The meaning of a flag.

The Israeli flag has two blue stripes on white background and a blue “star of David” in the middle. It has been inspired by the prayer shawl worn while praying during certain services and by the “Zionist’ symbol and therefore can easily be identified with both by religious and secular Jews.
It was first displayed in Rishon le Zion ( an Israeli town) in 1885 and was used in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. The flag was adopted officially on October 28, 1948.
It is very much a “flag of a people” and Jews all over the world can feel comfortable with it.
In my home we always have an Israeli flag on display.
It is not a neutral flag, however. As the “national banner’ of the state of Israel it represents an “identity problem” for whoever is not Jewish but still “Israeli”.

The Palestinian flag was originally designed for the Arab riot against the Ottoman Empire in 1916. It started as an “all Arabs riot” flag, but was later adopted and recognized as the Palestinian flag. This happened first in 1948 in Gaza and later officially by Yasser Arafat and the PLO at the Palestinian Conference in Jerusalem in 1964.
Many of the Arab countries have similar flags with the same colors used in a different order.
The flag has four colors. From top to bottom it has equal stripes with the colors black, white and green and with a red triangle pointing to the middle of the white band. (Similar to the Jordanian flag only without the seven pointed star in the middle of the red triangle)
The colors represents “bloody chapters” of Arab history.
The red originates from the first Islamic group to emerge after the assassination of Caliph Uthman III in the early days of Islam. Their symbol was the red flag.
The black originated from pre-Islamic times when the black flag was a sign for revenge. It was the color of the headdress worn when leading troops into battle.
The white originated as the color used by the Ummayad Dynasty in the early days of Islam. It was their symbolic color as a reminder of Muhammad’s first battle of Badr.
The green originates from the Fatimid Dynasty ( 909-1171) who took the color green to symbolize their allegiance to Muhammad’s cousin Ali who was once covered in green in order to thwart an assassination attempt against him.
The Palestinian flag does not necessarily awake positive feelings in Jews when seen on street corners or houses.

The Druze people do not have a state of their own but they do have a flag. It has five colors ; green, red, yellow, blue and white. Sometimes the flag shows these colors in equal horizontal stripes and sometimes the green is shaped like a triangle cutting the stripes with the point being on the dividing line between the yellow and the blue.
The flag of the Druze unit in the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) has a white “star of David” added to the green triangle.
There are various explanations to the colors used in the flag. Some say that each one represents five prophets in the Druze religion and others say that they symbolize different aspects of the Druze faith with green for “mind”, red for “soul”, yellow for “word”, blue for “potential” and white for “the actualization of the potential”. Again there are some who say that green is for “nature”, red is for “heart”, yellow for “wheat”, blue for “sky and water” and white for “purity”. I would add that it makes sense that the flag have five colors as the founder of the Druze faith was called “Hamsa” which means “five” in Arabic.
What is interesting is that the Druze flag does not represent any “threat” . The flag can be seen in many places upon entering a Druze village but there are no bad feelings connected with it.

The Circassian flag shows a cluster of three arrows pointing north, northeast and northwest, three five pointed stars are just above each arrow point and another nine similar stars are above them. The arrows and stars are yellow while the background is green. The flag was designed in 1836.
The arrows symbolize the traditional directions of migration from the Caucasus in ancient times and the stars are symbolizing their tribes. The background color symbolizes the verdant landscape of Circassia. All Circassians have the same flag. They originates from the mountains of Caucasus but was “uprooted” and spread around by the Turkish Ottomans.
Their flag does not represent a threat to anyone.

The Samaritans do not have any flag. They are the smallest ethnic group on earth numbering close to 1000 people. They claim the seven branched candelabra to be their symbol.

Elin Elkouby

Waltz with Bashir.

The film is an animated documentary describing the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war.
It is about real people sharing their story, telling what they experienced in the past and the nightmares they go through at the present because of a war they took part in. It includes interviews with psychologists and other experts. The movie has an important message to bring about the long term consequences war.

