Thoughts about the Promised Land

Im sure people have noticed my lack of commentary on my experiences of Israel.
Some of that has to do with me being pretty much tired of traveling and preferring to just post a few pictures rather than write reams of personal analysis... after six months of travel I feel Im allowed to slack-off a bit :)
But actually the more significant factor has been that its a complicated place and it seemed wrong to leap to conclusions after only visiting one or two places and only spending a few days here (especially if Im not moving on immediately and will be spending more time here)... But Ive now spent pretty much a month here and Ive seen a good amount of the place (though it only takes a day to ride from one end to the other of the country) so I think my opinions are now reasonably well founded.

So to start, lets state where Ive been and where I have not... I spent most of my time in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv (one week in each place), and I also spent a day or so in Elat, Hebron, and Tiberius. I have traveled from the extreme South at Elat, up along the Dead Sea coast to Jerusalem. Then North through to Haifa and on to the borders with Lebanon and Syria, around the Golan Heights, back through the West Bank to Jerusalem, and then West to Tel Aviv. I didn't get to se the SW coast or into Gaza (though Im pretty sure I would not have been allowed to enter Gaza even if Id been in the area). The vast majority of my time was spent in "Israel proper" and only a few days spent in the "occupied territories". I met lots of people though they were mostly in and around the cheap hotel/hostels that I stayed in or they were just average people on the street and at stores and gas stations etc.

And so, within those places and times, What did I think?
Sad to say I was pretty disappointed!, but its difficult to just lump all the difficult experiences into a single category... Israel is a complicated place... So Ill separate comments into categories.

So, the first category of my issues is "Religion" (no big surprise I suppose), and the main place where this aspect is overtly apparent is Jerusalem... Jerusalem is a very holy city for all three of the major Abrahamic religions (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim), And there are of course vast numbers of Jewish and Christian people from all over the world (almost only the "developed" world though) who come to Jerusalem on something of a pilgrimage. Note that while the city is also very holy for the Muslims, very few foreign Muslims can visit it because its difficult for them to get entry visas, so the majority of Muslims in the city are Palestinians/ residents of east Jerusalem and the other occupied territories.

For the most part, people from the different faiths get on in a civil fashion with each other and that's fine with me (I don't personally subscribe to any of these doctrinal faiths), but there seems to be something about Jerusalem that attracts vast numbers of "people of faith" who seem to be somewhere between significantly and completely "unhinged"!... Really!  I guess I shouldn't really be surprised but Ive never come across so many people who I felt were really quite "strange" and well on their way to crazy and with an intense religious bent!... Mostly they are not "overtly crazy" (you know, wandering around in strange clothes preaching in the street or shouting at passers-by etc), they are much less obvious and they only stand out as different once you start interacting with them. 
OK, so there are a bunch of crazy people wandering around the place... But its not that much of a problem, they are just crazy and I can mostly ignore them :)

And there are also lots of people here who experience their faith very intensely but don't feel the need to "push it down other peoples thoughts", and I have plenty of respect for these people (and thankfully Id have to say these types of people are probably in the majority compared to the others).

 But there is another category of people who I have much more difficulty with and these are the "intensely religious and righteous" ... Far too many "zealots" about the place!... These are people who experience their faith intensely and feel superior to all other people because of their interpretation of their faith and also feel the need to "share" their superiority and righteousness with anybody and everybody... Actually I have to say that it seems to be a significant factor in all the Abrahamic/Western faiths that most of the adherents feel morally superior and extremely intolerant toward everyone who is not of their chosen faith.... Like, my God and my holy book and my interpretation of it is the ONLY way to correctly live life, and anyone who believes differently is a sinner/heathen/infidel/etc. and they should be brought to the "true faith" and if they will not come willingly then they should be punished and driven out!!!  ... Needless to say, I have a BIG problem with these sorts of people, and sadly there seemed to me to be a lot of them in Jerusalem (both visitors and residents).
So that's a very brief and heavily caricatured description of the challenges I had with people I met in Jerusalem.

