Entry 5: CouchSurfing and Hitchhiking in Israel

Diary

Holy cow eveything that's happened since my last blog update has been a wild ride, almost constantly moving place to place thanks to tons of CouchSurfing and Hitchhiking.

This blog post won't be as literarily styled as my last, as there's way too much to talk about and I want to spend more time expiring Greece than editing. Perhaps in the future I will come back and revise it after its posted publicly, so keep in touch.

The way I do my blogs is that I keep a diary in my iPhone's notes of brief words and phrases of each day's events to jog my memory. Later on when I finally sit down to write my blog I expand on each of these notes, fixing spelling and grammar, adding detail, better language, fancy metaphors and the like. Expanding on my notes like this takes a lot of time, and I simply haven't had many large chunks of time available in the past month. ...ok, that's not completely true as I still struggle with internet addiction so lots of this free time is spent browsing reddit. But I did (and still do) have planning to do for Greece and Northern Europe this summer.

By the way, I'm considering going to the UK this summer, I'm thinking Scotland, because it's out of the Schengen Area: a group of countries in Europe where those from outside of it can only be in the Schengen for up to 90 days. After those 90 days you must spend 90 days out of the Schengen before coming back in.

So I need a schedule that allows me to visit France during November and December for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, helping with organizing the protests there. The UN hasn't done shit about climate change, so we're there to protest that and start changing the system ourselves. But that's a story for next year.

Sun Feb 1

Arrive at Hostel in Ramallah

Mon Feb 2

Uh, this day was blank in my notes as are some others, so I'm just going to skip over them.

Tue Feb 3

Did you know there's a Krusty Krab in Ramallah? Yes, that restaurant from SpongeBob SquarePants caters to patrons of the West Bank. Hardly anyone was there though because the food sucks when tasty falafel and lamb are all around.

That night I went to a yoga class in Ramallah with an Australian aid worker, who has spent much of his time in Gaza, and James, an English guy traveling around the Middle East. It was a typical yoga class, full of Westernized appropriations of Indian culture, attended mostly by Palestinian women. It was very relaxing, and during the meditation part at the end my mind was bouncing off the walls, as I couldn't focus on the instructor's voice at all.

That night I met a Palestinian veterinarian atheist Richard Dawkins fan from Hebron invited me to his place, though I never did. We talked about atheism, and our experiences of being an atheist in each of our own cultures. I've never felt persecution for my beliefs whereas he has.

Wed Feb 4

The Hostel in Ramallah has activities everyday, and today's was a hike. We saw Tel Aviv from the top of a castle upon a high hill, as well as a nearby settlement.

Thurs Feb 5

Fri Feb 6

Today's activity at the hostel was a "political tour," which meant visiting and participating if desired in one of the weekly demonstrations that take place in Bil'in, a town near Ramallah. I met Roi, a Tel Aviv Israeli Jew of Anarchists Against the Wall who comes to demonstrations every other week.

The Palestinians march as close to the apartheid wall as they can with the ultimate goal of tearing it down. On the opposing side are the Israeli military blocking the Palestinians from advancing, mostly by launching tear gas in a high arc to land amidst the protestors. Occasionally the IDF will fire rubber bullets and even more dangerous weaponds like projectile tear gas canisters, which are designed to penitence buildings to spread tear gas within closed walls. There's a monument erected for Besem, someone who was killed when one of these projectiles hit him in the chest.

Toward the end of the protest the IDF advanced very rapidly, and we all retreated rapidly in response. Tear gas landed in front me as I was walking quickly away from approaching IDF, I felt tear gas for the first time. Despite how little gas was around me it stung pretty badly.

Sat Feb 7

I had to leave the West Bank back to Jerusalem because of visa complications. A bus took me from Ramallah to the checkpoint, and when I got off the bus I was pretty confused. What exactly was I supposed to do at this checkpoint? Where do I go? It was very crowded, with lots of lines and gates everywhere. Fortunately a Palestinian noticed my confusion and gave me free taxi ride, as he bought a taxi for himself to go to another, easier checkpoint at which I didn't even have to show my passport.

He dropped me off on the outskirts of Jerusalem and I still had ways to go, so I turned around and stuck out my arm to hitchhike and immediately found a ride. That never happened to me before but it was pretty cool finding a ride so quickly in a city.

He dropped me off at the Old City from which I easily walked to Abraham Hostel, where I ran into James, who I met at the Hostel in Ramallah.

I met yet another Birthrighter at the hostel, one of the many I've ran into.

My friend Zoe took me to an underground (literally and figuratively) death metal show, lots of loud noises with no rhythm. Not my style but it was fun knowing that exists in Jerusalem.

Sun Feb 8

Mon Feb 9

The Israelis must be very proud of Kafka's judaism because they stole every bit of his nightmarish bureaucratic themes. My appointment at the office for Ministry of the Interior in Jerusalem ended with them claiming that I needed the original copy of my birth certificate in order to extend my visa. Fuck getting that mailed here, there's no way I'm going to travel around the world with that in my possession. But they said I could stay until I get berth cert even though my visa expired the following day, so I figured they don't care that much anyway so I can spend as long as I want here with an expired visa just because I'm Jewish, so I left Jerusalem for Ramallah. Only once I got there I realized that having an expired visa in the West Bank is not smart because there's checkpoints everywhere. While my white and Jewish privilege can get me pretty far, there may be that one time they decide to examine my visa and give me trouble. So I need to get out of the country and come back.

Tue Feb 10

Left the Hostel in Ramallah, dropped a book my CS host Mohanad loaned to me off at Ramallah Cafe, took a bus to Jeru, found my Mexican phd researcher friend on bus, went to Citadel Hostel a her just to charge my phone, left to try hitchhiking to Eilat, people said I was in wrong spot, took tram to other spot without paying for tram, got busted for not paying, but screw that I'm not gonna pay the over 100 shekel fine. Got lost in Jerusalem. Made it to Abraham Hostel. Found James White again. Eavesdropped on a Jerusalem LGBT club member who mentioned free pizza, went there for the pizza, went to CS host and stayed the night there.

Wed Feb 11

Stressed about visa situation but friends got me to relax.

Thurs Feb 12

Bus ride to Eilat. Someone gave me a free ticket that would've cost me 80 shekels ($20)

Went to wrong border, too late for border crossing, which closed at 8pm. Camped on beach

FrI Feb 13

Charged phone got water at local Eilat bar, met Israeli who worked at Towson Mall selling Israeli products. She's been to that now closed Falafel shop in Maple Lawn.

Went to Border crossing. At that point I was three days over my visa, this border cared about that more than the Ministry of the Interior did, gave me a strict talking to but let me go.

Taxi to Aqaba because they don't allow walking to there.

Met CS host Ibrihim, talk with him at cafe, he's Palestinian, his family left Palestine in '45 by *choice*, that is: they chose to leave because they were farmers and had no match against the military. This destroys the black and white thinking of whether Palestinians left because they chose to or because they were kicked out, and paints a more complicated picture. Yes, some Palestinians left by choice but it was because they had no other choice, it was face the British/Israeli military or leave.

Met Mutaz Teto, studies accounting at works at bus station. Gave me the rest of his dinner. Drove me and his work buddy on a ten minute business run. No idea what was happening but got milk and oreo cookies.

Ibrihim bought me falafel for dinner as we watched Training Day.

