`You have to live'

 Kenosha News reporter Liza Berger's visit to Israel opened her eyes to a different world where violence can erupt any time among some of the world's most historic and beautiful sites

BY LIZA BERGER

KENOSHA NEWS

 The bar grooved in the warm summer night. Under the bright lights, young, attractive waitresses bustled from the bar to the couches with wine and mixed drinks. People talked and laughed as popular tunes played in the background.

This scene could have been played out at any bar in any big city.

But it wasn't in just any city. It was in Jerusalem, and this was the Moment Caf'e, which had exploded during a suicide attack in March.

I was at this bar in early July following its reopening just three weeks earlier. My experience here was just one of many on a 10-day tour of Israel last month. On my trip, I saw ancient ruins, toured the Old City of Jerusalem, rode a camel and floated in the Dead Sea.

I also saw that life goes on in a country with daily episodes of violence.

Besides sampling nightlife at cafes like the Moment, I swam at a crowded beach in Tel Aviv and stayed at a hotel near the Dead Sea that swarmed with Israeli tourists.

These images of activity surprised me. That was not the impression I had of Israel -- of people out living, playing and having fun.

``What can you do?'' a middle-aged woman who sat next to me on the plane to Israel asked rhetorically.

``You have to live.''

As hard as people try to lead normal lives, I also learned that violence looms large in the minds of the people. During my trip I heard from victims of suicide bombings and young people uncertain about their futures in Israel.

Starting Out

Admittedly, I didn't pick an ideal time to make my first trip to Israel. The worst violence in years has been the backdrop of the country for almost two years. Hundreds of Israelis and hundreds more Palestinians have died since September 2000.

 The trip I was planning, with the Jewish United Fund, a not-for-profit charity in Chicago, even shortened the trip from 10 days to seven because of the uncertainty of the situation. They dubbed the trip a ``solidarity'' mission.

Usually, busloads from the United States go on this particular summer trip. This year, as the Chicago leader pointed out, they were hoping for a mini-bus. But the organizers managed to persuade approximately 130 young people from the United States and Canada to visit a country that even the State Department has warned Americans to stay away from.

Because of the situation in Israel, this trip was different than past trips to Israel. We had security guards (with guns) on our buses. We wore nametags for security reasons and if we went out at night or left the group, it was at our own peril.

While in Tel Aviv during the first night of the trip, I called a high school friend who had moved to Israel about three years ago and was living a few blocks from the Hilton Hotel where we were staying.

She asked me if I wanted to see her apartment. I wasn't sure.

As I was contemplating my trip, I had visions of not leaving the tour bus, much less going out at night in Tel Aviv. But I felt foolish about being afraid to go to her apartment.

So I went, abandoning my nametag. I was nervous. My friend was patient and sensitive to my fears, and eventually I was glad I left the group. It was a pleasant summer night.

My friend showed me her apartment, a spacious two-bedroom on a residential street lined with trees. We walked by a crowded Starbucks. She pointed out the place where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed in 1995. She took me to a small caf'e9, not the Starbucks, where there was live music. She ordered a beer. I got lemonade.

It felt good, sitting outside, enjoying a drink, like any summer night anywhere in the world. People inside didn't seem to be apprehensive. They were laughing, tapping their feet and singing along with the music. It was just me who was worried.

Walking back, I admit I felt relieved to return to the safety of the hotel. I also felt proud of myself. Wow! I strolled the streets of Tel Aviv. Wait until my family hears about this.

The trip

I went to Israel, not for any particular reason, but just because I wanted to go.

It was not an easy decision. Just two weeks before, the front pages of daily newspapers carried headlines of two suicide bombings. Am I crazy? I wondered. What am I trying to prove?

I delayed telling my co-workers, anticipating their reactions: Are you sure you want to go there? While some people I finally told didn't say it I could tell what they were thinking. What? Do you want to die?

After the first day I didn't even think about the possibility of a suicide attack.

