Febr uary 19-20, 2009 Zichron Ya'acov, Jerusalem Future

February 19, 2009 from Stan:

Day in Tel Aviv and touring with Ilan Hamel, Chairman of the Dept. of Pathology, Tel Aviv University Medical School. We took the #480 bus to Tel Aviv, Arlozorov Station and then walked around the corner to Mordechai Namir Street and took the #27 bus to Tel Aviv University. Walked through the beautiful campus with many sculptures and flowers. While waiting for the bus we wanted to verify that the #27 was the correct bus so I asked a man with a briefcase, “Are you a professor going to the university?” He replied, “No, but are you. But I am going to the university and you can come with me.” He told us he was an illustrator for the “Jerusalem Report” magazine and also for many books. His name is Avi Katz and is well known, especially as an illustrator of children’s books. Two days later at dinner with our friends, Don and Barbara Rush, Barbara mentioned that an illustrator was coming to her home in a few days from Tel Aviv to discuss illustrating one of the children’s books she is writing. Guess the illustrator! It’s a small world here.

Ilan took us on a tour of his laboratories. We saw a confocal laser microscope, which can take pictures of a living cell layer by layer, even getting to see the individual structures of the nucleus. The entire department is state of the art with some very exciting research going on.

Our first stop was Apollonia National Park on the Mediterranean halfway between Tel Aviv and Netanya. Apollonia, then called Arsuf, was first settled by the Phoenicians at the end of the sixth century BCE. One of their main products was a rare and valuable blue dye made from snails. The Greeks in the fourth century BCE re-named it after the god Apollo. The historian Josephus mentioned in ~150 BCE that Appolonia was ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty of the Maccabee (think Chanukah) family. The town went through Roman then Byzantine then Islamic rule. The Muslims re-named it back to the original Arsuf. The Crusaders conquered it and ownership for the next century and one half alternated between Muslims and Crusaders until Mameluke Sultan Bibars destroyed it in 1265. The city was abandoned until it is excavated.

We then drove to Zichron Ya’acov one of the earliest Jewish agricultural settlements of modern times on land was purchased in1880 by Baron Rothschild to begin the re-building of a Jewish homeland. The town was built on top of a small mountain for security. The original main street is now a lovely pedestrian mall with many shops and restaurants including the Tishbi Winery and Restaurant where we had a delightful lunch and some fine wine.

Down the block are the Aaronsohn House and N.I.L.I. Museum, which tells an incredible story of a family’s ingenuity, bravery, and longing for freedom. The Aaronsohn family by 1915 had become relatively well to do and educated. The children studied in French universities. Their oldest son Aaron Aaronsohn became a well-known agronomist after discovering the location of wild wheat. He cross-bred the wild wheat and made many useful advances in wheat production and then set up agricultural stations across Palestine with the help of the Ottoman Empire which since 1516 ruled Palestine and the entire Middle-East.

In 1915, during World War I and a locust infestation that caused widespread famine in Palestine, the Turks, fighting with the Germans, instituted an extra tax on Jews and required a new loyalty oath. Thirty thousand Jews could not pay the tax or would not take the loyalty oath and were exiled. Aware of the Armenian genocide (that they witnessed first hand), the Aaronsohn family decided that rule under the British would be better than rule of the Turks and decided to spy for the British. At this time Aaron was travelling all over Palestine and could observe the movements of the Turkish Army and document water sources. The British reluctantly accepted their offer of information and sent a boat (ship?) every once in a while to get the information. After some success with this method of transferring information, the British boat came no longer due to the presence of German submarines. Two members of this small spy network decided to walk to Egypt to deliver their information. On the way Bedouins in the Sinai Desert attacked them and killed Avshalom Feinberg; the other man although wounded arrived in Cairo.

Incredibly when Israel captured the Sinai in the 1967 War, their effort to find his grave was successful as Bedouins still knew where the “Jew Grave” was. A date tree grew at the spot where it had sprouted from dates he carried in his pocket. His personal effects were identified and his remains received full honors and military burial in Israel on Mount Herzl. A love poem in Hebrew, written to his fiancée Rivka Aaronsohn, is on display in the Aaronsohn house.

Meanwhile, the family did not know if the two had gotten through to Egypt. Aaron went to Egypt by way of London and delivered current information to the British. The British sent sacks of silver and gold coin to help support the starving remaining Jewish Palestinians. Unfortunately the gold coins were stamped with a 1915 date. When the Turks discovered such coins in the market, they realized there must be a spy network. A British carrier pigeon landed in a Turkish military post and focused Turkish attention on the Aaronsohns. They arrested Sara Aaronsohn (one of Aaron’s 5 siblings) and two others and tortured them. None revealed the spy network or the location of the secret tunnel in the Aaronsohn home, which contained names and other information. After three days of torture, Sara convinced the Turks to let her go home to choose fresh clothes to die in. As soon as she entered the house, she reached into a hidden compartment by the door and pulled out a gun and shot herself. The two others were hanged.

The tour of the house showed the secret compartment that held the gun and the secret tunnel under the floor. It was quite moving to see these and realize the bravery of these Jews. Also on display are letters from the British Army stating how helpful their information was in conquering Palestine from the Turks. There was a major battle in Gaza with large number of British casualties. Capturing the rest of the country produced few casualties because of information from their group named N.I.L.I. an abbreviation for: “The glory of Israel will not lie or repent,” I Samuel 15:29.

