It's difficult for me now to trust anything I read in the news because too often I've the experience of seeing something, with my own eyes, and then reading what's written about it. To an extent, this is evidence of that cheesy Jain parable about the blind men and the elephant (it's a pillar, it's a branch, it's a fan, whoa, stay away from that fire hose!) But it's also because--well, let's just be charitable and stick with the Jain parable. 

Here's the thing: I was in Itamar. I saw that settlement, I saw the house where that family was destroyed. I spoke to people there. And the way it's been reported misses so much. 

Let me tell you a few things you probably don't know. It's not everything there is to say about the story, it's just more of it. 

First, here's how we got there. We drove. Our driver was an Israeli private tour guide. We didn't have an IDF escort; we weren't armed. And it was easy to get there: There was not one checkpoint on the way. Not one obstacle. We could have driven right up to that perimeter fence, and no one would have stopped us. The idea that there's heavy security around this settlement is nuts. There's a fence around the place, and that's it. 

Driving in the area around it, we saw Arab villages (which you could also call "settlements") and we saw both Arab and Israeli teenagers walking around at night, as teenagers do. Any one of them could have walked up to that fence. If you can get over the fence, you can get into that house--it was right by the fence. 

There's a direct road you can take from Jerusalem to Itamar--Route 60--and it would have taken us about 20 minutes to get there if we'd used it. Itamar is close to Nablus, you can see the route on the map. But we didn't take it. Why not? Because of this. We instead took indirect side roads, avoiding any roads on which Israelis had recently been massacred. This took about an hour and a half. Now, when you talk about "apartheid roads" in Israel, keep that in mind: There's more than one way to create an "apartheid road."

When we crossed into the West Bank, our driver was uneasy. "I don't like it here. Someone could jump out at you," he said. And no doubt he was right: These roads are empty, and no, there is no heavy military presence there. Anyone who suggests there is just hasn't been there recently. And this was in the aftermath of a sanguinary terrorist spectacular, so I have to imagine this is as heavy an IDF presence as you're apt to see these days.

I repeat: Not one checkpoint en route. We were not there in any official capacity, we had no one official with us, we were not driving in an official vehicle, we were just a bunch of curious journalists. And we just drove up to the place. The only thing keeping us out was that fence. You get over the fence, you're in.

However, a few weeks ago, there was a checkpoint. It was removed, over the settlers objections. It was removed to make life easier and more convenient for Palestinians. I reckon you can imagine how the residents of Itamar feel about that.

We did encounter an IDF checkpoint on the way back--just one. Yes, they looked closely at our passports and made us wait while they took our passports, examined the car, and asked us what we'd been doing. Just one checkpoint. 

Near Itamar, we picked up David Ha'ivri, from the Shomron Liaison Office, who guided us the rest of the way. We merged with the 60 Road there, and you can hear him explaining where we are here. I'm sorry you can't see much, but it was dark:

In this video, you can hear David discussing the road we took next:

So those are some points about the idea of apartheid roads. What I'm saying now I saw, personally, and I recorded what he said, so you can be the judge.

Second, a few points about "settlers," known to the media generally as "right-wing religious fanatics." They're religious, no doubt about that. They're there because they feel a religious connection to the land. Do I? No. Not at all. That this is a place you can read about in the Bible doesn't mean all that much to me. I'd give this land away in a heartbeat in exchange for peace. I don't think giving it away would result in peace, but if I did--off it goes, let it be Palestinian, let it be Uruguayan, for all I care. Doesn't mean much to me.

But the fact is that this was Jordanian territory until 1967, now it's "disputed territory," and I can't see any particularly good reason why, if Palestinians can settle there--and they do--Israelis shouldn't. When you hear people talking about the horror of Jewish settlement in the area, ask why no one is talking about, for example, Rawabi? Is Rawabi the object of international condemnation? Are its inhabitants right-wing religious zealots in the world's eyes? Why not?

For the record, I think Rawabi looks great, and I hope it's a terrific success. I think it's a very safe bet that Jews would be willing to live side by side and in peace with neighbors who take recycling and public transportation that seriously. 

Now, a quick word about "right-wing." As an enthusiastic emissary of the right, all I can say about that is, "I wish." Alas, when David and the other people we spoke to there weren't talking about the security situation, they were spouting just the kind of left-wing nonsense that drives me nuts. You know what they're insanely proud of in Itamar? Their organic farms. I stress, organic. 

We heard the word "organic" more than we heard the word "terrorist." Now, you all know where I stand on organic farming. I'm with Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution: Bring on the pesticides and the GMOs. But these are, alas, the kind of people who just won't be shut up about the healthful glories of organic farming, even in the wake of a savage terrorist attack. Organic grapes. Organic goats. Organic yogurt. The words "our community" feature large. If they weren't sitting there in the West Bank, you'd figure they were freaks from Marin County circa 1973. But they are sitting there, so they're not harmless organic-farming freaks, in the eyes of the world, but the very obstacle to peace in our time. 

There's a lot more I could add. But for now, just this: Below is a photo of the house next to the one that was invaded. 

The light wasn't good. But I think you get the point.

When I got on the plane last night, the flight attendant greeted me in Turkish. It had been a week since I'd heard anyone speak Turkish. The moment she said hello to me, I had a warm feeling. It wasn't just the familiar sound of Turkish; it was her sweetness, which is so typical of Turkey. They'd given me a center row seat; I'd asked for a window seat. I asked if she could help, and she said yes, of course, she'd make sure I was happy. It was the way she said it--she was so typically Turkish in her obvious desire to make sure a guest was happy.

When the plane landed, I felt, "Oh, good, I'm home." Everyone knows that feeling.

I'm an American citizen, not a Turkish citizen. I'm certainly not an Israeli citizen. I don't speak a word of Hebrew. My Turkish is primitive at best, and like everyone in Turkey, I'm frustrated constantly by the country even as I adore it. I've been an expatriate for so long that I don't feel completely at home anywhere anymore. But I've been living here for a long time, and now my internal homing beacon points, generally, toward Istanbul. 

