Another in my ongoing posts from Israel:
Today we reunited with a family I was close to while a student in Moscow in 1980, and had not seen since 1984 in Moscow. It was great, and very satisfying. The parents, now in their early 80's, have a life story about which history books should be written. To see their son (my age) and his beautiful family in Israel was beyond anything I could have expected in those horrible days in which they were subjected to retribution and imprisonment.
Most of the day was spent touring the central "West Bank" area including Itamar, Barkan and Ariel in the
Shomrom hills. This represents only a small slice of the "settlements."
For background on the legality of the settlements and the popular misconceptions and deceptions, see:
Itamar
The longest part of the trip was the drive to
Itamar, which is located on top of a high ridge overlooking Nablus in the distance with views towards the Jordan Valley.
[caption id="attachment_60307" align="alignnone" width="550"]
(Itamar map, Samaria, Israel)[/caption]
Itamar,
founded in 1985, is an rambling agricultural community of
175 families spread over quite a distance, with a dairy, goats, chickens and vineyards (which looked to me to have been recently planted). The products are "organic" and apparently sell for quite a high price in the main Israeli cities. We had some fresh yogurt at the small public café.
Unlike Barkan and Ariel, discussed below, many (but not all) of the homes were nothing more than simple trailers or small block houses:
[caption id="attachment_60297" align="alignnone" width="513"]
(Itamar, Samaria, Israel)[/caption]
In this photo of my wife taking a photo of me, you can see how Itamar towers over the surrounding landscape (our "guide" for the day -- my friend from Moscow days -- is to the left):
[caption id="attachment_60298" align="alignnone" width="545"]
(me at Itamar)[/caption]
Itamar has a
long history of being attacked by Arabs from neighboring villages, the most infamous of which was the stabbing murder of the Fogel family, including a baby in its crib. We covered that event extensively:
