Atlit, Caesarea, and Netanya

The morning started when we came out of the Akko Youth Hostel to load up the car and move on to our next location, and a pack of cats were startled out of their cool hiding place under our car (there must have been a half dozen of them). There are TONS of stray cats in Israel (I seem to remember hearing that the British brought them in to control the rats), but the number seems especially high here in the Mediterranean Coastal cities. We started driving and heard that the radio was playing sad, slow music for Tisha B'Av (the Jewish fast holiday today that commemorates the destruction of the Temple). It was cool to feel like Christian people must feel when they turn on the radio at Christmas time and all of the music is about their holiday.

Our first stop was back to the Chinese restaurant in Haifa where Abe has accidentally left his credit card the day before (Oops!). The owner reassured Abe that it happens all the time, and proved it by opening his cash register drawer to reveal a huge stash of lost cards! That minor crisis resolved, we continued on down the cost toward Atlit. because we had a little bit of time to spare before our noon tour, we pulled off just south of Haifa to play on the beach a bit. There is a major jellyfish invasion on the Med. coast of Israel right now, so even though we've been close to the beach, we haven't yet gone swimming. Sure enough, we saw a jellyfish the size of a football helmet washed up on the shore. The kids still had a blast playing in the sand, and dipping their toes in the water (there were some people swimming without incident).

The tour of Atlit was amazing. Atlit was a detention camp where the British sent Jews who tried to immigrate to Palestine illegally in the decade before Statehood. The British White Paper of 1939 had set low quotas for Jewish immigration to Palestine, and there were many people who wanted to come (especially once "HitlerZionism" as they called it became more widespread - i.e., people who weren't especially Zionist, but had no alternative, thanks to the Nazis). So, the Haganah and other Jewish organizations would load would-be immigrants onto ships, the British would usually intercept the ships, and the people aboard would be sent to detention camps like the one at Atlit. From there, they were sometimes sent to other camps (mostly on Cyprus), sometimes sent back to their country of origin (e.g., sent back to die in Germany), and sometimes allowed to settle in Palestine. Once the war in Europe ended, there was a flood of refugees and Atlit was crowded. You can imagine how it would have felt, to survive the war, and then to be sent by the British (sometimes in cattle cars) to a camp surrounded by barbed wire, asked to relinquish your belongings to be disinfected and to take a shower, and then assigned a bunk in a cabin of 70 other prisoners. Terrifyingly familiar. Now, I should say, Atlit and camps like it were not like Nazi concentration camps. The detainees were fed, people from the Yishuv came in to teach Hebrew classes or skills, they grew gardens, married, and had babies in Atlit. Still, they were prisoners there, sometimes for up to 2 years, and had no idea what their fate would be. We had a great tour through the disinfection building, a barracks, and a ship like one of the ones the refugees would have come in on, complete with the kind of movie/multimedia presentation that Israel so excels at. It was extremely well done, interesting and thought provoking.

Next, we went to Caesarea (National Parks Pass, baby!) and spent almost 4 hours exploring this incredible archeological site - which includes the remains of an impressive Herodian city (hippodrome, theater, bathhouse, palace, etc). The visit starts with a room where you can interact with and ask questions of holograms of various figures from history whose stories relate to Caesarea. We "interviewed" Herod and Pontius Pilate, Rabbi Akiba, Baron de Rothschild, and Hannah Senesh among others. This was followed by 2 movies on the history and structures of Caesarea, and then we just explored. The site is much more commercial than I remembered it from 20 years ago, dotted with cafes and art galleries now, but it is still a amazing site full of history and beauty, with the water from the sea coming up and over the dock alongside the ruins.

Finally, we came to Netanya, where we are spending the night at the lovely Hotel Orit (a swedish-run hotel). Although we had only a few hours in Netanya, we made the most of it! We took a picnic down to the beach, where we sat in the grass and watched the sun set over the water. When there was about 15 minutes left of sunlight, Sylvia and I went to the playground where we played along with kids speaking Hebrew, Russian, and French (the 3 main languages in Netanya). Abe and the big kids went down to the beach - where lots of people were swimming and dipped their toes in the sea. Although we were tired, we decided to go for a short walk on the midrachov (main street). Tisha B'Av was just ending and people were pouring out of synagogues to break their fast. Meanwhile, in Kikar HaAtzmaut, we found the highlight of the day for the kids - a fountain to play in, with color changing spouts of water shooting out of the ground at random times and heights. They got drenched and LOVED it. After a little while, some music started playing and once the kids got out of the fountain, we discovered that videos were being shown to accompany the music on the spray of the water. Tres cool!! Netanya is our kind of place - wish we could stay longer!