If it had remained a regular documentary I do not believe that many people would have bothered to see it. The genius thing about this movie is that they turned it into an animation. That opens for the possibility to present reality and fiction in an equal way as it appears in the minds of the ones who participated, and it gives the freedom to underline features in peoples faces which otherwise would not have been recognized easily.

The movie has received great critics from many different directions. It was premiered at the 2008 Cannes film Festival. It won a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, an IDA Award for Feature Documentary and was one of five movies nominated for Oscar for Best Foreign Movie (didn’t win).

This is not a movie to be happy from as it shows the ugliness of war without using any cosmetics. One of the important messages is the impact this war had on the future of the young soldiers who participated.

It is as the wisdom from the story about the ancient Jewish king David who ruled 3000 years ago comes to life again. This king had one big dream for his life and that was to build a Temple for the God of Israel in Jerusalem. He never managed to fulfill that dream and the reason was ; “ …you have been a man of war and have shed blood” ( 1 Chron: 28,3)

Elin Elkouby

A tour into Druzeland.

I was invited to join a trip to the Galilee last week. This region makes up one third of the country and is an area with mountains getting higher and higher towards the north. The Galilee runs from the Jordan Valley across the Yizreel plain towards Acco by the Mediterranean. It continues north along the coast to the Lebanese border and follows it towards the east until it reaches the foot of Mt Hermon. From there it continues south down the Hule Valley, the Sea of Galilee and into the Jordan Valley towards Beit Shean.
No other part of Israel has such a variety of people, religions and traditions. Here we find Jews, Moslem Arabs, Christian Arabs, Druze, Circassian Moslems and people belonging to the Bahai religion.
Our trip was about the Druze. They are 1 million people all together living in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. The two Druze villages on Mt Carmel are the most southern ones while all the others are situated on mountains in the Galilee. There are 100.000 Israeli Druze.

Their religion started about 1000 years ago from a Moslem Shi’ite background in Egypt.
Since the death of Muhammed all the different groups within Islam are based on who is considered the divine leader of the faith. From the beginning it resulted in the split into two main branches of Shi’ah Moslems and Sunni Moslems and continued to split within these two main fractions. The Isma’ilism is the second largest within the Shi’ah community.
Al Darazi was an Isma’ili missionary who claimed the divinity of Fatimid Caliph al Hakim. He was supported in his beliefs by Hamzah ibn Ali who also proclaimed himself to be the cosmic intellect. The Druze faith grew out from the religious philosophical teachings of Hamsah ibn Ali. They probably got their name from Al Darazi. Following the death of Caliph al Hakim the sect was subject to persecution and disappeared from Egypt. They settled in the mountain regions of what is today Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

It is not easy to get a clear overview of what they really believe as the community is closed for newcomers and as their religion is secret and revealed only to the religious among them, but still there are a few things that explains the basic of it.--- They are not Arabs and not Moslems. From 1050 on the community has been closed to outsiders. They believe that people living today are reincarnations of those who lived back then. If they didn’t join in the first place there is no reason to try now. They are not allowed to marry non Druze.

They recognize all three monotheistic religions, but claim that ceremonies and rituals have caused people to turn from pure faith. Therefore there are no rituals in the Druze religion. They have no fixed daily liturgy, no defined holy days and no pilgrimage obligations. The religious among them do not eat pork, smoke nor drink alcohol.
Their community is divided into the religious and the ones that are not, but there are no missionaries among them. Women can achieve high rank as they are considered better “spiritually prepared”.
As the Druze are always a minority in the countries in which they live they join forces with the strongest group surrounding them
.
I have always enjoyed the company of Druze people. They are very friendly and hospitable. They do not complain but see it as their responsibility to take care of themselves, therefore they always come up with new ideas concerning how to make a living. The Druze in Israel have started the production of furniture, carpets and fabrics that are unique to their villages.