Sat Feb 14

Left Ibrihim's, crossed border crossing, Israel gave me one month instead of the usual three because I had overstayed my visa three days and I only spent one day in Jordan. I'm Jewish and have family in Israel, which might have been a factor in them letting me back in Israel.

Found Liran on CouchSurfing. Hitchhike there with old couple who drove me straight there. Met German girl and Araik from Russia. Went to pool bar, Liran's friend harassed German.

Sun Feb 15

Liran asked me for massage. Creepy.

Mon Feb 16

Left Liran's and hitchhiked with Araik to Mitzpe Ramon. Three different rides, noon to five.

Saw Makhtesh Ramon, a huge canyon. Very pretty.

Visited hostel, met Simon from France. Met Noam our CS host, his two cats, two kids, and a homophobic woman surfer from Russia.

Tue Feb 17

Left Noam's for Beer Sheva, said goodbye to Araik.

Got to Beer Sheva and met up with James White who I had met in Ramallah and coincidentally in Jerusalem too.

Surfed with Nataly and her two American-Israeli flatmates, one of whom went to a house party with a NOLS Amazon buddy. Went to awesome music jamming session with her friends.

Wed Feb 18

Left with James to hitchhike for Ein Gedi. This was the first time I headed for a place without a secure host in place before hand. Hitchhiked with an awesome guy who fed us lunch and connected us with a host in Arad on the way to the Dead Sea, stayed night with them.
Check out my friend James' blog entry of these events!

Thurs Feb 19

It was supposed to snow in Jeru and flood roads on way to Jeru, so James and I did a day trip to hot springs in Dead Sea.

Luckily, hitched with a geologist on way there who told us about the terrain.

Another hitchhike ride was the third person I met from Silver Spring (a town very close to my home town in Maryland) in one month in Israel. Very friendly, fed us pizza during car ride. Drove to far but no big deal, hitched back to find hot springs. They were hot. Now I smell like sulfur despite rinsing off in the Dead Sea and taking a shower.

Fri Feb 20

Hitchhiked with James from Arad to Beer Sheva. Got to out host Aaron Zalcman who wasn't there but his flatmate Micah was. Went to dinner with Moshe, another CS guy in the city.

Sat 21

Spent day planning for Greece

CouchSurfed w Aaron Zalcman

Sun 22

More planning for Greece.

Bakery w a friend, went to Asham Hazman, a cool bar/music scene. Made campfire, had beer, roasted sweet potatoes in tin foil in the fire.

Monday 23

CouchSurfed w Moshe

Tue 24

Hung out w friend in middle of the day shopping for Purim costumes

CouchSurfed w Moshe

Wed 25

CouchSurfed w Ram, a student at Ben Gurion Uni

Thurs 26

Left Ram's to hitchhike to Tel Aviv. First time I got picked up by a truck.

Arrived at Milk and Honey Hostel, stayed night there

Fri 27

Did lots of emails, aka surfed reddit.

Sat Feb 28

Sun March 1

Still at Milk and Honey hostel

CouchSurf w friend from All That's Left, Jewish activist group against the occupation, she gave me free ukulele! Very, very happy about the ukulele.

Mon March 2

Stayed w Tomair Friedman.

I met this guy summer 2011 at Landmark College. I was a tour guide and he was a prospective student I gave a tour too. He never went to Landmark but we stayed fb friends since.

He saw I was in Israel and messaged me saying he lives there. We tried for a while to meet up then it finally become convenient.

Played basketball and watched Walking Dead. 

Tue March 3

Train back to Milk and Honey

Hitchhike to Jeru

Stay with friend

Wed March 4

Get stuff from Ari, a guy from america visiting Israel that my Mom and Dad gave a phone charger, power cord, harmonica, etc. to give to me as more supplies for Greece.

Through the end of Israel, stayed with friends and prepared for Greece.

Last day, one more night at Milk and Honey hostel.

Forgot to give key back to my friend, so I had to rush to do that before my flight.

Flight to Greece, met Alberto on the train and flight there, spanish-German traveling around the world.

End notes:

I often say to myself "Holy fuck what the Hell am I doing," as I travel, wondering why and how I'm actually going to survive. But I say this less and less as I'm continuously amazed at the hospitality of strangers.

Entry 4: Jaffa to Ramallah

Jaffa to Ramallah


Wednesday, Jan 21

After several days of procrastinated packing I finally left with goodbye hugs to my friends. I must admit I was sad to go but I didn't want to get too comfortable.

Right now I'm in the mindset that I need to keep traveling, I left the Milk and Honey hostel because I could feel myself getting too comfortable there. I made great friends and it was sad to go but I felt like I had to because I'm traveling -- that's what you do when you travel, right? Yet when I walked away with my heavy backpack slowing me down, there was an additional weight of regret pulling me back to Milk and Honey as if I wanted to stay longer.

The warmth of the sun and clear skies gave plenty of room for thinking my plans over though I trekked onward to an on-ramp Ori suggested to try hitchhiking, or "tremping" as they call it in Israel. Swaying in my arms in plastics bags were a fire starter and fuel kit that I collected from guests who left them behind, dried fruit, nuts, and granola to ensure my sustenance for the coming days.

I waited a half-hour until I met Shoshana, a New Jersey native who picked me up on her way to her Jerusalem home. We talked the whole time about our home country and why we left.

Once she dropped me off I took the short walk to Abraham Hostel where I checked in for free, as fellow hostel workers get three free nights there. Soon after, I met up with my friend Zoe, an experienced traveler helping me spread my wings and fly, who toured me through the city.

After a long day I rested my head in a crowded dorm room of Abraham Hostel.


Thursday, Jan 22

I woke up early to get first in line at the Ministry of the Interior's Jerusalem office where my attempt to extend my visa was thwarted by a bureaucratic delay, which I was warned is horrifying -- the earliest appointment I could get was February 9th, one day before my visa expires. Whatever, I'll get there early that day too, and if they don't accept it then I will quickly trek to the Southern Israeli city of Eilat where I can hop to Aqaba, Jordan and back, though they may only extend my visa for ten days. If this happens then I will try the Egyptian Sinai and back, or maybe move on to Cyprus.

I returned early enough to score a second breakfast at Abraham Hostel where I found a former guest of Milk and Honey, Tseda, an American researching for her senior thesis on the history of medical attention to refugees (I think? I forget).

Stressed about my visa circumstances, I wandered around the city and ate a mini cup of Ben and Jerry's cookie dough (so thankful they have it here) until I ran into my Norwegian friend from the asshole-led Jerusalem Gardens hostel, Bjørnulf -- Beo for short. I forgot to write about it in my last post but I ran into him at the Milk and Honey Hostel too, as he wanted an escape for a day, so it was a crazy coincidence to see him again. He lifted my stress and I went straight back to the Abraham Hostel's wifi to work out my situation.

While I could have stayed for free at Abraham Hostel, I ditched my reservation to CouchSurf with Ira from Silver Spring, Maryland, a town fifteen minutes away from my hometown of Scaggsville! Ira hosted another guest along with me, Claudio from Italy, and regaled us with tales of his activist youth in the 70's.

Friday, Jan 23
Friday and Saturday I found another CouchSurfing host, Shiri, a chemistry student at Hebrew University who cooked me and her friends a fabulous vegan dinner that kept me full for days. Like me, she grew up Jewish but is now atheist, so we bonded over that.