After this inspiring experience we went to Recanati Winery in the Heffer Valley. After a wonderful tasting, (thanks to our designated driver Ilan ) of many wines we bought a Reserve petite syrah/ zinfandel blend. Naturally cheese and bread were next and we went to Jacob’s Dairy Farm, which has the biggest herd in Israel and makes a number of fine cheeses. We bought two kinds and a challah. In a half hour we were back at Tel Aviv University where we said good-bye to Ilan and accidentally took his cheese as well as our own. Then we boarded the #27 bus towards downtown Tel Aviv to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. By mistake we got off three miles ahead of time so had a pleasant evening walk. Of course, the bus driver made the error and called out Museum for us. But alas it was the wrong museum. The “right” museum was open late for a concert that Roberta insisted we attend. Neither she nor I realized that Ensemble Nikel of Israel along with Ensemble Mosaic of Germany were playing world premieres of works of the 23rd century—in other words, the music was very far-out. Fortunately before the concert and during intermission we were able to view the museum’s many wonderful paintings of Picasso, Chagall, Monet, Renoir, and many other impressionists. In 50 minutes on the #380 bus we were back in Jerusalem

All in all, it was an incredibly interesting day.



Friday, February 20, 2009 Stan:

We took a 4-hour tour of Jerusalem sponsored by Ir-Amim or in English ‘A Family of Peoples ( or Nations)’. We found this organization his week from my friend Ela Greenberg just got a job with them the week before. She is the daughter of my advisor at Michigan who made aliya, married an Israeli, and got her Ph.D. in History recently from Hebrew University. Last year I was invited to their home for dinner and meet her lawyer husband and 2 cute girls. They are on the left side of Israeli politics and send their daughter to a school composed equally Jews and Muslims and each learns the language of the other. Things go well at the school until teen-age years when the Jewish parents pull their kids out for social reasons. The goal of Ir Amin organization is to pave the way for a peaceful spilt of Jerusalem when the 2 state solution comes about. Realistic joke/saying heard today concerning this issue. “Hopefully the Jews and Arabs will live in peace in Gds lifetime!”

A Jewish Israeli guide took about 25 tourists from all over and 2 Israelis through many parts of Jewish Jerusalem where new communities have built in the last 10 years including Gilo and Har Nof on the south. These are very nice with all the street and community facilities. Har Nof is very close to Bethlehem in fact. We then drove into Arab Jerusalem where trash was all over except the trash bins, there were few sidewalks, and the area looked bad, but certainly no worse than slums in large US cities. There is a large shortage of schools in the Arab areas but no willingness of the Arabs to provide land for schools since land ownership is very (and more ) important to the Arab culture than their kids education. Israel has built many new schools but not nearly enough. One such girl school is supposed to produce some of the best students in all Israel. But the emphasis on education is just not there. One reason that the government does not spend the same money on Arab areas of East Jerusalem is that the Arabs refuse to vote for city elections and thus have no representation in city government. Interestingly they do vote in national elections and have about 12% of the Knesset. Some Arab Knesset members have actually spoken about the overthrow of the Jewish State and have even spied for the Hamas & Hezbolla. Several years ago one such Arab Knesset member was caught spying and left/exiled/ escaped (?) to Lebanon where incredibly he is still getting his Israel pension. Only in Israel!

Back to the tour, we drove along the wall separating certain areas of Jerusalem from others. The apparent illogic of some of the wall placement was pointed out. The overall wall is 60% complete and the result is no suicide attacks since it went up. Whether this is the only reasons such attacks have stopped can not be proven but it is extremely important to recall that 1000 Israelis and some Americans were murdered in the second Intifada. Making the conversion to the US, that would be the equivalent of 50,000 killed in a few years. NO government would do nothing in response to such an lethal attack.

Both the Israelis and the Arab are now fighting a demographic battle to see who can have the most kids, who can build the most homes in greater Jerusalem that has grown tremendously by annexation. The wall tries to keep Arabs communities on the outside and include inside new Jewish communities as much as possible. However there is one area that has Arabs living on the west side on northern side and Jews living on the eastern side of this finger like projection in the north but both inside the wall. Some Arab areas were upper middle to well to do and other area very poor and not well kept. Jews have purchased some tracts of land in previously Arab sections despite the Palestinian Authority law prohibiting any sale of land to Jews. Some sales have gone thru initial sale to buyers in the Caribbean and then to the Jews, other sales included a one way ticket out of the country for the Arab owner. One sale went bad with the Arab seller ending up in the truck of car after being tortured. Unfortunately, he didn’t plan the sale properly. Nevertheless some substantial complexes of apartments have been completed or are in progress with Jews living among Arabs.

How all this will play out if a settlement to split Jerusalem is anyone’s guess. We then drove to the one refugee camp in Israel in Jerusalem which actually looks like a slum section of a city with no tents are any thing temporary only 3-4 story apartment buildings but with unfinished concert walls. The area, supported to some degree by the UN, is flanked on each side of this large hillside by rather nice areas with large high rise apartments. The fact hat this center refugee area is still there since 1948 is a big blot on the Jordanians who ruled this land from1949 to1967 and the Israelis since then.

Vast land to the east has been annexed to Jerusalem and now has several communities Ma’ale Adomim and Kfar Adumim, all designed to increase the percentage of Jews in the new greater Jerusalem. All these new communities do provide a security belt around the city.

The key numbers are that until 1967 Jerusalem had only 60,000 Palestinians and in 1948 the population was 250000 for the entire city with 75% Jewish. Thus with the amazing growth since 1967 to the present 800,000 total with 35% (?) or 280,000 Arab is a result of Jerusalem becoming the real and permanent capitol of Israel and the tremendous expansion of tourism resulting in this large influx of Palestinians into the area for economic reasons. If and how the city could be divided between two countries who are not at complete peace with each other similar to the US and Canada, is very hard to imagine despite all the peace talks going on (in my humble opinion). But one can only hope and pray that leaders on both sides can be found that could orchestrate a change in societies so that peace could be derived.