The tour started in Tel Aviv. Here, we visited the ancient port of Jaffa. After World War II, Jaffa was an important point of entry for Jewish people. Now it is a tourist spot with shops and art studios. It is romantic. The day we were there, two newlywed couples were having their pictures taken on the cobblestone streets by the harbor.

We shopped here, one of a couple of shopping trips to make a small contribution to Israel's crippled economy. The shopkeepers stayed open for our group. We were one of the few groups they had seen in a while.

I bought two postcards from a merchant at a tourist stand.

He asked me where I was from and thanked me for coming. Business has not been good lately, he said. Americans are not coming.

I told him that Americans are afraid to come. He scoffed and gestured to the beautiful scenery on the sea. Nothing will happen here, he said.

Ancient past

Much of the sightseeing centered around Israel's ancient past. On the second day of the trip we saw the ruins of Megiddo, one of King Solomon's main military centers, located in the Galilee. The New Testament of the Bible calls it Armageddon and identifies it as the site of humanity's final battle. Twentyfive layers of remains reveal its importance as a strategic crossroads in ancient times. Here, we visited a secret watering tunnel build by King Ahab in the ninth century B.C. and saw a grain silo.

Following Megiddo, we continued north to the Sea of Galilee, known to Israelis as Lake Kinneret, and saw the Golan Heights. Here, on the third day, we visited the ancient ruins of Gamla. In 66 A.D., 4,000 Jewish people were killed in battle and 5,000 jumped off a precipice into a canyon in order not to be overtaken by the Romans. This place now holds special significance for Israelis. Our guide, Asher Ashkenazi, told us the military used to march up to the ruins to hear the story of Gamla for inspiration.

Later in the day we heard from people who live on the Golan Heights and are worried about losing their land to Syria. In the 1967 war, Israel gained this territory from Syria. If Syria controls the Sea of Galilee, whixch feeds into the Jordan River, it will control 30 percent of Israel's water. Though relations with Syria have been without violence for more than 20 years, the Golan Heights is still an issue. Lately, however, terrorism has overshadowed this territorial concern.

One of the most interesting sites of the trip was learning about the seam line, the invisible demarcation line dividing the West Bank from Israel. Before 1967, when Israel conquered the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the area separating these territories from Israel was known as the Green Line. The boundaries of the seam line veer close to the Green Line. This line is where a wall is being built.

Early in the trip, we saw the line at a lookout point at a narrow strip of Israel where Jewish settlements and cites are adjacent to Palestinian towns. A soldier showed us the community called Kochav Yair where for mer Prime Minister Ehud Barak lives and the road separating his community from the Palestinian town of Qalqilya.

The proximity of Israeli towns to the Palestinian areas was made even clearer when our guides took us to a town in Israel called Bat Hefer, which was settled only a few years ago not far from the West Bank.

Also on the third day we took a rafting trip on the cool Jordan River. We did not exactly raft; we floated, but it felt relaxing in the hot summer temperatures. Here, we encountered Israeli children splashing about and playing on a makeshift swing on the river bank.

We visited Safed, a city in the Upper Galilee, that has been known since the 16th Century as a center of Jewish mysticism, also known as Kabbala. Today, like Jaffa, Safed is an artist's colony. Small art shops and galleries compose the bulk of the stores in this small town. It still attracts spiritual people. Here, I bought some clay mugs from a shopkeeper who moved to Israel from the United Kingdom some years ago.

He wrapped my mugs in newsprint and commented that he couldn't wrap his wares in newsprint just weeks ago because people would open their gifts and see gruesome pictures of terrorist attacks.

One common site in Israel is people with guns. Wherever we went we saw young people with large rifles slung over their backs. In Israel, military service is compulsory for young people aged 18. Boys serve three years and girls two. While we were in Safed, a group of young women in army fatigues were training. It is a strange site to see young people, especially girls, who are college-age, carrying guns. But the military presence also creates a feeling of security and safety.

Shabbat at the wall

We arrived in Jerusalem late Thursday on the fourth day of the trip. While Tel Aviv is fun and freewheeling, Jerusalem is holy and beautiful. Our group spent less than two days there, but what I saw, I loved.

