My misguided curiosity

No one is ever going to design a tour just for me. Adina took us all over northern Israel today – to ancient cities and beautiful vistas – and, as we drove, we passed a Kimberly Clark factory I wanted to know more about (diapers? Toilet paper?) and an abandoned Volkswagen dealership (economy issue? Distaste for German cars?). There’s the Clandestine Immigration Museum that I’m not getting to see and the Hermann Struck Museum – another museum in a converted house. I am super-curious, but always about the wrong stuff, it seems, and in a group situation, I’m too embarrassed to ask my questions. But I’m frustrated – I have not made it into a single grocery store – I haven’t been able to assess the range of peanut butter brands or potato chips.

I shouldn’t complain, I know. Adina took us all the way to the border with Lebanon – that’s the pic above and one more below, which actually shows the no-man’s land between the countries.

The reason for the trek to the border was to see Rosh Hanikra grottoes:

But I was definitely more interested in the border. As far as I could tell, the entire crossing was guarded by this one guy, who was friendlier than I think a border guard should be.

Adina says the Middle East is the last bad neighborhood on the planet. And while she’s kind of joking, there’s an undercurrent of animosity here. We heard an Arab speaker yesterday, talking about life as a minority in Israel, and prejudicial and unfair treatment by the Israeli government – for instance, his wife, trying to fly internally from Haifa to Eilat to give a speech at a pediatric ophthalmology conference – she was not allowed to bring her laptop on board with her. After much arguing about needing the laptop for the presentation, they allowed her to fly on one flight with her laptop on the next flight, presumably so she could not detonate it.

And then Adina, talking to us privately after the Arab speaker, told us that behavior like that does not happen in a vacuum, and shared with us a story about the leader of the Arab contingent in Israel, smuggling cell phones and information into the prisons here, making the point, I guess, that Israeli distrust of Arabs is defensible.

I don’t know for any of it. As with any complicated situation, I see a lot of sides of it and, in the end, I just have no idea.

Let’s move on though. We also toured ancient Akka today. We went into the 12th Century Knight’s Halls of the Hospitaller Fortress. I have no idea why it’s called this but check out the dining room:

Adina talked a lot of history in here and then we got to leave and I got to look at some interesting stores and restaurant items:

At some point, some unsuspecting tour members asked Ron to take a picture of them with their fancy camera, and I decided not to intervene, but, instead, let Ron try to operate the camera. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Ron doesn’t really know how to operate our point-and-shoot, much less their $1000 equipment. Outcome: no photos taken, despite much button pressing.

We also went to Nazareth to see a church that had everyone pretty excited. It’s the largest Arab city in Israel and has the Basilica of the Annunciation, where Mary received her message from god, which is apparently a BIG DEAL if you are religious. Here’s a pic of a group making their way to the Basilica, chanting and singing as they approached:

And here’s the Basilica:

I was far more interested in this pic below. It’s near Nazareth – new, high-end housing for sale, with a view into a vast cemetery, which I feel would affect marketing, but maybe that’s just me.

Tomorrow we head to Jerusalem for 4 nights, stopping en route to tour a kibbutz.