One of the families we visited told us that there are nobody in their village that are unemployed. The head of the family said that in order to make enough money to survive they have to change “strategy” all the time. His family decided to work with tourism. In the beginning he rented out some rooms for over night visitors and prepared traditional Druze breakfast for the guests. Now he has rooms for rent, Jeep tours in the surrounding mountains, he gives lectures about Druze and their religion, he has opened a restaurant with homemade, traditional food and he receive groups for cooking lessons. He said that to be flexible is a must, and that if we wish to have Druze food but don’t want to come to his restaurant he will come to us and cook the meal out in the open together with us. I thought he was joking, but he said that to cook out in the open was a new “hit”. “We, teach people which herbs to pick and how to mix them with the food that we make. There are lots of wild spices growing in our surroundings.”
This man had invited 45 tourist guides to eat a full meal for free in his restaurant. He served at least ten different vegetable dishes together with grilled chicken and some kind of cooked minced meat. It was all delicious.

We left his house hoping that the future would bring a possibility for us to be a blessing to him by filling up his restaurant with paying guests.

Elin Elkouby

Que sera, sera……

For the last few days Israeli President, Shimon Peres, have had visitors. They are all trying to convince him that they are the ones he should ask to form the next Israeli government with their leader being the prime minister.
Politics is like a game of poker. It is all about “how to play the cards”.
People were speculating about the possibility for the two biggest parties, Kadima and Likud, to join forces in a “rotation” government. This would make Tsipi Livni the prime minister for the first two years while Bibi Netanyahu would take over for the two last years of the period.
Suggesting that Bibi Netanyahu would sit “waiting on the bench” for his time to come was more than optimistic…..As Kadima won with only one more seat in the Israeli parlament, Netanyahu knew that from that point everything depended on how he deals with the bunch of “cards” given to him.
Avigdor Lieberman is in many ways a winner. He will not be the prime minister, but he has the power to decide which of the two others he will join forces with. That again, of course, depends on who will give him the best bargain.

Israel still have rockets coming from Gaza. We have had four of them in Gan Yavne the last two days…….The Palestinians do not know how to “play their cards” to the best for their people. None of Israel's candidates for forming a new government are into playing “any kind of game” neither with Hamas nor with the Palestinians.

I was in the Galilee yesterday on a trip with colleagues. We visited several Druze villages and met with leaders for their community. Being neither Jewish, Arab or Christian they pointed out the importance of Israel being strong. We were told that these villages actually support either Lieberman or the Jewish religious parties. The word strong was used over and over.
They know what it is like to be a minority and understand the importance of being strong and united. They are very nice and soft spoken to whoever is considered a friend, but if people do not belong to that category they do well in not getting too close. Their understanding of being strong is nothing else that to be able to fight an enemy. Whenever they feel threatened they go by the toughest rules of all.
There are 100.000 Israeli Druze. They do not have any dream or wish for a Druze home land, but would like for Israel, Lebanon and Syria to reach an agreement to make it easier for them to visit and to be united with other Druze communities in the neighboring countries.
We started our tour yesterday by visiting the grave of Sheich Abu Youssef Amin who was one of the greatest leaders of the community until he passed away in 1993 ( at the age of 105) We were received by his grandson.
Around the walls there were photographs of the Sheich with leaders from Israel as well as from abroad. We were told why and how the Druze community has supported Israel from the very beginning and that they will continue to do so.

We had a couple of Arab tour guides on this trip. On our way back to the bus they looked at one another as one of them said: “ This sounded like an election campaign for the Likud Party”

Elin Elkouby

What was it like?

Being a tour guide in this land I am constantly looking for sources that can reveal something about the past to me. One of my favorites is Mark Twain.
He embarked on a journey which would last for five months from June 1867 onwards. The purpose of the trip was to see Europe and the East in his own time and to describe to the readers what he saw. Mark Twain did it in a delightful way.
To read his book, “The Innocents Abroad” , is great fun. He writes so well that I almost get the feeling of walking right beside him. I know what these places look like “in my time”. When I “go for a walk” with him I get some insight in the past.

