{"id":32349,"date":"2019-04-12T03:18:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T10:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32349"},"modified":"2019-04-10T16:40:40","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T23:40:40","slug":"a-tour-full-of-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/04\/12\/a-tour-full-of-misinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"A tour full of misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The market in Jenin. (photo by Dave Gordon)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Everything is political in Israel; there\u2019s no escaping it. Pick a corner, a street sign, a building, there\u2019s potential for argument. So, you can imagine what it\u2019s like to take a tour of an area as contentious as the West Bank, which, thankfully, was quiet with respect to violence when we visited. Not surprisingly, our guide almost took on the role of spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abraham Hostel, in the heart of Jerusalem, offers a three-day West Bank tour. The tours include Nablus (biblical Schechem), Jenin and the refugee camp that borders it, Jericho, Ramallah and Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

It was eye-opening for me. For one, the media frequently portrays Palestinians in the West Bank as living in squalor, often involved in conflicts with the Israel Defence Forces. We saw bustling markets, shopping centres, corporate plazas, sports cars, and plenty of American restaurant franchises, such as KFC and Pizza Hut.<\/p>\n

Our tour guide was a wannabe biblical scholar and archeologist. \u201cPersonally,\u201d he told us, \u201cthere could never have been a Jewish Temple.\u201d It\u2019s impossible, apparently, to build on top of solid rock, he explained.<\/p>\n

He gave a brief history of the term Palestine, correctly stating that Roman invaders, Vespasian and Titus, in the first century, renamed the region from Israel\/Judah. But why, particularly, call it Palestine? \u201cHmm,\u201d he said, taking a moment to think. \u201cBecause they liked the name.\u201d Not, as many scholars believe, because the Romans sought to call the area after the Jews\u2019 sworn enemy, Philistines, to rub salt in the wounds.<\/p>\n

While at Bethlehem\u2019s Church of the Nativity, our guide gave his take on the Gospels, contending that it wasn\u2019t the case that Jesus\u2019s mother, Mary, couldn\u2019t find a room at an inn \u2013 rather, the Jews forbade Mary to have a room because she was ritually unclean after childbirth. And that, he said, was the unwritten explanation of the manger\/barn scenario.<\/p>\n

He then proffered his views on Jews. \u201cSince anyone can become a Jew,\u201d he said, \u201cthey\u2019re not really tied to the land.\u201d Meaning that anyone who has converted, or was born to converts, has no connection to Israel.<\/p>\n

And, he added, since the parcel of land called Judah, from which the name \u201cJew\u201d was derived, was only a fraction of modern Israel, today\u2019s Jews should only have rights to those ancient borders.<\/p>\n

Quoting the Torah \u2013 \u201cif you bless Israel, you are blessed; if you curse Israel, you will be cursed\u201d (Genesis 12) \u2013 our guide insisted that the \u201cIsrael\u201d referred to in this verse has never meant \u201cthe nation of Israel\u201d (which it does), but only refers to the patriarch Jacob, who was later named Israel. The underlying message was that there was no concern about being cursed if you curse Jews.<\/p>\n

For good measure, he asked, pointing toward the refugee camp, \u201cDoesn\u2019t it say \u2018love your fellow\u2019 in the Torah? That\u2019s one of the top commandments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost no tour anywhere is complete without the commercial aspect \u2013 wandering through the souvenir shops and markets.<\/p>\n

At the ice cream shop, our guide claimed, \u201cPalestinian ice cream is made with real cream, not like the Israeli version!\u201d At the spice store, he spoke about how Israelis use cheap ingredients in their Zaatar, but not Palestinians. And, he said, \u201cEven Israelis agree that Palestinian beer is better than the sewer water in a can they make.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Yasser Arafat mausoleum in Ramallah. (photo by Dave Gordon)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The hero worship of Yasser Arafat was astounding. Virtually every street corner in Ramallah had a wall-sized poster of him. My trip was in November, so these displays were likely timed for the anniversary of his death. Schoolchildren took a field trip to his tomb in Ramallah for a commemoration and photo opportunities.<\/p>\n

Our guide made every effort to politicize the tour, down to the free lunch. He said there wasn\u2019t such thing as \u201cIsraeli couscous,\u201d only co-opted \u201cArab-Palestinian couscous.\u201d Scholars and culinary experts differ, saying that Israeli couscous was created in the 1950s in response to food rationing. Alas, more was still to come from our guide.<\/p>\n

While he had our attention, he showed us illustrations of how Palestine in 1947 comprised modern Israel and the West Bank, while today, the Palestinians only have small, scattered autonomous dots in the Palestinian Authority. As for the Palestinian part in this development, he said, \u201cjust a couple of bus bombs\u201d derailed the peace process, but only temporarily.<\/p>\n

Dave Gordon<\/strong> is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The market in Jenin. (photo by Dave Gordon) Everything is political in Israel; there\u2019s no escaping it. Pick a corner, a street sign, a building, there\u2019s potential for argument. So, you can imagine what it\u2019s like to take a tour of an area as contentious as the West Bank, which, thankfully, was quiet with respect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329,786],"tags":[8900,479],"class_list":["post-32349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-travel","tag-judea-samaria","tag-west-bank"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}