Glenn Beck Preaching to the Choir in Israel

Popular and controversial American TV commentator Glenn Beck arrived in Israel. Speaking at a meeting of the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee Beck Said: "We have created a system of politicians who are afraid to tell the truth. Instead they're telling people what they think they want to hear," said Beck, recalling that he mistakenly viewed Israel as a hostile, war-torn nation before actually visiting himself.

When asked why he retired his show on Fox News Beck said "I was tired of preaching to the choir".

Beck touches on an important issue. He complains that the only people who tune in to his show, are people who already agree with his opinion, people who subscribe to the gospel he preaches.

Becks gospel like any other is a narrative, a story. People are storytellers and the stories are the way our mind views history and justice. It serves as a framework for our human experience and the foundation of our moral, social and national values. Although truth may be predominantly the premise of the stories we choose to tell ourselves it is seldom an entire and all-encompassing truth.

However flawed our perception of the world may be, we are inclined to strengthen our conviction with the embrace of like-minded individuals and communities. We find people who agree with us, at least to some extent, and surround ourselves with their soothing voices of solidarity, adding our own to the mix to the constant sound of their applause.

It is in this spirit that chairman MK Danny Danon (Likud) invited Glenn Beck to share his support of Israel with the Knesset committee and the reason he was so lavishly praised by its members. "It isn't a coincidence that you're a religious person [and support Israel]," said Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely. "This conflict isn't territorial. If it was, it would have been solved a long ago".
Hotovely continued: "This is a religious battle led by Islam. We can't ignore this basic truth. It's important that we stand behind a historical truth: We're not just here because of Zionism, but because of the Bible."

As an Israeli, I believe in this truth, in our right to be here, in our just cause, in the danger of fundamental Islam and yet it does not suffice me to hear this truth alone. If its truth we are after it cannot be partial it must be inclusive, it must include the Palestinian story, the Muslim story, the Christian story, the Jewish story. It is not history and fact that lend importance to these stories but rather the abundance of people that believe in them and live their lives by them.

On August 24 Beck will host a "Restoring Courage" rally in Jerusalem. He said thousands are expected to attend, including 70 prominent world politicians and four US presidential candidates. Beck said he hopes the event will help Israelis see that they are not alone, even if the mainstream media tries to make it out as though they are.

Glenn Beck is right about mainstream media covering only the stories in line with their school of thought. But the reason Glenn Beck is still preaching to the choir is that he acts in precisely the same bias.

What is needed in order to achieve true change is not more preaching but rather more listening. Not bigger mega-phones and rallies but rather bigger and more sensitive ears and hearts. if we seek a truth that is more inclusive we can find a narrative that leads to peace, a story with a happy ending.

Identity Travel Israel's 'The Traveller' Newsletter June 2011

Identity Travel Israel's 'The Traveller' Newsletter March 2011

War of Words, War of Worlds

Saturday's gruesome murder in Itamar, an Israeli West Bank settlement, horrified Israelis. A Palestinian perpetrated a violent murder killing a mother, a father and three children, the youngest of whom was a three-month-old infant.

As opposed to other terrorist attacks this attack did not yet instigate a war of weapons but rather a War of Words.

Israel is demanding an apology from CNN over its coverage of Saturday's terrorist attack in Itamar claiming it was "tendentious and deceptive."

The CNN report stated: "Five members of an Israeli family were killed in the West Bank early Saturday morning in what the Israeli military is calling a 'terror attack.'" Israeli officials contested the quotation marks around the term terror attack stating that there should be no argument on the fact that this is a terrorist attack.

The report went on to say: "According to a military spokeswoman, an intruder entered the Israeli settlement of Itamar near the northern West Bank city of Nablus around 1 am, made his way into a family home and killed two parents and their three children."

The report rephrased the IDF's official statement that noted forces were searching for a "terrorist" using instead the words "intruder" and "assailant". I myself remember many articles that called a suicide bomber, a freedom fighter.

Why is terminology such a controversial issue? Or as Shakespeare put it "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

To answer this question we should consider another article that hit the wires recently.

In Rome Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ. He deconstructs one particular Biblical account which has the crowd saying, "His blood be on us and on our children" — a phrase frequently cited as evidence of the collective guilt Jews bore and the curse that they carried as a result.

The phrase, from the Gospel of Matthew, has been so inflammatory that director Mel Gibson was reportedly forced to drop it from the subtitles of his 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ," although it remained in the spoken Aramaic.

The reason for Pope Benedict's interest in this debate could be traced to his childhood, when he was forced to join the Hitler Youth. As an adult he has made improving relations with Jews a mission and has visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Years of blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus along with newer anti-Semitic propaganda may have led to the extermination of Jews in World War II.

