(Getting read for the panel)For those of you who don't know, general elections are coming up on Tuesday to elect members to the Kinneset. Whichever party gets the highest percentage of votes and thus the most members of Kinneset gets to choose the new Prime Minister. When I came, I had little to no knowledge of the political atmosphere in Israel. Now, I have a slightly better idea of what is at stake, what the parties hope to accomplish, and who is the choice for each party for the seat of Prime Minister. Likud, the party which Netanyahu represents, is more conservative. Kadima is Tzipi Livni's party, Barak belongs to the Labor party, and Lieberman I'm not quite sure. I still don't have the strongest grasp on the whole situation nor what all the different parties have to say, because I haven't been to rallies for all of them nor have I read up on all of them unfortunately. Nonetheless, being at the Likud rally was pretty exciting. Rachel and I got interviewed by a lady with an eyepatch who writes for a British publication called the Sunday Times as to why we were there to get a better feel for who was at the rally. It was part of a last minute attempt to gain support from the Anglos in the country, as there are approximately 250,000 English speakers in Israel. I would venture out to say that about 75% of the people at the rally were 50 or over which doesn't really surprise me. The couple sitting behind us were from Scotland, another man behind us from Toronto and there were at least twenty Hebrew University students there as well. The mistress of ceremonies (whose name I don't recall) spoke about how important it is Israel votes for Likud and therefore for Netanyahu. Netanyahu's main points dealt with areas such as Gaza and education (advocating more Jewish education as, he argues, this is our land and we must continue to educate our children on their heritage and traditions). He argued that any of the other parties would not help the economy as he promised to do. He promised to create more jobs like he did back before he was prime minister in the late 90's and to help the economy get out of the global crunch faster than other countries. His policies on the Arab-Isreali conflict struck me as the most interesting. He seemed to be more conservative than some of the other parties in terms of what he said he was willing to give up and what he wasn't. He spoke to never going back to pre-1967 borders and not wanting to split Jerusalem. He attacked Livni arguing that her policies would only aid Hamas to continue what it was doing. The longer I'm here the more I'm learning about what really goes on in Gaza and the territories from either soldiers I know who have fought there or from reading the newspapers online every day. The more I read and speak with Israelis the more I find myself stuck in the middle on so much of what is going on. On one hand, there is obvious humanitarian distress occuring in Gaza, but at the same time much of it is self inflicted. A lot of the PR that Israel receives is skewed; at first one story goes out that is not always the whole truth, and when the whole truth does come out, it makes the 16th page of the newspaper and is completely overlooked. But there is also definite tension within Israel itself between Arab-Israelis and Jews. There doesn't seem to be any right or wrong within any of this, and I feel that so many people are looking to blame rather than to truly figure out a solution that can work. If Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinians in Gaza, shouldn't that say something about how the Palestinians feel towards Israel? But at the same time, Hamas has been creating schools and hospitals, so it would make sense that Palestinians would want to vote for them. The good that Hamas does doesn't nearly outweigh the destruction the group causes and the ideologies of death it puts forth, but it something to take into consideration. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with all of this, but it's given me a lot to think about while I've been here, especially because I don't feel directly connected to a lot of what is going on. I feel, for the most part, simply an observer and not a participant as perhaps many of the Israelis feel.
On a completely different note, I spent the weekend in the Golan, a beautiful area in the North of Israel on the Kinneret. We left here at 6:30 am on Friday and our first stop was to go repelling, on an omega (a zip line) and to take the country's longest cable car. The day turned out to be perfect for everything we did. We got to choose between the omega and repelling, but only three of us ended up repelling. We repelled down a 42 meter cliff and then took a ten minute hike back up to the top to meet the group. I'd been repelling before but not on a real rock face. While it wasn't the most exciting thing I've ever done, it was definitely exhilirating. There's something to be said for walking over the edge of the cliff, letting go of your body, and trusting that what you're strapped into while hold you the whole way down. You get to control how far you bounce and how fast you go depending on how much slack or tension you give yourself. It felt great to be back in a harness and tied into the belay system, definitely made me miss the ropes course at camp :-). After we took the cable car back down, we were off to our second location: ATVing.
(The leader of our caravan, one of the instructors who happened to have failed basically everyone he tested. He turned out to be a really cool guy)
(I'm driving the second ATV from the front)I realized once I got there that I had never actually seen an ATV before. It took a really long time for every took take the driving test and to be put into caravans and sent off. Not everyone got to drive the ATVs, so they got to drive these small off-roading Jeeps instead. A lot of kids failed for various reasons, but fortunately I passed and was able to take a passenger. It's really difficult to steer one of those things! The gas is controled by a little thumb lever on the right handle and the break is on the left handle In order to turn you really need to put all of your strenght into turning the handle bars. We were the second to last caravan to go out which lead to some craziness later, but the trip itself was fantastic. We began by weaving in and out of vineyards and then set off to the top of one of the Naftali mountains, which turned out to be about a 45 minute trip in all.
(View from the Naftali Mountains)When we were driving on the road we got to step on the gas and let ourselves go; it felt fantastic. The view from the top of the mountain was also something I will never forget. Spectacular. When we returned, we found out that the bus had already left with most of the kids to go eat lunch because we were running so late. We had to wait for the last caravan to return before we were bussed to the restaurant, only to find out that we couldn't sit down and eat and had to take the food to go because the restaurant was closed for shabbat and it was already almost shabbat. Unfortunately, we later found out, we missed the amazing hummus and guacamole in addition to salads, but the food we did have was really good. It was a little cold, but delicious. The only problem was we ate at around 3:30, 4, stuffed ourselves cause we hadn't eaten much other than chocolate rugelach, chocolate, and drank shock (chocolate milk in a bag) the whole morning, and we were supposed to eat dinner again 2 hours later at the hotel. That part of the day was extremely rushed between eating on the bus and not having a ton of time once we got to the hotel to relax and change for shabbat. Kabbalat shabbat was nice, different than I was used to because the men and women were separated, as the hotel was shomer shabbat and catered to an orthodox crowd. Dinner was amazing. It consisted of at least 4 different courses and lots of little things. Basically I ate enough the whole weekend to sustain me for the week but unfortunately food doesn't work like that :-). It was a relaxing weekend- we went out to the Kinneret and hung out on the beach for about two hours, looking at what stars we could see, and just chatting about various things. Shabbat morning we all slept in, did some more beach walking, a lot more eating, singing, praying, and at 7 pm we were back on the bus headed to Jerusalem. It was a short getaway but definitely worth it. A bunch of us want to all pitch in for a tent and go back to the Golan where there is great hiking and camping. It's the most lush and green part of the country because it's right next to the only fresh water source.
Right now, I'm getting ready to go the student center where I go every week, but this week is Tu B'shvat, one of the major agricultural holidays, so they are doing a seder with nuts, fruits, chocolate and apparently sushi, after which I have my learning session with Tsipora, an orthodox woman in the community (part of a dollars for learning program-i get paid to learn). After that it's back to finish some homework and crash because I am exhausted! I'm hoping to go to the zoo this week, so we'll see how that goes. Again, Tuesday is election day, so we don't have classes (but we do on friday the 13th to make up for it). A bunch of us might go early to Gan Sacher to play frisbee, but it might be raining. Don't have any definite plans right now and that's ok with me. I like being spontaneous especially here. Hope all is well in the states. I'd love to hear from you!
P.S. Kristen- you should comment so I know you're alive :-)
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