In the morning we climbed a waterfall in the Golan, which served as an excellent shower. Then we drove to Mt Bental which overlooks the Syrian border and contains a bunker from the 1967 war. It’s clearly put together as a tourist attraction, but is fun as a piece of kitsch. We got to listen to a one-sided history lesson about the various wars, the heroism of the Israeli tank commanders, and why the taking of the Golan Heights was a defensive move. While I concede that taking the high ground is a strategically important objective, the idea that Israel only fights defensive wars is clearly false.<\/p>\n
We drove to Jerusalem, and prepared for the Mega Event, a gathering of all the birthright groups in country at the moment for a ritual orgy of zionism. The thousands of waving flags, thumping pop music, and unthinking group dynamic was reminiscent of rallies at Nuremberg. At least there was a dance party afterwards, where I was able to work out my political tension by unbuttoning my shirt and getting my groove on. I channel every eurotrash\/arzt stereotype, and made a total fool of myself. It was glorious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the morning we climbed a waterfall in the Golan, which served as an excellent shower. Then we drove to Mt Bental which overlooks the Syrian border and contains a bunker from the 1967 war. It’s clearly put together as a tourist attraction, but is fun as a piece of kitsch. We got to listen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthright-and-beyond","tag-israel"],"geo":{"latitude":31.7800007,"longitude":35.2200012,"description":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}