Category Israel & biblical history

Jul 6 2010

Caesarea revisited

On the away trip with the staff of the charity I volunteer for, we first stopped off at Caesarea.

I have blogged on this place before but only very briefly, really only touching on the theatre which hosts live music and TV shows today, this time I got to see this place in a bit more detail.

The museum park is mostly outdoors and is a beautiful place to visit.  It is probably the most important piece of Roman history in the Middle East.

This sign shows how the harbour looked like:

Here you can see only a portion of the harbour is still here, the rest disappeared into the sea, although not so much through war, actually it happened by earthquake.


Today there is some flags out as a sign of countries in battle – this time the world cup football.

By the way the name ‘Palestine’ was invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian long before any Arab people populated this land.  Caearea was built by Herod, but there are signs here showing it was inhabited by Greeks, Crusaders and Muslims.

Outside a cafe at this place I ordered a hot dog with some french fries and sat outside.  The elderly man who ran the cafe had a strong New York accent brought out some pizza to one of my friends at the table and I noticed a small green tattoo on the man’s arm, not a particularly interesting design but when I went up to get some mustard I saw it again, it was about six numbers.   This was the unmistakable sign the Nazis used on Jewish prisoners in the holocaust camps, where as most people were rapidly slaughtered in the gas chambers not long after they had arrived by train, the ones with the tattoos tended to be those that were younger that were deemed suitable for working in the camp in unspeakable conditions.   Still today there are people who try to revise history and say it never happened. I would imagine the man is probably Polish and moved to the US in late 1940s and came to Israel not so long ago.  On one of the other tables he got chatting to one of the other staff, I didn’t hear what was said apart from he said he was from New York.   Its a sobering thought that history has come full circle, as the Nazis closely modeled themselves on the Romans to some degree and now as this small fragment of the Middle East is now owned by Jews again and some of them have reminders of tragedies gone by.

There are two films that can be watched in separate screens that show how Caesarea was restored by archeologists as you can see today.  Some other people on our trip went to scuba diving as there are parts of the ruins that can only be seen underwater.

People fishing, although I think this sign probably says you aren’t supposed to.

It perhaps doesn’t ‘go’, but I really like this wooden Caribbean style bar :o)

Current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lived here in the town and so did Russian-Israeli Billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak who used to own football clubs in Jerusalem and Portsmouth UK, its incredible this location has changed hands through so many people.

This is an absolutely must see for any visitor to the holy land.

I will cover the Kibbutz where I stayed next…

Jul 6 2010

Hezbollah’s friends at CNN

More evidence that mainstream news sites aren’t always pleasant and fair to the peace process in the middle east.   Apparently one of the senior editors of CNN’s middle east department, wrote on twitter about a being a sad day about this week’s death of one of the founding fathers of of Hezbollah, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. Worrying stuff indeed.

Jul 3 2010

ex-Hamas terrorist who finds Jesus stays in the US

Really pleased (some of our bible study group prayed this week)  that Mosab Hassan Yousef an ex-Hamas terrorist who turned to Jesus will be allowed to stay in the US, this is brilliant news, as it gets a chance for Arab people that have come out of the darkness of Islam to really tell the truth about what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza and example of the love of Jesus to touch both Jew and Arab.

Jul 3 2010

Methodist Christians in Portsmouth against Israel

Some articles like this make me sad.  Especially when its my home city by Christians.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/methodists-launch-boycott-over-west-bank-2014827.html
I notice that this unpleasant Ben White character pops up out of the woodwork yet again.  If you are not familiar with him, he is also a Guardian column space filler, looking here and here, gives you an indication to steer clear of this newspaper.  If you have a genuine love for Palestinians buy more fruit and vegetables from Carmel and other Israeli companies in your supermarket as the produce are from sources from all over this country, and helps Arab people out of poverty.  Sadly quite a few churches can be blinkered from what the bible says about Israel and go with a bigoted boycott plan rather than pray and intercede for this nation as we closer to the stage setting for Jesus’s return.

Jun 27 2010

recent demonstration of 100,000 Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem

Over a week ago, you may have seen in the news plans for demonstration in the city centre from around 100,000 religious Orthodox Jews who were upset about their children being taught with secular Israelis in schools.  I don’t really know the full details of this, but we were asked by my work to be called into the main reception area to be be told to grab our things and go home for the day as there was a possibility this demonstration could turn violent, we just did a quick prayer that the demonstration would just be done and dusted without any problems.   This was a bit annoying as well I wasn’t be able to go to worship event at my church that evening, as the demonstration would of gone on till midnight and is in the main streets where I cycle through to church.

