J-Walking in Jerusalem



Thirty minutes remaining. That's the message from my laptop as I sit, eight floors up, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in the Israeli port city of Tel Aviv. Ten days of touring this oft misunderstood country together with a group of South African journalists has seen me first standing overlooking the ancient City of David; haggling a trader for a discount on a T-shirt for my girlfriend in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem; driving through the West Bank towards Ramallah in a police escort; drinking and dancing to Hebrew songs on a boat on the Sea of Galilee; and visiting the children in the only rocket-proof day care centre in the world in Sderot before posing for photographs on a hill overlooking Gaza two kilometres away.
Download complete. Twelve gigabytes worth of photographs and 560 pages of notes now stare at me begging to tell their stories. Let's begin.

By David A Steynberg

Day 1
Jerusalem. Probably one of the most hotly contested cities in the world is where I begin my journey. It’s 08h30 in the morning and already 28ºC as I make my way along King David street towards the east of the city to take a tour back in time - 4 000 years worth of history in the ancient City of David.
Standing on the same hill where Jerusalem was born, I’m surrounded by the historical sites I read about in the Bible as a child: the Kidron Valley, the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives and Mount Moriah (where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac). Overlooking the Central Valley one of the local guides, Talya, leads us through the remnants of the ancient city where archaeological digs are still being conducted among the decrepit houses still being used today. 
Talya then points to the remains of a tomb. “Some people believe this is where King David was buried,” she says, before walking a few metres and showing me the Pool of Siloam where the blind man in the Gospel of John was told by Jesus to go wash off the mud and spit mixture Jesus had smeared over the blind man’s eyes. The man’s blindness was healed.
The heat today makes the walk from the bottom of the old city to the top of the hill at the Western Wall plaza almost unbearable. But once through the security turnstiles, the activity in the plaza is amazing! Pilgrims and sunburnt tourist groups with matching red caps fire away with their cameras; petite female IDF soldiers in brown uniforms brandish M16s like handbags; orthodox Jews speak into their Blackberries and the celebration in the distance suggests someone’s Bar Mitzvah.
We meet Prof Dan Bahat, one of Israel's leading archaeologists, who takes us through the Kotel Tunnels – a series of underground tunnels that run beneath the Dome of the Rock. “You're standing on the same slabs of streets Jesus walked,” Dan says, explaining that the arches above us are actually supporting structures from a bridge that dates back to the time of King Herod in 37 BCE.
Walking further, Dan points to the third biggest stone in the world which forms part of the Western Wall. “It's a single piece of rock weighing 300 tons,” Dan says. “Where you're standing now it's 18-metres to the top of the Temple Mount.”
We follow Dan past a group of Jews who are praying at a rock that he says is the closest point Jews can now get to the Holy of Holies – little pieces of paper with prayers and petitions are lodged in the crevices.
Twenty minutes later the light from the day smacks me between the eyes as I enter the Via Dolorosa in the Muslim Quarter of the old city. It's the beginning of summer and the start of the tourist season in Jerusalem. As I walk the old streets, dodging cars, budgie cages and the throngs of tourists I'm amazed at the variety and sheer volume of things to buy. T-shirts saying “Don't Worry Be Jewish” and “Guns N Moses”, hubbly bubblies in all shapes and colours and in some shops even cackling chickens. Haggling is not something that comes easily to many South Africans, but I do succeed in bargaining for a bag for my girlfriend back home – even if I only manage to bring the price down by R10!
Next I walk through the Jewish Quarter. Here you can buy overpriced artworks, pricey silk shoals and delicious port made from pomegranates grown in the south of Israel. This is no place for a South African on a fixed budget, considering that one shekel costs R2.
It's 15h30 as I exit Zion Gate and see the wall in the distance that separates the West Bank from Israel – the other side of which I'll cross in two day's time. I'm off with the group to talk politics at the Jewish Agency. But you don't want to read about that do you? 

Day 2
I'm on the bus on my way to Yad Vashem – the new Holocaust Museum.
The prism-like structure “is shaped like an arrow through the heart”, according to Zel Lederman, our group's guide for the tour. “The museum is ugly – but that's done on purpose.”
It’s designed in a way that shows the entire history of the Holocaust, from its build-up to its end. Walking past the actual three-level bunk beds that were slept on in the Belzec death camp, the striped pyjamas the men, women and children wore prior to entering the showers where they were gassed and the photographs of men whose emaciated bodies got lost in the clothes on their backs angers and saddens me.
The most traumatising video I see is of a brother and sister in the Warsaw ghetto. They could not be older than 10 years. The little boy's limp body is shaken by his frantic sister in an attempt to keep her brother alive. But it's too late. The boy dies and that's the end of the story. No funeral. No remembrance or record of ever being alive except a 15-second-long black and white video of his final moments.
The purpose of this tour is not only to try and understand the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, but also to show how people on both sides are working towards peace.
My first taste of this is the moment I meet Eliyahu McLean and Abdul Aziz Bukhari. Eliyahu is an ultra-orthodox Jew and Rabbi-in-training and Abdul is a Sheikh, and together they have formed Jerusalem Peacemakers – an organisation which works towards fostering dialogue and understanding between Jews and Arabs.
“The popular opinion is that Arabs and Jews just want to kill each other,” Sheikh Bukhari says. “We all represent the family and children of Abraham. We both inherited the same stubbornness. Hopefully we can both be stubborn enough to make peace.”
This is a view shared by Eliyahu. “We are destined to share and to live in this land together,” he says. “Love for Jerusalem is defined differently by different people. But we don't have to hate each other to love Jerusalem.”
I can say amen to that!