It's interesting actually, my time here in Israel has made feel less Jewish. Non-religious and atheist-Jews in America often still culturally identify with Judaism, joking and mocking their own Judaism to stick out as a form of identify expression in a Christian dominated culture. I know some such American Jews who casually joke about themselves openly to their friends as if to remind themselves and others about their Jewish background. Not that this is a bad thing, it creates a sense of community and belonging out of a tiny percentage of society who would be alienated otherwise.

However Israel doesn't have this because of the Jewish dominated culture. It's not necessary to joke about getting Chinese food for Christmas when nobody forces Jesus down your throat. The secular and left leaning Jews I've met here are actually disgusted at the increasingly religious-right government and certain parts of the population, so they eschew Judaism all together to create bonds rather than joking about their own Judaism like American Jews do. When showing my avocado seed carved Star of David to an Israeli I met he even compared it to the Nazi Swastika, asking me to get rid of the nationalism from his sight.

I can't deny my Jewish cultural identity though since I was raised with it but when the Netanyahu administration ties Judaism with Israeli Nationalism it becomes elitist when one does deny the Palestinian struggle.

Ok, that's enough pseudo-anthropological rambling, let's return to my blog.

Sunday, Jan 25

I left Shiri's place early to ensure my procrastination habits of a few days before would not resurface, leaving the fire starter and fuel here as I didn't want to bring that through the checkpoint. Standing at two of my bus stops on the way, I mentioned to the Israelis waiting with me where I was going to which they gravely warned me to be careful and wished me luck not to get killed. The only thing that scared me, I told myself, was how ignorant Israelis were -- buses are segregated, after all. (Keep this is mind as you read though as I end up scared nonetheless.)

I got to the bus station for Palestinians at around 3:00 PM, where a friendly one-armed man enthusiastically helped me toss my giant backpack and grocery bags under the bus and asked for twenty shekels, which I assumed was for the bus ride. I think he ripped me off though, using ten of those to pay for his own ticket, and since asked me for more money when I sat next to him. After he fell asleep, I occupied my time with staring out the window, keeping silent and enjoying the Arabic language in the air.

Passing the checkpoint is a breeze going in; it's on the way out that gives Palestinians hours, usually a full day, of trouble. During this bus ride I saw the apartheid wall up close for the first time -- it was surreal, a high wall with barbed wire rounding the top decorated by watch towers and occasional graffiti. I didn't get a photo, I wanted to wait until I learned the culture a bit first before I pulled out my iPhone's camera. As the blue dot on my phone approached Area D Hostel, which I knew had free wifi, I exited the bus and thanked the driver, shukran, lugging my bags across the street toward the hostel while people smiled at the American idling by.

Soon after borrowing a phone to call my CouchSurfing host Mohanad, he took me to Ramallah Cafe for hookah where he smoked as we chatted for a couple hours. He bought me Chinese take out as we headed for his home in the north of the city. I have a private room, bathroom, and shower in his beautiful apartment, recently emptied by his ex-wife and three-year-old daughter who he plans to see in Sweden soon. Mohanad works at a bank while studying for his master's in International Development, mountain biking with his friends in the little free time he has, so his busy schedule allows me to explore the city by myself.

Edit: check out this article about him and his friends mountain biking in Palestine!

http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/palestine-riders-biking-through-holy-land-226620473

Or this link:
http://www.thatsramallahbaby.com/#!Mountainbiking-in-Palestine-Thats-Ramallah-Baby/c166d/55ae11330cf286eab0280e10

Monday, Jan 26

I woke up early yet spent much of the morning on my phone looking over my plans, with a late start out of Mohanad's home. While it's a half hour walk away from the city center, I took the stroll to see the route. Perplexed by a fancy KFC/Pizza Hut on the side of the road, I wandered in expecting to check it out for just a minute when a man exclaimed at me to help him finish his meal after learning I was American. I rejected at first but he insisted and eventually left me alone for his taxi job, which I first thought he was slyly making me pay for his meal but he turned out to be a sincerely nice guy.

Full with grease, I kept moving toward the city center where a swarm of kids ran into me at the afternoon market trying to communicate with what little English they knew, though it was much better than my Arabic. They cheerfully led me to their "boss man," an eighteen-year-old named Ali selling vegetables for his father's business, who's Arabic name on Facebook is علي أبو عطيه. The rest of the day and through the night I learned what Palestinian hospitality means. It's as if their national sport is throwing kebabs and pastries at Americans. From a teen worker handing me raw fennel drizzled with lemon juice to an old man walking by who came out of nowhere and literally pushed his half-eaten doughnut into my mouth out of giddy generosity, I was stuffed until the next morning.

Ali asked me more than a few times if I was scared to which I replied that I wasn't. No way, why would I be scared? They are people just like any other on Earth, kind and compassionate at heart. But could he see something that I couldn't? In the middle of goofing around with the kids at the busy market, an older guy around my age cut through the crowd and inched to my face with a stern glare, seemingly annoyed at me as if I was disturbing his family by my presence. I calmly asked him if he was ok, repeating myself several times yet got only a silent, angry glare in response. After a full minute or two of this he let out an incomprehensible yell -- immediately followed by a chorus of laughter as the kids realized their older brother was joking with me long before I did. He walked away chuckling at my fear. Without me realizing it, Ali was right. It was just 24 hours after arriving in a new place and new culture, the Arab world and the "Other," why wouldn't I have some fear and anxiety? Racism permeates us all subconsciously, it's naive to think I wasn't scared of entering the West Bank.

I hung out with Ali and his friends at the market until it closed shortly after seven, then we all headed to an Internet cafe in a taxi-van to spend the rest of the night goofing off, sharing music, and learning about each other's lives in butchered Arabic and English, while sipping a creamy, orchid tea (picture!). While it was mostly fun and games, they also showed me YouTube videos of the IDF countering Palestinian demonstrations and a montage of Palestinians who have died at the hands of the IDF. While they love Americans they don't like our government, which backs Israel. Interestingly, I never heard the word "Jewish" from anyone yet; it's pretty clear to me that despite some Israelis claims otherwise, Palestinians hate Israel, not Jews. My CouchSurfing host has Israeli friends he invites over, though with difficulty due to the wall. I brought up the subject on my own and told him I was Jewish, which didn't phase him at all.

Ali invited me to stay with his family that night, who gave me another full dinner. I wasn't hungry but it would be rude to refuse and it was tasty anyway. After I told his Dad I was in Israel before coming here he gave me a long talk in decent English about how Israel doesn't exist, it's all Palestine, which I was grateful for the opportunity to listen and not argue. He also spoke in Arabic to Ali at length about their financial situation; I could see the poverty in their faces though they didn't specifically mention it to me. Hanging on their family's wall and as Ali's Facebok profile picture is a portrait of one of his sons who was taken prisoner by the IDF even though he was not armed.

They have a small television and wifi, though it's a crowded home as I slept in a small bedroom with two of Ali's brother's while Ali got out an extra mattress to sleep on the living room floor. I only saw Ali's Mom a couple times, who wore a headscarf and didn't make eye contact with me. While Ramallah isn't as traditional as the rest of the West Bank women are still often kept separate from men, especially when guests arrive. In the streets however I see plenty of women without any headscarves. I was warm enough to sleep most of the night however the morning call to prayer at around 5 AM wouldn't let me fall back asleep. The mosque must have been very close to his home because it was very loud and kept going for at least twenty minutes. In a odd sense of familiarity and curiosity I realized that while it was definitely foreign to me, it was similar to Jewish music heard in synagogues as a minor keyed tune.