The Haredi (ultra Orthodox) communities often have demonstrations, since I have been here there have been one concerning a woman accused of abusing a child (the religious thought the police were ganging up on them) and other cases its usually they are complaining that the government are being too secular.   On one of the occasions a police car was torched and people were hurt.  But thankfully that thursday went peacefully.

The rest of Israeli society may get annoyed at the Orthodox people as lot of them do not work (just study Torah and religious books) or join the military, although in recent years there are more in the army.

There are many different facets to the frequently spiritually stormy atmosphere here.   Another reason to quote Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, Psalm 122 : 6.

Jun 25 2010

Sderot in Israel, Gaza’s nextdoor neighbour

Where as Gaza is getting plenty of attention in the news of late, there isn’t so much sympathy for the people of Sderot, an otherwise seemingly quiet town with neat gardens at the side of the roads but has to put up with regular Katusha rocket fire from terrorists in Gaza.

Meaning Boulevard in Hebrew, Sderot is a place I visited last September during my first season in Israel, not part of my normal job, but when given the chance to go there I thought it would be interesting to see a place closer to conflict than Jerusalem and to see things as they really are without the aid of television or internet.

Getting there we would be met by a local man who is actually in British but has lived in Israel for 30 years and in Sderot for most of that time.   He played this audio track of some wailing on his mobile phone, this was the sound to expect if there was a rocket attack, when this happens the people in this town have 15 seconds only to get to a bomb shelter.   People are allowed to drive their cars without seatbelts in Sderot to give them a chance to get out and run to a shelter (on bus stops) next to a street if necessary.

Outside the police station here in Sderot, most of the rockets are collected and are on display for people to see.   A lot of these are thought to have been manufactured in Iran.  There are some larger more sophisticated ones which have hit a large radius like the neighbouring cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon.  Without adequate security around Gaza, much more powerful weapons would get in (and probably do through the tunnels) and threaten the whole country and could hit Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, which is why roadblocks and strict inspection of trucks is a very necessary business.

Here this town is otherwise very pleasant and clean looking place, the regular threats seem to give people a more community spirit I guess.


This a typical bomb shelter, a public one.   Some of these you see attached to peoples houses as a home improvement, not unlike people getting a conservatory built back in the UK.

Because of the regular attacks here, although deaths or serious injuries from rockets do happen but not that often, children cannot sleep in fear, and mental health disorders are common, as well damage to people’s houses and cars.  Unemployment is high here, but no Olympic sized swimming pools or fancy restaurants which Gaza has.

The Katuysha rockets are fairly crude by modern day weapons  in the fact they are not accurate, and so fired indiscriminately not at a specific target like a military installation.  In fact we were told that often the most common time the rockets happen is during children going to or from school.   At least a basketball ground here as a concrete roof on top, just like this school here on the left.

Our aim was to help decorate some peoples houses here and as Christians show love to this neglected community.  The first people we helped was a large static caravan which was on a farm which was in quite poor condition which we painted up.   The next was for a young Orthodox man who was about the same age as me and was disabled, we painted and plastered his house.  I got a chance to learn and practice plastering holes in walls which is quite fun and easy once you get used to it.  Later once we finished painting, we got a chance to watch a movie ‘Don’t mess with the Zohan‘ a comedy filmed in Israel starring Adam Sandler.


Without being hasty and under the expertise of our local friend, he took us out in his car up to the border with Gaza, this was a very interesting visit that no normal tourist would ever get to see.

Here there is a small military base to watch for rockets and other terrorist activity.  A small blimp (Zeppelin type balloon, not pictured) is up high tethered to the ground, this is not manned but has a camera and solider on the ground is alerted if a rocket is fired and the alarm is sounded to warn the people in the town.  On the right is an interesting peace monument (sorry I can’t remember who provided it) in the form of a musical instrument.  The buildings in the background is Gaza.  There is also a water reservoir close by.

Really no community in the world would ever put up with rockets fired on them regularly over the last few years, I think Israel shows a lot more restraint that many other nations would if treated like this.

If you lived or been to my home city of Portsmouth UK, Sderot and the Gaza strip are as close together a Gunwharf Quays and Gosport, this is less than a mile in between.

Before we went home on the last day, the man we stayed with took us out for a meal in a restaurant on the pier on the nearby biblical city of Ashkelon.

