Wednesday, the 2nd of March
Today we were scheduled to go on a tour of Jaffa (or Yaffo) which is the old port city south of Tel Aviv. I wasn’t exactly sure of where we were supposed to meet or how long it would take me to get there so being the “Type-A, Western, Goober” that I am I arrived about 30 minutes early to the tour.
As I was walking up the tayelet (TAY-el-et), which is the promenade along the beach, to Jaffa I started noticing helicopters circling the area where I was headed. As I got closer I noticed several dozen police cars and groups of police officers hanging out. My first thought was that since it was early morning that they must have just finished a training mission. However, when I walked off the tayelet into the square where we were meeting I got a big surprise. I turned the corner to see hundreds of officers in full riot gear in neat rows. (News reports varied with estimates between 300-500.) Still, in typical Israeli fashion there was absolutely no evidence of tension so I thought maybe they’d just finished some training exercise. Then I noticed the journalists. Now I know that journalists don’t show up to see training exercises. Maybe a few local stations would, but not the BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN etc. (Aren’t ID lanyards handy?) At this point I started to think “well maybe I should figure out what’s going on and where I should be.” Pretty soon I'm surrounded by undercover police officers and ushered away from the area.
Turns out it was a protest by right-wing Jewish activists. About 50 of them showed up to be protected by ten times that number of police officers. It certainly made for an exciting morning for me.
The tour of Jaffa itself was awesome. Jaffa is the port Jonah left before being swallowed by the big fish, Paul left Jaffa on his way to spread the Gospel around the world etc. According to historians, it is the oldest port in the world that has documented continuous usage. Some really cool sights.
I'll post pictures from all this later. I promise.
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