stop shouting, "incoming!" thank you.
Today's itinerary:
Capernaum
Safed
The Good Fence
Kiryat Shemona
Golan Heights
Guy restaurant
Carole asked him, "Would you go?"
He shrugged. "Sure."
We conferred for about a half a second and then said, "Okay, sure, let's go."
Micky thought about this. And then he said, "You're the first Americans I've ever had who would go through with it. Everybody else would find a reason to cancel."
(Micky has been leading tours for over 20 years.)
We drove around the Sea of Galilee (which is actually named Lake Kinneret), which is a gorgeous site. Our hotel room has a great view of it (the only thing about our room I like). Micky pointed out the Sermon on the Mount Church, which is built on the spot reported to be where the Sermon on the Mount was given. My first thought: that Jesus had a keen eye for the spectacular backdrop.
Our first stop was Capernaum, known as the center of Jesus's ministry and a wealthy Jewish community. At the Franciscan site, there is a large church called the House of St. Peter or "the UFO" because of its modern, round appearance. There is also the White Synagogue, which dates from the Herodian era. The synagogue showed how wealthy the community was, because the white stone it was built out of isn't found in the area, which is actually covered by black volcanic rock.
At the temple, an almost totally white cat started following us around and meowing loudly. Another cat, a calico, soon joined in.
Wandering around, looking for cats
From Capernaum we drove to Safed, a town way up in the hills. Narrow, winding roads made me queasy on the way there. Safed is one of the 4 holy cities of Judaism; the other three are Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias. During the Middle Ages, scholars flocked to the shadow of a crusader's fort (this happened a lot in Israel's history, we learned) and began writing about Judaism. Now it's an artist colony specializing in Jewish art: drawings of stereotypical Jewish men dancing in a line, mezzuzahs of all shapes and sizes, menorahs in every type of design.
At the synagogue Micky took us into waas a book: Kabbalah for the Layman. (Lots of qabalistic books in the shop by the interior of the synagogue.)
EXT. SAFED SYNAGOGUE - DAY
MICKY, DARIN, and DIANE exit the synagogue into a narrow pedestrian
shopping alley.
DIANE
I don't know if you know this,
but the qabala is very trendy
in Hollywood right now
MICKY
Right now? The last 4 or 5 years!
DARIN
The biggest popularizer of it is
Madonna.
Micky rolls his eyes, as if to say, "Don't get me started."
MICKY
My ex-wife is!
He then told us how his ex-wife is way into the qabala now, after having tried every guru under the sun. One of the "great" things about the qabala is that you can just keep studying it; there's always more to learn, being one of those occult "sciences."
Micky also told us that when someone's crazy, there's an Israeli saying: "He has no brakes." Then he pointed out where the tour buses park: several of the lampposts were bent at a serious, kind of disturbing angle.
From Safed we went to the Good Fence, the border between Israel and Lebanon. After the Lebanese Civil War started, there were no social services provided in South Lebanon. So one day--alert! legend starting! alert!--a woman took her sick child to the Israeli border post and asked if they had a doctor. The child went over the fence, saw a doctor, and came back with medicine.
Next day, 2 or 3 more mothers showed with their kids.
Then one guy asked to buy cooking oil.
Now there's a big trade across the border there, with a couple of clinics staffed by Israelis--hence the name, "The Good Fence."
Just a few feet from getting yet another country stamp in our passports.
We couldn't get a picture of the one thing we all really wanted to get a picture of. At the souvenir/snack stand was an Arab family. The 6 of us started cracking up at the same time, and Scott said if he'd had a camera with a zoom lens he'd have gotten the picture (so that they wouldn't have known). The mother had her baby wrapped in a Bart Simpson "Underachiever" blanket, which seemed so incongruous with this traditionally dressed woman.
We stopped in Kiryat Shemona for lunch. We got fresh hot falafel at a little shop--the best falafel we've ever had. Evidently one of the shells from yesterday's shelling fell 50 yards from this shop and the blast cracked the glass on his doors. The owner made sure we saw that. Americans! Look here!
As we drove down the road after lunch, I looked for more damage from shelling. I didn't see any.
Our final bit for the day was the jeep tour of the Golan Heights. We went to the place where we were supposed to meet the jeep driver, but he was delayed because of a flat tire, so we waited inside the bar. I got a glass of coffee, which I discovered was neither American coffee (usually called "filtered," here) or espresso but traditional coffee, which Steve helpfully calls "dirt." Hot water and coffee grounds and incredibly strong.
The driver showed and we set off in his Land Rover. My butt can still feel it. We went over rocky terrain like you wouldn't believe. Not a whole lot of pavement on either the farm we drove through to get to the Heights or the Heights themselves. Ow. Ow.
The Jeep! (Actually, a Land Rover)
The valley next to the Heights was created by draining a lake into the Sea of Galilee and is now farmland, which wasn't very usable when the Syrians controlled the Golan Heights. Syria moved all of its regular-Joe citizens out of the Golan and moved the military in, letting them dig in and shell Israel at will. As you can see here, when you're on the hill, you pretty much run the valley below.
Midway up the Golan Heights.
In the Six Day War, the Israelis defeated the Egyptians and Jordanians in the south and then turned their attention to the Syrians in the north, who hadn't advanced during the War, but were pretty much doing what they'd been doing in the area for the previous 20 years: shelling, shelling, shelling. So the Israeli army showed up and there was fierce fighting for a day. The next day, the Israelis discovered that the Syrians had fled in the night. Part of the reason was that the Arab propaganda had done its job too well: the party line was that the Jews were so bloodthirsty that if they captured you, they would eat you. The Israelis managed to push the border back 21 miles that day, and they could have kept going except a cease-fire was declared--the 21 mile border was pretty arbitrary, actually.
(Unfortunately, the victory in the Six Day War led to Israeli overconfidence, which led to them getting wailed on during the early days of the Yom Kippur War. But we get to that later.)
Now, of course, the Syrians want the whole Golan back as a precursor to any peace talks. Having seen the Golan Heights, I am left with two thoughts on the matter: the Syrians lost it fair and square (what kind of army loses with such a dominant position?) and there's no way the Israelis are ever going to give the Syrians this kind of vantage point over their valley again. Maybe everything up to these Heights, but I can't believe they'd give these up.
Scott keeps an eagle eye for Syrians sneaking up on us.
We stopped and peeked in a Syrian bunker that was built to hold 10. It was teeny. The driver also told us that when the shelling starts it can hold 20. There are remains of buildings--some civilian, some military--and barbed wire and cows. That's what's on the Golan Heights these days.
Since today was Darin's birthday, he had to choose where to eat. (Where's the justice in that, I ask you?) He picked a place that turned out to be right across the street from the hotel, the Guy Restaurant, which serves cheap, wonderful Middle Eastern food (like shishlik and--what else--hummus). If you're ever in Tiberias, check it out.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com