This was an interesting weekend and I would like to do it again sometime this year maybe.

As this is a sensitive subject please note hateful or provocative comments will be deleted and reported.

Jun 25 2010

At work, the Talpiyot food bank team, replacing LCD screen on Acer Travelmate laptop

Work has been busy this week, actually I am not often not busy, but had some trouble with a PC that sits in the Talpiyot food bank that is supposed to back up everything off servers, this essential running box was showed as off on my Spiceworks console, and after I went over and replaced the power supply, the next day it did it again.  The PC had to be replaced and took good few hours to get it running the same.

Talking of such, its been very very hot in Jerusalem, temperatures have been up to 37c (thats 100F)  so cycling 4 miles to the office in scorching heat is pretty tiring!

Other things I had to do with to set up new members of staff, get a Russian speaking colleague who is based in Karmiel access to a database, he works with immigrants from Russia and ex-Soviet states who live in the north.

But as well as this I managed to put a new screen in a friend’s (ie: not one my work’s assets) laptop.  This Acer Travelmate laptop had liquid that got in the LCD from an accident with some olive oil, great for your health but not for laptops, the screen works just has some weird blobs in between the layers of thin plastic inside the screen, this would eventually cause the LCD to fail altogether as they are fragile.   When I went back to the UK I ordered a new LCD display and carried it in a box on the plane, so I was a little nervous that this part was all right, it cost me UK£70 ($100) from a specialist laptop spares company in the UK….

Out come the little rubber pads on the screen fascia.  Then take out all four screws.  Gently prise and flex the screen fascia out, the old LCD is freed from taking out 4 tiny screws from the long steel hinges that give the top section rigidity and also double up as antennae for the wireless card, then the screen can put flat down has the ribbon cable disconnected and two little wires from the inverter that supplies voltage to the screen.  The new screen is put in its place and I put the screws in loosely and tighten them up one at a time, as it needs to be jiggled a bit into place….

Hooray it works!!!  The volunteer who asked me to fix this gave me a bit of extra money which paid for my Dead Sea trip before I went away, so it was a blessing I could get this fixed for her, and she could provide me with means to do some exploring I did with friends at a weekend a month ago.

The IT workshop has three desks and half a dozen PCs as this room has our database expert (Gilad) sat here, we also had Shirley our American-Chinese IT specialist who took care of a lot of problems at this site, but she has left now (we miss you, come back soon!!) and there is a bench with lot of stuff in pieces to be rebuilt and put back into service.  At my main desk in headquarters I just have one PC and few spare parts and a server room I look after…

There is another Acer on the pile of PCs in the background, this has a full hard disk and need some software tweaking to fix it. (change data around the two partitions on it)   I am going to order a new power supply for this as the one the volunteer as its a bit unreliable and held together with tape.

The food bank floor team are having a bit of cake and ice cream after lunch (why I look forward to site visits there)  but don’t let this deceive you, this team work very hard hauling food onto pallets, several tons a day that are shipped to some of the most poorest and needy Jewish people in Jerusalem.  People do come and go fairly often, as people come to the end of their commitment is always sad.   Here you can see these pictures shows staff ranges from the US, South Africa, Japan and Finland.   We have had people here from every continent.

Overall this week has been extra busy, but got most things done I needed to do and it has been fun.

Jun 22 2010

Journey to the Red Sea – part seven; day at the camp

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8

Ok, after a very long wait, here is another day in my trip around the Red Sea over to Jordan….

Once at Wadi Rum camp, the scenery was beautiful but perhaps not quite as amazing as Petra.   The places consists of wide open desert plains with rocks hills around the edges, often providing convenient caves as dwellings for people.  Often the rock formations were quite abstract in appearance looking like Swiss cheese.

These ancient writings are pretty cool, but when our tour guides (asked my an enthusiastic Brazilian chap who had a keen interest in geology) were asked about the markings, how old they were etc, they didn’t really know much.

Below the narrow walkways through dried up waterfalls were pretty nice.

At the end of tour, we got the chance to see this quite amazing (and famous if I could remember what it was called) huge rock formation.  I got to stand up here, its quite easy to climb up the side.

Sorry a lot of these pics were done on my phone as my camera was dying a death…

Me and the two Swedish lads sat on top of the pile of rocks and watched the sun go down.   After then mainly just sat around discussing places we had just come from, Jerusalem, Sinai, Cairo, Damascus, etc.