It's unbearable to me that the formerly close relationship between Turkey and Israel has been injured so deeply. It makes no sense strategically, for Turkey or for Israel. And it makes no sense culturally. These countries have far more in common than they realize. They are both new nation-states--remember, the Turkish Republic is almost as young as the state of Israel, both products of the upheavals of the first half of the 20th century, and both deeply insecure on the world stage because of it. They are both multi-ethnic democracies. One has a Muslim minority; the other a Jewish minority; both are remarkably tolerant in a region not known for tolerance; both are secular states; both face similar security concerns in a dangerous region. Both are struggling to figure out how to reconcile the concept of a secularism with the piety of its citizens; both are countries with young, vibrant, populations. Both countries have universal conscription, and not one mother in either country is happy to pack her son off to the army. I'm not pointing this out because I'm corny and sentimental: It's just a fact.

The Turks you've seen in the videos howling about their longing to be martyrs for the jihad? They are not the majority, you've just got to trust me. It's a country of some 70 million people; any country this big will have its nuts. These nuts have a terrific media strategy, so they end up looking like the real face of Turkey. They're not. Ordinary Turks don't have a media strategy. They have jobs--oftentimes hard, demanding jobs--and families. 

I might add that both countries desperately need a mute button. On the plane last night I was going nuts: All I wanted was a bit of quiet after a long week, and the guys in the aisle behind me just wouldn't shut up. It doesn't matter whether they were Turkish or Israeli, when it comes to making noise, they're interchangeable. They could have said everything they needed to say quietly, without disturbing everyone around them, but that concept just doesn't compute--not in Turkey, not in Israel. The cultural similarities between Israelis and Turks vastly exceed the dissimilarities, in so many ways. 

I heard not one word of malevolence toward Turkey in Israel--just deep sadness and bewilderment. Many people I spoke to fondly remembered vacations in Istanbul and Antalya. 

I did hear something that makes me insane with frustration: A sentiment to the effect of, "What's the point of trying to explain our point of view to the Turkish people? They hate us now." 

They don't. That's an understandable siege mentality talking, but it's not reality. There are certainly some people in Turkey who hate Israel. There is a much larger number of people who don't know much about Israel and don't think much about Israel, but who would be well-disposed to the country if they knew more about it.

This relationship just has to be repaired. If there's anything I can do to help, I'll try. Turks, if you have questions about Israel, ask me. Israelis, if you've got questions about Turkey, ask me. It doesn't have to be this way; it's a pointless tragedy that it is, and it breaks my heart. 

You'll never manage to convince me that this is the way it must be. I know far too much about Turkey and about Israel to believe it.  

I'm writing this from Ben Gurion airport, where I'm waiting for my flight back to Istanbul. I've just had a remarkably, I mean remarkably long conversation with the airport security officials.

I can't at all blame them for wondering. I look like something the cat dragged in (it's been a busy week, no time for laundry), I've got some weird story about being a freelance journalist who lives in Turkey because she's adopted a lot of stray animals, and I'm telling them I've been here checking out Hezbollah installments on the Lebanese border. If that doesn't add up to secondary questioning, it's kind of hard to imagine what would.

It was a lot less expensive than psychotherapy, and after a while I really got into it. I'd really never thought that much about my whole life story before. If they'd offered me a couch and another hour, I'm sure I would have achieved significant insight. 

There's always a discussion simmering somewhere about war between Israel and Iran -- who will start it, what arms will be used and by whom, what retaliation will be exacted, what the effect will be on the rest of the region, and so on and so forth. The central question is usually, "When will the war begin?"

Begin?

We'd all like to know how close Israel will allow Iran to get to the nuclear threshold before acting preemptively, but let's not mince words here. Iran is already at war with Israel, and it is conducting that war through its local proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. The nuclear issue is important -- of course it is. But you don't need nukes to make life here difficult. Israeli citizens with the misfortune to live, say, within striking distance of the Gaza Strip are already on the front line. They're not anticipating a war; they're living one.

Earlier this morning, Iranian-backed Palestinians in Gaza heavily shelled civilian areas inside sovereign Israel. Sha'ar Hanegev, Eshkol and Sdot Hanegev were bombarded with more than fifty rockets. Residents were ordered to remain inside their homes or in shelters. Two civilians were injured by shrapnel and taken to Soroka Hospital. "We are used to sporadic rocket and mortar fire, but this was not the daily show we are used to," said Eyal Brandeis, a kibbutz secretary in the Eshkol Regional Council and the head of a local emergency response team. "When we heard the high number of explosions across the area, we knew this was not an ordinary attack."

Hamas does what its sponsors tell it to do. The escalation of its war with southern Israel reflects both Iran's emboldenment following the collapse of the Mubarak regime and its eagerness to test the limits of what it can achieve ahead of end-game nuclear conflict. Remember that this morning's assault on Israeli civilians follows the interception by the Egyptians of an overland arms shipment from Sudan destined for Hamas, as well as the seizure by the Israeli Navy of a 179-meter-long cargo ship bearing 39 containers full of arms. Thirty-nine containers' worth of arms is a lot: it puts this smuggling attempt in the ballpark of the Karine A. In one of those details that elevates incidents like this to the level of art, some of the arms came with instruction manuals in Farsi. That's unreadable to most Gazans, but eloquence itself to the Israelis. 

The containers were loaded onto the ship at the Syrian port of Latakia, which is the port at which those two Iranian warships (remember them?) docked last month. The arms included thousands of mortar shells, about 67,000 assault rifle bullets for AK-47s, and six C-704 radar-guided anti-ship missiles. Those missiles have a 35-kilometer range and a 130 kilogram explosive warhead capable of sinking 1,000-ton vessels. The Jerusalem Post  notes that if those missiles had reached the Gaza Strip, the Israeli navy -- which now operates just a few kilometers off the coast of Gaza -- would have had to pull back. This, I need hardly say, would represent a serious blow to Israel's defensive capability against a hostile western front.

Regarding today's attack by Hamas: Israel lodged a formal complaint with the UN over the rocket bombardment of civilian areas and also hit Gaza with tank shells and helicopter strikes.

Expect condemnation shortly of Israeli aggression.

Yesterday we visited Kibbutz Beit Oren, which was devastated in the Carmel fires. The ostensible point of our visit was to see the damage and the recovery efforts. The damage was terrible and the recovery is continuing. 

But my own interest, really, was to see what a privatized kibbutz looks like. A "privatized kibbutz" is an oxymoron, because a kibbutz is, by definition, a socialist collective. Like all socialist projects, the kibbutz movement failed. Yes, yes, we all heard the propaganda--the kibbutzim show that socialism can work, isn't it amazing, these beautiful, efficient collective farms where the babies are raised by day-care workers. Well, that was complete rot.

