The view from here

I am falling behind in my posts - slacker!  Sunday was a quiet day, as I had a project to complete so I spent most of the day sitting at my favorite neighbourhood cafe, in the sunshine. Mostly not working. 

Cafe Masaryk

In the evening, I walked to Jaffa to have dinner with Rafi's cousin Avi and his mother at a restaurant called Doctor Shakshouka and yes, they specialize in shakshoukas, a dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, chili peppers, onions, served on a pan. They also serve other Libyan specialties. The location is very picturesque; sort of a mix of shabby-chic and middle eastern, with long shared tables, and very casual. Not sure which look wins.

Doctor Shakshouka

Monday I went to an amazing and often overlooked place, Akko. I had been invited to meet with a telephony company located about 30 minutes outside town - and jumped at the opportunity to go there. Rafi and I visited Akko four years ago and I remembered it as a beautiful Arab town by the sea and was happy to go back.

(Before going to Akko, on the way to the train station in the morning, the cab driver took me via the "scenic route" which, on the one hand really bugged me and cost me an extra 10 shekels, or 3 bucks, but on the other I realized I have been here long enough to know when a cab driver does you in. I don’t feel so much like a tourist now; worth the extra 10 shekels.)

The train ride took about 90 minutes. The ride is all along the sea, so most of the time you can see the Mediterranean roll along, on miles and miles of sandy beaches. Too bad the train windows weren't the kind you can open so I could smell the breeze.

Akko is a port city in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. Akko is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the country, probably five thousand years, and the holiest city of the Bahá'í Faith.  Its Old City has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and there are remarkable sights (and sites). It doesn't get as many tourists as it should (do I real mean this?).

The Old City is a sleepy place -- and that makes it so charming (the new city surrounding it is fine, populated mostly by Russian immigrants who got here in the 1980s and 25% of the population is Arab Israeli). The Old City is compact and within a few steps you can visit sites like Ottoman ruins to Crusader foundations and more. 

Fun Fact: 1799 was a big year for Napoleon as his siege of Akko failed and then his battered army returned to Cairo and Napoleon secretly left Egypt after that. But things could have been different. Napoleon actually tried to negotiate with Chaim Farhi, the Jewish assistant to the ruthless Ottoman ruler, to switch sides by issuing the first post-biblical call for a Jewish homeland under French protection in this land, way ahead of the British Balfour Declaration by 118 years. Farhi declined and Napoleon came crashing against Akko's walls. The end.

Most Israeli Arab citizens live in the Galil, and Akko is often regarded as an example of coexistence. The city, oddly enough, has a very violent history but since the creation of the State of Israel, other than riots that erupted in the city in 2008 after an Arab citizen drove through a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood during Yom Kippur leading to five days of violence (not bad violence apparently), it has been a beautifully boring town.

In Akko I took a cab ride from the train station to the old city to look around. Here are some views....

Port view

Souk fishmonger

Souk

Inside the main Mosque

Main Mosque courtyard

Main Mosque courtyard

View from the ramparts

Climbed the Old City walls that did Napoleon in

View from the ramparts

A lane in the Old City

Inside the Mosque

I didn't have a lot of time before my meeting so I walked to see the Old City walls, the port, the souk as well as the Mosque, and found the restaurant I was looking for, which is mentioned In the book I am reading, Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation by Martin Fletcher, an NBC News journalist who lives in Israel (the book is OK, but I am actually trying to get the author’s email address to take him to task on some of his unbalanced narrative, but I am enjoying parts of it nonetheless).

The restaurant is called Hummus Sa’id, right in the souk. There, I asked for the menu (probably not the first giveaway that I am a tourist here) and was told everyone orders the same: hummus with chickpeas and olive oil; pickles; tomato slices; hot, sweet tea; and pita (I should have known: this is what the book’s author had). I am not the biggest fan of hummus but I have to say this was absolutely the tastiest, most velvety humus I have ever had.  Unfortunately I couldn't linger here as one should, because I was planning on meeting Ruth Bridger, who was driving me to the Galilean hills to the meeting in her company. The waiter kept shaking his head each time I asked for the bill. I was not staying long enough, and he was right. I left feeling slightly nauseous, as the stuff is heavy and I ate too quickly, but it was worth it. I hope to come back.

Best hummus ever

The Galilean hills are beautiful, gently sloping and very green. Ruth is the first woman in high tech I meet in Israel (there aren't too many in North America either), and we had a wonderful conversation (no surprise). By the time we got to the Industrial Park where they are located, I had learned about her family, what her kids do, when and how she moved here from California, about her career, and what it is like to live here. It was fascinating – and I could so relate to her! (She looks a lot younger than me but we are both Scorpios and the same age.)

What fascinated me the most were Ruth’s many examples of coexistence between Arabs and Jews in this part of Israel. Being in high tech, lots of her stories involved high tech examples. I heard that in Nazareth, the Israeli government funded an Incubator to aid the Israeli Arab sector, focusing on bio-med. A former employee in her company has done three start-ups, and they are all highly successful and their valuations are increasing all the time. Plus, the one start-up that originated in the Incubator has since moved to Ruth’s building as well.

There is a Arab-owned call centre company in her building that provides jobs for Arab women who, because of cultural reasons, do not want jobs where they interact with men (I have heard similar stories about creating employment in call centre jobs for Orthodox Jewish women too).

Unemployment in Israel is low, about 6%, and this is especially true in high tech where there is so much competition for qualified people and pretty much everyone dreams of "doing a start-up". I asked Ruth if this “institutionalized racism” Israel-haters talk about is real in her industry. No, she told me, high tech companies hire Arabs and anyone else with the right skills.   "Where you've got talent, you take it" Ruth said.  

Most fascinating was a story Ruth told me about a Moslem Arab man in the nearby town of Sakhnin who, just like his father and grandfather before him, volunteered and served in the IDF (Arab Israelis are exempted from mandatory service).  When deployed, he was stationed in Hebron, a real hotbed of violence in the West Bank, and this was extremely helpful to the IDF's goal of keeping order as he understood how to speak to the locals. But this isn't Disneyland, so he has been ostracized and spat upon in his village. 

In a recent documentary called  Ameer Got His Gun  (the link to the promo is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OY6wZ84hyU) he was interviewed and said words to the effect that "I live here and I support my country, and while I don't agree with everything the government does, neither do the Jews."

Truer words I haven't heard here so far.