Israel old and new

You’ll have to excuse me if you read the word “Israel” more than a few times in this corner over the next couple of weeks. I visited that country recently, and my head’s still spinning from the sights and sounds of a place I’d only dreamed of since boyhood.

If you were a kid in the 1960s and saw The Ten Commandments, you wanted to grow up and visit the Holy Land, the Promised Land, or Israel — wherever it was that Moses brought his people to — never mind that the 1956 opus was actually shot in Egypt (where, to be fair, much of the story actually took place) and California. Whatever those of us who begin as young Christians turn out to be later in life — atheists, agnostics, fundamentalists — a soaking in Biblical lore is hard to shake off, and the complicated politics of the Middle East (complicated not just today but since ancient times) tends to recede in a dusty blur against the cinematic sharpness of Jericho’s crumbling ramparts, the parting of the Red Sea, and Christ’s tortuous ascent to Calvary.

Still, as dramatic as the history (or some would say the mythology) might be, nothing quite prepares you for the majesty of the real thing. It was clever of our tour planners to start us off literally at the very top — on the Mount of Olives, which overlooks many of Jerusalem’s holiest sites: the Temple Mount, with the gold-topped Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque; the Jewish Cemetery; the Church of Mary Magdalene, and the Church of All Nations beside the reputed Garden of Gethsemane.

Your eyes sweep not just over kilometers of biblical territory but also centuries of a rich but tumultuous history, from pre-Roman times to the reign of Herod, the Jewish revolt, then Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Egyptian, Ottoman, and British rule, before the establishment of Israel in 1948, and subsequently the conflict within and beyond its borders.

Indeed only the most insensible of visitors can visit Israel without acknowledging the uniqueness and the challenges of its position — historically, politically, and culturally. To see it merely as an exotic movie backdrop or a pilgrimage destination would be to shortchange both the country and oneself. (Not incidentally, our visit took place just before the Gaza flotilla episode — a sobering if not chilling reminder of just how lethally difficult relationships remain in that part of the world.)

The ironies and paradoxes abound in Jerusalem, where we set off on what most Catholics (a nominal one, in my case) would do in Israel — follow the Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus supposedly took to his crucifixion, and one that begins and mostly stays in the old city’s Muslim Quarter. The Holy Sepulchre, the holiest of Christian shrines where Jesus is held by tradition to have been crucified and entombed, is also the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem. Some Jewish women, keeping with traditional dictates prescribing modesty and simplicity, shave their heads — only to acquire and wear expensive wigs. While Israel is officially a Jewish state, it is also very much a multicultural and multi-religious society, and one in continuing transition, as we would find at nearly every turn we made during our week there.

I traveled with a group of journalists — Kat Kat de Castro and Uma Khouny of ABS-CBN’s travel show Trip na Trip, with their writer Jigs de Castro and cameraman Dave Bola, and Cheryl Tiu of Lifestyle Asia — most of us first-timers. Kat Kat had been there thrice before, but on quick-and-dirty news assignments that left her little time for any real touring. Uma — yes, the Pinoy Big Brother discovery — was a godsend, being an Israeli Arab who not only was born and who grew up there and a native speaker of Hebrew, but also a bright young man with a sharp mind and a sense of humor and irony. His unique position provided informed perspective to the rest of us, although Uma himself admitted that much of what we saw was new to him as well, coming from the other side of the fence.

Depending on your circumstances, getting into Israel can either be painless or excruciating — in the latter case, if Israel’s security or immigration people have any reason to suspect your motives. You fill out a short form which the immigration officer stamps (you can tell them if you want your passport itself to be stamped — many people don’t, because some Arab countries reportedly refuse entry to people who have been to Israel); another officer collects the form, and you’re off.

This may come as a surprise to many, but Israel is one of the few countries outside the Asean region that don’t require Filipinos to have entry visas. However, that special status doesn’t guarantee automatic entry. You could still be questioned at Immigration, and you will be sent back if it becomes clear that you have something else on your mind than visiting the Mount of Olives or floating belly-up on the Dead Sea. For this reason, says Ambassador Avi Vapni, Filipinos might be better off with a visa to spare them the hassle on arrival. That said, about 70,000 Filipinos live in Israel — many of them, shall we say, well beyond the 90 days officially granted to visa-free tourists. That may not sound like much compared to Filipinos in California or even the UK, but that number already makes up 1 percent of Israel’s population of 7 million.

Clearly, tourist traffic between the Philippines and Israel can improve both ways. Some 6,000 Filipinos visit Israel every year as tourists — most of them elderly people on a lifetime’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The inbound figure peaks at 3,000 Israelis — a drop in the bucket compared to the 250,000 who troop to Thailand every year. The Tel Aviv-Manila route is served by El Al, among a few other airlines, via Bangkok and Hong Kong. I’d heard horror stories about El Al’s security procedures and about the airline service itself, but thankfully none of our fears about excessive security and rude flight attendants materialized.

The evening was cool enough at around 20⁰C when we got into Ben Gurion International Airport, stately with tall marble columns in its main lobby, after an 11-hour flight from Bangkok. The coolness was welcome because, instead of using air-conditioning, our Israeli driver pulled his window down, something Uma said was typical of the locals’ practicality. There was little to see at night during our 40-minute ride from the airport to our hotel in Jerusalem on the impeccably smooth highway, but over the next two days, now with our guide Sharon, we saw the basic truth of Israel’s topography — it was, indeed, a country divided into shore, valley, and mountain, its vast deserts punctuated by huddles of date trees, then suddenly outgrowths of villages and cities built largely in the same yellow-ochre “Jerusalem stone,” the limestone that gives the city of its name its architectural character.

(To be continued)

* * *

E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.