Friday was such a huge day, I'm dividing it into two blog posts because it couldn't possibly fit in one! To start, we checked out of our hotel in Tiberias and loaded all our stuff on the bus. Then we drove to a kibbutz called Sde Eliyahu.
At Sde Eliyahu, a woman named Sarah gave us a tour of the kibbutz and a history of kibbutzim in general. Unlike the shoe factory we went to Thursday, Sde Eliyahu is an Orthodox kibbutz. They're very concerned about maintaining the purity of the kibbutz, so when others decided to industrialize, they stuck with agriculture. Their industry is organic agriculture, and they do some really cool things. Sarah told us about how, instead of using pesticides, they figure out what species are threatening the crops and then introduce those species' natural predators to the environment. They also use donkeys as lawn mowers, which is just fabulous. The factory on Sde Eliyahu is a bug factory - they grow bees for pollination and other bugs to eat the plant-destroying bugs. We saw a bumblebee colony and a few different species. Don't worry, there are lots of pictures that I'm sure you all will be so excited to see!
After our tour, we loaded back on the bus and drove to Jerusalem through the West Bank (which was totally safe on Friday, otherwise we wouldn't have driven through it! Side note: In case any of you are worried, they take our security VERY seriously here. We have armed security guys that come with us everywhere. Our bus is also tracked, so the Israeli government always knows exactly where we are. So calm down!). On the drive, our tour guide Merav talked with us about Israeli Arabs and citizenship, which opened up a whole can of worms.
So here's the deal with Israeli citizenship (and why "Birthright" is a problematic thing for me): IT IS WAY EASIER FOR ME TO BECOME AN ISRAELI CITIZEN THAN IT IS FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN LIVING HERE THEIR ENTIRE LIVES. That's right, just because I'm Jewish, I can pretty much say hey, I want to be an Israeli citizen, and I will be. If I chose to make aliyah, not only would I be a citizen, the state of Israel would give me a stipend and would pay for me to get a university degree. This is crazy. Whereas if you're not Jewish, it's "pretty much impossible" (Merav's words) to become a citizen.
Merav, to her credit, was very insistent that the Israeli-Arab situation is incredibly complex, and that there are a million different points of view, no one of which fully encapsulates the situation. She talked about how some Israeli Arabs are citizens of Jerusalem but not Israel, so they need work permits to travel to the rest of Israel. During the Intifada, they stopped issuing work permits. Merav also told stories about good relationships between Arabs and Jews. She grew up in the West Bank, and her family's housekeeper was Arab. His son had medical issues, and Merav's father used to drive to Jerusalem to get medicine for him, because the housekeeper would have had to go through checkpoints. Which is all very nice, but I find it really awful that this Israeli person couldn't get medicine for his son just because they were Arabs. It all feels very Apartheid/U.S. pre-civil rights movement.
What's even more insidious is that Arabs are seen as this inherently dangerous group of people. Not just by Israelis, but by Americans too. Several people on the trip asked Merav about the Arab Quarter and whether it's safe to go there. I know in the U.S., even in New York City, I see awful anti-Muslim propaganda all the time. Islam is one of the most practiced religions in the world. There are an enormous variety of people who practice Islam. The percentage of Muslims who are involved with terrorist organizations is TINY. It's like saying all Christians are like the Westboro Baptists. It completely ignores what the religion is and how it is normally practiced to focus on one teeny tiny subset of the population. Are terrorists a problem? Absolutely. But terrorist does not equal Muslim, and Muslim does not equal terrorist. The common perspctive here is that Jews are "real" Israelis, while Arabs are second-class citizens (or not citizens at all). I wish that this trip gave us a chance to interact with Israeli Arabs, to learn about their lives and hear their stories. But of course, the whole point of this trip is that Israel is our "birthright" and not theirs.
Okay, that's the end of my political rant for the day. Anyway, the bus ride was fun - we stopped in the middle of the desert for a sand dune bathroom break (authentic Israeli experience!), and we saw some camels, and Al won a 5 shekel bet some of us had made about how long the bus ride would be. We drove to Mt. Scopus at Hebrew University and looked out on a beautiful view of all of Jerusalem (pictures to come). Then we drove to the hotel and found our rooms. I'm staying with a girl named Mallie, who is a native Manhattanite and is very nice. We've been living well together so far. When we got to the room, we had some time to prepare for Shabbat in the Old City, which I will tell you all about next time!
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