Tuesday, Jan 27

7:00 AM breakfast at Ali's was sweetened tea, though he bought me some plastic wrapped pastries on the way to the market as well. He works twelve hour days with his family yet makes the best of it despite the conditions, giving travelers like me all he has. I hung out at the Area D Hostel typing this up (check out the view!) and checking emails then went back to market where I was given more fruits and pastries out of hospitality.

Notes, Tuesday through Sunday:

Mohanad finished the book he had for his course, "Popular Resistence in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment" by Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, so he lent it to me for reading.

One night, Mohanad took me to meet his friends at an Irish pub where I met other CouchSurfers, NGO workers, and travelers. It was like a UN meeting of various countries sipping alcohol in Ramallah. Another night we went out again to a different bar and then to a dance club at the top floor of a fancy hotel.

I mostly wandered around the city, not doing anything in particular, but simply exploring and getting to know the place. Often people of all ages shout out to me "Welcome!", wave in glee, or even hand me a piece of whatever fruit or vegetable they are selling. Once some teens followed me around asking for shekels, the Israeli currency also used here, but adults caught them and sternly told them to back off (or at least I assume that's what they said since I don't know Arabic). On the other hand, I've had kids offer me money too, which I had to flat out refuse -- there's no way I'm taking that from them. While I typically walk everywhere to save money, walking to the Mahmoud Darwish museum honoring the late poet some people offered me a ride in their car right up to the front gate.

I left my CouchSurfing host Mohanad to spend one night for free at Area D Hostel on Saturday night, since a volunteer there invited me when he visited Milk and Honey a few weeks ago.

I start volunteering at the Hostel in Ramallah today, Sunday February 1st, for at least one month, and I may volunteer at a refugee camp or teach English during the next month. My first week here has been incredible, here's to the rest of my time here.

Adding on: Just got to the Hostel in Ramallah, and was greeted by a wonderful guitar voilin duet rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as we're making dinner together. I like it here already, great music, great food, great people.

List of Arabic words I've memorized so far (pardon me if I butcher them):

Salaam Alaikum -- hello, goodbye, peace. Like Shalom in Hebrew

Layla Sayeeda -- goodnight

Jayeed -- good

Mahyi -- water

Shukran -- thank you

Update 3, Jan 17th, '15; Milk and Honey Hostel

It's been a while since my last update, and unfortunately I did not make detailed notes to use for the blog like I did for my last posts, so this will be more... general.

Let's see...  There's sooo much to talk about since my last update. Sorry it's been so long!

Typing with my thumbs as my head rests on my pillow makes me pump out these blogs sooner yet with the literaracy of a lysdexic ephelant, so bear with me.

I arrived at the Milk and Honey Hostel on Shalma 4 in Jaffa, Israel on Friday morning, December 5th. It was just some place I found at the last minute to work in exchange for food and shelter but by the end of my stay it became a home.

Between seven and nine other coworkers, we each worked around 21 hours per week, cleaning the four full bathrooms, making beds, sitting at the computer as a receptionist, buying groceries at the local supermarket, and making a breakfast of Israeli salad (chopped cucumbers and tomatoes), bread, hummus, tahina, and labina (a spreadable cheese without the distinct flavor cream cheese has). If I worked more than 21 hours, which was often up to 30 hours, I got 25 shekels per hour or 200 shekels per week ($50) to spend on my lunch and dinner. Total occupancy is at around 40 beds, which only happened around Christmas and New Years, though these guests supplied the staff with a steady stream of alcohol. I'm thankful for the many Russians that visit here.

The people I met here have been a blessing to my burgeoning travels, from my coworkers I grew friendships with to the myriad and diverse travelers who rested here for one night.

My manager, Kenya (like the country, yes that's her name), is a Yemeni Jew who co-owns the hostel with two other people, although I've never met them since they don't work nearly as much as she does. Her husband often works here too in addition to playing bass for the Israeli singer Ester Rada. They sometimes bring their adorable toddler with them as well as wine or pastries for special occasions (like my going away!). They are a very chill family, super friendly and welcoming, who invited me back to stay whenever I want.

Except for the two Israelis, Ori, a Tel Aviv University political philosophy student who gave me fantastic feedback on my Birthright essay, and Atar, an art student with an amazing tahina cookie recipe, staff here are also travelers, coming and going to make a steady stream of new faces to meet. When I first got here my coworkers were Selena, Cormoron, and Daniel, an American from Virginia who funds her travels by teaching yoga and giving massages around the world, an Israeli who changed his name to the bird of the same name because why not, and an eighteen-year-old American who paid over ten thousand dollars to work at this hostel and learn about Israel in a separate program. Then came Ilhan, a crazy French guy with one enormous dread-lock who incessantly asked people how they were doing over, and over again even if we told him we were fine just minutes before. Eventually, we couldn't take it anymore and my manager asked him to leave. There's Elmar, the Dutch artist born one day after me, carrying a book of the hand-prints of every person he meets on his travels. I just met Rabea before I left, a German girl who's spent four years on the road. Finally there's Valentina from Italy, who's looking over my shoulder as I type this -- wait, she just went away so I can talk about how evil she is. Probably my best friend after Christmas eve mass together at a nearby Arabic Church. We go from deep, meaningful conversations to spontaneous bursts of laughter, late night talks to walks in the local market. Thank you for everything, I will miss you! Come visit me in Ramallah!

There were even some hostel guests who have stayed here so long we became friends, like Jeffrey the Dutch philosophy student who spent his vacation here during Christmas and invited me to his home in the Netherlands this Summer. There's Michael, an American immigrating to Israel who is temporarily living at the hostel until he finds an apartment. And Harvey, a French guy traveling around the world who rambles incoherently and left his tent here for me to take (I think?). I met Ryan from the Virginia side of DC on his way out of Saudi Arabia where he taught English for six years. After growing sick of the fundamentalist country where his kids praised Hitler for killing Jews, he drove away in his expensive sports car, which he takes all over the world, getting it ferried across oceans and seas. Attempting to ship it to Cyprus, it got a flat tire on his way to the port in Haifa in Northwestern Israel; hopefully he can find the rare tires it needs in Turkey. He takes pictures of famous places with his sports-car in the foreground -- that's his shtick, a lot cooler than a garden gnome, right? While in Saudi he converted to Islam just for the fun of it despite secretly being atheist, and he became a minor celebrity in the country for a few weeks since it's very rare for a white American to do that. News networks tried interviewing him but he declined, saying that in his culture religion is more personal so it's not polite to sensationalize.

Gabrielle, a guest here, deserves a story on her own. She did Birthright in 2009 and stayed afterward with her boyfriend to participate in activist demonstrations against the occupation. At one of these, the IDF was shooting rubber bullets at the protesters and hit her boyfriend in the head, permanently paralyzing and leaving him brain dead. She's here to try to sue the IDF for what happened, courageously coming back to fight for justice. The court cases haven't been going well though, as the Israeli bureaucracy shuts down anyone attempting to resist.