The second category of my issues in Israel Ill call the FUQ which is short for "Fuck You Quotient" and it seems to be a pervasive factor throughout the country and culture though I think I experienced it most clearly in the traffic and driving behaviors of the locals.
Now Ill start by saying that the traffic/driving in Israel is immensely more civilized than anywhere I went in East or North Africa and is more or less on-par with traffic in South Africa, and Namibia... People drive in marked lanes, they obey traffic lights and most road signs. The cars are modern and the roads are clean and well paved... Definitely "developed world" rather than "developing world", so compared to most of my driving experiences on this trip, driving in Israel was very pleasant indeed.
But the drivers here can be incredibly inconsiderate to each other... There seems to be a pervasive attitude of "I can do whatever I want and I don't care how it effects you"! ... In the middle of rush hour with rapidly moving crowded traffic, drivers are happy to stop their car in the middle of a traffic lane, completely stopping traffic, and spend two minutes chatting with the passenger who then casually gets out of the car, spends another 10 seconds chatting with the driver before closing the door. and then finally the car moves on and traffic resumes flowing... It matters not how much horn blaring is going on behind, the people in the blocking car don't seem to care at all... Its as if everyone in the country were a Taxi driver!
By far the most common cause of the FUQ is that people are engaging with their smart-phones all the time and prioritize that over all other considerations... This causes most of the disruptions in traffic flow and people standing in the middle of door-ways or corridors blocking other people, but its also often caused by other things too though I think mostly being captured under the heading of "social priorities"... Which is to say that I think the culture here prioritizes social interaction much more highly than cultures in North America/Australia (where Ive spent most of my life). The national attitude of "Fuck You" is however un-biased and is expressed completely equally to foreigners or other Israelis alike but regardless, I found it very distasteful!

But its my third category of issues that is the biggest and most difficult to accept/reconcile...
Im very sad and sorry to say that in my opinion Israel's current (and past) political/legal/social administration is an extremely biased and unfair system!... It appears that the prevailing cultural attitude is one of "Being White and Jewish is far more important than being democratic or espousing Human rights for all"!
I know that sounds incredibly harsh but having spent a good amount of time here and having looked to try to see where I was misinterpreting things Im afraid to say I think its true.

... But where to start? ... All I know is that it would feel very wrong for me to have seen what Ive seen and then Not write about it honestly!    so here goes...

From everything I saw, Israel is extremely biased against immigration from non-white and non-Jewish people... Now I freely admit that I do not at all know what the nations official immigration laws, policies, requirements are, but the "facts on the ground" are extremely clear... Every other city that I have been to in the world has significant numbers of  people of East Asian (mostly China) and usually also South Asian (India) descent... But I saw virtually none of these ethnic groups in Israel at all... And likewise, I saw virtually no people in Israel with sub-Saharan African heritage (which is the long-winded pc way to say Black people)... and of course every other city I went to on my trip (to "Africa") had very large populations ... This may be "normal" for Arabian nations (which I have not visited - though they hardly have a reputation for democracy or ethnic equality!) so Im not sure its a valid reference for Israel? And given the wealth and industry and general "developed" status of the nation, I guarantee there are millions of people from Africa and  South and East Asia who would very much like to emigrate to live in Israel (The ongoing military tensions with Israel's neighbors would not matter one jot!), so there is some "real politik" mechanism that is physically stopping that from happening.
Now I did see lots and lots of Russian immigrants (about 20% of the population) and there are also plenty of people of Arab descent (The indigenous Palestinians of course but Ill get to that in a bit), but by far the majority of the Israeli population seems to be of European descent... which is anything but the original inhabitants of the area. So, one way or another, the fact is that Israel appears to have very racist immigration behaviors! (regardless of how politically correct and un-biased the official narrative goes).
But even this aspect of the nation is less of an issue for me than the Palestinian "situation"...

Now Im not going to get into the incredibly long and divisive arguments of who did what where and when... There are literally hundreds of books written on the subject from many different perspectives and you can go read up on things if you want. Im simply going to state what my observations were and based on my own readings what conclusions Ive come to... No doubt many people will have wildly differing opinions... That's fine with me, but I have to live with my conscience so Im stating my views as they currently are...

