{"id":1321,"date":"2006-07-21T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-21T19:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/07\/israel-a-state-of-mine\/"},"modified":"2006-07-21T19:59:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-21T19:59:00","slug":"israel-a-state-of-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/israel-a-state-of-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel: A State of Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Twenty-eight years ago I was fifteen, and traveling through Israel for the summer. My sister and I were spending six weeks there with 60 other teenagers, as part of NFTY, National Federation of Temple Youth. On this trip to Israel, we visited Jerusalem three times, because the Bible says that all Jews should see Jerusalem three times in their life. We climbed Massada, (lower picture) using the crooked trail, of course, (we were told that no self-respecting Jew would take the Roman ramp, which the Romans built to kill the Jews who lived up there). We watched the sun rise there. Later that day we swam in a waterfall, called Ein Gedi; it is in the Bible, Song of Songs: “My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna in the vineyards of Ein Gedi.” Good stuff.<\/p>\n

We worked on a Kibbutz for two weeks, picking pears and shoveling cotton. And we drove through the Sinai desert and slept right on the sand. Back then, the Sinai was part of Israel, not Egypt, as was Eilat, a beautiful resort on the Red Sea, where we snorkeled. We went to all the borders: Syria, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon. We ate with Bedouin nomads: freshly made pita bread and really sweet tea from a leather container. We visited Yad V’Shem, (other picture) the memorial to the six million and sixty teenagers became speechless for a little while.<\/p>\n

I also fell in love in Israel, with a twenty-year-old Canadian named Gabriel, who was living on the Kibbutz K’Far HaHoresh. He taught me how to drive a tractor, among other things. I acquired the nickname “Magnet” from the other kids in my group because of all of my interactions with guys there! I am still in touch with Gabi, who loves kite surfing and has a beautiful daughter, around the same age as Max.<\/p>\n

My diary from this date describes a little of Israeli culture:<\/p>\n

We’re rolling again, and headed back to Akko (Acre) to see the famous prison, which radical Jews blew up.
It was a very scary place, especially since it is now an insane asylum. We saw a couple of inmates. We saw the gallows, and the prisons. It was very eerie and depressing place, with walls that could have been ten feet thick.
We had lunch and then dropped half our group at Kibbutz Yfat, while we went to K’Far HaHoresh.
Our kibbutz is nice and the rooms are okay, kind of antsy, but I’ll live. We’re rooming with Elise and Stephanie again. Laura and I are taking the late shift for pear-picking — from 1:00 pm to 7:00 pm. Shit! The worst hours! I’m very apprehensive about this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought about Israel today because she is still a fantastic country in my book: strong and proud. She is beleagured on all sides, and judged harshly by the entire world, a world that forgets the 1930’s and 1940’s. Even after breaking off chunks of herself for peace, her neighbors are not satisfied. Not until she is dead and gone.<\/p>\n

I fear polarizing you, dear readers, but I love Israel passionately and am so angry at the way the whole world turns its back on her. A couple of questions for the U.N. and perhaps the Boston Globe<\/span><\/a>: what does every other country in this world do when they are attacked? What did we do after Pearl Harbor and 9\/11? Where did refugee Jews go when they were fleeing the death camps of Europe, before FDR saw fit to open the doors of America? Before there was an Israel? ‘Nuff said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty-eight years ago I was fifteen, and traveling through Israel for the summer. My sister and I were spending six weeks there with 60 other teenagers, as part of NFTY, National Federation of Temple Youth. On this trip to Israel, we visited Jerusalem three times, because the Bible says that all Jews should see Jerusalem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-lj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}