By Josh Scheinert

It’s on the bus driving in from the West Bank where you really appreciate Jerusalem’s grandeur. The Old City creeps up on you from out the window. The sun, reflecting off the Dome of the Rock is almost blinding. Yet, you can’t look away; you don’t want to. This is it, what it all comes down to – so you want to make sure you take in every last glimpse of this city of gold that ignites so many passions.

By Michael Rom

At first glance, Peki’in is a tourist’s dream. The Galilean village is situated on the side of a hill, overlooking a green valley, from which it takes its Arabic name, al-Buqe’a (little valley). In the centre of the Galilean village is an ancient spring, ringed by cafes and restaurants. A little ways north of the spring is a cave, said to be the spot where the 2nd century kabbalist Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai hid for fourteen years from Roman soldiers. According to legend, although the great rabbi subsisted only on carobs from an adjacent tree, and water from the spring, he was able to compose the Zohar, the seminal text of kabbalah.

By Yousef Bashir

When the Intifada started in 2000, I was only in the 6th grade. Kids my age did not go to watch movies or travel with their parents for the summer time. Instead, we watched the young men throwing rocks at soldiers who were sitting behind strong, safe walls. Some soldiers used to beg the teenagers to go home and not waste their time. Collecting Israeli bullets was also a very cool thing to do or even waiting for an Israeli tank to get closer and then run away. This is what I used to do for fun when I was a kid. I also loved playing soccer in the street even though the ball was older than me.

By Ruth Stevens

Hebrew graffiti in the old city of Hebron calls for death to the traitors against God, presumably including everyone on our tour and a large majority of the citizens of Israel. It’s a bright sunny day. Many of the buildings here are quite old and have beautiful Arabic inscriptions carved into their facades or wrought in their gates. Most are locked, shuttered and abandoned. It seems that living nation of Israel, am yisrael chay, has quite effectively rocked the casbah.

By David Zameret

In September of 2005 I set out to explore the world. I had finished my undergrad degree the previous April and I was determined to see as much as I could. After nearly four months and twenty-four countries in Europe I flew from Athens, Greece to Ben Gurion Airport, just outside of Tel Aviv.

By Luke Savage

I am not a Palestinian. Nor am I an Arab. I am neither Jewish nor Israeli. Unlike many of the other voices that speak tonight my family did not come from The Old City or the West Bank, or from the bustling streets of Tel-Aviv. It fought the war on the safe side of the Channel, and not in the ghettoes of Warsaw or on the desert battlefields of El-Alamein. Canada is my land and I speak as a Canadian, whatever a Canadian is. S/he could be anybody, from anywhere; fresh off the plane from Dubai, or an Iroquois whose family has fished in the St Lawrence for a thousand years.

Myth – “A popular belief or story that has become associated with an … institution or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal.”

The following is a collection of short stories about my own myths and those of others I’ve encountered; those of Jews and those of Arabs; and finally, their causes and their consequences.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, like most others, is adversarial. The issues involved raise a barrier between the two sides (sometimes metaphorical and ideological, sometimes very real and physical). We deal with the ‘enemy’ when necessary, but it’s always impersonal and generalized. It’s never ‘Walid’, always ‘the Palestinian from the village’, never ‘Tomer’, always ‘the soldier at the checkpoint’. No names, no faces, only uniforms and keffiyehs with an increasingly sinister expression. Epithets and stones are hurled over the barrier, and we shake our collectively clenched fist in a gesture of frustration and refusal to just go away…

Dusk approached cautiously as I steered myself

Carefully, down the steep, age-worn steps. As I walked,

I let my hand run lazily along the stones.

Their softness, testament

To the thousands who had made this journey before, many of them running

I was not enticed, per se, by birthright’s web pages inviting me to Experience Israel! adorned consistently with photos of youths huddling happily together, advertising how incredibly intimate they had become over the course of their ten days together – in fact I suspected these were amateur models posing to receive generous stipends from Taglit’s overflowing coffers. I was more attracted by the free airfare…