His description of Jerusalem is almost heartbreaking. He describes the group of travelers as they ride towards the city from the north :

--we longed to see Jerusalem. We spurred up hill after hill, and usually began to stretch our necks minutes before we got to the top--but disappointment always followed:--more stupid hills beyond--more unsightly landscape--no Holy City. At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bite of wall and crumbling arches began to line the way--we toiled up one more hill, and every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high! Jerusalem!
Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid, massed together and hooped with high gray walls, the venerable city gleamed in the sun. So small! Why, it was no larger than an American village of four thousand inhabitants, and no larger than an ordinary Syrian city of thirty thousand. Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people.

Jerusalem in those days consisted mainly of what we know today as the Old City. It was considered unsafe to live outside the protection of the city walls. The first Jewish neighborhood to be built was Yemin Moshe which was established in 1861 right outside the city to the west. It could no be seen from where Twain and his fellow travelers were standing. Most of the other neighborhoods were established later.

I record it here as a notable but not discreditable fact that not even our pilgrims wept. I think there was no individual in the party whose brain was not teeming with thoughts and images and memories invoked by the grand history of the venerable city that lay before us, but still among them all was no "voice of them that wept."There was no call for tears. Tears would have been out of place. The thoughts Jerusalem suggests are full of poetry, sublimity, and more than all, dignity. Such thoughts do not find their appropriate expression in the emotions of the nursery.

Jerusalem had been under the Ottoman Empire since 1517. The Turks made sure that any group of believers other than the Moslems kept their heads down. No church or synagogue were allowed to dominate the landscape. Church bells were kept silent and monks would beat a wooden plank to call for prayers.

A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is. The appearance of the city is peculiar. It is as knobby with countless little domes as a prison door is with bolt-heads. Every house has from one to half a dozen of these white plastered domes of stone, broad and low, sitting in the centre of, or in a cluster upon, the flat roof. Wherefore, when one looks down from an eminence, upon the compact mass of houses (so closely crowded together, in fact, that there is no appearance of streets at all, and so the city looks solid,) he sees the knobbiest town in the world, except Constantinople. It looks as if it might be roofed, from centre to circumference, with inverted saucers. The monotony of the view is interrupted only by the great Mosque of Omar, the Tower of Hippicus, and one or two other buildings that rise into commanding prominence.

The situation of the inhabitants was not good.

It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently--the eternal "bucksheesh."

The only thing familiar with today’s Jerusalem has to do with the rich history of the city.

The sights are too many. They swarm about you at every step; no single foot of ground in all Jerusalem or within its neighborhood seems to be without a stirring and important history of its own. It is a very relief to steal a walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to talk unceasingly about every stone you step upon and drag you back ages and ages to the day when it achieved celebrity.

Elin Elkouby

Israel’s election.

Many things can be said about Israeli elections but this last one was more than ever an election where “two Jews with three opinions went to vote for the right to live”
The election day was cold and rainy. Many political activists were concerned that the weather would cause people to stay home. According to statistics, however, there were a 3% rise in votes.
We ended up with 28 candidates for Kadima with Tzipi Livni, 27 for Likud with Bibi Netanyahu, 15 for Israel Beiteinu with Avigdor Lieberman, 13 for Avoda with Ehud Barak and the rest spread out to smaller parties. The tree first parties belong to the right in politics.
The total number of members to the Knesset is 120.
All Israeli governments have been coalitions, but most of the time there has been a clear majority of votes for one of the parties. What makes trouble this time is that they are too close. It is not clear who will be the Prime Minister as that will depend on who is capable of putting a government together. That will take quite some bargaining. We will probably not know until mid March and if no solution is found there will have to be a new election.

What these results show more than anything is that people want politicians who are willing to fight to secure their lives. As rockets continued to fall down on Israeli territory many people thought that the war was ended too early. We know that Hamas is far from being defeated and that they actually are gaining support from even more Palestinians both in Gaza and in the West Bank. When these facts are seen on the background of Iranian support for Hamas the picture becomes more threatening.

