This is a guest post from Israelinurse

I’ve spent the last two months or so putting our plans to move back to Israel into operation. Sorting out status and the appropriate paperwork, selecting a removal company, packing our furniture and belongings into cardboard boxes in spare moments during the day and by night dreaming that they wouldn’t all fit in the 20’x8’x8’ container, or if they did, that the ship sank in a stormy Bay of Biscay. In mid-March my daughter flew back to commence her search for a flat in the Gush Dan area, so I was left  to deal with the bulk of the packing up and the dispersal of anything designated ‘not going’ to charity shops or recycling. The removal men finally came on Erev Pessach; not the typical choice of slot for a Jewish mum, but the only one I could get. One of them cheerfully informed me that moving, especially abroad, is as stressful as divorce; he didn’t know the half of it.

We’re putting our house here in the UK up for sale, and I had decided that it would be considerably easier to give it the much needed ‘Changing Rooms’-style makeover after the furniture had gone, so the minute the movers had driven off, I began a top to bottom redecorating campaign of our ‘delightful Victorian terraced cottage with quirky original features’ (that’s Estate Agent speak for stairs of differing heights and those oak beams I always hit my head on). With a lot of help from family, that took just over two weeks and I finished painting the last bit of skirting board the evening before my 10 a.m. flight. In among the decorating I’ve also been cancelling direct debits, paying final bills, dealing with Estate Agents, closing bank accounts and cutting off the phone and broadband: in short, everything one does when one is leaving a place for good, including giving away the fridge and freezer and the most complex of all: trying to convince the TV Licensing body that they cannot continue taking money from me if I’m not going to be in the UK and trying to persuade HMRC to take money from me even though the tax year has only just ended.

Three days before my flying date, my partner in Israel got a call from the shipping company’s representatives to say that my container is arriving earlier than expected on this coming Sunday, and that I then have four days in which to complete customs clearance and transport it out of the port. Within those four days falls Independence Day, when everything will be closed, but still, with a bit of luck, it seemed possible. Little did I know that fate had other plans.

On Thursday morning my sister and brother-in-law arrived at 6:30 a.m. to accompany me to Manchester airport telling tales of some Icelandic volcano which had erupted in the night. At that time in the morning, this sounded just too surreal to be true. “Maybe we should phone the airport” my sister suggested. (Note to self: next time you cancel a telephone line, make the cut-off time after your flight leaves.) We set off anyway, listening all the way to the updates on the radio and hoping that my flight would manage to take off before the cloud of ash moved any further south. Upon arrival at check in, things immediately looked suspicious; an uncommonly large number of Jet 2 staff trying to look unusually helpful were milling around in the check-in area. The flight had been cancelled ten minutes previously. All they had to offer was a phone number which was probably constantly engaged, a refund or to stand in a queue with all the other two hundred or so hopefuls in an attempt to secure a spare seat on next week’s flight.

As I was trying to get my head round the implications of all this upon my shipment, the fact that due to the time difference my partner would soon be setting off on the three hour drive to the airport to collect me, that the next flight out of Manchester to Tel Aviv would be at best a week away and that for all intents and purposes I actually no longer exist in the UK, I felt a hand on my arm. “I’m a reporter with GMTV…” No time for that: at this stage not all flights had been cancelled nor the airport officially closed. I rushed to the information desk to try to get a flight out of Manchester to ….well, basically anywhere that would advance me on my journey, but no luck and within minutes it became clear that I wasn’t going to have the pleasure of looking silly in my British winter coat in balmy Tel Aviv anytime soon.

‘Operation Find Another Flight’ commenced as soon as we got to my sister’s house, which fortunately still does have a phone line and an internet connection, but of course thousands of other people were engaged in the same activity, so flights were disappearing at a truly incredible rate. Volcano willing, I’ll fly on Monday night from Heathrow, so if you happen to be at Ben Gurion airport very early on Tuesday morning and notice an exhausted and dishevelled woman who looks as though she’s been wearing the same clothes for the past 24 hours, she will have been. And that ridiculous smile on my face as I pass the Tnuva advert – ‘the cheese with the home’ – on the left going down the marble-paved walkway before passport control will be because it will never have felt so good to finally get home.

Now, if anyone has any suggestions as to how to make my explanation to the Haifa Port customs man – which is going to have to be ‘I was late because of a volcano’ – sound a little less like ‘the dog ate my homework’, I’d be very glad to hear them!

This is a guest post by Israelinurse.

I don’t know about you, but after a cold, dark week riddled with nasty carols, boycotters and antisemites, I think we’re due a dose of comfort food. Seeing as I can’t send hot liquids over the internet, here’s some visual chicken soup in the form of one of my favourite places in Israel.
(Click on photos to enlarge them.)

This is Nahal Samech in the Golan; one of many valleys which descend from the plateau down to the shores of lake Kinneret. In summer the streams are no more than a trickle, but in a good, wet winter you will see the locals out in their spare time ‘watching the flow’.

At the top of Nahal Samech lies Um el Kanatir, also known as Kshetot Rehavam; an ancient settlement which thrived by dealing in the bleaching of flax and growing olives.

