PALESTINE - ISRAEL - JORDAN - SINAI

Off the beaten track tours • Visit sites • Meet locals • Discuss Human Rights & Politics

Memories of a Day in Bethlehem

by Neil GunnI was looking forward to my first visit to Bethlehem so it was particularly good, on that September morning, to leave my depressing Jerusalem hotel room and head off into the early sunshine. The Jaffa Road was coming to life and the ‘ting ting’ sound of the Jerusalem Light Railway could be heard […]

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Women in the IDF – Debunking the Myth of Equality

By Miri –  “The army is the supreme symbol of duty and as long as women are not equal to men in performing this duty, they have not yet obtained true equality. If the daughters of Israel are absent from the army, then the character of the Yishuv will be distorted.”  David Ben Gurion The […]

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Obamarama

By Miri – Tel Aviv is frequently referred to as “the bubble”, and rarely anything seems to be able to affect its integrity, its sense of an ideal world. Not even a visit by President Obama.Except for the indifferent Tel Avivians everybody else in the region seems to have gotten excited quite a bit by […]

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Unrequited Sympathy – The Case of the Maronites in Israel

By Miri –  Obviously the Arab – Jewish divide is by far not the only one in the area and there are way more ethnic or religious groups whose relationships are rather complicated, whose identities have been mobilised and played out against each other during the manifold conflicts that have been shaking the Middle East […]

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The Palestinian Costume – Embroidered HerStories

By Miri – One thing that keeps on impressing me about Palestine is its endless local variety, its heterogeneity. You can be in one village in the West Bank and hear people making jokes about the particular accent of the neighbouring village, which is not even a kilometre away. As someone whose Arabic is far […]

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The Bahá’ís and Israel

By Miri – Anyone enquiring about the landmarks of the city of Haifa will most likely be right away directed to the majestic Shrine of the Báb and its gardens on Mount Carmel. Together with the Shrine of the Bahá’u’lláh near Acre, these sites make out the Bahá’í World Centre. Much of the international governance […]

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And then there’s that Wall…

By Marianna Hillmer-Wiechmann – Marianna Hillmer-Wiechmann went on our Greater Jerusalem Tour and on our Hebron and Bethlehem Tour. In this article (for the German original see here) she puts her impressions into word and image. It does not take long to get from Jerusalem to the Wall. This huge wall, that Israel has built […]

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Tales of Masada

By Miri –  The ancient fortification of Masada in the Judaean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea is the most popular tourist site in Israel.Apart from the breathtaking beauty of both the site and the area, it is especially the legend surrounding it, which continues to play a crucial role in discourses of national security and survival. […]

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Purim – Different Lessons to Be Learned

By Miri – Growing up in Germany mainly amongst non-Jewish friends, together we developed a pattern of translating Jewish holidays into Christian ones. “So when is your Jewish Christmas?” my friends would ask me, referring to Hanukka, which obviously has absolutely nothing to do with the Christian holiday except for its similar timing around December. […]

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الحرم القدسي الشريف‎ / הַר הַבַּיִת / The Temple Mount

By Miri – It is a common mistake to see the root of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis as grounded in the different belief systems. Obviously with the expansion and strengthening of fundamentalist movements on both sides during the last decades the conflict that is essentially about control over land is more and more […]

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Dance the Dabke!

By Miri – It is always a challenge to write about music or sound in general. Are there words at all to describe what you perceive through your ears, what vibrates through your body and frequently triggers strong emotional responses?In failing to truly put into words what we hear when talking about a sound event […]

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On the State of the State of Palestine

By Miri –  According to Benedict Anderson, one of the most influential scholars on nationalism, all nations are socially constructed communities, imagined by those who perceive themselves as part of that particular group. Following Anderson there are certain elements and dynamics which commonly aid the creation of this mental image of affinity among its members, […]

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