I can’t remember when I became Jewish.

It could have happened when God’s divine handiwork gave my parents their third child. It technically happened when my dear foreskin was stolen from me just eight days into my existence. It even might have occurred when I stepped up to become a man, albeit a barely pubescent man, at my Bar Mitzvah when I was 13.

Growing up, the subject of my heritage seemed taboo and shameful. Not because being Palestinian is any of these things, but because the prevalent sense in the schoolyard was to belong, not to be different. People did not understand Palestine; where is that, why have I never heard of it?

There are many terrible answers to the question “where do you stand,” and the worst I can ever remember giving was “in Jerusalem.” Jerusalem? I’ve heard of that place before. An imaginary place. It lies directly between the edge of reality and the end of time. It lies at the centre of the universe. How strange to end up so far away. I’d just gotten off the bus from somewhere that seemed a lot closer.

This is my third visit to Israel, but this time is different. This time I want to get down to the bottom of things and to understand the political situation to the best of my ability. I am seeking the truth, but as I seek truth in a country that constantly shifts and is run by people with opposing ideologies, I find that my perspective changes on a daily basis. I have a deep love for Israel, but I know she is imperfect. Therefore, I am striving to make peace with that contradiction…

Eight years ago I dropped out of school and went to Israel to experience the magic of the Jewish homeland, my Jewish homeland. Things didn’t progress as smoothly as I expected. I got kicked out of my Kibbutz and wound up working as a dishwasher and a line cook in an upscale restaurant in Tel Aviv. But I was young and adaptable…

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.

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…

At first I didn’t think about it, but now I’m mildly alarmed that I was not alarmed. I didn’t really raise an eyebrow when my roommate and I went to the movies a week or two ago and we had to sit down behind a row of seven or eight young Israeli soldiers whose m16s clanked every time they moved in the dark theatre. I didn’t bat an eyelash when going through three different checkpoints to see the (in)famous Ibrahimi mosque in the West Bank. In fact, my friend Jo was even daring enough to take a picture of a soldier searching my bag at the second checkpoint out of the three…