This is not about “feeling afraid” but about having a very realistic reason to be scared. In times like these people do not want to see politicians “sitting and talking” but rather “on their feet actually doing something”.

Elin Elkouby

A hike in the wilderness of Judah.

I was on an educational trip for tour guides yesterday in the Judean Desert. ( I am a licensed tour guide: see www.elinelkouby.com ) We can choose between several educational trips and this one was for “people who enjoy hiking”.

The Judean Desert has its own reasons from being counted as one. It is a special and isolated small local desert bordering to the highlands of Judah to the east, Wadi Kelt to the north, the Dead Sea to the west and to the south by the Zin river. It is 100 km long and 20 km wide and the reason why it has become a desert has to do with topography. It is located “in the shadow of the rains” as it starts from a height of 800m. above sea level and descends to 400m below.
Many wadis (dry riverbeds during the summer ) cut deep into the landscape from east to west. When it is raining in the highlands of Judah water rushes through them and creates numerous waterfalls as it flows towards the Dead Sea. Some wadis have many small waterfalls while others have a few tall. The tallest one is 350m high.
There are plenty natural caves which have been used for different purposes by man throughout history. Sometimes they have been dwelling places by choice while other times they have served as hideouts.

Wherever we travel in this country the Bible is an obvious source for knowledge and understanding. I enjoy very much the fact that this book is a key not only to the insight of spiritual matters but just as much to the comprehension of a country and its peoples. Therefore it does not belong only to church and synagogue services but has a natural place in any hikers backpack sharing room with maps, sunscreen crème, water bottles and sandwiches.
Having a greater understanding of the land and its peoples will again add life to the spiritual “secrets”. It is as if this knowledge covers the “spiritual skeleton” with "flesh".

Hiking in the Judean Desert is a test to ones physical abilities. My muscles keep reminding me of just that today.
We were a group of about forty hikers and we were sweating our way climbing down and up the steep sides of a wadi. Our guide told us numerous, tragic stories about people who had ended their lives by falling off cliffs or by being washed away by sudden floods. He reminded us that most of them had been trained hikers and that all it takes is one moment of not being concentrated. It seems like the desert demands a certain number of sacrifices every year.

No wonder we had an extra portion of gratitude as we finished the last descent and were standing by the bus as the sun was about to go down. One of the participants was a religious Jew. He asked if there were volunteers in the group to form a “minyan”. (the minimum number of a Jewish prayer group). Soon after there was a group of men with covered heads facing Jerusalem as they prayed the evening prayer.

Elin Elkouby.

The priority list.

Thousands of bombed homes and no cement….Old, young, men, women and children living outside with nothing to cover them….No electricity and lack of water…The kitchen being an open fire fed by everything that may burn long enough for simple bread to be baked…

This is the reality and the background picture for the simple people in Gaza right now, but it is still not enough for Hamas and Fatah to bring the concern for the people to the top of their priority list. They are doing everything in their power to get others to make that move. They want the Palestinian people to be on top of other nations’ list. They want other countries to take that responsibility…..
In the mean time they are busy strengthening their own positions and they do it by weakening the other.
This is like a super slippery soap opera. The tragic thing about it is that it is not fiction.
It is like a broken home where the children are left completely to themselves suffering while the parents are quarreling about who is the best parent as they are shouting and blaming their children’s misery as being the neighbors fault?????????

All it takes for life to get back on track is to leave Israel in peace.
How come that is such a hard decision to make?

“We desire death as you desire life” was the words to Israel by Hamas in the beginning of the war. If that is really what they want, then what are they complaining about? That is what they got….
Death is not only about “bodies without life” but about no hope for the future. It is impossible to reach to the top of the stairs if every stepping up is continued by stepping two down.

The ones that are killing the Palestinians are their own leaders; They preach lies into their ears from the day that they are born. They keep them down in self pity instead of encouraging them to look up and to see the possibilities. They want to keep them in a miserable situation for the world to feel sorry for them while the leaders have nice houses, big cars and live their lives in luxury. They want them to sacrifice their lives as suicide bombers but make sure that their own children are not volunteering.