Day 3
Not too many people can start their sentences with “The other day when I was in Ramallah”, but I've found myself saying those words more than once already.
Our third day begins in the seats of a heavy bus with reinforced steel panels and bullet-proof glass. We near the six-metre-high wall that separates Israel from the West Bank with mixed feelings. We’ve been told by Israelis that the wall is a necessary evil that has saved countless lives (Jews and Arabs) in Israel from suicide bombers; but its physical presence goes further by adding to the already frayed relationship between Israel and Palestine.
We’ve also been instructed to bring our passports, but getting into the West Bank requires no documents and takes less than three minutes. Once inside I have little chance of taking any photographs – burka-clad women refuse my sincere requests while my driver, Abed, instructs me to hurry up and get into his car. Abed doesn't speak much as he stays as close as possible to the convoy in front of us, braking hard and accelerating with a heavy foot. Abed grew up in Ramallah; he is 30 years old and works for the presidential guard. He tells me the van we're travelling in is armoured and that it is his job to get me safely through the West Bank to Ramallah where we’re meeting with Palestinian officials to talk more politics.
The streets on the way to Ramallah are not as bad as I had expected. But the buildings and signs do speak of a time when the West Bank was a better place to live. Mansions on the hillsides lie vacant but not vandalised. Even the wind across this part of Israel has made the sky white with limestone dust and gives the West Bank an eerie sadness. People go about their lives as I speed past them from meeting to meeting. Each time it's a rush to get us from one side of Ramallah to the other, spending as little time out in the open as possible.
It’s 14h00 as I stand in the queue to leave the West Bank – children, mothers and the aged shuffle their feet as the line inches forward.
Thirty minutes later I’m on the other side and my ignorance nearly earns me a bloody nose, at best. Spotting two adult Arab men pushing their car, I line up for a photo and am not met with a smile. Instead one of the men rushes at me and unloads unmentionable profanities at my mother while I apologise for my ignorance.
Back on the bus, our buff Israeli bodyguard, Daniel, asks me what happened. After explaining my story Daniel says somewhat disappointedly: “I wish he had hit you. Then at least I would have gotten some action today.”
18h00. “Welcome to hell,” our guide Zel says as we pull up to Jerusalem Music Centre, which overlooks the Valley of Hinnom. It was here where the people of Judah offered their children to the fire god Molech and Baal by casting babies over the ravine’s rocky edge  (Jeremiah 7:31; 32:35). Fortunately there will be no sacrifices today.
The sound from inside music centre is beautiful and immediately lifts my spirit. Here Jewish and Arab youngsters sing and learn music together while breaking already-entrenched stigmas, according to the centre’s music director Orna Magen. “Here there is no politics – just music,” she says while a quartet of violins plays in the room behind us.
22h23. We hear about a place called Ben Yehuda in Jerusalem where both young and old, Jew, Arab and Christian meet to drink, shop and party. I’m rearing to let my hair down after all the politicking and to experience some of the culture Jerusalem has to offer. It’s a Thursday night (the last party night before Shabbat) and we arrive in an urban market the likes of which I’ve never seen: people sing karaoke into microphones, Hebrew rap blares from falafel and shwarma cafés and I stop to watch a dance-off between some boys in front of another T-shirt shop.
04h34. After a number of beers and some hubbly bubbly at a quaint little corner restaurant, we head back to the hotel. A young girl passes us unperturbed on a strawberry-styled bicycle, secure in the knowledge that Jerusalem girls are safe in their city - an alien image to my South African eyes.

Day 4
Our fourth day in Jerusalem is a Friday – a half-day for many religious Jews and Arabs. The streets are quieter today as we go on a tour of east and west Jerusalem trying to understand how geographical placement in the city influences politics (West is where most Jews live, while East is where the majority of Arabs live).
At around lunch time we figure out where everyone has been: Machane Yehuda, one helleva bustling marketplace.
It will be Shabbat in a few hours and the market traders are making a killing. I buy a falafel and watch the tightly-packed paths move in different directions. The people here are gorgeous, and Afrikaans is the perfect language to skinner about a pair of beautiful legs!