Update: I found this article where it clarifies it was a high velocity tear gas canister, not a rubber bullet

http://electronicintifada.net/content/tristan-anderson-civil-suit-delayed-new-evidence-emerges/10649

There were unwelcome crazy guests too, like a creepy old Israeli man who verbally harassed women every chance he got and an annoying French lady who accumulated so much trash under her bed I needed a giant black trash bag and vacuum to clean everything. Send me a message if you want the details of her stay that are too gruesome for this blog.

In a weird connection to recent news, every French person I met here has been crazy and Islamophobic, from simply saying Israel should take over the West Bank as if its ours to a couple that thanked me for making breakfast as they don't eat anything made by Arabs -- the TV told them that Arabs poison Jew's food.

Countless guests here have been Birthright participants, as they find the closest hostel they can after ending at the nearby Ben Gurion airport. Most recently, two were on their way to visit their IDF friend who promised to take them flying in his Apache helicopter. I routinely see Birthright buses in the city, and talk with the participants about my time here, casually asking how the brainwashing is going. So many Israelis, most of them liberal, consider Birthright a propaganda exercise; it's such a common notion that it is joked about in the Israeli version of Saturday Night Live.

While most of the people I befriended were at my hostel I did meet Zoe, an American who did the same thing I did but a year ago: Birthright to escape America and travel around the world. Coincidentally, she knows a Landmark College friend of mine back home and is familiar with the Maine based Beehive Collective, that artist activist collective I volunteered with this past August through October, since she's from that state. She's been all over Europe since first coming to Israel but she came back here for the Winter. I had Christmas dinner with her and her friends and I'm about to go visit her in Jerusalem on my way to Ramallah.

There's only three of us Birthrighters left in Israel, Eitan, Andrew, and myself; the rest of us had left the country a long time ago. Last night I had a mini Birthright reunion with Eitan and Noga, an IDF soldier who was with us during the trip. Hopefully I'll see Andrew at the farm he's volunteering with soon.

Well, there you have it, what matters most in traveling is the people you meet rather than the places you see. The connections created are a metaphor for how we are all connected in the world by human emotions, not photoshopped geography. Now that I got that cliche out of the way I can avoid social interaction the rest of my time, right?

I leave Jaffa today and will start volunteering at the Hostel in Ramallah (that's the actual name of the hostel) on February 1st for two months. Between now and then I will CouchSurf in Jerusalem for the rest of this week and then spend a week CouchSurfing in Ramallah to get used to the city before working there.

One point about Tel Aviv before I go: it feels too American, a Western city in an Eastern land. Israelis even consider it practically a different country than the rest of Israel. While it certainly has its differences and I enjoyed running barefoot on the beach, I have been ready to leave for a while now; my heart aches for more to see.

OK, I need to start packing, this procrastination habit is hard to beat.

Shalom and Assalaam alaikum

Addendum: I just realized I did something a little stupid.

My tourist visa says I can stay until 10/2/2014, so I had originally interpreted this as October 2nd, 2014, without realizing it actually means February 10th, 2014. Which means I have a little more than twenty days left in Israel.

I want to stay longer however, as you know, so I have a couple options. One, I can make a trip within the next couple of days to Cyprus, Jordan, or Egypt to reset my visa. Or two I can try to extend my visa, which is a lot easier I think.

In order to extend my visa, I'm told that I need to list an Israeli address as my place of residence, so for the next few days I need to find someone who will let me use their address even if I don't stay there like my new friends or my distant family here.

Or I'm going to Jordan and back! Where should I go?

Also, I've actually been trying to leave Jaffa for the past few days now but my procrastination, planning, and packing habits reek of -- breaking fourth wall here, I just got distracted for five minutes after writing that -- ADHD distraction fest. It's a running joke here at my hostel that I'm never going to leave. By Tuesday at ten o'clock at night I finally finished packing to head to the bus station for the hour journey to Jerusalem. My friend Valentina however (thank you very much!) suggested I call Abraham hostel to try to reschedule my stay for Wednesday night, which fortunately worked out with no money lost only because I'm a hostel worker myself.

The police are racist.

Edit: I can't believe I forgot to include anything about racial profiling. It exists. That's why all cops are racist. They're required to be.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/04/the-long-halting-unfinished-fight-to-end-racial-profiling-in-america/

All I want for Chanukah is an end to white supremacy. #Chanukah Action to End Police Violence

• Black teenagers 21 more times likely to be shot by police than white, study finds
• "the rate of police killings of black Americans is nearly the same as the rate of lynchings in the early decades of the 20th century."
• And for perspective: Iceland's armed police make first ever fatal shooting

***

The following is in response to comments on my Facebook post calling for a protest against systemic racism. Check them out to understand the context.

***


If what you are using is free then you are the product. For example Google and Facebook make money by selling its users' data to corporations who buy advertising space. We the readers of the news are in fact the product that the news networks sell to the corporations that buy advertising space in the news. Basic laws of supply and demand say that the news will fit the demands of the corporations who are buying the product. This Propaganda Model implies corporate interest, making the media biased towards such power that is "protected and served" by the cops (Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky). Take for example The Guardian, which I cite a lot. It is critical of the United States and is losing money. Given that politicians cannot get elected without corporate money, it is safe to say corporations effectively control both the media and the government, which also controls the police. That's the theory, empirically confirmed by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting that the media is biased against blacks, not cops.

This does not contradict the distraction and sensationalism in the media but rather reinterprets it. Electronic media, being cheap, instantaneous and worldwide, inherently leads to sensationalism as information competes for viewers. Corporations capitalize on our attention, profit from our procrastination, institutionalize a rhetoric over logic, sound-bite driven media conducive to bad argumentation and uncritical thinking, exclude rational content, isolate news out of its context, and trap us into addictive spirals of distraction. In a deluge of infotainment, we become passive receptacles of trivial information incapable of active participation in democracy. (Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman)

Media coverage of the incidents of the past few months focused on the particular dead black person and the cop who shot him. Not much on the militarization of American police, or the fact that black people get wasted every day in America. Or that they have been shut out of the economy and are desperate. No, just focus this single killing. Have bullshit commentary from cops about whether or not lethal force was necessary. Distraction, in other words.

There's no historicity in the reporting. Just an individualization of the case. Which, like the expectation of violence after the verdict, is a red herring. When people's first move is to criticize looting, which has been minimal, they deliberately avoid the talk about both the criminalization of blackness and militarization of the police. Put differently, they position capital above human lives.

A common refrain is that the media has a liberal bias -- yet this is a myth. The logic goes that violence gets sensationalized to make us think that we live in a very violent society, which is fear mongering that will be used as an excuse for more government regulations to keep us safe, as if these encroaches on our freedoms and will lead towards a totalitarian government. While it is true the media sensationalizes violence, what's wrong with this argument is that it ignores the kind of violence sensationalized: black on white crime, to make us fear black people.

Thus the media is a part of systemic racism that permeates throughout all societal institutions like education, capitalist industry, academia, law, and, of course, the police, all of which which are what these protests are about. In fact, there is this concept among activists called “intersectionality” that connects all these different axes of oppression under the same root cause and analyzes their relations to each other, like how many cops oppressed as working-class does not excuse the police as an institution. It is not the protesters that ignore the context and focus on the police but rather the culprit is the media and its representation of protesters.

