PALESTINE - ISRAEL - JORDAN - SINAI

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

Beware of the Jerusalem Syndrome

By Miri – Many people believe that Palestine/Israel is an unsafe place to travel and a lot of foreign embassies and consulates caution about visiting a region that is seemingly always at the verge of a new eruption of violent conflict.Most of the times locals will however tell you that it is completely save to […]

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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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The Beta Israel – Ethiopian Jews in Israel

By Miri –  Today, there are about 130,000 Ethiopians living in Israel, of which more than 38,000 are Israeli-born. In the following we shall briefly outline the origins of these communities, their journeys to Israel and their status within contemporary Israeli society.  Origin and History of the Beta Israel  Beta Israel community in Ethiopia, ca. […]

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On Route to Rediscover the Great Women of the Holy Scriptures

By Miri – A lot of people would agree that the three Abrahamic religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, if not read in a new and progressive way, are very patriarchal in character, and women are usually minor characters in the stories of men.The Old Testament, the very basis of all three religions for instance features […]

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An Introduction to Some Jewish Anti-Zionist Positions

By Miri – In recent years, critical positions towards the State of Israel have been increasingly delegitimised on the grounds of supposed anti-Semitic undertones. At the same time however, much criticism supposedly launched exclusively against the Jewish state and its supporters, did actually rest on a false understanding of what Zionism is and frequently conflated […]

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Internal Strife – The Case of the Mizrahi Communities in Israel

By Miri –  In recent weeks, with the riots sparked by the anti-Islam video “The Innocence of Muslims”, proponents of the discourse of a “Clash of Civilizations”, who have been warning against the “Jihad” that the “Muslim World” is launching against “Western Civilisation”, saw themselves once again confirmed.  The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is […]

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Persia and the Jews

By Miri –  –> During these days of increasing tensions between Israel and Iran it is worthwhile to revisit the ancient interconnectedness between the Jewish people and what used to be and is still referred to by many as Persia. Cyrus the Great Jews have been settling in the territories of today’s Iran for over […]

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The African Hebrew Israelite Community in Israel

–> By Miri – Origins and Way of Life The African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC), usually referred to as Black Hebrews, emerged in Chicago at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and formed part of the big array of Black pride political and cultural organisations.  Like the Nation of Islam, the […]

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Progressive Judaism – an Overview

  By Miri – Like most other religions, Judaism is not one static homogeneous belief system. Throughout its history, and throughout the various places that Jews took their beliefs, their practices and culture to, Judaism has changed and developed. From an analytic point of view it may be actually more appropriate to view Judaism as […]

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Cousins – the Muslim-Jewish Connection

By Miri – These days it is way more fashionable to emphasise the distinctions and the conflicts between Judaism and Islam, as well as between its respective followers. There are however way more similarities between the two religions and its communities than is acknowledged in these days of “clashes of civilisations”. Since both religions, their […]

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