Israel Photos
“Israel is definitely a Middle Eastern country”, that is what any Westerner would say, and he would be right: Middle Eastern architecture, Middle Eastern food (or should I say cuisine?) and a Middle Eastern mentality are obvious everywhere…
“Wait”, would say my imaginary Middle Easterner, “but of course it is the West”, and naturally he would also be right… Western architecture, Western cuisine (or should I say food?) and a Western mentality are just around the corner as well.
It is also a very casual country. In restaurants, forks and knives are both served on one, frequently random, side of the plate (sometimes even in the middle of the table). Shorts and flip flops are the norm for office workers.
However, this should not fool you. From time to time, here and there, your eyes stumble upon a group of girls and boys (very casually dressed 🙂 ) with machine guns, or contemporary ‘ruins’ that were scenes of a suicide bombing – every once in a while you pick up a subconscious feeling of tension (felt especially strongly in Jerusalem)…
Somehow, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this place is at the very centre of the tensions between different political systems, religions and economic models, between science and faith, and between all other divisions – both real and imaginary – that spread out in waves from here to the rest of the world…
Despite such thoughts, we felt very safe everywhere… In the twisted streets of Nazareth at night, in ultra-orthodox Tzfat where just before Shabbat most people look ‘through’ you, and even in Jerusalem, which was even more full of soldiers than usual since someone had shot a politician there the day before.
We were there with my father, and having him with us added an extra dimension to this already highly unusual place.