Meanwhile, you claimed that the media "inundates black youth with the message that cops are out to get them" as a distraction from the real source of oppression, the "tremendous socioeconomic injustice that keeps the black population in poverty." If this were true that blacks follow what the media tells them then they would largely trust the media. However, 75% of blacks think the media does not accurately cover their community, which negates your claim. Blacks distrust the police significantly more than whites do, so if their views aren't coming from the media then that leaves their lived experiences for us to listen to, which is more accurate than the bias coming from whites and the media.

Why, then, are blacks violent towards cops? Let's go back to your original rebuttal.

***

Your first paragraph

Adjusted for crime rates, black teens are still vastly more likely to be killed by police than whites, however the data is incomplete since some police departments do not bother recording such killings, as if black lives don't matter. Nonetheless, a single scientific study doesn't have to account for the context of each situation, nor should it. That requires other studies, not better science, like the ones that show violence is a symptom of poverty, thanks to the decades of dedicated study from the likes of W.E.B. du Bois a hundred years ago and up through to today. And poverty, like slavery, is not an accident (Nelson Mandela). It is the manifestation of capitalist exploitation of labor and oppression of workers.

It’s great that you asked the question “why,” why do police kill more blacks than whites, and discovered the reason is blacks are more violent than whites. But have you asked yourself why blacks are more violent than whites? If you're stepping on someone's neck and they are clawing at your ankle trying to get you off, are you going to get angry at them for clawing at you or step off their neck? This isn’t to justify violence against cops but to at least understand why it occurs, from then we can say the high rates of police killings are not justified.

I’m not going to criticize violence against the cops though because that can be used as fodder for further oppression of blacks. Activists from Gandhi to King follow this belief as well. “Gandhi made it clear that while he was opposed to murder under any circumstances, he also refused to denounce the murderer. ... It is always morally superior, he insisted, to oppose injustice through non-violent means than through violent means. However, to oppose injustice through violent means is still morally superior to not doing anything to oppose injustice at all.” Moreover, growing up in a life that knows only violence one can expect that those suffering through it day to day will speak the same language of their oppressor, in a cathartic resistance that gives meaning to their existence (The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fannon).

Additionally, riots and looting have in fact worked for the oppressed throughout history. Blacks bodies used to be considered property, so the act of looting was literally liberation from oneself. Since property is theft (see end) that police protect in service to the capitalists then it makes sense to loot the white-owned chains that infest black communities, to take back what was stolen from them. If whites own most of the wealth due to a racist system then the police defending it are complicit. There’s just so many ideas in this essay, “In Defense of Looting,” read this if you are going to read one link I cite.

The police shootings are "justified" by a system that criminalizes black life reminiscent of the period that effectively made it a crime to be black in public between civil war to the civil rights era (Slavery by Another Name, Douglas Blackmon). Just a couple decades of freedom in the middle of the century gave way to a return of racial oppression as the white supremacy increased their usage of the police as their pawns. It's funny how tons of whites accept how absurd the almost half-century old drug war is yet turn a blind eye to how it's used for throwing blacks in prison or the grave despite similar drug use rates between blacks and whites (The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander; if there is just one book I would recommend it is this one because it caters specifically toward your privileged, progressively sheltered liberalism. Critics have called out its Eurocentrism, white-washing, and ignorance of black movements and capitalist white supremacy).

Consider that alcohol is far more lethal yet it is legal. Why are blacks dealing crack criminalized while Budweiser isn't? Answer: racism gives alcohol companies power and profit. Police protect the white-owned alcohol and tobacco industry and criminalize the drugs common among blacks.

This issue further intersects with the for-profit prison system in the United States that incarcerates more people per population than any other country in the world. Combined with the racist drug war that unfairly targets blacks, the prisons were filled with blacks. Now consider that many corporations employ prisoners at less than a dollar an hour wages, which is basically modern day slavery. These concentration camps provide free labor, subsidized by the state and our tax dollars, to corporations that crush small businesses (Are Prisons Obsolete?, Angela Davis).

Also, when so many blacks have prison on their records it's hard to get jobs and can no longer vote, so they have to resort to theft or selling drugs to make a living, i.e., survive. It's especially hard when so many blacks are in poverty, with school systems just as segregated now as they were fifty years ago (Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol) and given far less than white and privileged schools. Consider that schools are funded by property taxes, so if a community has low property value then little money will go to their schools, ensuring that poor communities have poor schools.

And there's environmental racism, dumping toxins in low income neighborhoods of people of color, many of which lower IQ and lead to increased violence. Try resisting against the white-owned fossil fuel and chemical industry and the police will protect their masters.

To attribute the cause of their own violence [and poverty] to themselves is blaming the victim of an oppressive white supremacy. It is a talking point that has been used by racists over and over again throughout the centuries of colonization, whether the racists are aware they are being racist or not (Racism Without Racists, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva).

Racists are probably the last group of people to identify as racist since it requires a certain degree of self-awareness that racists do not have. Acting as a racist requires a lack of empathy for people of color and thus a lack of understanding of what one’s actions are doing. It is not an intentional act of evil but rather a manifestation of subconscious ideology. Not being racist is thus not an identity but rather a continuous process that requires self-reflection of one’s thoughts and behaviors. I for example try to check my privileges as a white, straight male by catching myself stereotyping and then analyzing how subconscious thoughts make me act and think in racist ways. Additionally, and more pertinent to this essay, I’m still learning about racism embedded within society’s legal and power structures. I am not “not racist” but rather I advocate “anti-racism.”

To extend this point, there is this concept in sociology called institutionalization of ideology. It is similar to how many Americans sincerely believed the US liberated Iraq and didn't care about the immense amounts of oil there. Or that people truly believe global warming is a myth despite copious evidence otherwise. Likewise, segregation was once considered "separate but equal." Legal and power structures propagate ideas throughout a system with it ultimately reinforcing itself. Delusion goes all the way to the top sometimes but that does not mean we should judge people only by their intents and excuse the effects. While you and many within the police force may not identify as racist you may just not realize the implicit and explicit racism that permeates throughout society and is internalized by both blacks and whites. And by defending the police you are defending a militant institution that defends a racist status quo whether the working class cops are aware of it or not.

Your second paragraph

Would you mind providing a source to any of this? Something besides the racist hosting PoliceOne.com, please?

I should point out that my source is not just another Guardian article. The author of the piece, Isabel Wilkerson, wrote The Warmth of Other Suns, a historical study about the black migrations out of the South and to the rest of the United States, which has won numerous awards for its historical accuracy and clarity. I personally messaged her asking her to back up the quote that I selected to which she responded, “The rate of police killings are in the links to the Guardian piece. The rate of lynchings during early decades of the 20th Century come from the 1933 book, The Tragedy of Lynching" by Arthur F. Raper, as cited in The Warmth of Other Suns.”

Regardless, it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter if Darren Wilson is innocent or not. The recent killings however were the straw that broke the camel’s back after decades of racism coming from the police and multiple other angles. I’m deliberately ignoring the specifics of Ferguson here in order to emphasize the systemic oppression throughout society that the mass media leaves out. Perhaps you would benefit from reading up on what sociologists have to say about all this or at least read the letter signed by almost two thousand sociologists condemning the law enforcement, proposing a call to action and supporting Black Lives Matter, an activist group behind much of the organized resistance.


