Purim, Haifa, Israel Diplomacy, and the First Week of Spring

Since my last post, a lot has happened (I should have written one last week). I'll try to make certain things as short as possible...

My Purim costume: a golfer

Purim was awesome. It's celebrated like it's an extended weekend. I went with some friends to a local synagogue to hear the Megillah reading on Erev Purim (the eve of the holiday). I then went as a golfer to a backyard party near the Azrieli Center in eastern Tel Aviv. The villa's backyard was smaller than I'd imagined, but the party was very fun. I went with my friend from UConn who was visiting, Jacob, and we just danced our butts off. I also ran into a bunch of my friends from the internship group that was living with my group until this past week. A couple nights later, I went with some friends from the internship group out to a local bar; we played pool and just chilled. Since then, I have been partied out. While Jacob was visiting, he slept over my place and we also went to the Eretz Israel Museum. We only covered about half of the museum, but I got to see a bunch of pictures of Yemenite Jews, learned about the history of Israeli currency dating back thousands of years, and saw some really cool glass sculptures.

View of Haifa from the top of the Baha'i Gardens

Adam with a cactus

Last Sunday, March 11th, Adam and I spent the day in Haifa. We visited the Baha'i Gardens on Mt. Carmel and got a really good lunch in the city. We took the train, went straight to the middle of the Gardens and saw the Baha'i shrine. You have to be really quiet inside to show respect to the Baha'i and you can't take pictures. However, when we were outside in the Garden, I took all the pictures I wanted (and they're all posted on Facebook). Beautiful arrangements of flowers and bushes covered the beautiful green landscape, and one area even had just cacti (that's the plural for cactus). We then headed to the top of the Gardens and saw a beautiful view of the whole city of Haifa, the port and everything. Afterwards, we stopped by the bottom to check out a couple water fountains and ask security guards some questions. I learned that the whole Baha'i religion comprises of only 7-10 million people, but they are the second-most widespread religion in the world, behind only Christianity. No Baha'i actually live in Israel, but they pay a visit to either the Gardens in Haifa or the other one in nearby Acre (pronounced Akko) for religious reasons. After the Gardens, we bought falafel for a mere 10 shekels (just over $2.50); it was delicious. We finished off the trip by going to a local mall, and Adam splurged on clothing (on sale). He spent 270 NIS ($72) on a pair of pants, 2 pairs of shorts, and 4 t-shirts; you can't get a deal like that in the U.S. almost anywhere. Great deal!

I'm now going to talk about the Israel Diplomacy course and what I learned in last week's class... If you want to skip it, scroll to the next line...
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That night, Simon, Anna, Shoshana, and I went to our Israel Public Diplomacy course at Tel Aviv University. It was the second meeting of the class since a two month break. This meeting, about Occupation, was not as interesting as the one the previous week, about refugees, but I'll give a description of the Refugees class (I don't have the slides from Occupation yet). So first of all, refugees exist in Israel because people are displaced from their houses, whether they leave by choice or by force. The 1947-48 Palestine Partition Plan divided the country into 2 states: Acre, the West Bank, and Gaza would create an Arab State while the Negev, the northern half of the Mediterranean coast, and the area surrounding the Sea of Galilee (Kineret in Hebrew) would be the Jewish State, and Jerusalem would be an international city. The Arabs didn't like the plan. Soon afterwards, on May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, signed the Declaration of Independence and Israel became a Jewish State. The next day, the War of Independence began as armies from the five surrounding Arab countries attacked: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon.

Now, according to different accounts, refugees exist in Israel for different reasons. Zionists say that Arab leaders just told them to leave, while Arabs say that "...Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel..." (quote by Mahmoud Abbas in The New York Times). In reality, it's both: some were told by Arab leaders to leave, some were expelled by the IDF, and others chose to leave for safety reasons. You may think I'm just referring to Arab refugees but I'm not; there were Jewish refugees, too (known as the "Forgotten Refugees"; there isn't even a Wikipedia article about it, just an article of The David Project movie). In 1948, they were all living in Northern Africa and a few Arab countries in the Middle East. Since then, the vast majority have been killed or moved to somewhere else to escape persecution (whether to Israel, North America, or even Europe). The U.N. hasn't even written up any resolutions on them, just on Palestinian refugees.

