Note to readers: So, this post is kinda long. There’s simply too much to write about, so future posts will highlight the coolest one or two things of the day to remain a little more pithy.

Day Four – Learning Day

After a later breakfast (stupid free hookah bars!), we sat down for a long, but very informative day of speakers. All of the talks were off the record, so I can’t provide any details, but I will highlight who spoke and maybe a thing or two about what they said in general.
First up was Wendy Singer, the AIPAC Jerusalem Office Director. Wendy has been in Israel for over a decade now, but served as a foreign policy advisor to two Congressmen and as an AIPAC lobbyist in DC for five years each.

Wendy painted a very interesting picture of the current political landscape in Israel, explaining to us that the right, left, and center are all going through a “rebuilding year” so to speak. It is a very interesting time in Israel politically as a number of crossroads are approaching very rapidly for all the parties, and the country as a whole as well.

Reuven Hazan, a professor at Hebrew University and an expert in Israeli politics, gave a very informative talk about understanding how the political process works in Israel as compared to the American form of government. His central point was that they don’t really compare at all. Israel’s parliament is a very unique system that focuses very heavily on parties (of which there are three major parties – Likud, Labor, and Kadima – and many smaller ones), whereas American elections are candidate-centric.

This means that during their elections, voters cast a single ballot regardless of their location, and they cast it for which party they want to win. There are no regional elections like we have with the Congress – whoever wins the most votes nationwide as a party gets the most seats in parliament based on their proportion of the vote. The second place party gets the second most seats etc all the way down, with a three-seat minimum. The leading party then has to form a coalition with the other parties in order to form a government with the Prime Minister usually being from the strongest party, the Minister of Defense being from the second strongest, and the rest of the cabinet split up between the dominant parties of the coalition.

Their government is also very different, and very complicated. Having elections that force opponents to serve in the same government means that a tremendous amount of maneuvering and compromise takes place during the legislative process.

The last speaker of the morning was Michael Oren. His talk was absolutely phenomenal and focused on existential threats to Israel’s existence. What he means by existential threats are situations Israel currently faces or will face in the near future that could result in the complete elimination of the Israeli state either through military, economic, or ecological means. This is in contrast to threats that other nations face that generally would not have ended in the annihilation or total removal of the entire population such as the threat the United States faced in WWII. Neither Germany nor Japan had the intent to ultimately invade and destroy America, but on a daily basis Israel is confronted with a struggle for its very survival.

Because the speeches were off the record, Michael Oren’s speech is very hard to summarize, but I feel I can list the impending existential threats he listed very briefly without a problem.

The first of course is Iran and their very apparent desire to “wipe Israel off the map” as stated repeatedly by their leaders. This is an obvious threat not just to Israel, but to our objectives in Iraq, regional stability, the lives of our soldiers, and the lives of Americans at home should Iran direct their terror networks to attack us domestically. General terrorism can also be included in this category because groups like Hezbollah and Hamas get a substantial amount of their resources and orders from Iran. The fact that Iran could soon have a nuclear weapon is of urgent concern to the Israeli people and should be to people all over the world.

The second threat is demographics. The Israelis are simply not producing as many children as the Palestinians. Eventually, there will be fewer Jews in Israel than Muslims, which would force Israel to make a decision about their ultimate purpose. Do they exist as a Jewish state or a democratic state? As of now, they can be both, but when they are no longer the majority population, this decision will have to be made.

Third is water. There is simply a lack of it, and the problem is only getting worse. While Israel has been a world-leader in desalinization technology, they haven’t employed its use domestically on any major scale. Now, they are building the world’s largest desalinization plant to help alleviate this concern. However, the Sea of Galilee is where they get over 30% of their water and it is located right next to the Golan Heights, a very contentious piece of land that could soon be ceded to Syria in exchange for a guarantee that the Syrians would stop supporting terrorism as well as some other demands.

Fourth is the general ethos of the nation. During the height of the intifada, the will of Israel nearly broke. It is important to note that it did not break, the Israelis are very strong people, but those were incredibly difficult times and it put an enormous strain on everyday life in this tiny nation. The longer this country has to deal with surviving by the skin on its teeth everyday, the more wearing the situation becomes. The ethos that was behind the creation of Israel seems to be evolving with the times, and it’s of concern to people here what the next generations will have to face.
I can’t recommend more that all CRs should go out and get a copy of some of Michael Oren’s books. He is the preeminent scholar on the history of Israel, and a tremendous authority on Israel’s current place in the world.

