A visit to Israel

A small country on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea has been in the news for the last several years. Wisconsin is approximately 6.8 times larger than Israel according to comparea.org and has a population of around 9-10 million people. It was created in 1948 as a place for surviving Holocaust victims and Jewish immigrants.

Ten years ago, I was invited to tour Israel by an Israeli company that manufactures components for dairy milking systems and the software to process the information those components collect. The majority of our group was farmers from British Columbia and Canada, with the remainder from the Midwest.

We landed at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv after an overnight flight from New York. It was Saturday, which is the Sabbath in Israel. The airport was almost empty. As I checked in at the registration desk, I realized I had lost my passport between the plane and the desk. I walked back to where I had stopped to re-organize my luggage and found my passport on the floor. That probably wouldn’t have happened if it had been a normal busy day at the airport. For many people of the Jewish faith, the Sabbath is a day of rest; strict followers may not even drive a car or use electricity on the Sabbath if they think their actions will cause others to have to work.

Our tour leader met our group, and our first stop was on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. We walked among the rocks and sand and asked why the steel gates were across the nearby road. The other side of the gates was Lebanon territory and visitors were not welcome. Our tour leader was a reservist, as is everyone who serves in the Israeli Defense Forces. All physically able young people are required to serve in the IDF – men for three years and women for two years. Israel doesn’t have a large standing army, but reservists can be called in for duty at any moment. Men are reservists until age 55 and women until age 50. These reservists may have 20-40 days of training each year to keep them prepared and trained properly.

As we were eating outside a tourist hotel on the Sea of Galilee one evening, young male soldiers would be on dates with other female soldiers, both carrying their rifles with them. They are trained to be aware of any terrorist situation that may occur wherever they are. We felt very safe during our whole visit; that might not be the case today.

There are only four rivers in the entire country; the only large one is the Jordan river. The others are very small and may only be a few miles long until they empty into the Mediterranean Sea. The Jordan River starts just north of Israel, flows into Lake Tiberius, and then flows into the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the lowest body of water on Earth. It is around 1,410 feet below sea level and is very salty. The salt concentration makes it impossible to sink while swimming in this lake. The salt and mineral content makes the water very irritating if it should get in your eyes. Bromine and magnesium are two major minerals extracted from the Dead Sea for use in Israel or exporting.

Most agriculture in Israel consists of vegetables and fruits, which are irrigated – usually by drip irrigation. Bananas and dates are grown in fields with large nets over them to keep the birds from eating the fruit. The workers told us that harvesting dates was extremely dangerous, because snakes tend to live in the date clusters, and when they pick them, they are hard to see. Bananas are one of the crops exported from Israel.

At the time of our visit, Israel had six larger dairy farms, each operating with about 600 cows. All feed for the cows was imported, went through one major feed mill, and then was distributed to the dairy farms. There are other smaller dairies in Israel, with many of them being located in a kibbutz. A kibbutz is a small communes with members sharing the food they grow. We visited a farm in the Golan Heights, which is on the east side of Lake Tiberius and near Syria. Because the climate was so arid, their manure dehydrates quite quickly and they only have solids to apply to fields. At the time we visited, they were experimenting with sorting milk with high components from milk with low components and putting them in different tanks. All the cattle were Holsteins. This land became part of Israel after the seven day war in 1967. A couple miles down the road from the dairy we watched a large military drone land on an airstrip adjacent to the highway. In the distance, we could see lights from a larger city, which was Damascus, Syria.

About six months after our visit, we learned that one of the dairies had been hit by a rocket from Gaza. Fortunately, no humans were injured, but some cows were killed.

A visit to Israel is a lesson in history. There are places in Jerusalem where we saw three layers of roads built by different civilizations over the last 3,000 years. It seems that each time a new civilization conquered the area, they destroyed the previous civilization’s churches and other structures. The Jewish second temple of Jerusalem was built over 2,000 years ago and was destroyed, but one wall remains and it’s called the Western Wailing Wall. It is a very holy spot and considered to be a place where Jews can talk to God. The city of Jerusalem itself has endured many conflicts and wars. It is divided into four parts: Christian, Muslim, Armenian and Jewish. The Way of the Cross and the room of the Last Supper are in the Christian sector. I can honestly say that readings in church on Sundays definitely mean a lot more after visiting places like Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, the village where most of the original apostles lived, or the spot where the Sermon on the Mount was given. I like history and there is an abundance of it in Israel.