Your third paragraph

Iceland is well over 90% white and has a lower poverty rate than the United States, so it is not surprising that cops have only shot one person in their entire history. But even if they did have a higher crime rate it would not justify police killings. There are better tactics police can use to help their communities besides the violent methods of which they are trained, like using their words. Police in America used to do that to great effect but today are increasingly militarized as violence replaces argumentation as a tactic and so they are more likely to kill for trivial crimes. For example, Eric Garner, they guy who was choked to death in Staten Island for selling loose cigarettes could have been dealt with through rational discourse without resort to physicality. Too bad police aren’t trained in conversation, I imagine that creates a huge gap in the ability for police to empathize with their community.

Perhaps that is connected with the barring of people with high IQ’s from entering the police force. Stupid cops obey commands, don’t question what they are told, and don’t have as much capacity for using their words to deal with crime.

Finally, in regard to this study you shared that suggests police delay shooting at black people, well, that's all it is. Police delay shooting at blacks, so what? It does not mean the police as an institution are not racist, or do not have racist policies like racial profiling.


I hope I have made clear why the police are racist in the above paragraphs. Racism is a conversation that must continuous since it effects everybody and harms so many. I’m glad to have this civil conversation with you. Thank you for reading.



PS: other news I found.

Thought crime.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/12/23/chicopee-man-faces-charges-for-put-wings-on-pigs-facebook-post/#.VJlm5Jj0wHI.twitter

Domestic abuse among the police is horrifying, far worse than the NFL player abuses the media distracts us with.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/?single_page=true





Notes:

1) "Property is theft" requires some background.

Capitalism, defined, is the private ownership of the means of production, a phrase that means one person or a small group of people owns and controls everything that goes into producing a product including the machines, mechanical processes, the land, and the labor of the workers. This manifests as the trio of capitalism: landowner, capitalist who pays the rent to the landowner, and the workers who sell their labor to the capitalist. Since the property the workers work on isn't theirs despite their labor it is effectively stolen from them.

Back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, entry two.

I left you last time at Avrum's pseudo-hostel, a place where he's trying to make his own hostel from scratch. The bedrooms, though cramped and crowded, are in the warm house while the drafty kitchen and living room are just outside in a big open space with a roof and walls made of tarps.

Although I felt very welcome the first time I stayed, for the three days before Thanksgiving weekend at my third cousins, this time was the opposite.

As I said in my last post, there was a miscommunication between me and the head of the place, Avrum. Though we quickly settled the issue though with my apology I think he stuck in his head that I was a moron for not interpreting his email correctly. He was very curt the rest of my time there and gave me tasks to do through a middle man, one of the other guests, like clean up the yard. The next morning, Tuesday December 2nd, I woke up to the sound of arguing, so I stayed in bed to avoid that conflict.

To make a long story short, Avrum got overwhelmed and released his anger at me, asking me to leave. He made some rude remarks to me too, saying I couldn't follow instructions. Beo, the Norwegian journeyman, gave me 200 shekels ($50) as I left as a little help to find my footing to which I am very grateful for. Thank you, Beo!

I went to the first place I could find wifi, a museum, and spent the next seven hours there trying to find a CouchSurfing host for the night, as well as doing various other emails and facebooking. Just as things were looking dim someone responded to me and I went straight to her place in Pisgat Zeev, a suburb north of Jerusalem, via the train. Thanks to the musuem guard who gave me ten shekels for the train and an IDF soldier who stayed with me during the ride helping me out since she was headed my way anyway, I got to Miri's place just after 9. Though we couldn't talk long and she had to leave early the next morning she gave me hot soup, a hot shower, a comfy bed, and the key to have her place to myself the next day.

After eating a lot and reading my nook, I took off on the train back south to Jerusalem where I hung out at the Abraham Hostel for a few hours to use their wifi. It eventually became time to move on to my next CouchSurfing host, Elyakim, who lives in Nachalat, a neighborhood near downtown Jerusalem. He had to leave for an hour soon after I arrived during which I used the time to do some emails and FaceTime with my Dad thanks to the wifi. When he got back we talked for hours about our travels, Israeli culture, and the similarities and differences in our lives. With the same amenities Miri gave me I took off the next morning.

Though it was only my second time hitchhiking ever, I pulled it off remarkably well with a straight shot from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. The guy spent most of his time talking on the phone in Hebrew but I gathered from our brief conversations that he's going through a divorce and trying to get a lot of money from his wife's rich parents, he hates cats, and he's "right wing" in that he wants Palestinians and arabs out the country since they are so violent towards Israelis. I wasn't about to take on that subject with my only ride to Tel Aviv but I nodded and smiled. He dropped me off as close as he could and I walked two hours straight for the beach.

It was on my way to there, walking through Tel Aviv, when all of a sudden, "SHOW ME WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" came blasting out the radio of a falafel shop. Confused, I asked the owner what he was listening to. He couldn't speak English but a customer translated it was an Israeli news station broadcasting the protests of the police killings in America. I told him I have friends there protesting. Great work guys, your voices are heard all over the world. Solidarity from Israel and occupied Palestine.

At the beach I read Chomsky's Gaza in Crisis on my nook and carved designs into an avocado pit (see pic) to sell and fund my travels. The first one easily sold for five shekels ($1.25) though I think the old, white lady bought it out of sympathy. Next I'll paint it and up the price to twenty-five shekels.

At 8 that night I went to a meeting for All That's Left, an activist group of diaspora Jews opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I spent most of the discussion listening, chiming in only to let them know about my essay critiquing Birthright propaganda, but it no doubt felt great to stay in touch with the Left during my travels, continuing my streak of activism that I developed over the past two years at home. At the end of the meeting we took a group photo to show solidarity with the protests against police killings at home, (see the facebook pic here).

The meeting slowly dispersed though I stuck around since the hosts let me crash there for the night. A few of us went out to dance clubs after pregaming with vodka. In the morning I hung out with the two of the ATL members who lived there, learning some Arabic from one and getting served breakfast. Thank you so much for hosting me!

The next morning I walked to the Milk and Honey hostel in Jaffa where I secured a job working in return for shelter for the next month. Breakfast will come with it but I'll have to buy the rest of my meals on my own, so maybe I'll sell art to fund that. Any other ideas?

I ran along the beach up to the US Embassy where I met my Dad's friend Melissa at 3 pm who returned the water bottle I left at her place and ran back stopping to do some pushups in the sand a few times.

This hostel place seems pretty chill so far, just a few workers, one level with maybe thirty beds at most, a few blocks from the beach.

After spending a few hours at the hostel I felt the sudden loss of the joy I felt the past 12 hours staying ATL. I was now back in the mainstream world, or at least the "not-left." I mean, there's definitely the traveler type of person that eschews the mainstream but they're much different than activist types. Contrast the hippies that obsess over astrology and energy crystals with the organizers that build social movements and change the course of history. Basically, the difference between the United States and Israel felt far less than the difference between the United States and the underground radical left activism within my homeland.

Let me back track a bit. Five years ago I got my first urges to go travel, wanting to break free from the mental blocks that obstructed my life at home, stress, anxiety, and depression. In my mind, years of therapy and pills weren't working, and only a radical lifestyle shift would work to rejuvinate my mind.

In the past three years however, I've increasingly been learning and getting involved with radical left wing activism. It did nothing short of upend my worldview and led me to discover a vibrant underground culture of activism within my home country. It was with these people and spaces that I started to feel, you know, that sense of meaning people say is required in life (I could write a lot about how I think it's absurd that life has any inherent meaning but there's at least a psychological well-being factor that makes people happy despite the absurdity). There's so much energy and passion within these circles with rediculously intelligent people. Living with people who want to change the world and are actually doing is completely invigorating, it's a sense of community unmatched before in my life.

