There are no armed guards in Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, at least not on open display. Entering from the arrival terminal, the airport initially seemed smaller than other airports I had visited until I realized that it fans out in a series of circles. It reminded me of a string of shopping malls.
“So, here,” I reflected, suitcase in hand, “is the Promised Land of the Bible!” Just what this Promised Land had to offer would reveal itself to me over the next several days, the duration of a press visit I had embarked on. I was visiting along with four other travel writers: two from Los Angeles, one from Arizona and one from Quebec City. Most of my companions were Jewish and all of us were official guests of the Israeli Tourist Ministry.
Because the El Al flight from Newark had been less than comfortable, it was my hope that things would be better on Israeli solid land. My flight was packed tight with Hasidic Jews: men in hats and long sideburn curls who carried hat boxes of various sizes and seemed to take great delight in blocking seat entrances or pacing around the plane without letup. For me, it was like listening to endless renditions of Ravel’s “Bolero”.
Once in Tel Aviv, a driver met me at Ben Gurion and drove me to the Herzliya Ritz Carlton Hotel. The traffic was five times the density of the Schuylkill Expressway and we traveled on a special toll road that got you to Herzliya in half the time. Along the way I took note of the billboards and random graffiti on buildings and reminded myself that cities the world over are the same when it comes to their urban landscape.
When we arrived at the Ritz the world became a Mediterranean luxury spa with a harbor of yachts, an beautiful beach and blue skies. My hotel room overlooked the luxurious harbor. Management had also arranged a swag surprise: gifts of body lotions and a small plate of gourmet chocolates. I devoured the chocolates, showered, then took a walk on the beach. I watched teenagers played Frisbee and two guys surfing in wet suits reminded me of the Jersey Shore.
I’ve no doubt that some people go to Israel for the food, especially the salads. In Israel there are salads of every variety with vegetables and ingredients you’re not likely to have heard of before. The breakfast buffet at the Ritz was beyond compare, attracting the likes of Tony Blair who rushed past our table with his security entourage.
“It’s Tony Blair!” one of the LA writers said, even though all we saw was the back of the former UK Prime Minister’s head. Blair seemed to be on important business. Israel, after all, is about the size of humble New Jersey, but surrounded by large, hostile countries. Our tour guide indicated that Jordan was the most peaceful of Israel’s neighbors, but that was unless at some point “it has an Arab spring.”
Naturally, fear of terrorist activity during our 5-day, whirlwind tour of Tel Aviv, Jaffa, the Dead Sea and Jerusalem were very much on our minds. Some people had advised me to drop out of the trip prior to my departure. They prayed for me in my local parish. They told me to be careful. I was even taken out to dinner and my hosts jokingly referred to it as The Last Supper.
Our group had done its homework as well and was aware of the recent history of terrorism and violence to sweep the country: an American tourist stabbed to death in Jerusalem in 2010; an attack on US taxi passengers in 2000; a shooting at a bus stop in 2001; the storming of a bus in Jerusalem (3 fatalities) in October 2015; a couple and their 4 children were attacked by gunmen in the West Bank in 2015 — the list goes on. (Two days after our press trip, November 19, 2015, terrorists open fired on cars stuck in traffic; another attack in the West Bank left five people, including an 18 year old student from Boston, dead.)
The instructions from the Ministry were clear: We must remain with our fellow travel writers at all times. Solitary excursions through Tel Aviv or Jerusalem were forbidden. The reality of this hit hard after we could not locate the tour bus following our first dinner out in a Tel Aviv restaurant. We were left lingering on a dark Tel Aviv street.
“This cannot be happening,” a member of our group said, panic evident in her eyes. “We are standing alone on a dark street in Tel Aviv. A car could come up at any time and blow us away!” Inspired by her words of caution, we hightailed it around the block and hurried to the parked bus. Moving along in a group is better than standing idle on a street corner where anything can happen.
Our apprehension abated somewhat during our first daylight tour, which was a walk through Jaffa, the ancient seaport of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans and the Crusaders. Jaffa, the story goes, was founded by Jacob, one of the sons of Noah after the Great Flood. From its star-studded history — which featured Greek mythology, Jonah and the Whale and a long stay by Peter the Apostle — we listened as our guide explained how after the Jews won a local battle against the Turks, resident Arab Christians and Muslims were given permission to remain in the city while newcomer Arabs were not allowed in.
Our guide also described how when Napoleon came to Jaffa to fight the Turks and the British, many of his French troops contracted the Plague. For Napoleon there was only one solution: Have his head surgeon kill all of the sick so that the disease would not spread. When the doctor refused, tell the emperor that he was in the business of saving lives and not killing them, Napoleon asked the Turkish sultan’s head surgeon the same question and got the same answer. Although there are various stories about how the afflicted soldiers died, our guide told us that Napoleon walked away from the conflict and let his troops die in agony on the vast portico outside the church of Peter the Apostle.
