Schwartz - Kicking it back in Kufr Manda, non compos mentis in Nazareth, aching in Acre, hiking Haifa & nowhere in Negev--Quick update of my travels

I love Northern Israel-Palestine. It's a gorgeous land: succulent, lush fields, kibbutzim, ancient battlegrounds and bustling cities, vast yet traversible.

Four four days, October 27th-30th, I had a helluva trip. I went up north on Highway 6, passing the walled-in ghettos of Qalqiyah, Tulkarem and other Palestinian cities, to Kufr Manda, a small Palestinian village near Nazareth in the Lower Galilee. I hung out with Bedoins in Rumati el-Heib and Rumani, and Circassians in Kufr Kanna. Spent a day zooming about Nazareth (which was, sadly, not all that impressing a city, but the Basilica of the Annunciation was imposing and fascinating). Then hitch-hiked to Old Acre, an amazing little stone cube of history. Then taxi'd over to Haifa and spent all day at the Bahai Shrine and Gardens, which were astounding. You wouldn't even know that the Bahai Shrine was a modern building, it seems so ancient, and it is the perfect synthesis of cathedral and mosque.

Then I tried to take a train back to the Latrun region, ended up accidentally in Beer Sheva. Hung out with some security guards, who bragged about stealing from Arabs and killing HAMAS guerillas. One of them was Russian and the other a practicing Sepharadi Jew. Since I suspect that my own Jewish lineage may be Sepharadi and not Ashkenazi as my family believes, this was fascinating and important. I shall be looking for Sepharadi synagogues to learn more about their Judaism. I then hitched a ride with the train conductors on a lorry and zoomed up Highway 6 again. The Negev desert at night is a mystical wasteland. Whole swaths are as dark as the Atlantic at midnight, and if it weren't for the red haze of distant Gaza I would have believed somehow we had driven to the coast. I was dropped off in ancient Ramle, which now bears the indentured-labor-fueled "twin towers of Israel," a massive concrete factory that grinds Latrun granite into building material for Israel. Haggled and hung out with the taxi drivers, a motley but jolly bunch of Jews and Arabs, before I finally split a cab with a mad Israeli. The fellow was a member of the Golani commando unit back in the '73 War. With his own hands he murdered hundreds of Arab soldiers. He snapped (as he put it, "got spooked") when he saw the Syrians execute en masse a group of Israeli soldiers. My heart went out to him: he was a complete product of a military-industrial system, a system which exploited him... and then broke him. Sure, the State of Israel pays his medical bills--better than how the US treats its Viet Nam and 1st Gulf War vets--but it can never heal his spirit. The cab driver, a friend of the commando, told me that there were many Israeli soldiers who were like this fellow. War after war after war, what has it done to the Holy Land?

I was dropped off on Nachshon Junction, and hiked the last kilometer up the hill to Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam, armed with a stick to keep away the kanine and human jackals that prowl Latrun at night. The Moon glistened silvery above me, full and round like a 1922 Liberty half-dollar. Indeed, during my entire adventure across Israel-Palestine those four days, the Moon shone forth from behind chrome and navy blue clouds, queen of her dark domain, a beacon...

It has been an eye-opening journey. Perhaps I'll write a larger entry in the near future about it.

Click on continued reading for photographs

Kufr Manda

New Kufr Manda

Rumani, near Rumat el-Heib: me with two Bedouin dudes. The one all the way to my far right had an uncanny resemblence to Peter O'Toole.

Nazareth

Basilica of the Annunciation: one of a series of cultural re-depictions of the Mother Mary and child Jesus. This one is from Chile...

...and this one from China.

The Marina of Old Acre, with view of the Ottoman merchant market/fortress and clock tower, Ibn Pasha mosque and el-Jezzar mosque, with a church steeple in between.

Haifa: the Bahai Shrine to the Bab.