The Old City is an amazing sight at sunset Friday when Shabbat, or the Day of Rest, is beginning. There is a sense of excitement on the narrow, cobblestone streets in the Old City as people rush home to prepare for the holiday.

As the sun begins to fall, the crowd gathering at the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, to pray grows larger and larger. Before long, a crowd of religious Jews dressed in long black coats and top hats had gathered at the wall. Groups of men prayed and chanted. A group of younger men sang and danced in a circle.

I put a piece of paper with a prayer on it from a friend into a crevice of the wall on the women's side and touched it with a Jewish Star of David a friend had given me. Then I walked backwards from the wall as I had seen others do before me.

Sacred to Moslems and Jews, the wall is a remnant of the Second Temple built under the reign of King Herod. When the Romans invaded they destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D. The part where the Jews pray is not very large. The larger part of the wall is in the Moslem quarter.

What is fascinating about the Old City is the juxtaposition of the world's three main religions. The Old City is divided into four quarters: Moslem, Jewish, Christian and Armenian. During calmer times, someone told me, people walked freely from quarter to quarter.

On Saturday, I walked around the Old City with a friend from the trip. At the entrance to the Old City, are streets where Arabs sit outside their shops trying to get tourists to buy knickknacks.

``Hey, come into my shop.'' ``Don't you want to see my shop?'' they plead in a Middle Eastern accent.

Beyond this street, the Old City is more relaxed and less concerned with tourists. I walked through an Arab part where regular people walk. We sat and drank some carrot juice that a shopkeeper was making from a machine at the front counter.

One surprise of the trip was the Church of the Sepulchre in the Christian quarter.

``Beautiful church,'' I told a Franciscan monk dressed in a brown robe.

``Not really,'' he replied.

The church, on the site where Jesus is believed to have been crucified, is badly in need of repairs to the floor and ceiling. However, because several countries are in charge of maintaining the church, no one can decide on how to renovate it, the monk said.

Visit to Dead Sea

The diversity of Israel's landscape is obvious upon leaving Jerusalem. Just a halfhour south is the Judean Desert. Here, in the caves of the Judean, kings would come to hide.

Even though the trip ended in Jerusalem, I opted for the three-day extension to the Dead Sea with a small number of people from our group. The Dead Sea, which has no animal and plant life, is known for its minerals and salt. We visited the Ahava factory store on the Dead Sea and I loaded up on beauty products for drastically lower prices than in the U.S.

Floating in the Dead Sea is an experience. Because of the salt -- it contains three times the amount of salt in the Mediterranean, our guide said -- you float. Literally. As soon as you try to swim your body pops to the surface.

Also because of the density of the salt, you cannot put your head in. I splashed some water in my eye and I had to go under a shower nearby to wash it out. The Dead Sea is actually disappearing because Jordan and Israel both use the Jordan River, the body of water that flows into the Sea. There are now two parts of the Dead Sea because of the low water levels.

We also explored the rich landscape of the Dead Sea area. The Ein Gedi nature preserve feels like paradise in the Judean Hills. We swam in the natural springs and stood under the waterfalls.

Not far is the Negev Desert. Here we stood on top of the Ramon Crater, an ancient crater that was created by erosion millions of years ago. We also visited the home of the first prime minister of Israel, David BenGurion, and saw the graves where he and his wife, Paula, are buried, in a remote spot surrounded by the Negev mountain. Ben-Gurion's vision was for people to settle in the Negev, which makes up 60 percent of Israel. His dream has not yet been realized.

Before leaving, we road a camel. It isn't that much different than a horse.

The day before leaving Israel our group climbed Masada at sunrise. Like Gamla, this hill holds an important place in Israeli mythology. It was here that a group of Jewish zealots took over this fortress and held off the Romans for three years. When they finally penetrated, the zealots chose to die on their swords rather than submit to Roman control. In the past, the military would run up this mountain as a test of their strength and to contemplate the significance of the mountain.

The climb was rigorous, but it was worth it.