If this had been the situation in a fiction soap opera it would have been taken off the screen. People would have complained that it was too sick and too stupid.
But this , unfortunately, is the reality in Pallywood.

Elin Elkouby

Words don’t come easy to me today…

Sometimes it’s good not to say too much and rather try to listen. This has been such a day for me.
I have been watching all the different people working just outside my house. There are about 20 of them being busy on the road and at what will soon be a play ground. Half of them are Arabs and the other half is a strange mixture of Jews from many different parts of the world. I can see that they are from Ethiopia, Russia, Yemen and Iraq and that some of them are newcomers while others were born here.
The reason why there is such a mix has to do with the fact that there is no need for an academic education to do the kind of work that they do. What’s needed are muscles.
Many newcomers have problems learning the language and so the easiest jobs for them are the ones that do no require much talking.
I thank God for them. They are doing such a great job and it’s a pleasure watching them working side by side in peace.

Elin Elkouby

What is real?

It seems like life is full of different kinds of “stages” and we take part in or watch several “shows” every day. Sometimes what I see makes me wonder how real “reality” is?
The Greek philosopher Plato claimed that “you cannot step into the same river twice”. We live in a world with constant changes. What was true yesterday is not necessarily true today.

2000 years ago Pontius Pilate asked “What is truth?” He was about to make the most important decision of his life without realizing the depth of it. He had been warned by his wife and he had tried to avoid being the one to close the case. Living in times, not much different from ours, when personal interests usually came before others he tried to say “no” by saying “yes” and he spent the rest of his life washing his hands claiming that he was not guilty of “the blood of this innocent man.”
He realized that Jesus did not deserve crucifixion and he insisted on writing a title and putting it on the cross saying; “Jesus of Nazareth. The king of the Jews”.

I always thought the question was strange when I was younger. How come a person cannot distinguish between truth and what isn’t?
As I get more experienced with life and with the performances of people who claim to represent the truth, I understand better the complexity of it.

We tend to believe in people with some kind of authority. If it “was in the paper” it must be right. If the pastor said so, it must be right.
Some people are taught from a young age to “do as they are told” while others have been taught to “ask questions”. People who ask questions are often being accused of rebellion.

Life is about learning to trust the inner voice trying to guide us through life. There are so many confusing “facts” to relate to, therefore we help from the One who sees the situation from a much higher place, with a much better view and who cared so much about the whole world that He gave, and gave, and continues to give…

So friends, what I’m trying to say is this “It is not as easy to be a human being as people think.”

Elin Elkouby

No cease but fire.

Two rockets were sent from Gaza towards Israel yesterday. One of them landed close to a kinder garden.
Today a Grad rocket was fired into the center of Ashkelon. As by a miracle nobody were wounded, but 3 people suffer from shock.

People seem to believe that shock is less serious than physical wounds. This is not right as a wound may heal rather quickly while psychological shock can stay with a person for years.
Shock occurs after a physically or emotionally harrowing experience. It can cause a person to go through the event over and over without being able to stop doing it. If the situation does not improve it can turn into post traumatic stress disorders which prevents the person from living a normal life; not being capable of continuing working and often causing the person to be angry or generally ill tempered.
Many people living in the southern parts of Israel suffer from this kind of psychological chock, some of them being children. In their case the reason for shock does not only belong to the past but is a daily threat. The fear is real and not just something imaginable and as it is constantly present, because the danger is constantly present, it is also much more difficult to deal with.

Elin Elkouby

Jaffa oranges.

I went for a walk with one of my daughters on Saturday. It was a beautiful day so we decided to “check out” some orange groves between where we live and Ashdod.
It was sad to see trees with lots of fruits just laying on the ground rotting.
It is easy to tell the difference between a neglected orchard and one that is “still in business”. Besides, the latter ones have signs informing people that picking is prohibited.
The trees that are not in production anymore have smaller fruits, there are weeds growing everywhere and nobody does pruning on them. That, however, does not mean that they are less tasty.
There are no proper roads leading to the orchards so people have to walk and to carry home the fruits. Therefore it is limited how much people actually pick.
We brought home some clementines and some red and yellow grape fruits.

