Travelling through Israel

Last visit, I spent all my time in the West Bank.
This time I wanted to see more of Israel proper and meet some people.

So, I spend a few days in Tel Aviv - meet great people in the hostel. Other travellers - many who have come from the West Bank. We swap stories of border police & Israeli army encounters. Others who don't want to go to the West Bank, who think it's bad to go, or scary there. It's filled with terrorists don't you know.

I meet fantastic locals who teach me Hebrew and answer my questions about their opinions of Palestinians and the Occupied Territories. I have Shabbat meal with them.

It's really good - I have great food and great company. One can ask for no more.
At the time - I'm just meeting people. And for me, People is People. I wasn't brought up to divide those I meet into this or that, but in hindsight, as I write this, I think it was important for me...

It's easy to demonise Israel & all Israelis for what their government is doing in the West Bank & Gaza, but after Iraq we can all relate to having shit that we don't agree with carried out in our name.
This is not to say that ordinary Israelis don't have a responsibility to oppose the Occupation. I believe they do. But it's critical to know the context and the reasons why most of them don't, without simply hating on them.
Anyways, I'll probably get into that in a later post.

I bus around Israel for 8 days seeing the sights in the major towns & cities.
It's a small place though. You could do it in 4.
With the exception of Jerusalem, which is amazing and worth the trip alone, there's no other outstandingly nice place to go in Israel, as far as a secular tourist can say.

I did manage to find a couple of sweet record shops in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Bought some fine Israeli hip hop. I hope to get some fine Palestinian hip hop in Ramalla next week.

Overall though, the country is pretty strange. Most cities are rather messy and dirty and as for the conflict is concerned, especially the gaza bombing, it may as well be 1000s of miles away. On the streets there is no sign of protest. And of course the news is never about a brutal occupation, but a simple war between hamas and the jewish population of a country.
In Haifa, I read Haaretz (the Israeli liberal daily) in which it speaks of a "measured response" to Hamas rockets when writing about the Gaza bombing. It is a plainly noticeable difference to the coverage in the UK, which talks of "Carnage in Gaza" and outrage and the numbers killed.
It's election time here to, and there are posters and billboards EVERYWHERE!
They are delightfully old-school as well. They have almost soviet style imagery of political leaders looking strong but wistfully off into the distance with big flags fluttering in the background, their name in bold type with some accompanying slogan. I don't think that marketing style would work too well in the UK!

I visited Sderot, a town just 18km from the Gaza Strip. There were Israel flags everywhere - like a nationalist graffiti writer had gone mad and tagged every single empty surface. I went expecting perhaps a ghost town, or to see lots of damage. But it was a very normal town with people out in the sun doing their shopping. I did see a Qassam shell on the ground, but no damage that wasn't being repaired.
I felt pleased that the people here were able to get on with their lives despite the terror of rocket attacks, but felt that if this town is the self-confessed 'frontline' of Israel's casualties, then people would more likely be mourning the loss of broken air conditioners, than dead children.

My time is up. It's off to the West Bank to start planting olive trees.