quick post

hello again,
as the title implies I dont have much time because we are leaving for the kibbutz soon and I must be off to clean my room. I will be at kibbutz Sde Eliyahou which you may remember from Ezra's blog two years ago. I will be working on a number of projects from laundry to garndening and working in the kitchen. There are only 18 of us going and I hope it will be relaxing.

Over break I had a very nice time with my parents, grandparents and an array of cousins. We spent most of our time in Tel-Aviv but we took two trips to Jerusalem, one to Haifa and one to a Druze village (actually the same village I went to with the group trip). While I re-did part of the trip I had just been on, I did do some new things which were iinteresting. I would say the most interesting was the second trip to Jerusalem. My cousins Avner and Idit took us around the city showing us a former prison that held members of the Israeli underground figheters in the early part of the century. Though I had been to a similar prison in Acco, this one was interesting because two prisoners killed themselves before being hanged by exploding a grenade. These two men are hailed as heros to most Israelis but my parents and I discussed the idea that we are not so sure they are heros. They were certainly brave, but members of the more extreme groups - like the etzel and lechi - were pretty close to terrorists. Yes, they did help establish the state of Israel, but they also targeted British civilians and used extreme tactics. In Israel their actions are not even questioned (except by my liberal cousins).

The other interesting moment was later that day when I we went to an overlook and we could see the safety fence/wall. As my cousin pointed out, it cuts right through towns and some people have to go through security just to see thier former neighbors down the street. Its hard to really know what to think of the wall. It might help prevent terrorism (I really dont know anything about how successful its been) but it also makes life much harder for innocent people.


anyway, I'm off to kibbutz where I hope I dont have to think about hard questions or the best ways to solve world peace.

and a random note, the spell check doesnt work on this computer, or any Muss computers, so I'm sorry for all the spelling mistakes - I just was not good at spelling since about fifth grade and I dont have time to look up all the spellings.