The Crusaders!

As we waited in the lobby for our next full day tour, I couldn't help but wonder ...if we dug deep enough down, underneath the receptionist desk, would we find another desk that's centuries older!
And maybe we'd find out about an ancient and wealthy lost civilization called the Hiltonites, who built reservoirs of water they called "pullz" wherever they went. We call them "pools" today!

This day's tour was to hug the Mediterranean coast, to the very top of the state and the Lebanon border, with 4 major stops along the way (Caeserea, Haifa, Acre and Rosh Haniqra).

Our guide and linguist for this group tour day would be Amir Ben Dror.  He was very knowledgeable and thorough, providing facts but also the impact the events had on the culture of the time.  He presented a lot of different information throughout the day and had quite a dramatic flair to his delivery. I thought he did a great job of not being bias to any one culture or religion as well.

Fittingly he taught us some Hebrew greetings initially.  He said "boker tov" meant "good morning", "laila tov" meant "good night" and "mazeltov" meant "good fortune".  With of course "tov" meaning "good".

He told us that the word "Tel" means "archaeological mound" and the word "Aviv" means "spring", symbolizing renewal.  He said this name was chosen for the new city to embrace the idea of the renaissance of the ancient Jewish homeland.


He said Israelis are all scavengers of the Ottoman Empire, when the Ottoman's ruled for 400 years with no borders in the area.
He said Israel's lawyers per capita is something like 6 out of 1000 people.  And he said not only is the cost of living high there but ..."we have inflation of righteousness here"  :)


He told us about  Theodor Herzl (his good friends called him Herzliya) and how he formed the World Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish migration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state (Israel).   These goals of the Zionist movement were stated by that organization in 1896.

"Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a legally assured home in Palestine. For the attainment of this purpose, consider the following means serviceable:

(1) the promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists [farmers], artisans, and tradesmen in Palestine;

(2) the federation [unified organisation] of all Jews into local or general groups, according to the laws of the various countries;

(3) the strengthening of the Jewish feeling and consciousness [national sentiment and national consciousness];

(4) preparatory steps for the attainment of those governmental grants which are necessary to the achievement of the Zionist purpose."."

Herzl wrote the books "The Jewish State" and "Old and new land".


Our first stop for the day was the Caesarea Maritima, which is a national park, right on the Israeli coastline.  The ancient city and harbor there were built by Herod the Great about 20 BC. It was a Roman province for a couple hundred years.  Much later in history, around 1200, it was a major Crusader stronghold.  It is the location of the 1961 discovery of the 'Pilate Stone', the only archaeological item that mentions the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, by whose order Jesus was crucified. It is the only evidence for the historical existence of this person, otherwise known only from the New Testament.

The park was rebuilt and funded by a strong supporter in Zionism in the 20 century, Edmund Rothschild.  He bought 500 sq kilometers of land in the area. He also started a winery in Mount Carmel, aptly named Carmel Winery.  It is the largest winery in Israel, with a local market share of almost 50%!  They produce 15 million bottles a year!  If you can believe it, in Hebrew "carmel" means "god's vineyard".


In the Roman theatre there, Amir took center stage and sang to us. I believe he was singing something Hanna Szenes wrote.  He told us about her some and her story found online is sad but inspiring.

Hanna Szenes (Senesh) was a Hungarian poet/playwright who enlisted in the British Army during WWII and parachuted into Yugoslavia to assist in the rescue of Hungarian Jews about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz. However, she herself was captured, tortured and was eventually tried and executed by firing squad. She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where her poetry is widely known.  Her most famous is a four line poem titled "A Walk to Caesarea"...

My God, My God, I pray that these things never end,
The sand and the sea,
The rustle of the waters,
Lightning of the Heavens,
The prayer of Man.

The following lines are from the last poem she wrote, "Ashrei Hagafrur", after she was parachuted into Yugoslavia:

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake.

There are so many layers of history there...but so little time to review it.   Just a few weeks before we came to Caeserea a large cache of medieval gold coins were discovered off it's coast.  As this article discusses, not only does the gold capture the imagination but the historical story it lays out is fascinating as well.

From there we drove up the coastal range called Mount Carmel and into Haifa.   We parked and took in a viewpoint on top of Haifa and listened about the Bahai religion.








On the way out of Haifa we saw a strip mall, just outside of town, that had a McDonalds, an Office Depot and an Ace Hardware!





Come on! An Ace Hardware!  Seems strange.  "Ace is the place with the helpful hardware Jew" ?

I whispered to Randi..."I wonder if in Hebrew 'Mc' means 'shit' and 'Donalds' means 'food'".

We continued driving north to Akko (also known as Acre), a city known to be where Arabs and Jews live in harmony! During it's history the inhabitants there became a melting pot of Europeans, who came there for the Crusades.





Though excavations have shown fortifications existing there for thousands of years, the Crusaders are credited with constructing a more sophisticated system of fortifications, composed of tunnels, wall and towers. We walked through many rooms of the impressive, well restored, Crusader-era fortress. These fortifications though fell relatively easily to the Muslims. Shortly after their victory at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin, on 9 July 1187, the city surrendered to Saladin and its Christian inhabitants were evacuated.  But just a few years later the Muslims surrendered to Richard the Lion Heart, King of England and Philip Augustus, King of France (leaders of the Third Crusade) on 12 July 1191.  Akko would be the Crusaders foothold in the Holy Land for the following 100 years. Its port served as the Crusader Kingdom's link with Christian Europe, and also for shipping valuable cargoes westward, that originated in the east.

We had a very mediocre lunch in Acre.  It was kind of a "mystery meat shawarma" that was ok.  The 14 salad treatment, was significantly downgraded there to around 6 plates and it wasn't very good.

We talked about more recent history and the Ottoman ruler in the late 18th century, Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar, who was affectionately known as 'The Butcher' and his main counselor who was a Jew.  They are credited, along with a British reinforcements and their artillery expert, Antoine DePhelipoux, in handing Napoleon one of the few defeats of his military career, at the siege of Akko.

We went underground to visit the Hospitallers fortress. Amazingly preserved, unlike Caeserea, where there was almost nothing completely intact.  Strangely though when we exited the fortress, we ended up going through a back door of a seemingly unrelated market shop and then right out into the middle of the market. Seems like the Indiana Jones music could have been queued right there and we should have took off running and knocked over an old man pushing a cart with olives or something.  I'm really not sure exactly where we were or why it is setup like that?

Then after a walk along the walls of the old fortress by the sea, we went through an ancient Templar tunnel.  The tunnel was discovered by chance in 1994 when a woman resident, living above the tunnel, complained about blocked sewage. While searching for the underground blockage, a plumber is said to have found the tunnel, that proved to be roughly 400 yards in length, connecting the fortress in the west, to the city's port in the east. That's why they put warnings on that professional strength Liquid Drano.  It really works!!  It took 5 years of renovation, adding a walkway, lights and access, before the tunnel was opened to the public in 1999.   I'd really like to visit Akko again someday.

 After Acre we drove even farther north, to Rosh Haniqra, right on the Lebanon border.  We didn't know
we were going to Six Flags Israel and would be taking a cable ride down a white chalky cliff to see the spectacular, naturally formed, ghottos.  They were incredibly beautiful sea caves. They looked like the kinda place that Bond would park his boat in...James Bond . Really awesome!


After a really full day of touring, we went to dinner on the promenade by the hotel, to an Italian place called Lucca, where there may be a little-known policy of 'Americans must dine outside, even if there is room inside'.