The short version is that the behaviors of the Israeli Administration toward the indigenous Arab/Palestinian people of the area appear to be undeniably and exclusively those of an Colonial conquest... (which seems to be about 60% through to its completion in my opinion). The effect is that the indigenous inhabitants of the land (region/island/continent) are systematically evicted from the land  - Starting with the most arable and desirable regions and progressing through to any usable and even must "unusable" land until the entire continent is populated almost exclusively by the colonists and the original inhabitants culture is completely destroyed and only a tiny remnant of the people remains... Its an absolutely horrific process and there is absolutely no justice in it whatsoever!!! Much like the results of the European Colonizing (mostly the British in these cases) of Canada, USA, Australia, and New Zealand.
Likewise, the "process" of the "colonization" is very clearly apparent from the modern histories of the other colonized lands...Initially, when the colonizers are few, small amounts of land are bought or traded from the local inhabitants and a more or less peaceful process is used. But as the colonizers numbers grow and become more dominant then areas of the more desirable land are taken by force (with the colonizers having overwhelming technological and military superiority). And then as the colonization rate increases and more and more land is taken by force, the indigenous people become more militant and fight back... which the colonizers of course treat as completely unjustified attacks and then wrapping themselves in the cloak of "self protection and security" they visit horrendous punitive actions against the indigenous peoples and seize more land and raise villages etc. etc. etc. The story is as I said horrendous, predictable and extremely well documented as it has been repeated so many times...

So that is what happens with European colonization, and as I said it has happened a lot, but it happened mostly in the 18th, 19th centuries and was more or less a "mopping up" process in the first half of the 20th century. Since then the "victorious" colonizers have done some belated "soul searching" and nowadays the generally accepted "developed world" view is that the whole process was incredibly unjust, self serving and violated every version of Human Rights that we can think of... And of course we (in the developed world) like to think that we would never do anything like that again.... But Im not quite so sure, and Israel seems to be a definite "case in point"...

It seems to me that this process is exactly what has been happening in Israel all through the 20th century and is currently in "full swing" even now!!! The Palestinians are systematically being evicted and eliminated from the land of their forefathers, They are being visited with every known form of persecution and when individuals or groups within their population retaliate against the colonizers then the colonizers label the whole of the indigenous people as terrorists and visit ever more sever punitive actions and continue to usurp their lands and resources. Like I said, its the same old story! But to me the amazing thing is that its being carried out in the current times!

And Israel's administration clearly feel absolutely no shame whatsoever about what has been done in the past or what they are continuing to do every day! And of course the general Israeli population feel the same way too for that matter, but the public of any nation are pretty much putty in the hands of internal propaganda and will believe with conviction any narrative they are fed by their media.
And yet, the administration don't admit to what they are doing , well at least not publically because that would result in complete excommunication from the rest of the developed world!  So the same narrative that is used to generate internal popular consent is circulated and used to generate external political approval, though with somewhat less success... And I suppose that reduced success in generating political approval with other nations/peoples is directly because other people have less to gain and more to loose than the Israelis...
I think its a fundamental aspect of the human psyche ... I think that the peoples of other nations would be just as susceptible to committing mass acts of colonial persecution etc against another people if there was the same level of gain/loss at stake... When our greed locks onto something that some other group of people has and that we want, then we are all very capable of and depressingly competent at identifying the differences between US and THEM and then finding any and all means of justifying WE are the good guys, THEY are the bad guys and then its completely fine to do what ever horrible think we want to THEM and identify it as JUST and RIGHTEOUS in the defense of US....

Just like that wonderful and much lauded constitution document of the USA that starts out "We the people..."   Well, that "WE" somehow didn't seem to include African slaves or Native Americans!.. How convenient!
Yes, at the time it was written most of the founding fathers owned slaves and the "Indian wars" were just getting started! (late 18th century)

So sad; so depressingly and predictably sad!!!

... In fact, I found the whole experience of visiting the Israel and traveling around the place and seeing the effects of a hundred years of colonization, and doing some of my own literary research as well, so intensely depressing and aggravating at the same time that Im not going to write any more on the subject... Im going to leave it at that and just state that I didn't like it!

And so having spent about a month here I find that Im happy to be leaving the beautiful sunny warm beaches of the modern city of Tel Aviv and heading back to the cold rainy city of Vancouver... Like I said, quite disappointing... Well for me anyway, Im sure if you don't pay much attention to these sorts of things then it would seem like a wonderful place ...

In the Box

The bike is now shipped!