I worked on Kibbutz Afikim, in the Jordan Valley, when I was about eighteen years old. The path between working on a kibbutz and writing a book called "Why Margaret Thatcher Matters" was a straight line. It did not escape my notice that I was working on a collective farm--a place devoted to the production of agricultural goods, in other words--yet the only vegetable served in that dreary collective dining hall, ever, day in, day out, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, was the cucumber, and there was never any fruit. I farmed my brains out that summer and still nearly came home with a case of scurvy. I have no idea where the bananas I picked that summer went, but it surely wasn't the dining room table. 

Beit-Oren was founded as a die-hard socialist settlement in 1939. Predictably, it went bankrupt, because socialism doesn't work. By the 1980s it had no means of subsistence, and the world's ideological tides having turned, the larger kibbutz movement cut it off. In 1987 about half the population of the kibbutz decided to leave, an event known as the Beit Oren Incident. You can read between the lines of the brochure we were given yesterday, I'm sure:

During this difficult period for the kibbutz movement, a new concept was born at Beit Oren, of all places--the concept of "the new kibbutz."

Much as it would give me pride to say that Israel was the birthplace of this new concept, they are of course not speaking of a new concept at all but rather a very old one--private property. Obviously--again reading between the lines--the old guard took this about as well as old socialists ever do when confronted with the idea of private property:

In 1988, after an intense period of discussion and decision, the New Kibbutz was on its way with renewed strength and vigor, and many new members. The kibbutz's financial situation improved, empty apartments were rented to new residents, the kitchen and dining room became an events hall, and various kibbutz enterprises recovered. In June 1995, the decision was taken to privatize services and individual income. This was to be the first in a series of privatizations. Within a short time after this decision, most kibbutz members expressed satisfaction with this arrangement.

So in fact, what we were visiting was not a kibbutz. The proper term for what we saw is "a village." A very lovely village. And even though this village had nearly burned to the ground, it had the hallmarks of a place where property is private, unlike the kibbutz at which I worked. What's the telltale sign? The parts that had not burned were breathtakingly beautiful. Socialism never looks breathtakingly beautiful. And there were a variety of refreshments on offer beyond the cucumber.

Now, a few sad things that I have to point out. The fire was a terrible tragedy. The loss of life, in particular, was appalling--44 police officers died. (They died trying to evacuate a prison. All of the prisoners, Palestinian and Israeli, were saved.)

But it was abundantly clear on inspection that common-sense precautions to protect this village against forest fires had not been taken. One glimpse at this landscape is enough to see that it's a tinder-box. Forest fires are obviously a huge risk here. Anyone from California would know that. There should have been nothing combustible on the hillside directly beneath this village. There should have been a safety zone of at least 30 feet between the houses and anything that could burn. There wasn't. There were no fire hydrants.

The disaster was not only predictable, it was predicted: 

After the “big fire” in the Carmel Forest in 1989, when “only” 3,000 dunam burned, an investigative committee had recommended that preventive steps should be taken, namely, creating fire breaks with no or restricted vegetation and limiting the kind of vegetation that proliferates in the woodland by thinning out and controlled burning. Further, when the plant life does regenerate, livestock or human volunteers should be put to work to keep it cropped. Sadly, these guidelines were not heeded.

The total damage estimate, they say, is about 70 million shekels. Their insurance only covers 20 million. 

So. You're living in a hot, dry, windy, heavily forested area known for the outbreak of fires. You've planted pine trees--pine trees, that resin is particularly combustible!--up to your windows. You don't cut them back. The whole area is in range of Hezbollah rockets, let's not forget that--they hit Haifa repeatedly in 2006, and you've got to reckon that doesn't reduce the forest-fire risk. You don't buy enough insurance to cover the damage if your house burns down. 

Who makes a decision like that? 

People who've only recently learned how to handle a checkbook and who have only recently come into contact with the idea of "Whatever happens, you'll have to pay for it yourself," I suppose. 

Check out this short video. Ignore the soundtrack; I put that on to obscure the voices of some of the people with me who weren't crazy about the idea of being quoted. 

Now, here's what you're looking at. You're looking at Shi'a villages, on the right, controlled by Hezbollah. One of those villages contains a model of the al-Aqsa mosque. Last October, Ahmadinejad was standing there--in that village--announcing to joyful crowds that soon they would make the Zionist filth disappear.

Buried underneath that village and others near it, which you must admit look lovely from this vantage point, are weapons. A lot of them. You've got command and control systems, IID, anti-tank weapons, short-range rockets, anything you need. This isn't a big secret; after all, this is the view--without binoculars--from where I'm standing, so obviously it's not going to be hard to watch what they're doing and where they're burying this stuff.

So. You can fire a rocket from there and hit Haifa, which has a quarter of a million people in it, and indeed, during the last Lebanon War, they did just that, hitting an open area of an oil refinery. Had the hit been just slightly more direct, you can imagine what would have happened.

And where are these weapons buried, exactly? Near schools, hospitals, and civilian homes. It's easy to see that, too. So, you take them out and you will, inevitably, kill kids--kids whose only crime has been to be born in the wrong place.

You be the strategic planner: How many rockets would they have to launch before you said, "Okay, we're taking those installations out?" 

The Israeli answer--to judge from experience--is about 10,000. That's how many rockets were launched from Gaza at Israeli civilian populations before operation Cast Lead.

No, no, that number's not a misprint. About 10,000. 

So, seriously. At what point, if you were responsible for Israel's defense, would you take them out?

Don't say, "Now." That border's been quiet since the 2006 war. You need to think about this in the complete diplomatic and military picture. You do that, you start a war--a big one. And you kill a lot of kids. 

One rocket? What if it doesn't hit anything?

Ten rockets?

Fifty?

Now imagine that's the American border, the rockets are flying over from Mexico, and they could easily hit a major population center like Dallas.

Anyone going to say, "Let's wait for 10,000?" 

I kind of doubt it. 

Predictably, I've received messages in the wake of the post I wrote about Itamar suggesting that I am only interested in the "Zionist" account of this event, and that I take this murder seriously only because I am a Jew. You may wonder why I'd respond to this. I'm responding because yes, there are a large number of people out there who would think that no matter what I said, but there are also a large number of people who just haven't thought about these things much, have no idea who I am, and might be willing to think differently if I point out a few facts they may have missed. I'm talking to them. 

