LIKE WHITE SOUTH AFRICA? (Israel)

Member Name: Aang

Product:	Israel
Date:	08/10/00 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: History

Disadvantages: Not a holy place?

Israel has the wonderfully sunny Red Sea resort of Eilat, with its deep blue sea, amazing water sports, and luxury hotels; Israel has the DEAD Sea; Israel has lush green Galilee and the famous town of Nazareth; Israel has Jerusalem; Israel has children being shot by soldiers. (Terrified 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durrah was cowering in his father's arms when he was apparently deliberately shot by Israeli soldiers.)

In Jerusalem there is the Western Wall ( best visited on a Friday night); there is the Garden Tomb and the Via Dolorosa and the Mount of Olives.

There is the CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE which was built in the 12th century by those bloody murdering Crusaders (the Crusaders who roasted children on spits and who were happy to kill Christians as well as Jews and Moslems). There are churches in Italy and Spain which are more impressive.

Jerusalem has THE TEMPLE MOUNT. This is supposedly where Isaac's father prepared to sacrifice Isaac. Fortunately the boy was not killed. This is also where the first and second Jewish temples were built. Neither survived. What does survive is the MOSLEM DOME OF THE ROCK, with its shiny gold dome. The Temple Mount is the place from which Mohammed is supposed to have ascended into heaven. A safer place to visit mosques might be Malaysia.

Jerusalem has Chagall's Windows at the Hebrew University, and street performers at Nahalat Binyemin Street.

Outside Jerusalem, Masada is one of the most impressive sites: a fort on top of a very steep-sided rock.

Some tourists are disappointed by Israel. They visit all these 'holy' places and yet they don't somehow feel anything special. Lonely Planet sums it up better than me when it writes: "ANYONE EXPECTING PROFOUND MOMENTS OF EPIPHANY BROUGHT ON BY IMMERSION IN THE REFINED AIR OF THE HOLY LAND IS IN FOR A SHOCK. ISRAEL IS A BUSTLING, SMELLY, NOISY COUNTRY, JUST AS CAPABLE OF SQUEEZING A TACKY TOURIST BUCK OUT OF
THE SACRED AS ANY US BIBLE-BELT TOWN."

Atmospheric places with Christian connections can be found in much safer Greece.

A trip to Israel is best to be accompanied by some HISTORY. (Please let me know of any errors of fact)

1. The Cannanites lived in Israel.

2. Supposedly, The Jews, led by Abraham, left their original home in IRAQ and beat up the Canaanites. Some Jews seemed to think that their god allowed them to take over other people's land and massacre the children of any one who objected. (Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose).

However, the Jews, having given the world the idea that there was one God, also gave the world the idea that God was a God of love. Hosea, chapter 6, quotes God as saying "I want love, not sacrifice."

J M Roberts writes "The Bible states that Abraham came from Ur to Canaan; this is quite plausible....the Hebrews were pastoralists, organised tribally, quarrelling with neighbours and kinsmen over wells and grazing, still liable to be pushed about the Near East by the pressures of drought and hunger.....

3. The Jews later left Israel and went to live in Egypt. That might have been the end of the story, but Moses brought the Jews back to Israel.

4. The Assyrians did to the Jews what the Jews had done to the Canaanites. The Assyrians took over Israel. The Jews went to live in Babylon.

J M Roberts writes "There is only tradition for all Hebrew history until about 1200 BC...The Old Testament texts only took their present form in the 7th century BC, perhaps 800 years after the story of Joseph..."

5.Enter the Greeks! Israel was conquered by Alexander the Great.

6. Enter the Romans! Jesus was born at the time when the area was part of the Roman Empire. Jesus preached that God was a God of Love, and that people should learn to love their enemies. He tried to educate people about God and point out supposed err
ors in some previous thinking.

The Jews were expelled from Israel in 135 AD and went to live in many different countries, from Russia to Morocco. Some went back to Iraq. (In the Middle Ages, false accusations were raised against the Jews in Europe and some were herded into ghettoes. Cruel massacres took place )

7. The Eastern Roman Empire became the Christian Byzantine Empire, and Israel was mainly Christian.

8. Israel was Moslem from 636 AD until the middle of the 20th Century (except for the period from 1099-1291 when the Crusaders occasionally got the upper hand).

The Moslem Turks were the rulers of Israel from 1517-1917.

9. In the 19th century a few Jews began returning to Israel.
By 1914 there were 450,000 Arabs in the area and about 90,000 Jews.

10.In 1920 Israel (called Palestine) became British. The British favoured the idea of a Jewish homeland within Palestine.

Nazi persecution led more Jews to move to Israel/Palestine. Six million Jews persished in the Nazi Holocaust.

11.In 1947 the United Nations decided to split the region into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The state of Israel was founded in 1948. The Arab countries objected, went to war and got defeated. Israel took some Arab/Palestinian land. Jordan took the West Bank.

In the years that followed there were several wars. The Jews took over more and more Arab land.

In 1967 the Jews grabbed control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

12. In 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was founded.

13. There were many evil terrorist attacks by the PLO. In 1978 a Palestinian terror raid into Israel left 37 civilians dead.

In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy PLO bases. In 1982 Lebanese Christian Phalangists, working with the Israeli army, entered the Palestine refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. 2,000 Palestinians were murdered. General Sharon was held indirectl
y responsible.

In 1987 the Palestinians began an uprising which led to more than 300 Palestinians being killed by the Jews.

14. In 1993 Israel agreed to the future handover of territory to the Palestinians (eg the West Bank). This is opposed by fanatical Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

15. On 8th October 2000, Suzanne Goldenberg, in the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote: "12-year-old Mohammad al-Durrah...cowered in his father's arms, before he was hit by a final shot to the stomach and slumped over, dead...(There was a) loosening of a dying boy's grip on his father, Jamal, and his father's convulsive twitch when he was struck by more rounds...By the end of the week the evidence was pointing...to the conclusion that the 12-year-old boy and his father were deliberately targeted by Israeli soldiers..."

Over half of those killed (in the days leading up to to 8/10/00) have been children aged 15 and under. They were shot, from a safe distance, by heavily armed soldiers. Hence the condemnation of Israel's use of excessive force by the United Nations Security Council.

So, should Israel be shared between the Canaanites, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks....?

The impression one gets while visiting Israel is that this is not a holy place, any more than Northern Ireland or Jaffna or Bangkok. It is commercial. It is tribal.
Surely God is to be found not just in one city or in one tribe or in one country?

If you want history, then Israel has lots of it!
If you want beaches, there are better ones in many other parts of the Mediterranean.

As an alternative to Israel, how about Turkey? Turkey has loads of history, holy sites, and beaches.

For more on Israel you may like to look at the following sites:
israeldaily.com
has lots of news, from both sides, and lots of links to other sites.

B'tselem.org
is an Israeli organisa
tion which monitors human rights violations.

conspire.com has theories about a right wing conspiracy to murder Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.

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