The U.N.'s definition of a refugee is "[A person who] owning to a well-founded fear of being persecuted... is outside the country of his nationality"; this could be due to war, famine, displacement, or even facing conflict. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) is an organization that provides education, health care, and social services to Palestinian refugees (the ones originally displaced and all their descendants) and works towards getting those refugees' homes back. There are now 5 million of them in the Palestinian territories and other neighboring Arab countries. UNWRA believes in the Right of Return, which states that first-generation Palestinian refugees and their descendants have the "sacred" right to return to the residences in which they left decades ago. Palestinians claim it to be international law, which is controversial, but Israel claims it is just a political claim and that Palestinians are trying to use it for negotiation. UNWRA also runs summer camps, which instead of what they say they do is providing arts and crafts classes and sports activities to children, they teach Palestinian children to be supporters of the Right of Return and brainwash the kids to not see both sides of the coin, what Palestinians say and what Israel says. One confusing statistic about UNWRA, though, is that the United States, while being Israel's greatest supporter, provides about $250 million a year for the organization's finances. The E.U. is second at around $180 million. No one else is close to those numbers.

Palestinian refugees are actually not treated too well. In Lebanon, they legally cannot be issued working permits and cannot hold jobs. In Egypt, they are not even citizens. Syria and Jordan have their own rules against Palestinian refugees living in their countries, too. Many refugees in these outside countries are poor and live in the projects or even camps.

In terms of Israel's role in all of this, U.N. Resolution 194 states, "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so... and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return..." Nowhere here does this mention Palestinian refugees; it infers ALL refugees, whether Palestinian or Jewish. However, Palestinians try to claim that the Resolution only means Palestinian refugees. Israel over the years has been very generous with its offers regarding refugees. It has dealt with U.N. Resolutions 194, 242, and 338, along with meetings at Camp David. Peace negotiations have involved establishing an absentees properties fund, allowing 10,000 refugees a year to return to their homes over the course of 10 years, and more compensation. To conclude, the whole situation is really chaotic, and like the actual Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, this is not solved either.
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If you did read the stuff on the Diplomacy course, good for you. If not, you lost out on educating yourself about history in the Middle East (your loss!). Anyway, to finish off this post, I want to mention a few things.

Oranim 72; photo courtesy: Daniel Israelite from Dan Tomar's photos

1. I want to say goodbye to my friends in Oranim 72, Tel Aviv Internship Group that started their program the same day I did. You guys were some of the first friends I had here and I definitely made a few friends who will last a lifetime (Dan, Loni, Emma, Hunter, Shelly, Jenny, Meyzi, etc.). Dan, enjoy Europe and I'll see you on the East Coast (and good luck with grad school). Loni, you better visit me in Connecticut. Hunter, enjoy the IDF. Shelly, I'll see you in Colorado one day and good luck with college. I will miss you all and hope to see you all in the future.

2. Someone I really care about just made Aliyah (immigrated) to Israel and I have enjoyed her company immensely since she got back. I will not mention too much of her unless she gives me specific permission ;) PLEASE???

3. I started classes for the Spring semester and they seem pretty good so far. I'm taking Performance Management, Research Methods (preparing a research proposal in order to do my OB research project and thesis), and Project Management. I'm looking forward to another great semester.

3. Beginning tomorrow, I will be attending MASA's flagship enrichment program in Israel, the Building Future Leadership (BFL) conference in Jerusalem, March 18-22. There are one of five tracks to do: Coaching, Education, Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship, and Networks of Purpose & Communication. I chose Intrapreneurship because it is related to social psychology and interpersonal communication (what I basically focused on at UConn -- okay, it was really I/O Psychology and Marketing but whatever) with an emphasis on the workplace while taking innovative ideas and applying them to the organization you already work for/with. This track is most relevant to me and what I want to do with my life in the future. I hope to apply new great ideas to the field of human resources in the future, using exceptional communication skills to create and foster the development of a strong manager-employee relationship in the workplace (HR basically acts as mediator for the two sides). I will be missing classes this week, but I expect to come out of the conference a stronger person with strengthened skill sets.