I've been living in Turkey for the past five years. During those five years, I have many times had the experience of checking the news, as I do every few minutes throughout the day, and seeing that there has been a terrorist attack in Turkey.

The PKK has targeted cafes and crowded streets and squares very close to my home in the recent past. Ricochet members will remember that not long ago, a bomb exploded at Taksim Square, which is a five minute walk from my apartment. I'm there almost every single day. The attack littered Taksim Square with body parts. 

During the time I've been in Turkey, I have, like everyone in Turkey, been disgusted, enraged and--as intended--terrified by PKK attacks that have taken place far too close to me ever for me to dismiss them as "something that happens in a far-away place, to other people." The attacks have targeted civilians, and they have had exactly the effect on the Turkish people that the attack on Itamar has had on the Israeli people. 

First, you get a phone call from a friend or you see the words "PKK attack" in the news. Then you stop what you're doing and glue yourself to the news, trying to find more information. You try  to figure out exactly where it was and how many people were hurt and killed. You call the people you know who might have been close to it. The news stations turn to full-time coverage. There are calls for blood donation on Twitter. There are crazy rumors. More news comes to light. You see the photos. You see the faces of the families who have just found out. You feel excruciating pain for them, and you feel, excruciatingly, "That could just as easily have been me or someone I love." You think about the mothers who have just found out--yes, that was your son, yes that was your daughter.

The whole country feels on edge. The police and military presence feels heavy and the faces of the young police officers are angry and anxious. Fighter planes fly too close overhead, looking for something, you don't know what. People talk about it, they say, "It's terrible." They say, "What crazy people, what monsters, would do that?" Facebook fills with hateful pages about Kurds. Everyone gets angry at the politicians for having failed to prevent it. You hear talk of revenge attacks. The next time you pass by the place where it happens, the taxi driver shakes his head and asks, "Why? Why would someone do that? It's crazy." Nothing good, nothing, ever happens as a result of it. But the victims are dead forever.

For everyone else, life goes on, because it has to. It gets back to normal quickly, because the country is used to it, and what can you do? 

I would like to point out three things: First, Turkey is overwhelmingly a country of Muslims--99 percent of Turks identify as Muslims--so the victims, overwhelmingly, are Muslims. 

Second, every time it happens, I go insane because the foreign press doesn't cover it sufficiently and doesn't say needs to be said. They call them "terrorists," in quotes, or they focus on the grievances that prompt the "terrorists" to do this, as if anything could warrant deliberately killing children whose only crime has been to be born in a country involved in a political conflict--as most countries are.

Third, every time it happens, I do my best to cover it and to say what I think needs to be said. If you search under my name and the name "PKK," I think you'll see clearly that this is so. When my Turkish friends say to me, "Why doesn't the media tell the world the truth about this," I say, "I don't know. But I do." For example:

The PKK has bombed cafes and restaurants in Izmir and Istanbul. They have bombed crowded buses. Recently, they took hostage a group of German tourists on Mount Ararat. They kill journalists, elementary school teachers and doctors with special enthusiasm. To briefly review: Amnesty International reported, shortly after the PKK issued the statement reproduced above, that the PKK was killing civilians “almost every day.” In 2002, PKK bombs in Istanbul and the resort cities of Antalya and Marmaris killed three civilians and wounded more than 100. In 2006, ten people, mostly children (civilian children, I assume), were killed by a PKK bomb in Diyarbakır. In the same summer, PKK bombs targeted a bank and an office building in Adana; a PKK bomb went off near a school in Istanbul; three separate attacks in Marmaris targeted tourists on their summer vacations; another one in Antalya targeted a shopping center. In 2007, a PKK ambush in Sirnak killed a child, seven village guards and five construction workers who were trying to build a dam to bring water to Kurdish villages.The PKK has branched out into suicide bombings. They have planted land mines in areas frequented by civilians, which, as intended, killed civilians. Just last week, the PKK shot dead four civilians and wounded seven more in Bingöl, a village in eastern Turkey. When the PKK target civilian government officials, they tend to execute their civilian wives and their civilian children, as well. I could extend this list for quite a few paragraphs.

Do I feel a special connection to other Jews and to Israel? Of course I do--with pride and without the slightest apology. 

Do I feel a special connection to Turks, who happen to be Muslims?  Of course I do--with pride and without the slightest apology.

I have been living in Istanbul for five years. It is my home. When the PKK attacks a Turkish man, woman or child, it attacks me--or it would have been just as happy to, had I been in the wrong place at the wrong time, because when you put a bomb in a wastebasket on a crowded street, you clearly don't care who gets killed, just as long as someone does.

When I write about terrorist attacks on Jews, do I write about it because I'm a Jew? Apparently.

When I write about terrorist attacks on Muslims, do I write about it because I'm a Jew? That one's a little trickier, isn't it? 

How about this as a hypothesis: I write about terrorist attacks because I hate terrorists. I write about them because the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children going about their daily lives--the deliberate effort to terrorize a civilian population--enrages me. I write about them because my heart is with the victims, whether they are Muslims or Jews. And I write about them because I know they'd like to see me dead--they say so in the clearest possible way every time they bomb a place I might have been. They don't care who they kill. We were talking the other day to an Israeli Arab--a Muslim--who was injured in a terrorist attack on Tel Aviv. They don't care. As long as someone dies in an impressive, horrifying way, they're thrilled. 

Israelis often ask me, "Why doesn't the world understand what we're going through? Why does it glamorize these terrorists, why does it minimize these murders?" Turks ask me the same question, all the time. And I have no answer for them. All I can say is that I do understand, and that the authors of these crimes--be they the PKK (which is not an Islamist organization at all, but a Maoist one), Hamas, Islamic Jihad--are enemies of humanity and enemies of me, personally. I have no room in my heart for people who kill children. 

If you do, perhaps you'll at least have the intellectual honesty to admit that my feelings about terrorists do not seem to be confined to those who kill Jews--if you read what in fact I've been writing for years, you'll see, unequivocally, that it is not the ethnicity or religion of the victims that angers me, it's the fact that they were victims at all. 

At Itamar, a group of Israeli journalists asked if they could interview us. We weren't sure it was appropriate for us to become the subject of the story, but since they asked, we figured--why not. That was the video, you can read the report in English here. 