Day 5
After leaving the Israel Museum which houses some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it’s off to tour the Christian Quarter of the Old City.
Entering Jaffa Gate I pass a belly dancer’s heaven before moving past a currency changing establishment. Its doors are wide open and no-one is fleeing with bags of cash - the heavy inside might have something to do with that.
One of the most special places we visit is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – the church believed to be built over Golgotha (the hill on which Jesus was crucified) as well as the tomb in which he was buried. The thousands of devout Christians kneel and pray on the site Jesus was crucified while hundreds queue for the opportunity to pray inside Jesus’ tomb.
After about an hour inside the beautifully coloured and decorated church, we leave while a choir fills the candle-lit passages with beautifully harmonious chants.
22h04. With Shabbat finished I’m again at Ben Yehuda. It’s the same festive atmosphere as two nights ago and while on a mission to buy something, I’m distracted by a beautiful sound.
I follow my ears and see a gathered crowd. Peeking over the heads in front of me, I see a choir of Christian Koreans singing songs while some of the gathered crowd joins in the impromptu praise and worship!
I can’t get over this city: Koreans singing Christian songs in a Jewish neighbourhood. I love Jerusalem!

Day 6
After a tour of the Negev desert in the south, we head towards Sderot. It is this little town that has suffered the brunt of Kassam rockets fired from Gaza. The fact that only 13 people have been killed by the rockets is largely thanks to the efforts of the Israeli government which builds bomb shelters almost everywhere: bus shelters, residential homes, shopping malls and classrooms.
The roads and parks are unusually quiet as we enter the town (we are later told that two rockets were fired at Sderot the night before) and stop in front of the country’s only rocket-proof day care centre.
“They’re unhappy about becoming celebrities over the past few years,” Celia Meechanic, Women’s International Zionist Organisation representative to the UN, says of the teachers at the day care. “Rockets have landed a few metres away from the centre before. Now the children don’t have to run and hide any more because the whole centre is a shelter.”
Our time to leave coincides with the moment my photographing succeeds in waking up the sleeping children. I’m only too happy to comply!
18h00. As the sun sets, we pay a visit to the Peres Center For Peace in Sderot. We meet the Peace Team – a mixed eight-player Palestinian-Israeli soccer team who play regularly together and are making their preparations to travel to South Africa to take part in the Fifa-sanctioned Football for Hope Festival.
Both the Palestinians and Israelis admit that their perceptions of the “other” have changed after being given the opportunity to use soccer as a bridge-builder.
This is the kind of story the world needs to hear more about (keep an eye out for a future issue of people when we will introduce the team to you).

Day 7
Today starts with SMSes from back home asking if we’re alright. Yes, come our surprised replies. The news in South Africa is that a few hours ago IDF soldiers boarded an aid flotilla en-route to Gaza. A gun battle broke out and people are dead.
The daily media fraternity in our group are perfectly placed today because we’re visiting Israel’s parliament. After an exclusive grilling on why people on the flotilla are now dead, we head north and say farewell to beautiful Jerusalem.

Days 8, 9 & 10
A tour of the Golan Heights first sees us overlooking Lebanon and then Syria, before we head south towards Tiberius.
Weaving through the mountain passes we first pass the eight-sided Church of the Beautitudes before arriving in the tourist-filled streets leading to the Sea of Galilee.
As a welcomed reprieve from all the politics, we’re given some R and R in the form of a boat ride on the green-blue Galilee.
The experience of drinking good red wine and listening to island-style Hebrew music while the boat hums along is surreal and makes me feel like I’m living in a movie.
After almost an hour on the water we head back to the bus and travel southwest towards Tel Aviv where we will spend our last two nights in Israel.
18h00. We enter Tel Aviv with the skyscrapers and hotels on our right and the Mediterranean on our left. The weather is perfect as locals jog shirtless or walk their dogs on the beachfront. This is a city for the party tourist: clubs, pubs and beachside hideouts that only close at 05h00 is what you can expect when you visit this beautiful city.
Day 10 @ 04h30. My final morning is spent with a drink in my hand, sea sand between my toes and reflection of my time in Israel. It’s time to pack my bag and head for the airport.
I leave Israel with a longing to return. It’s a country with a rich history, diverse and beautiful people, and a landscape that can be traversed south to north in a day – from the dry Negev to the green and topographical Golan Heights.
09h00 and at 30 000 feet. I pick up the Jerusalem Post and see a familiar face. It is that of Sheikh Bukhari. But it’s a eulogy! He died two days ago from a lingering heart condition. My eyes well up as I consider what my journey has taught me: it would be to value the extraordinary people who dress in Sheikh’s clothing and have the guts and humanity to hug men in yamakas. Perhaps peace is possible for Israel if Sheikh Bukhari’s words are to be believed: “This war can’t go on forever. We all need to help close the gap between the heavenly Jerusalem and the earthly Jerusalem.”