This is a lot to digest, but that's all for now. I will write about BFL later this week, if I have the energy. Until then, l'hitraot!

Personal Day in Jerusalem

So I haven't done much since my last post; I just spent a weekend cooped up in my apartment (and Adam's) writing three papers, doing two projects, writing a take home exam, and studying for another exam. Finals breezed through and break started. The first few days of break were relaxing but annoying because all I did was sit in my room watching TV and going on Facebook while it poured rain outside (but I did get a couple chances to go running on the beach). Either way, yesterday was the most exciting day of break so far because I took a trip to Jerusalem by myself.

Facebook kippah in the
middle of the picture

I woke up and went to the Arlozorov Bus Station to take a bus down to Jerusalem (the student price is just 9 shekels!). I got to the Central Bus Station around 11:30am and realized that I had a few hours to kill before I was supposed to meet up with my friend, Noah, who lives in Jerusalem and just graduated from my program. However, he did help direct me to a couple places over the phone. I started walking to Ben Yehuda Street as my main mission was to get a Facebook kippah for a very good friend back home (he worked an internship at Facebook's international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland this past summer). After searching around the numerous kippah stores on Ben Yehuda, I finally found the one I was looking for. Afterwards, I walked to Machane Yehuda, a very popular shuk in Jerusalem. This outdoor marketplace has over 250 vendors and spans two major streets. I remembered going here right before Shabbat on Birthright and it was PACKED; it was less so yesterday but still busy. I walked around for a while but didn't find anything I wanted so I started on a aimless journey throughout the city.

My trek took me through neighborhoods such as Machane Yehuda, Zichron Moshe, Ge'ula, Me'a She'arim, and past Migrash HaRussim. As I walked, I noticed there were ultra-Orthodox Jews (both Haredim and Hasidim) all over the place; this was when I knew that I was the OUTSIDER! However, it felt good to get another view of the world. In Me'a She'arim, I saw a sign that stated, "To women and girls: Please do not pass through our neighborhood in immodest clothes". I eventually ended up at the Jaffa Gate of the Old City. I walked in, realizing that that gate was the same one I entered on Birthright, too (I almost walked in through the Damascus Gate into the Christian Quarter). Passing a few shops, I entered one walkway with some smaller shops selling t-shirts for tourists, hookahs, and other tourist paraphernalia. I eventually unknowingly approached the sign every Jew likes to see: "Western Wall -->" I knew I was going in the right direction to the Wall, and that I was close. I got to the Wall, did tefillin (putting it on and saying the Shema), wrote a note and stuck it in the Wall, and stood there for a few minutes just breathing in the energy of being there again. Just like on Birthright, I got a chill of being there, and thoughts of my family, friends, and memories of what I'd done in Israel so far raced through my mind. It never gets old going there, it's such a magical place. After that, I walked around the Jewish Quarter for a bit, seeing places and things I've seen before.

Me at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism

Shortly afterwards, Noah called me. He was in the area and was ready to hang out. We ran a couple errands he needed to run, but regardless, it was fun catching up with him. Noah is a Hasidic Jew from Los Angeles who skateboards. You wouldn't expect that from a Hasid, would you? He and his wife live on the western edge of the city, but he loves it. We stopped off at a pizza place for dinner in Me'a She'arim; that is some of the best pizza I've ever had and the accompanying sauce was phenomenal. I have no clue what the place is called, but I know where it is. And yes, there are gender segregated seating and pizza lines.

I eventually got a call from my friend, Noa, to hang out at her place in Giv'at Tsarfatit (the French Hill), a neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. Noa now goes to Hebrew University for her Bachelor's degree. I took a bus to her place and we had a little Birthright reunion. Our old friend, Zeal, who since the trip has become Orthodox and has been studying at a local Yeshiva, visited, too. He's been in Jerusalem for two years, but wants to go back to New York and get his Master's in Art Therapy. I wish him luck. I then trekked home by Jerusalem Light Rail, then a bus to TLV, and finally walking home from the bus station. It was a busy 16 hours but a very fun day.

HAPPY PURIM!

By the way, if anyone has any ideas on what I can be for Purim, let me know. I don't like buying things for one-time use, so if you can think of something using just my clothes, that would be great!