Sea of Galilee

Day Two: Jetlag Above the Kinneret, 6:44 A.M. I was stranded like a vessel on the water; I put faith in nature and set myself adrift, isn't that how all epics begin: a tide of repose and resignation, a tide...

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40 Years Later

The (famous, remarkable, inspiring) picture on the left was taken on June 7, 1967, shortly after the Israeli army won Jerusalem's Old City back from the Jordanians during the Six-Day War. This picture captures three soldiers beside the Western...

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Pale September

As I feel my personal stock in Zionism waning, or maybe just shifting, I go to Har Herzl, which is the major Israeli military cemetery (akin to our Arlington ...but existentially very different) to test the feeling. It's a...

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Deheishe Refugee Camp

One Thursday afternoon...one towards the end of all of this...I end up in the Deheishe refugee camp in Bethlehem for a tour organized by a (newly arrived) French activist at the Faisal. One more wait through the Bethlehem checkpoint...

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On Ramallah (part i)

To elaborate on my postcards from Ramallah last week, I first owe a huge debt of gratitude to my compeer Lilit at Heeb magazine for sharing the pictures with Jewschool. Ultimately, Ramallah is one of those places that some of...

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I'm wondering who won the war...

...It's a small cobwebbed building that inspires a modest patriotism; you sit in this small room probably the size of the Oval Office (except it's rectangular) and wonder how people, so few people, would decide to be heroic enough to to actually sign a document that the world endorsed but their neighbors would never accept. You wonder why they keep signing documents that all its neighbors will never accept. Is the heroism in having that faith?

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Anatomy of a Katyusha Rocket

Born in Iran, modified in Syria, fired from Lebanon; the Katyusha cannot hit strategic targets with accuracy. This is a close-up of what was struck on August 13. The house was on the corner of the major road that the...

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Interview with Coughy Annan

...His real name is Itzik. He was born in Greece and moved here when he was two. He has one son, three daughters, does not mention his wife. He normally works as a taxi driver and a bus driver in alternating weeks, but has time off because of the lack of tourism. He speaks English, Greek, French, Arabic, and Hebrew. He fought in Lebanon during the 1982 invasion. He is completely broken. He stammers and repeats increments of time to denote when he thinks the war will end, when there will be quiet, when he won’t stay up all night smoking and coughing.

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