Here at this camp, a handful of tents and simple brick built buildings complimented the caves, which were mainly for storing supplies and tools.

There was a brick built bathroom block, some tents, and pipe and plumbing systems are seen to be channeling from up on top of some rocks where some kind of water cistern is housed.

The construction of the tents is very interesting, they are built as an almost permanent residence.   Here you can see that there is a concrete block base and and a painted rigid steel frame which has the canvas stretched out over the top.  Gives the whole thing quite a robust structure and probably doesn’t need too much maintenance.

By then we were all quite hungry, but didn’t see an obvious sign of a kitchen.  After a while Zadane the boss, standing very tall with his traditional Arab head dress called us outside.   I wasn’t expecting this part.

Two of the other Arab men got out a couple of spades and dampened out the fire by hitting it and scraping over the sand before digging it up until something metal was found.  It looked like a large upside down bucket.  Next they took the metal object out of the ground with a pole and put by the side of the hole.   Then a lid of the thing was opened.  Inside was our dinner, after the lid was taken off there was what looked like a very large old fashioned cake stand, and several whole chickens and some vegetables wrapped in tin foil had been cooking all day underneath the fire.   A totally unique method of cooking I have never seen before.

So we got to eat Bedouin style in another tent with tables a few inches of the ground sitting on some cushions.  We were all well fed after this, then we got to play card games and some of the tour guides played up some music on Arab style guitar.   The two Swedish guys who liked heavy metal did try playing a few chords of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ which was quite amusing.   We also got chatting to a young girl whose nickname was Josiah (but her name was actually Tan) from the US who had Indian background who was working for the Jordanian tour company, cleaning, cooking and admin work.  Have to be hugely amazed how brave she was doing this on her own in a place where roles for men and women seem a world away from western culture, she was fun to chat too and was working in different countries and earning money to get a flight to the next part of her adventure.  Earlier in the day, there was another woman (from the Netherlands) who told me she was working for the same place but had just quit as she didn’t get on with the staff, understandable I guess.

After sleeping in a wonderfully comfortable bed in large tent with about 8 other people, I had to get up early (7 I think)  to get back on the jeeps to the village where the tour company’s office was where we could get a taxi back to the town of Aqaba, close towards the border of Israel.   This time I got to share with two Japanese guys thankfully making my journey much cheaper, and just as I had prayed, I had just enough money to get back to the border.

I was quite glad to be back in Eretz Israel now, going back through the Yitzak Rabin crossing is a bit odd.  I had to pay for my stamp to go back through and in true Israeli security fashion, they put my bag through the xray machine three times, asked me who I met and where I went.  One these bits were done there were some very dated pictures in the building of Yitzak Rabin (assassinated in 1995) with Bill Clinton and Yassa Arafat all smiling in some large photos on the wall on the way out.   How things change a lot in 15 years in the middle east…

It was back to the Shelter youth hostel overlooking the beautiful Red Sea, I was in for a whole lot of more surprises later….

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8

Jun 21 2010

Potato batteries

You have probably heard of lemons being used to run simple digital watches back in 1980s, fun but probably no real life use for citrus fruits as means to run gadgets.

But today in seems vegetables have uses instead, this time for lighting (LED technologies have massively get better in last couple of years)

Perfect for developing nations where batteries are scarce and expensive, not to mention poisonous at the end of the lifespan, and yes its those darned clever Israelis again that came up with the idea of using the humble spud.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/20/yissum-develops-potato-powered-batteries-for-the-developing-worl/

The article doesn’t say when your potatoes need to be changed, or if when they grow shoots if that affects their performance though.  Imagine this conversation one day:  “Hello, yeah, er I can I call you back in a couple of hours, phone battery is dying and I need to get a kilo of King Edwards from the market, speak at 9pm mate, bye”

Jun 20 2010

Updated donations page

Just added a new link on the right hand side called Donate / costs.

From there you can make a donation to me or look at my living costs and what I need to live on to be able volunteer in Jerusalem.

On there check out the bottom tabs marked ‘Main / Figures’

I live on about £500 a month, everything else is out of my pocket, I am urgently needing to get sponsorship or donations of any kind, as I am struggling way below the amounts I was hoping to get.

All donations will be listed on there, and I will give an email of thanks.  I will list each one anonymously unless you want to tell me your name.  Of course I am very happy mention your business or organisation if you like.  Or maybe I could wear a Tshirt with some kind of advert of your business (something not political) when I am out and about perhaps.

thank you / תודה רבה (toder b’vukasha)