Words and terminology motivate people to action. Language has cultural and practical consequences. The Pope understood this. Israel has become aware of this and is now asking the world media as well as global leaders to unequivocally denounce these most recent attack.

One of the workshops we run on our tours is an exercise in the vocabulary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What is the language used in your local media to describe the conflict? How do you reconcile between terms such as apartheid wall and separation fence, terrorist and freedom fighter, targeted killing and assassination?

At the end of the workshop we show a clip and deconstruct the phrasing of each sentence. By choosing our words we choose our moral ground, our social values and our identity – In effect our world is made up of words.

How were the Itamar "killings" reported in your part of the world?

An Earthquake in Egypt.

Egypt is in turmoil. The people are revolting against their oppressor. They chant as so many before them "Give me liberty or give me death!"

This chant echoes in my mind as I travel to Beit She'an excavations. Beit She'an Hill, houses some of this region's most important archaeological finds, including artifacts from Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine and Muslim eras. These same rulers ruled Egypt for millenniums and I have to wonder what influence they must have had on the Egyptian people and their ideas of liberty, faith and government.

I walk into the ruins of an Egyptian Royal administration center and travel back in time to the age of the Pharaohs. These kings were believed to be deities, their reign divine. The reign of the Pharaohs did not bring with it much liberty, in the Jewish bible the escape from Egypt is also the attainment of liberty and is a cornerstone to millenniums of Jewish philosophies on personal and national freedoms. From the corner of my eye I spot the ruins of an ancient synagogue and think how relevant the story of Exodus must have been as the Greeks took over this town and brought with them the first raw form of democracy.

From the Roman amphitheater in Beit She'an, I walk through a Byzantine street fully equipped with period columns, and into a Byzantine basilica. In Egypt The Byzantine Era brought with it rulers believed to be the messengers of god on earth and their colonial rule enslaved the Egyptians until the decline of the empire.

I continue my time travel experience in Beit She'an to the 7th century when the Muslim conquerors took over. Here as in Egypt the local population could choose to convert to Islam or be considered second class citizens. When Umar conquered Egypt from the Byzantine Empire, Islam offered them the same deal. To the local inhabitants this meant that by becoming Muslims they would gain many more freedoms. They would subscribe not only to a faith but to a nation, a class and an ideology.

Back to modern Egypt, although it is ruled by a strong tyrant the power on the ground is divided. The government and military on one side and the Islamic clergy on the other.
The most apt manifestation of this is the rise of The Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamental Islamic movement established in the 1920's. During Mubarak era they have become the only well organized opposition.
Disenfranchised and poverty stricken the Egyptian people are rebelling; they chant words like freedom, and change.

But the Egyptian people have never really experienced freedom in the way that western countries have, and that makes the west very worrisome of the type of change they plead for.
If democratic elections were held today the Muslim Brotherhood are likely to take over and bring with them a religious government based on Shariah (Islamic) Law. What that would mean is a loss of that all-important separation of church and state, and with it the loss of many of the essential personal liberties enjoyed by the average Egyptian.

In Beit She'an the story ends with an earthquake which shattered the city's neglected Greek-Roman foundations. The marble floor and Greek columns, so associated with democracy today have mostly collapsed or disappeared. The city perished and was never rebuilt.

In Egypt the country's foundations are shaking, will the ruins provide a breeding ground for democratic ideas and government or for a faith based dictatorship?
Will it be liberty or death?

Ben Gurion's Fruitful Christmas

While Europe looks like its heading into an " ice age", Israel can only dream of a white Christmas. Here the sun still shines the young flock to the beaches and stay to bathe in those warm shafts of light till sunset.

As fun as this may sound to those who are cuddling in front of their fire places or clearing out their icy driveways, for Israel this sunny winter is a real problem. Israel is drying up. The Sea of Galilee has decreased significantly in size and the Dead Sea has sprouted new islands in its salty waters. Farmers have lost much of their crop and have to keep innovating to save on precious water.

Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister was well aware of this problem and was known for his vision of making Israel's barren southern lands flourish.
These winter days are always the best time to go south and hike in the vast desert plains of the Negev. The sun isn't scorching hot, but pleasant. Water finds its peace in rocky hideouts and crevices. One could go top off their tour by visiting Sde Bocker, Ben Gurion's modest Home.

Walking through the household you can see Ben Gurion was a man of action. He saw things as they might be not as they are. His roots were in German's icy soil but when the UN suggested a Jewish state that was at the most part a barren desert land he jumped at the offer.

His grave today lays at a panoramic mountain top, his favourite place in the desert. I can imagine him looking out, and picturing in his mind's eye a flourishing green community.

He wasn't far off, Israel's Negev has sprouted the city of Beer Sheva, originally dating back to the Israelites of the 10th century BC, It now boasts a modern well-respected University, theatre, sports stadiums and a population of 200 thousand. The Negev has a new ecological tourism industry that’s growing steadily. And Israel is the only country in the world that has ended the previous century with a surplus of trees, planting more than destroying.