As you know, I'm here in Israel on an Act for Israel media fellowship. So are Seth Mandel and Tim Mak.

Act for Israel has done quite an astonishing job of getting us access to government officials and filling our schedule with meetings. They've done such an astonishing job of this that sadly, I haven't had time today to write anything about Israel. In fact, I haven't even had time to transcribe my notes. And I'm thinking I'll probably be transcribing mine until the year 2015.

So I was sitting here with Seth and Tim wondering just what to do about this--it didn't seem right not to write about any of this--until I realized we could just call the Blue Yeti and do a quick podcast. Because, as we explained to the Israeli Foreign Ministry today, that's what new media's about: rapid response and flexibility.

Although it may be, as Tim points out, that the Israeli Foreign Ministry is a lot more rapid in its response and flexible than we thought. I mean, how is it that we had access to their spokesmen for that long and wasted that much time talking about new media.

P.S. We had to split this into two parts as YouTube only allows videos of 15 minutes or less. It's about 22 minutes long in total.

Jerusalem -- I'm here in Israel on the same media trip as Claire. (And yes, she is just as beautiful, brilliant and funny in person as you imagined.)

We've had an unbelievably packed itinerary, much of which Claire has informed you about. Yesterday we also met with the parents of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas some 4.5 years ago.

About eight months ago, believing that not enough was being done to return their son, Noam and Aviva Shalit marched from their home in Mitzpe Hila to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence, in front of which they erected a tent and sit in protest throughout the day. They vow to remain there until their son is released.

Everyone in town knows where the Shalits sit and it's a very social place with people frequently stopping by to join the Shalits and offer condolences. In the middle of our interview, a young bride and groom arrived to tell Mr. Shalit that they were remembering his plight on their happiest day. I joked that this must not happen much and was told that it happens all the time.

Shalit's story has received international media coverage, so you might remember that Hamas is holding him in gross violation of human rights laws. His captors won't allow the Red Cross to visit him and the only contact with the outside world has been a few letters, DVD and audio tape released in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners.

On that note, we learned more about what Noam is asking of the Israeli government. Since Hamas has indicated that they will release Gilad if Israel releases 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, that's what the father seeks. The arrangement would be something like 550 released first, including some of the country's worst terrorists, and another 450 chosen by the Israeli government after Shalit's release.

Netanyahu responded that he was willing to release 1,000 prisoners, just not the worst ones that Hamas demands. He said Israel was willing to pay a heavy price for Shalit, "but not any price."

Israeli opinion seems to be divided on whether to agree with Hamas' demands or resist. Remember that Israel has a compulsory Army, and everyone believes that the government should work hard to get Shalit home to his family.

There are no easy answers for how to resolve the situation, but it's worth noting how much Israelis value the life of this one soldier and how much they're willing to give up to get him home.

I'm pleased to report that we have brought the only obstacle to our complete information dominance under our control today. The Zionists are now under the command of the Ricochet Empire. 

Please give them a warm welcome. 

We went yesterday to Itamar, the West Bank settlement where Udi and Ruth Fogel, and their children--Yoav, age 11, Elad, age 4, and Hadas, their 3-month-old daughter--were murdered. A detail that wasn't widely reported, or reported anywhere that I've seen, is that their newborn baby was decapitated.

I shot a lot of video and have several hours of interviews on tape. When I got back last night, after a long day and a long drive, I wrote about it in haste. Owing to the famous Ricochet log-in malfunction, what I wrote disappeared when I tried to post it. 

I was frustrated by that last night, but now that I've had some sleep, I'm glad it disappeared. Writing about something like that when exhausted isn't the right way to do it.

Judith correctly observed that an event like this inspired Truman Capote to write a book, and while I don't think I have that in me, what I saw certainly does warrant writing with some thought, after stepping back at least carefully to listen again to what everyone told me. I'm going to wait to write about this until I get back to Istanbul, when I have some time. 

One very quick point I'll make is that this was clearly not a family above all of "settlers"--some alien species that exists primarily as a political bargaining point--but of human beings. In the home next door to the one that was invaded, kids' clothing was hanging on the line next to a child's bicycle. You simply cannot look at that and think, "This story is above all about land and politics." This story is above all about murder. They were children and they were murdered. Two more children were orphaned. The children were targeted deliberately. This was a premeditated murder--not a crime of passion or self-defense--and it was a psychotically savage crime. Anyone who in any way tries to rationalize or minimize this or to suggest that this is a fitting punishment for anything needs to go out and look at a three-month-old baby and ask himself what it would take to climb over a fence, climb in a window, and cut off that child's head. If that act seems an "understandable" reaction to a political grievance to him, I don't think we can have much of a conversation. But I don't think it will, on reflection, seem that way to most people. 

I did ask people there, "Why would you raise your children in a place like this?" The answer was not one that would satisfy me, if I were a parent. I don't want to do the answer an injustice, but the outline of the answer was--basically--"Things like this aren't the whole story. Look at the lovely organic grapes we grow here. It's truly such a nice place to raise kids. It's so meaningful to us to be in a place so central to Jewish history." I have what they said exactly on video and I'll post more of it next week. For now, here's one voice. This is Leah.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I suppose rightly, insisted we begin our visit with a tour of Yad Vashem--Israel's Holocaust Memorial. I say "I suppose rightly" because I surely do see the logic of ensuring that journalists grasp this history, but I would have opted out if I could have. I've been before, but that's not why I didn't want to go. The truth is that there are some things that are not emotionally helpful in the wake of the death of your last surviving grandparent, and one of them is spending three hours contemplating the annihilation of European Jewry. 

I went anyway, because obviously I didn't want to be known as "the journalist who refused to go to the Holocaust Memorial." But I'm pretty sure no one could have less needed a reminder than I did today that the Jews of Europe are gone, their entire world vanished. 

Since I last visited, some things have changed. A children's memorial has been built.

Some 1.5 million Jewish children perished during the Holocaust. 

Between that, and the news from Itamar, we have the makings of depressing day in the Holy Land, do we not?

But there is something good to report. Here's a news item you may have missed. "Shoah" is now playing in Iran, and soon to play in Turkey:

The Holocaust documentary "Shoah" is being broadcast in Iran.