Their techniques must have been advanced because apparently cloth was brought from as far away as Egypt to be treated in these stone baths using the soft, mineral-rich water of the Golan which is prized even today. ‘Kanatir’ means arches and an impressive arched building once stood above this network of baths. So well did Um el Kanatir prosper that in the 5th century the villagers built themselves a new synagogue on the site of their old one, with exquisite decorative stonework.  This is one of the famous south-facing synagogues, several of which have been discovered in the Golan.

In 749 CE the village was hit by a massive earthquake (this is, of course, the top of the Syrian-African Rift Valley) which devastated much of the area. Today the synagogue is being painstakingly excavated and reconstructed. Just above the site lies Moshav Natur – a thriving village of young couples, many born in the Golan. They are engaged in agriculture and raising a third generation in the beautiful wild landscape of the Golan, just as the villagers from Um el Kanatir did 1,700 years ago. Knowing that certainly gives me a nice warm feeling.

And that’s my answer to all the boycotters and haters.

This is a guest post by Israelinurse.

You know how it is when you’re looking for one thing and you end up finding something totally unrelated that you’d forgotten you had? The other day I found an old newspaper cutting in a recipe book. It’s a Jerusalem Post editorial dated Thursday, March 16th, 1978. It is, of course, yellowed and crumpled; seemingly old news,  but the words are remarkable  in that they portray just how little has changed in over 31 years on Israel’s northern border.

Five days before this editorial was written the Coastal Road Massacre took place in which 38 Israelis were murdered and 71 wounded by Palestinian terrorists coming from Lebanon. The editorial relates to the subsequent Operation Litani:

“Beyond Retaliation”

“It would be a mistake to view yesterday’s massive Israeli military action in southern Lebanon as a simple, though justified, act of vengeance, in retaliation for the PLO terror attack on Israeli civilians on Saturday.

“The action, despite its dimensions, was carefully restricted, both with regards to targets and means. It was intended mainly to foil the attempt by the terrorists to fill the political and military void which has been permitted to develop in southern Lebanon which abuts on Israel.

“This void resulted from a de facto Syrian military take-over of Lebanon down to the Litani River, which it did not cross for fear of Israeli intervention, coupled with Lebanese failure to extend effective control into the area south of the Litani.

“The no-man’s land thus created, together with the recent massive arms shipments from the Soviet Union to the PLO through the port of Tyre, came to constitute a serious security threat to Israel, and a murderous potential against its northern border settlements.

“Lebanese President Sarkis in attempting to stave off the Israeli action admitted that his government did not control the PLO-infested area south of the Litani. Defence Minister Ezer Weizman yesterday corroborated this admission.

“By last night it seemed clear that Israel’s major purpose is to clear and hold on to a wide strip parallel to its northern border until an effective anti-terrorist agreement is concluded with Syria and Lebanon. Provisions for keeping PLO terrorists away from the Israel border were said to have been included in the Shtura agreement, hammered out between the various forces in Lebanon at the time of the Syrian take-over. But for all intents and purposes the Shtura agreement was born dead.

“The Israel Government has made it as clear as possible that yesterday’s action in Lebanon will not serve as a pretext for Israel’s remaining in that territory. Israel wants security for its citizens, not other people’s lands.

“Yesterday’s military operation should, in fact, have come some time ago, as soon as it became clear that the PLO was filling the void left by the Lebanese Government. The reason it did not is equally clear: U.S. pressure against any Israeli intervention which it feared could lead to a confrontation with Syria.

“The reason the action could finally take place yesterday is also clear: the brutal murder at the hands of Lebanese-based PLO killers of scores of Israeli civilians,which, for the time being, swept away the political underpinnings of American objections.

“The need to wait for the murder of scores of innocent victims in order to justify resort to military action whose only purpose is to prevent terror, should say something about the moral priorities and prescience of U.S. diplomacy.

“It is also important to stress that the action should in no way prejudice the continued search for agreement between Israel and Egypt. On the contrary, one of the goals of the military action was to deprive the PLO of its southern Lebanese bases, that were used as springboards for forays into Israel designed to undermine the peace process.”

So, if we exchange ‘PLO’ for ‘Hizbollah’ and ‘Soviet Union’ for ‘Iran’ we clearly see that 31 years  down the line, little has changed apart from the names of the key players.

South Lebanon is still an area that country’s government cannot control;  a fact still cynically used by terrorists with foreign backing. Even worse – today’s terrorists actually form part of Lebanon’s government.

As for the international community and the US in particular, neither Operation Litani in 1978, Operation Shlom HaGalil in 1982 or Lebanon II in 2006 seem to have impressed upon them the need for urgent and far-reaching action regarding the constant threats on Israel’s northern border.

America is still tying Israel’s hands and Israel is still restricting itself in the scope of its self-defence.

Even if dozens of Israeli citizens are murdered yet again, will the world see the real nature of the threat located to Israel’s north? Most certainly could not do so in 2006. It would seem that blind bigotry has frozen the minds  which steadfastly  refuse to see what has been in clear view for over three decades.