After the informational sessions, and feeling a bit overwhelmed, we took the bus to the Knesset, the equivalent to our Capitol building. It was very interesting to be inside the heart of Israeli politics and we got a great tour inside the plenary. While at the Knesset, we went to hear another two speakers in the Kadima Party’s meeting room.  The first was the political reporter for the Jerusalem Post, who was formerly a front-lines reporter who covered many scenes of terrorist activity.  She was interesting and gave very personal accounts of her reasons for moving to Israel and of what it means for her to be Israeli.

The second speaker was a former member of the Knesset from the left leaning, he described himself as a “socialist”, Meretz party. He spoke about achieving peace with the Palestinians and provided some insight into the process of government in Israel.

After this we heard from Karen Brunwasser a former AIPAC Leadership Development  professional about Israeli society and culture, Shira Shato after dinner about her very touching story of traveling to Israel with her family from Ethiopia through the dangerous Sudan, and from Galit Roichman, an Israeli filmmaker who educated us on Israeli culture through a very innovative presentation of Israeli movie clips.

Well, if you’ve made it this far you are either a HUGE fan of Israel, up very late running through your blogroll, or a member of my family. This trip is absolutely incredible as a learning experience and I truly recommend that all CRs get involved with this great partner that we have in AIPAC.

Also, a shout-out to Mrs. Therese Drey, my middle-school religion teacher who taught me so very much about the importance of many of the places I’m now visiting. Apparently my mom is still telling everyone how great her son is, and Mrs. Drey got caught in the process and heard about my blog. Welcome to Mrs. Day and all new readers of CR Voice!

Good night!

Sorry I haven’t updated anything in a few days. I both underestimated the pure exhaustion that faced me after long days in the desert and overestimated the chances I would have to connect to the internet. I’m going to post multiple day’s summaries in a row here, so you can check them all out at once.
Day Three – Hot Enough to Slap Your Sister

We started bright and early by traveling to Masada, a mountain fortress built by King Herod as a palace get-away. In Jewish history Masada is remembered as the place where a group of former residents of Jerusalem moved right before the Romans invaded as a protest for the very materialistic environment surrounding the Temple in the years directly after Jesus’s death. They were there when a Roman army of over 30,000 soldiers approached and laid siege to the walled fortress.
Being so high up on the mountain, there was no way the Romans could have defeated them militarily without constructing a route of their own, which they did. Using Jewish slaves, they constructed a humongous ramp that led to the gates of Masada. They finished ramming the gate and left for the night to return the next day to take the city.

When they arrived, all of the approximately 900 residents except for one woman and two children had committed suicide knowing that they would be massacred or enslaved by the Romans. This act of bravery denied the Romans the opportunity to strip them of their Judaism and dignity and the story lives on today as a tale of tremendous heroism for the Jewish people.

After Masada, we went to the natural springs at Ein Gedi, a site mentioned several times in the Bible including where David sneaks up on Solomon in a cave and cuts a piece of cloth from his robes. The springs were amazing, and it was a good break from an indescribably hot day of at least 95 degrees with a heat index that I would bet my plane ticket home was over 110.

Next, it was on to the Dead Sea. This body of water was formed by the movement of tectonic plates that separated, allowing water from the Mediterranean to flow in. Since then, the pass between the two great seas has closed, and as the water evaporated it left behind mineral deposits miles thick below the water’s surface. These minerals mix today with the fresh water that flows into the sea, and create the extreme buoyancy that allows for people to essentially float on top of the water. In addition, the sea’s bottom is a black mud that is rich in minerals that make your skin smooth when you put it on. However, as we all learned the water can really, really sting if it gets in your eyes, and the mud gets really itchy if you leave it on too long. Also, it is possible to cook the bottoms of your feet on the sand…not as cool as it sounds.

At night we went out to Ben-Yahuda street. On this bustling pedestrian mall there are hundreds of small shops, bars, and restaurants open late into the night. We all had a fantastic time, but it was important to keep in minds while we enjoyed ourselves that just a few years back it wouldn’t have been possible to go there. Ben-Yahuda was a prime target of the terrorists during the Second Intifada and was hit with devastating bombing attacks on multiple occasions.