The 1985 documentary by French director Claude Lanzmann was scheduled to be presented this week on a satellite channel and is dubbed in Farsi. Satellites are banned in Iran, but many Iranians have them and therefore could watch the film, which includes survivor testimony. 

The broadcast is sponsored by the Aladdin Project, an independent, international nongovernmental organization based in Paris dedicated to promoting intercultural relations, particularly among Jews and Muslims.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly denied the Holocaust on several occasions.

The film also has been dubbed into Arabic and Turkish and will be screened in Turkey next month, The Jerusalem Post reported. 

This article doesn't note that the Aladdin project was launched under the patronage of UNESCO. It deserves much credit for this, especially since we are all so quick to point out the UN's failings.

Aladdin’s founders were initially inspired by the need to counter the falsification of history in the shape of Holocaust denial and trivialization. In launching the initiative, France’s Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah sought to address the dearth of objective information in the main languages of the Muslim world, starting with Arabic, Persian and Turkish, on the Nazi genocide in societies where Holocaust history has never been taught and where it has remained largely a taboo subject.

And the airing of the documentary has, apparently, received an overwhelmingly positive reception in Iran.

Emails and telephone calls from viewers in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashad and other cities across Iran have been overwhelmingly positive after the Los Angeles-based satellite television channel Pars began showing an epic French film on the Holocaust in Persian for the first time on Monday, according to anchor Alireza Meybodi who presented the film.

On Wednesday, the state-run Iranian news agency Fars denounced the airing of Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah, as an attempt by Israel to target the Iranian people “with its propaganda in a bid to counter Iran's efforts in international organizations to refute its claims about the myth of the Holocaust.”

Dozens of pro-government websites in Iran joined the chorus, attacking Pars Television for “licking the boots of Zionists.” 

Persian-language media abroad with large audiences in Iran, including Voice of America Farsi TV, Manoto TV, Radio France Internationale (Persian) and Voice of Israel (Persian), carried long reports on the airing of Shoah in Persian and interviewed Iranian intellectuals who underlined the need for Iranians to have access to such films. Many Persian-language websites, representing a spectrum of opinion, have reported the event.

Good news is relative, of course. But this is good news, so let's be glad of it.

The knifing to death of five members of the Fogel family in the settlement of Itamar reminds me of the killing of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, familiar to you perhaps as the subject of Truman Capote's monumental work of reportage, In Cold Blood. The Clutter murders still arouse revulsion and horror decades later, as well they should. The Fogel murders, on the other hand, provoke a rather telling lack of interest among journalists in the basic details: as several commenters here have noted, most international coverage of the event neglects to mention the ages of the murdered children. They were an eleven-year-old boy, a three-year-old boy, and a one-month-old baby girl. 

Netanyahu has spoken out angrily against the tepid response of the PA and demanded that they clamp down on anti-Israel incitement in the territories. It's perfectly right and proper that he make this demand, but as the kids say, good luck with that.

Why did this happen now? I wonder. In the wake of the revolutions in the Arab world, an anxious Fatah has been preemptively cozying up to Hamas, and Hamas chief-in-exile Khaled Meshaal has been making reciprocal noises. "The first step [toward 'liberating' Jerusalem from the Israelis] is refusal to negotiate with Israel," he said this past Monday, setting the terms for any potential reconciliation between the Palestinian groups. The object of a Hamas-Fatah rapprochement would be what's written in the Hamas charter: jihad against the Jewish state. (That's the whole Jewish state he's talking about, mind you -- not just children with sidecurls in Itamar.)

Less than a week after Mashaal made this statement, members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- otherwise known as the armed wing of Fatah -- slaughtered the Fogels. The "heroic operation," as the Brigades' press release called the attack, was "part of the natural response to the massacres of the fascist occupation against our people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

That's what a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation looks like, folks. It means the subsuming of Fatah into Hamas and the death of any pretense of a Palestinian partner for peace. 

In his speech on Monday, Mashaal said, "[t]he people in Egypt and Tunisia have given us back our lives." Congratulations, Khaled. No one is bringing the Fogels back to life. They won't even get journalists delving with grim, fascinated interest into their short life stories. And hey, why should they? They were only settlers, after all.

Dear colleagues,

These photos were released by the family. They have given full permission 
for their use and they to ask you to report on the horrific reality of 
murdering children and babies in their sleep, simply because they are 
Jewish.

On Friday night at 10:30 pm the terrorists entered the house through the 
living room picture window, did not notice the 6-year-old boy sleeping on 
the couch and continued on to the bedroom where they slashed the throats of 
the father and newborn baby who were sleeping there. The mother came out of 
the bathroom and was stabbed on its threshold. The evidence shows that she 
tried to fight the terrorists. They then slashed the throat of the 11-year 
old-son who was reading in bed. They did not notice the 2-year old asleep in 
his bed, but murdered the 3-year old with two stabs to his heart. After 
that, they locked the door, exited through the window and escaped. Two hours 
after the infiltration, there was another warning signal from the same spot 
on the fence, as the terrorists left the way they had come. Once again, the 
patrol did not identify the source of the signal as infiltration.

The 12-year-old daughter returned home at 00:30 and found the door locked. 
She asked a neighbor to help her. He brought a weapon with him once he 
noticed tracks and mud near the house. The two woke up the 6-year old 
sleeping in the living room by calling through the window and when he opened 
the door, the Rabbi returned to his home. When she entered the bedrooms, the 
young daughter saw the horrific bloodsoaked scene and ran out of the house 
screaming. The neighbor ran back and fired several shots in the air to alert 
security personnel. Within a short time, large police and IDF forces 
arrived and began intensive searches to see if the terrorists were still in 
the community. At 03:30 a.m., military trackers discovered footprints 
leading to the Arab village of Avrata.

With hopes for better days,

Ruthie Lieberman

The photos, she says, "are high resolution and can be reproduced in your website and newspaper."  Let's see which newspapers and websites do. I won't show them on Ricochet--I know a lot of our readers have kids who look at the site.

I look at this and wonder what some of our members wondered about parents who went to riots in Egypt and Libya with their kids: What kind of parent settles in Itamar?  Yes, you should have the right to assemble and protest in Egypt and Libya without being beaten or gunned down. And Jews and Arabs alike should live side by side in harmony. But they don't.  And given that, I cannot understand moving to Itamar with your young children.  

We're arranging to go to Itamar this week.  I'll tell you what they say. 