I made some measurements and figured the bike would fit in 3 cubic metres or less. I then got a local carpentry place to cut all the bits of wood needed to make the box (from my cut-list).
Then yesterday morning I rode the bike over to the carpentry place, drained the last of the fuel out, disconnected the battery, dropped the bike down on the front suspension to its lowest, and spent the next three hours ding the box...
Its all screwed together pine with thin ply outer panels. I ended up being able to make the box lower than I had initially planned so it is now 2.5 cubic metres... which is a good thing since it costs me many hundreds of dollars per cubic metre to ship it.

So, once the bike was in the box I organized a truck to come collect it the next morning. At 6:30 am the truck arrived and with the help of a couple of the carpenter guys we managed to manhandle the crate onto a fork-lift trolley in the street and from there onto the truck.
Then I accompanied the crate to the bonded warehouse where it was inspected and the last side panel screwed on... and a fork-lift came and took it away into the warehouse.

... and now I have to make do with public transport! :(

So, all that is left to do here in Haifa is to wait till the shipping broker gets the bike through customs for export, and then I have to pay for the shipment (which is the big bucks!)... Then Ill be free to head off to Tel Aviv... I will wait to see when I actually get to Tel Aviv but I may try to change one of my flights to go earlier and then Ill be able to stop for a few days in Istanbul rather than just hanging around for yet another week here in Israel... we shall see.

But the bike is now dealt with... at least till it gets to Canada.

Bike crated with the two side cases.

Loading it onto the truck

 

Last side panel screwed on after customs inspection.

And off it goes into the bonded warehouse... I wonder if Ill ever see it again :)

 

Dead Sea

While Im waiting for the holidays to be over here so that I can get back to shipping my motorbike to Canada, I went for a quick visit to the Dead Sea...  Every one does :)

View over the dead sea.

The dead sea is a lake at the end of the Jordan river that divides Israel from Jordan. (And the Sea of Galilee is a much smaller fresh-water lake at the other end of the valley that is the source of the Jordan River). The Dead Sea is salty because there is no outlet for the water and all the salts that are leached from the land that the river waters pass through are left in the lake as the water evaporates with the sun. And over the millennia that has amounted to a great deal of salt.
In fact the Dead Sea is dying... Its evaporating fast because humans are drawing so much water from the Jordan river that less and less water is reaching the Dead Sea each year. The Dead Sea is already renowned as the lowest point on the Earths surface and is about 440m below sea level... That's a long way down!! But each year it loses about another 1-1.5m of water!

Anyway, I went to have a swim to see what its like... And its rather an odd experience...
The water is so intensely salty that it doesn't really feel like water at all... Its more like a very light oil... it beads off the skin strongly and it feels thick and greasy.

 

Greasy water that beads off the skin.

Then once you get into the water there is so much buoyancy that it feels kind of like you are wearing a 12mm wetsuit with no weights (Like you would use for surfing or diving in arctic waters ). You float so high that its actually quite difficult to swim... Your feet are up out of the water so using a normal kicking motion doesn't work...it just makes lots of splashing and no propulsion!
And when you try to "stand" in the water (floating vertically) you constantly become unbalanced and start to flip over... very interesting!

And the water is intensely salty indeed... Its far too salty to drink and even trying to taste it is unpleasant because it burns your mouth... It burns any area of skin on your body that is normally moist...Like inside your mouth or your nostrils etc...You can put your head underwater only briefly but then trying to open your eyes after you come up again is very painful because the salt is in your eyes.
They say you should not stay in the water for more than about 20min since the osmotic pressure is rapidly dehydrating you by sucking the moisture out through your skin... But after you do get out and wash the salt off with fresh water, your skin does feel much softer... I guess the salt triggers your skin to release more oil and clears out the pours pretty well too... There is a thriving spa industry around the edge of the Dead Sea; and the mud is apparently very therapeutic too... you can buy tubs of the mud in very nice cosmetic packages :)

Floating level with lungs absolutely full.

Floating level with lungs absolutely empty.

No, Im not touching the bottom at all... just floating like this!

 

All the tourists lolling about.

And after an hour or so there is not much else to do so I went back to Jerusalem which is only about 45 minutes drive away (Its such a small country).

Petra

I went to visit Petra just over the border from Israel in Jordan.

Its one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World", so I expected it to be incredibly touristy but still worth visiting... Much like the Pyramids in Egypt...
And that's about how it was ... way too many tourist for my liking but impressive and well worth the cost and effort anyway :)

Much of Jordan is flat and very arid... not a lot too see or do here!