The church of Peter the Apostle was built in 1654 and looks much like any cathedral in Europe. When I snuck a peek inside, I was amazed to find the interior in total darkness with tourists milling confusedly about, some walking to the altar while others hung out near the back pews. I noticed an adult man sneaking up behind a friend of his who was sitting alone in a pew and watched as he poured bottled spring water onto his friend’s head. Was this a Monty Python skit making fun of baptism? I left the church shortly after this.
When Saint Peter came to Jaffa he stayed at the home of Simon the Tanner, a house that is still very much intact. The scriptures (Acts of the Apostles) tell us that during his stay, Peter raised a woman named Tabitha from the dead. He also fell asleep on Simon’s flat roof whereupon he had a series of dreams in which he was told by the Lord to abolish the old Jewish dietary laws. Peter had to be told to do so three times, but once he enacted the change, this new religion was able to spread among the pagans. Had the dietary laws not been abolished, Christianity could have died out as just another Jewish sect.
Aside from history lessons, we journalists were also treated to a number of massages — our voyage was officially designated as a Health and Wellness press trip after all. After a spin around Tel Aviv’s Sheinkin Street and the open air Carmel Market, each of us prepared for our 40 minute rubdown at the Ritz spa. In individual cubicles filled with sweet aromatic scents, we undressed and were lathered appropriately with oils and balms, wrapped in hot towels and then set upon by our assigned masseuses. I was paired with a talkative Israeli girl who, because I told her I wanted a firm massage, went to extreme lengths to pummel my back with road construction drill jerks that had me bouncing off the mattress. Although she did manage to deliver some pleasant sensations, she became even more animated when I told her that during my massage I kept seeing vision of the face of an infant. Perhaps it was her child? She told me no, it was probably her sister’s newborn whom my masseuse thinks of as her own.
“Are you a medium of some sort?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “but massages send me places.”
There would be two other massages on the trip. At the Mitzpe Hayamim Hotel Spa and Farm, we donned white robes and slippers and took turns in the various cubicles for our Sea of Galilee rubs. My masseuse here was a sturdy-albeit-bullish short-haired woman who was coming to the end of a long day. She did not speak English, but she was adept at pointing. There was no conversation and no jerking motions, just a thorough deep tissue application that was heads above the first. The Mitzpe Hayamim tour guide, after giving us a tour of the farm, pointed to a not-so-distant mountain and told us that just a few weeks prior he had hiked to the top and was able to look over into Syria “where you can see all the carnage down below.”
By this time, of course, we had heard about the attacks in Paris, so our group was even more apprehensive about traveling along the West Bank to the Dead Sea and into the city of Jerusalem. Our tour bus, we were told, would waver between zones A, B and C. Areas labeled B and C were considered the safe West Bank zones, but area A was the one to watch out for. The same journalist who wanted us off that Tel Aviv street corner after dinner was now concerned about our entry into Jerusalem. She told us that she had not even informed her mother that she was taking a press trip to Israel because the news “would have given her a heart attack.”
Our bus driver, a sturdy man with a lot experience driving buses along the West Bank, Haifa and the Jordan Valley, explained that he has had stones and rocks thrown at his buses. When we entered the West Bank we were careful to avoid the window and sit in the aisle seats.
Along the Jordan Valley the tour guide pointed out Jericho, the oldest city on earth and home of John the Baptist, as being an especially dangerous place. Its small scale, very biblical-looking skyline seemed too close for comfort. Looking out the window from a safe distance, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the desolate Judean wilderness with its mountains and caves that were once populated by the Essenes, Jewish Zealots and early Christian hermits. I also took note of the abundance of abandoned tractor and military vehicle wheels that seemed to dot the landscape every few miles. Periodically we would pass an Arab settlement and what looked like the remnants of isolated, bombed out buildings. As we approached Jerusalem we were greeted with the timeless spectacle of shepherds guiding their flocks up and down the sides of mountainous hills.
Our final group massage occurred near the Dead Sea. I was told to strip and lay face up on a small table by a tall, completely bald man who reminded me of Yul Brenner. He painted me with a brush in warm Dead Sea mud and slashed it around like he was swabbing a fence. He then wrapped my body like a mummy in two layers of cloth. He then left the room without a word of explanation, returning fifteen minutes later with an order to shower. I was then supposed to float in a rectangular mineral swimming pool with a group of pot bellied men and their wives, the latter bobbing about in flowered bathing caps.
Needless to say, I opted to get dressed and help myself to complimentary tea in the foyer of the spa.
Next week: Jerusalem…