I remember when I first arrived in the country in 1976 that there were orange and other citrus groves absolutely everywhere. Israel was famous for the smell of blooming oranges and the orchards kept thousands of people busy. Everyone knew that “Jaffa” was just another name for Israel…
Honey producers put up their bee hives close to the orange trees in order to get a special citrus brand of honey.
The oranges does not belong to this country naturally, but was introduced to the land by some Christian newcomers who were living on an agricultural farm a few kilometers north of Jaffa. The first orange trees were imported to this land from Portugal and it was Vasco da Gama who some centuries earlier had brought a root of an orange tree to there from China. Actually, all the orange trees in Israel, Portugal, Spain and France descended from this single root. Hard to believe, but that is what the experts say.
The Arabs started growing oranges and the Jewish newcomers added agricultural knowledge and turned it into a flourishing business. For many decades oranges were Israel’s top export and became a trademark to the country.
It is not like that anymore. Spain, Morocco and other countries have taken over the marked for oranges. What is still produced in Israel is mainly for the local customers.

A friend of mine started a charity work from such neglected orange trees. It was hard for her to see all the fruit that would just drop to the ground and rot, so one day she asked her sons to help her pick and to carry them home for her. Once in the house she started producing English style marmalade. As she cannot eat it all herself she offered people to buy from her and decided to give the money to an organization in Bethlehem called “The Shepherd Society”. This organization helps people with economic needs due to unemployment.
What started with a neglected orange tree has grown to be a charity work that includes selling handmade articles of various kinds. So the blessings from the oranges have expanded.

Elin Elkouby

It’s been raining.

The Bible always connected rain with blessing as described in Deuteronomy, chapter 11 verses 13 and 14: “And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine and your oil.”

So, today we were blessed.
It was pouring down both last night and during the day.
I love the sound of rain and also the smell that comes with it. In a country like this with so much desert surrounding us and sand constantly being transported with the wind, it is a pure delight when that is being brought down and the air is left clean.
I also love the drama that very often comes with the rain. No performance is more beautiful to watch than a “wide screen sea show” of thunder and lightening. I always try to get to one of those restaurants by the sea when it is dark and I hear the thunder. To watch the "show" sitting inside drinking hot coffee or chocolate with a panoramic view of the sea is something that it is hard to compete with.

But this was the only day of raining in a long time. The rainy season is supposed to be from mid October till around April. We have hardly had any rain so far.
Israel is facing the worst water crises in the country’s history. There is a gap of 100 million cubic meters between water supply and demand for 2009. That is the equal of the amount of water in 40.000 Olympic size swimming pools.

The water crises has occurred due to lack of rain which has dropped over the last 16 years. Israel now receives 1.2 bill. cu.m./yr. or less.
The three main natural water sources are the Sea of Galilee, the mountain aquifer and the coastal aquifer. They are all far below the red lines. If too much water are to be pumped from these sources it will cause irreparable damage by salt water and contamination seeping in.
Israel uses 1.4 billion cu.m./yr. divided into household (700 mill. cu.m./yr), agriculture (500 mill.cu.m./yr) and industry (150 mill.cu.m./yr)

It is strange for Israel to enter a situation like this. The country has the best reputation in the world for water management technology and irrigation technology.
Israel leads the world in recycling sewage water. As much as 75 % of sewage water is being recycled and this water is used for agriculture and for the watering of public gardens and parks. Spain, the next country in line, recycles 12% of their sewage.
The country also has a number of desalination plants on the coast. This is a very expensive way to produce water. It requires a lot of electricity and there is a problem with the return of the highly salinated water to the sea.

So let’s pray for rain folks.

Elin Elkouby