The ten days of my Birthright trip for example was just another vacation, another tack on my board of world travel, and wasn't life changing at all despite what some people say about it. In fact my whole time here in Israel so far pales in comparison to my time at the Beehive Design Collective that climaxed at the People's Climate March and Flood Wall Street protests. It was in downtown Manhattan among thousands of other activists at which I truly felt like I was doing what I wanted and gettting a meaningful life out of it.

I began to wonder, during my dive into activism, if I really needed to travel abroad to seek the mental shift I desired. Maybe it was here at home the whole time, that cliche that what we are looking for in life was with us all along. That was the gist of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, right? Is it telling that I thought that book was cheesy when I read it six years ago?

So maybe it wasn't a radical lifestyle shift that would inevitably lead to a mental shift. Perhaps my intentional and passionate surge into activism was doing that already.

Indeed, during my research about world travel I've come across people who've become desensitized to the novelty of each new place and instead see how similar the world has become. I mean, cultures and subcultures will always exist but the effect of capitalism permeating everything it touches is undeniable. Personal accounts of the globalization, a euphemism for neoliberalism and American imperialism, and my readings about our culture infecting the whole world confirmed these thoughts I was having. But perhaps I was confirming my biases, blindly accepting ideas that aligned with my beliefs as true without critically thinking about them, and I should go travel anyway.

Anyway, I was having these thoughts long before I left the country to go travel the world. In the end, obviously, I decided to travel since I could stay with the Left during my travels, and it would be its own subculture within whatever country it is in, so even more of a culture change than simply traveling to typical places. It was a few months ago at the Northeast Climate Justice Gathering that an activist friend suggested that I stay with anarchists while traveling since they're friendly and open to hosting most people as long as you're not an oppressive asshole.

There's also the part that despite my surge into activism, I really wasn't getting better from depression. Despite my strong sense of connection to activists, my time in activism wasn't helping me gain back the life I once had. I still felt trapped, awkward, unreliable and inferior, not able to speak up or rebuild my confidence. So I left the country before it got worse. And so far I feel great, though definitely far from 100%, with the warm climate and new people to meet everywhere abating the stress. (Or am I just postponing truly working on my mental health? Well I've tried working on it for a long time, now I'm trying a new tactic. Any books to help with this on my travels?) My goal is to deconstruct and then reconstruct my identity, so that I can actually communicate effectively and work confidently with my activist community.

Also I've learned about free ways to travel (in addition to being white, male, and privileged) like CouchSurfing, WWOOF, and WorkAway that I can use after my free Birthright trip.

I'll travel while hopping from anarchists to anarchists, feeling home while traveling at the same time.

I found All That's Left. Where can I hop to next?

***

"Wherever you go, there you are."

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust, French novelist

Israel post-Birthright. Blog entry one.

Apparently I should do these more often.

I'm finalizing a 24 page essay on Birthright, exposing it's propaganda point by point. And I've been waiting to finish that before doing any other blogs.

But screw it, here's a quick one for everyone in the meantime. I guess this means you can see the rough draft of the essay if you skip to the previous blog entry. Read if you want but I may add or delete some of it.

Wednesday night, Nov 19th.

Birthright ended, goodbyes were rushed as people went off to different directions.

I went with Maxi (our 60 something year old guide) and Eitan, a fellow Birthrighter, on a train towards Tel Aviv. We were all headed in different directions.

I went to my Dad's friend Melissa's house in the suburbs and stayed there for the next four nights, where I spent most of the time typing my essay. I swam in the Mediterranean, ran barefoot on the beach, and played with her kids. Thank you for letting me stay and use your computer Melissa!

Sunday, Nov 23, went to Jerusalem to see my third cousin Lev, his parents, wife Steph and newborn daughter Meira. We had dinner at a nice restaurant and then I stayed at the Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem, which is apparently one of the best hostels in the world. Not bad for my first hostel. I highly recommend it. Just don't make the same mistake I did of taking someone's bed on accident (it was early enough I found a new bed and nothing problematic happened). I met some Germans who visited the Holocaust musuem here and asked them if it was too depressing for them, to which they said they responded that they grew up with it and so are used to it.

Hostels being too expensive for someone trying to travel without using money, I found a guy from someone at Abraham Hostel who was open to hosting travelers. Thanks Achia! He has cool story himself, having ran away from his ultra orthodox family as a teen, slept on the streets, and has found his way to a living with a few jobs and apartment in Jerusalem. Over hummus and arak, with a friend of his visiting, we hung out at his place and watched Friends.

Next night I used CouchSurfing to find Avrum, an Australian-Israeli building his own hostel but is letting couchsurfers stay too. Thanks Avrum! I stayed Tue night through Thursday, and met a bunch of cool people. A Norwegian journeyman who rambled about conspiracy theories but is pretty fun to talk to anyway, a British electrician who's helping to wire the house in exchange for living there, a Thai cook who's also doing some sort of helping children here (I think?), American biologists spreading awareness of secret engineered viruses that control the population (I'm skeptical, but ask me if you want to see the abstract), and an American journalist tracking the story of a new director of an Israel-Palestine struggle activist organization.

Thursday evening through Monday morning I stayed with my cousins, and went with them to friends of theirs for Thanksgiving, which was more of a party for the hell of it with lots of desserts and no turkey. Met some cool people there who invited me to an All That's Left (activist organization opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine) meeting in Tel Aviv, Thurs Dec 4th. Thank you Lev, Steph, and Meira!

Up until last night when she had to fly home to Montana, Lindsey, my friend from Birthright, was in Jerusalem for a few days with me. We wandered inside the Old City, visited the Israel Musuem where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept, toured to the Dome of the Rock, went to Shabbat dinner with my cousins, spontaneously ran into our Birthright friend Ben, had lunch with our Birthright medic and guard Yosef who lives in Jerusalem, and spent tons of time in the market, which was a great people watching and good food eating experience. It was great spending time with you, thanks for the being here!

I'm now back at Avrum's place. I had emailed him asking if I could come back. He gave a long response that I thought meant yes. Turns out it was just a question. And I assumed yes. When I showed up he got mad and asked why did I come back without his permission. We settled it though. And I can work here in exchange for staying.

Ok I think that's good for now. Typing this with my thumbs on my iPhone with wifi can only get so eloquent. Please pardon my butchered grammar.  I can add more later. See my pics on Facebook! I upload each night I take pics.

Oh yeah. I need to blog about my past six months of travel. and thank everyone that was involved in that. Next time on Michael's blog!

Edit: Forgot to mention that on my way from my cousin Lev's and back to Avrum's hostel for the second time, I walked by the Israel President's house just to check it out as I was curious. I think they had asked me in Hebrew to stop so they could question me but since I couldn't understand it and didn't realize they were talking to me I kept going. Eventually they caught up and yelled at me, so I turned and said I didn't know much Hebrew. The guard asked for my passport, and had me walk back up closer to the House to question me for maybe 20 minutes. They said my big backpack looked suspicious, so I opened it up and showed them the inside. Since I told them I was visiting my cousin they needed his information to confirm what I said, so they called him up and chatted a bit.