 

But in the real around Petra it becomes rugged and rocky with sandstone formations much like the Moab area in Utah USA. And in one of the valley systems in those sandstone hills is Petra... By the way, the name "Petra" simply means stone or rock in Latin, so we really don't know what the local people called the place in their own language... they didn't leave any written records of their culture!

 

The current prevailing theory is that all of the rock carved rooms and facades are actually a huge necropolis rather than an actual city used for trade, though they believe that the area was a centre for trading caravans from many areas and the trading centre was located near-by but not in this valley... This was a sacred valley used to bury the dead.

 

there seem to be about three different types of tombs, from three different eras... The first type are the simplest and are effectively simple rooms hollowed out of the rock with a single door.

 

The next and more sophisticated type of tomb is more or less a simple "box" of stone formed by carving away the natural shape of the hill that the simple room was carved into... There are some adornments to the cubic tombs but not much.

Inside the tombs you usually find quite a few graves carved into the floor... And even the graves may well have held the remains of multiple people... I think the current theory is that a tomb was for a single family and they gradually "filled" up over the decades... but again, who really knows?

 

The sandstone in the area is generally quite soft and has been eroded by wind and water into all sorts of interesting shapes.

 

Unless it has been exposed to lots of water, which actually acts as a hardening agent.

And so the hoards of tourists arrive at the parking area quite a way from the monuments in the Petra valley... We all then proceed to walk a couple of kilometers through a very narrow "slot canyon" to the main monument valley.

The builders protected the road way from erosion by carving rain gutters along the sides of the slot canyon and put quite a lot of effort into diverting waterways and ensuring good drainage to protect the valley from water damage... very interesting!

And after about a kilometer of winding your way along the canyon you emerge into the light...

 

And immediately in front of you is the most spectacular of the rock facades (the third and most elaborate and recent type of tomb)... This one is the best preserved in the whole valley due to it being in the most protected location). Its referred to as "The Treasury" but these days its assumed that its actually the main temple for the valley... but that "diagnosis" may change as archaeologists slowly learn more....

In fact, only recently did they discover that the current "floor" of the valley is in the completely wrong place and should in fact be about 6 metres lower down... Excavations in front of the treasury have shown that there are further tombs below this main façade and inscriptions on the face below that... which we currently believe is the true "floor" level.

Over the centuries the valley has been filled up with sand and for many centuries the whole site was completely "lost" and no one knew where "Petra" was. The trading city was at its peak at around the time  when the Roman civilization was at its height and the Romans recorded the existence and rough location of the city, but little more was known.

 

 

After a look around at the "Treasury" area I wandered down the valley and looked at many more of the less well preserved tombs and facades. Then I headed up a long set of stairs that lead up and over one of the local hill peaks and enjoyed the views of Petra from above...

 



The sandstone erodes and wears easily so many of the steps are in bad condition are completely worn away...

 

Some Obelisks at the top of the hill.

Looking down on people and camels etc.

 

 

A Juniper tree... Probably over a thousand years old!

 

 

 

Many many tombs in the valley walls...

The main tourist route through the valley.

The sandstone that has been protected from sun and rain has the most beautiful patterns and intense colours.

 

 

 

The hills are full of tombs

 

 

 

The insides of most of the tombs are stained black by smoke from fires... The Bedouin used most of the tombs as homes for a few centuries, long after the place was abandoned for unknown reasons.

But there are a few that are free of soot and the colours and patterns of the rock inside are truly wonderful.

 

 

 

 

The architectural features of the facades seem to contain features and aspects in common with many different cultures, from Egyptian to Greek and Roman and Persian... Seems appropriate for a major trading centre that had ongoing relations with all of these places... Its like the tomb city was designed to please the eye of the visitors as much or even more than the locals... very cosmopolitan.

I was here :)

And then back out the same way I walked in.

A very nice Arabian horse for tourists to ride... A little odd to see it with an American "Western" saddle, and while it looks magnificent with that arched neck, the horse is a bit uncomfortable because its the harness set-up that is physically holding the hoses head in that position that makes his neck arch.

Locals still using one of the old tombs as a place to hang out and have a smoke and a cup of tea :)