Camp Ended

I loved the international work camp, it was unbelievable. 'm traveling around now with some of theinternationals from europe, and we're currently in jerusalem. Yesterday we visited the dead sea and floated while standing up. Guys were sittingin the water reading the newspaper. People took mud baths too. We also went to n ancient jewish fortress, masada. This is the place where 1000 jews committed mass suicide when they were about to be taken as slaves by the romans, and its sort of a national symbol for israel. They definitely played it up, and the movie they showed was pretty corny, but the experience was very interesting. It felt like the ruins have had their original stories adapted to be a temple of Zionism. The oldest synagogue in the world some say is located on this site hundreds of meters above the dead sea, and its a fortress on top of the mountain. Herod built palaces here.

We went hometo eat some falafel, and chill in the new city of jerusalem.
Today we are going to see the people who have lived in their homes for 50 years who were just evicted by israelso that their homes can be given away to jewish settlers. Eastern Jerusalem is Arab and Western Jerusalem is mostly Jewish Israeli, but Israel wants to try and change the ethnic composition of the astern sie of the city so that it can have all of jerusalem. the israeli actions are against the expressed wishes of the us, the eu, the uk, and more, but they are continuing with them anyway. They are literally throwing refugees out on the streets who were removed from their original houses after 1948 to make room for more jewish immigrants. The policy is very unfair. Here they make use of an old ottoman law that says the land belongs to the state if you let it lay fallow for three years. Sometimes they limit entry to land for only the original title holder, who sis old and cannot work, or the curfews and restrictions they put in place on palestinian movement are so extreme that they cannot work the land, so then israel takes it away and gives it to settlers who illegally live in the west bank. When settlers outright steal land and dont do it under any pretext, they begin a lengthy legal battle. Sometimes it takes years to evict settlers from their homes that are built on land they do not own. Once the settlers are finally kicked out, the land has laid fallow and the state can seize it. So the Palestinians really get screwed at every angle.

I'm off to Nazareth, the city of Joseph and Jesus. Next I'm off to Haifa.