Come to think about it, the forestation of Israel is a beautiful example of Israel's tendency to plant positively and constructively despite its problems and short comings. From the ashes of the holocaust rose a state, from the war of the Middle East rose its military might, from the desert sun sprouted agricultural innovation, from lack of natural resources an economy based on intellectual power and from dependence on oil an explosion of green novelties.

Any problem along the way is just a seed to a solution.

Ben Gurion must be smiling in his grave, the desert of Israel, once barren and underdeveloped has become green with innovative spirit and new ventures. 

So if you are snowed-in, think of a hike in Israel's desert and driving nearby through the Tuscan like wine country of Lachish, think of sleeping in an ecological Bed and Breakfast in the midst of the dry landscape, a gold palace compared with the modest lodging of Israel's first PM in the Kibbutz of Sde Bocker.  Think of floating effortlessly in the waters of the lowest sea on earth or warming up to the sunset rays on the banks of the Mediterranean.

When I think of all that Israel has managed to do by daring to dream and thinking constructively I get a warm feeling in my heart.

Have a warm Holiday season.

Remember what the Holidays are all about?

We wanted to take this opportunity to remind everybody who is enjoying this holiday season where it all began. We want to thank all of our customers and readers for allowing us to take part in their memory of ancient times. We are sure that the past has a message to impart to us all. Whether you have experienced a tour of this land or simply reminisced of its glorious past;  feast, celebrate and remember to let the history resonate through the millenniums and into your life today.

We are certainly reminded of our mission during these festive times: Promoting understanding through travel.

Season's Greatings,
From all of us at the Identity Travel Team

A Scary World and the Myth of the Lone Bomber

Bomb in Turkey! coordinated attacks in Iraq! printer-bomb found Yemen plane! Iran weapon ship stopped on its way to Africa! What a scary place our world has become.

How has this happened? Where did we go wrong?

Terrorist bombers have existed for decades. Israel used to be a focal point for fundamental Islamic terror organizations. With the birth of terror bombings a new myth emerged.

Media reported of a bomber, crazed and oppressed by the forces of occupation. This troubled soul was lead to a desperate act of violence as defiance; Whereas the bomber is perhaps reproachable, the media pleaded, his act is but a red flag to encourage us to look at his desperate cause.

This was what we would call "The Myth of the Lone Bomber". Why a myth?
As we can learn from terrorist attacks the world over this is almost never the case. Take for example the attack on Mike's Place, an Israeli Bar a few years back. This young Muslim bomber was a British college dropout who was unemployed and yes, he was desperate. However here is the route he underwent before finally committing his desperate act:

Indoctrinated in Jihadist Islamic Ideas through his local mosque, he became an activist in London. Recruited as an Islamic soldier to Bosnia fighting for the Mujahidin, he then flew to Syria, then to Pakistan for combat training, passed the border and met with Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, fought allied forces, then flew back to London and once more to Syria from which he was supposed to be taken to Iraq to combat allied forces yet again, but his mission changed and he was handed over to Hamas.

This is where his Jihadist ideology would finally be transformed into action but not before Hamas would drive him through Jordan across the border to Israel to research possible bombing targets, then invite him back to Gaza for more mental training, recording his farewell tape and receiving his already prepared trigger and explosives.

Luckily this man did not manage to carry out the attack, his bomb did not go off. His partner yet another desperate soul with a similar route was the one that ended up committing mass murder as an act of defiance in Mike's Place.
Not Exactly a one man show, is it?


What is clear from all the current events is that there is a network surrounding the bomber. The bomb itself is just the most apparent part of the network, the tip of the Iceburg.

This network provides the ideological doctrine, identifies and recruits , trains, transports, smuggles weapons and explosive, engineers the bomb, plans the route, provides documents and takes care of media relations after the attack.
Yes it is easier to recruit people who are desperate and yes the occupation is one of the reasons that a lot of people are desperate in the small Gaza strip but why are British Muslims desperate not to mention Iraqis, Saudis and Yemenites, Turks, and Kurds?

Should we look at London's underprivileged class as a breeding ground for terror because it inspires desperate bombers? We think not.

We believe that this myth of the bomber being just a symptom of desperate plight as oppose to a fanatic ideology and network of terror, rewards terror organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah and encourages them to continue utilizing terror as a means to an end.

If terror is allowed to be an effective tool to voice an opinion in Israel, than why not in Iraq or for that matter England or the United States.

At Identity Travel we encourage people to plead their case through dialogue, and to travel throughout the world, meeting other people with other views, listening and constantly reassessing their own opinions.

After all, as Mark Twain said "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness".

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