JofGold's Summer Fellowship

My tour of the Golan Heights started by my tour bus driving due east, into the West Bank, passing through the Judean Dessert and the Palestinian town of Jericho. After that we headed due north, driving along the Jordan River and other small towns in Israel until we reached the Sea of Galillee, or Kinneret. From there we went around the Kinneret from the right side, passing tourist-dependent kibbutzim like Ein Gev and others. North of the Kinneret, we passed through the Israeli town of Rosh Pina and Kiryat Shmona, until we reached Misgav Am, a kibbutz located on the Israeli northern border with Lebanon. "There is no Lebennese police here," said Arie, our speaker from the kibbutz, as we sat at an outlook overlooking Southern Lebanon's hills and valleys where small villages and cities are scattered along this scenic view which is also one of the most voletile border. "Its like the Wild West," continued Arie, "Hezbollah (The Syrian Terrorist group) controls the villages here. Look below at the village...you can see the yellow Hezbollah flag at the entrance of the village." As Arie was showing us the geography of southern Lebanon, a UN helicopter flew by, completing its first out of two daily flights over the border to make sure there is no violence. Before Israel left souther Lebanon during the late '90s, Kibbutz Misgav Am enjoyed the buffer created by the Israeli military presence in souther Lebanon, but now they are at the forefront of Hezbollah's vicious barrage of rockets and mortarts it fires into Israel, especially at the naighboring towns of Kiryat Shmona and Metula.

After completing the sceenic visit of Kibbutz Misgav Am, we learned about the attack on the Kibbutz by Hezbollah terrorists after an Army incident involving a storm and the electric sensors of the border fence failing to alert the Kibbutz about the approaching Hezbollah attackers cutting into the fence, killing the secretary of the Kibbutz, two soldiers and a child in the childrens' house. The story was the first of so many stories yet to come.

We then travelled through the Golan Heights, passing Mt. Hermon, at its peak it being the tallest point in Israel where Israelis flock to go skiing in the winter, we arrived at Kibbutz El-Rom, the home of El-Rom studios, where we watched the movie OZ 77 about the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Then we drove down to a lookout point on Mt. Bental, where we were shown views into Syria, and the fertile Golan Heights filled with winneries and orchards of plums, apples, and cherries. On top of Mt. Bental were also sculptures of monsters, animals and obscure figures.