I'm posting this in response to a request from our member Roque Nuevo:

Here's something else: could you just stand on a high place in the West Bank, try and see the Mediterranean from there, and take a picture of it? Then put the picture somewhere where I can see it? Then put a marker on Google Maps where you were and send that to me, too?

I'm just curious about the view, is all. That's probably the first thing I'd do if I ever got the chance to go to Israel since where I was born, that's what people do when they go someplace new. They try and get the lay of he land and they'll climb a tree if they have to.

No need for me to compromise the dignity of Ricochet by getting stuck in a tree and requiring the aid of the fire department to get down--here's the approach to Tel Aviv from the plane. I'll leave it as an exercise for other readers to point out the landmarks. (Look how cleverly I've concealed the "heck if I know" part.) This gives you a pretty good overview of the city and environs. 

The joke here is that this article just came out in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that Turkish Airlines' pilots are having certain issues with landing the Airbus. Taking off, no problem--coming back down again--tricky! And the storm we flew into was actually a bit rough. But I must say that personally, I've never had any problem with Turkish Airlines. Their customer service is very good. No doubt they take security on this route very seriously--just as seriously as El Al, which sadly no longer flies to Istanbul. This flight was perfect, and as you can see, very beautiful.

You ask, I'll report. I promise to at least try to answer every question our members leave for me in the comment section, so don't hesitate--and don't hesitate to remind me, either, if it looks as if I'm forgetting it. Things here are a little rushed and disorganized.  Or, more properly, I'm a little rushed and disorganized. Israel seems pretty slow-paced and organized, actually. But that's because I'm used to Turkey. 

Within five minutes of our arrival at Abu Ghosh, Claire and I were seated outside an Arab cafe sipping thick dark coffee and being plied with fried cauliflower, small delectable green olives, toasted pitot, and thick creamy hummus. Our host was Ibrahim, with whom we struck up a conversation and who quickly pulled up a chair for a schmooze and a nargila. (We didn't partake in the latter, although it smelled delicious.) 

Our conversation turned out to be pretty wide-ranging. Ibrahim is a Circassian Muslim with four children whose family has been in Abu Ghosh for generations -- his grandfather, by the way, lived to be 120. He considers himself Israeli, not Palestinian, but sympathizes with their frustration at their loss of property -- it's something he can relate to personally, since he can't get access to his grandfather's thousand dunams in Nataf (just up the road) even though he holds the deed to the land. With that said, when I asked how he would like to see the Palestinian situation resolved, Ibrahim said he believes they should have a state of their own on the land they now occupy -- but that they should forget about returning to the lands their forefathers left inside present-day Israel. 

I wanted to get some sense of his personal feelings toward the Palestinians beyond the question of national allegiance, so I asked what he expects his relations with them to be after they get their state. He said he hopes he'll be able to deal with them exactly the way he deals with the settlers in Hebron: he goes there to buy foodstuffs for his cafe. He currently gets supplies from Hebron, but also from Shechem and from Ramallah -- he's an equal opportunity purchaser. To Ibrahim, good relations with the Palestinians would amount to mutually beneficial business relations. I didn't get the impression that he anticipates or particularly desires anything much closer than that. "In Abu Ghosh, we love life," he said at one point -- possibly (although I can't be sure) an allusion to the death cult of Gaza.

I asked him straight out if he will want to be a part of the Palestinian state or to continue to be a part of Israel. He dodged the question slightly by saying that Abu Ghosh won't ultimately be part of the Palestinian state -- but did say pretty unequivocally that he has no interest in becoming a Palestinian. He's an Israeli Muslim, not a Palestinian one. "I am not from Gaza, I am not from Ramallah," he said. "I am from Abu Ghosh."

Many times during the conversation, Ibrahim -- who mentioned in passing that he had been injured in a terrorist attack -- said variations of "I just want to get along, to have a good life. You're a Jew, right? Jews, Muslims, Christians -- we're all the same." At one point he took my hand and held it next to his. "See?" he said. "I'm no different from you or from anybody else. You don't hurt me; I won't hurt you."

On the question of hurting people, Claire asked Ibrahim whether or not Islam instructs its adherents to commit acts of violence. He appeared shocked by the question, and said it's totally unacceptable for a Muslim to force Islam upon anyone through violence. He added, though, that if someone takes the property of a Muslim or commits another deeply offensive act (raping a daughter, for example), the Muslim has the right to kill the offender. He said he was not aware of any passages in the Koran instructing him to go out and kill non-Muslims. Whether such passages actually exist in the Koran or not seemed beside the point: the Islam Ibrahim professes to believe in is not the Islam of, say, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. (Not even close, it seems.)

It was a delightful and very interesting visit. Claire and I were made to feel as welcome as old friends and were encouraged to return soon and often. There were several things Ibrahim said, some of them unfortunately off-camera, that really resonated with me. One was "If you hurt me, I will not hurt you" -- a sentiment that sounded, to my ears anyway, more classically Christian than anything else. Ibrahim gave the impression of being a decent, good-hearted family man who just wants to get along, stay safe, and get through a sometimes difficult, unfair life with as little unpleasantness as possible. He is by no means without grievances against Jews; he simply prefers to look forward rather than backward -- to cultivate his apparently substantial Israeli clientele rather than nurse hostility towards us. 

We spoke today to Ibrahim, an Arab Israeli in Abu Ghosh. 

So, what do you think the solution to these complicated problems might be? How about an academic boycott of Israel? There you go, world-class idea.

Except did you notice that Ibrahim is Israeli? 

We thought about going to Hebron, but realized no one would speak to us on camera there on the Sabbath. Then it occurred to us that this would be largely true in Jerusalem, too. Finally, we figured we'd head toward Arabs--what were we going to do all day, shoot footage of the olive trees? We needed to speak to someone, after all.

So off we went to Abu Ghosh, a lovely Arab-Israeli village with the best hummus and rose-water cookies in Israel. And a lot of moderate Muslims, one of whom we interviewed at length. We'll have footage up later. Trust us, they really exist. And they're Israelis, too.

I can't tell you how good it was to see her. We had a lovely dinner, over which I nearly fell asleep, alas. The food here is world-class, as she keeps saying, and she's so right. 

The odd thing is that we both have a sense that for all the dangers of this region, we are lucky to live in it.

Turkey and Israel have far more in common than most people realize. The feud between these countries is particularly hard to bear because Turks and Israelis are in fact so much alike. When I get off the plane in the US, I feel a strong sense of dislocation and culture shock. When I get off the plane here, I immediately recognize the culture and feel at home. It's youthful, loud, vibrant, Mediterranean, under pressure. And it's struggling with such similar political issues: how to reconcile secular and religious cultures; how to cope with a pervasive terrorist threat; corrupt politicians--but trying all the same to muddle through with a brave, historic experiment in democracy. You see the same pressure-cooker tight-knit families, the same adoration of children. The people even look the same. There is no reason for these countries to be anything but the closest of friends. The rift is artificial, entirely manufactured.

I asked a few people today what they felt about Turkey. They smiled. They like Turkish people. They have fond memories of Antalya and the Grand Bazaar. They hope things will improve. 

Judith looks gorgeous--you can't see from the photos how tall and slender she is. I could talk to her for hours, and hope I'll have the chance this week.

We're both worried about America. We're both worried about this terrible thing that's happened to American universities, to American city life. To us, America looks grotesquely self-indulgent--how could we be arguing about whether there are too many white men in the military leadership at a time like this! We're both worried that the America we knew may be gone for good. We don't really know what happened, but it scares us. 

We're both glad to live in countries that feel, at least, alive and dynamic. 

Why did I only just see this in the news? 

Five members of an Israeli  family were killed Friday night when a suspected terrorist broke into their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed them all to death.

According to police, the suspect broke into the house armed with a knife and stabbed the mother, father and three children, aged 11, three and a three-month-old baby.

I'll tell you why: Because when settlers are killed, the world thinks, "That's just what they deserved. It's not news." Even when the victims are three children aged 11, 3, and a 3-month baby.

I report, you decide. 

Israel is a tiny country. Even knowing that, and even having spent a lot of time here before, I tend to forget it. I forget it because it's always in the news, so it winds up feeling more substantial in my mind than it is. It took me a lot less time to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem than it does to get across Istanbul during rush hour. And in fact, Israel's population--all of it, Arab and Jew--is about a third that of Istanbul. 

If you haven't seen it yourself, I don't think you can fully grasp the disproportion between the role this country plays in the world's imagination and its size.  When you read about the disputed territories, try to remember that the amount of land in dispute feels, when you look at it, like "about what you'd need to build a good-sized shopping mall."  

UPDATE: You do all realize the part about being drunk all week is a joke, right? And that I'm a vegetarian teetotaler who travels with her yoga mat? Anyway, for anyone who didn't get that, it's a joke. I'm the only journalist on the planet who locates the local Muay Thai gym before she locates the bar. Go on, ask anyone who's met me. 

***

We've got an exciting week coming up here on Ricochet--we're taking Ricochet to the Holy Land! That's right, your Turkey correspondent's been invited on a press junket to Israel, where she'll be hooking up with Ricochet's Permanent Holy Land Correspondent Judith Levy and our Pro-tem Holy Land Correspondent Mollie Hemmingway. Hosted by Act for Israel, together we'll be live-blogging, filming, and podcasting the entire week. 

Here are some of the events on our schedule. Questions for any of the people we'll be talking to? Things you'd like us to see and do? You ask, we'll investigate. It will be as if you're right there with us, especially when we go to the hotel spa together and comp it to Ricochet--right, Logo? Dead Sea Mud Mask Facial, here we come! 

We'll be meeting Gilad Shalit's parents on Sunday, then touring Givaat Zeev and Maale Edumim, which are settlements in disputed Jerusalem neighborhoods. After that we'll meet the IDF Central Command spokesman. 

Then, because this is a press junket, we'll be getting drunk. 

On Monday, we'll be going to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We'll speak to Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and the prime minister's Deputy of Communication, Mark Regev, where I plan to ask the all-important question, "Hey, why don't any of you communications whizzes speak Turkish? Haven't you noticed that this is the language Turkish people speak?" I am coming back with an answer to that question, folks, and if they think Hamas is persistent, they haven't seen Claire Berlinski when she gets in a lather about Israeli communication policy.

Then we'll have an overview briefing of the Iranian threat. After lunch, we'll be visiting JVP, a communication and animation startup (I may skip that so better to communicate what I learned in the morning with you, my Ricochet readers). Then we'll visit Teva, Israel’s largest pharmaceutical company. 

And then, because this is a press junket, we'll be getting drunk.

On Tuesday, we'll be heading to Tel Aviv and the Weisman Institute for an overview of their latest medical innovations. Then we'll be checking out Shai Agassi's electric car factory, which I'm told is the highlight of the trip. If we can pull it off, we'll podcast the whole thing, with video. After lunch, we have a briefing at the International Center for Counter Terrorism. 

Then, because this is a press junket, we'll be getting drunk.

On Wednesday, we'll be heading north toward Hezbollahland for a briefing with IDF Spokesman Yair Dotz and an overview of Israel’s Northern border. Then they've got us scheduled to see a soap factory, which they swear is interesting but which I may skip, because how could that be interesting? But who knows, I do have a thing for nice soap. The lure of soap samples could well rope me in.

Then we're off to see something listed in the schedule as a Druze village. I suspect the point of this is to show journalists that Israel's not just about Jews, so I may skip it, because I'm convinced of that already.

Did I tell you that I used to hang out in this neighborhood a lot when I was a teenager? I worked on a Kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee one summer, long ago, so this will be a little walk down memory-lane for me. Splendor in the grass and all that. I may go on my own little sentimental journey. 

Then, because I'll be all melancholy--and because this is a press junket--we'll be getting drunk.

Finally, on Thursday, we'll be touring the Sea of Galilee (I used to water-ski there, which is a very ancient historic tradition, you may recall.) I may skip that too because I've done that, and let's face it, at my age you need to recover from all that drinking. I'll probably just catch up on sleep.

After lunch we'll go to Kibbutz Beit Oren, which was devastated during the December fires, to learn more about the recovery efforts. 

And then, because this is a press junket, we'll be getting drunk.

So join us in Israel, Ricochet! Leave your questions and comments here, and remember, this trip is your trip: It's a press junket, so the whole point is for us to find the answers to any questions you might have about Israel. Don't be shy--we're off to the land that tact forgot. You ask, we'll report--loudly, without caring who we offend.  

See you at the bar!