The Jerusalem Trip

So I went to Jerusalem yesterday and today I went to Silwan. I'll first talk about Jerusalem. It was amazing. It's completely different than Tel Aviv. You don't really realize just how secular Tel Aviv is until you go to the Old City. That is the feeling of Israel at its heart I believe. All I saw around me was the religion. So many men wearing black hates and different types of facial hair... it was amazing. I wrapped T'fillin at the Kotel and wrote a note. Yes it's very cliche, but that's what you do at the Wall. The coolest part though was when I said the prayer. I went up to the Wall and touched it and I just got chills. Everything that I felt four years ago came back. The passion, the love, the connection, the history... all of it just came rushing back in an instant. There is no place like Israel, but there really is no place like the Old City. Then today, I went to East Jerusalem with J-Street. Now I don't really like J-Street, but my friends convinced me that this is the type of opportunity that I would get at no other time so I took it. Overall it was very boring, ill prepared, and not interesting except for the twenty minutes that we spent with a Palestinian man who lived in Silwan. We learned what the municipality of Jerusalem provides us and what they don't provide them and the latter is much, much larger. But the most interesting part of the conversation was when I asked a question. I asked him, "Do Palestinians believe that Silwan should be the capital of Palestine or would it include all 28 neighborhoods?" And his response was tremendous. He simply said, "Personally, I don't care. I don't care if it's Palestinian, Israeli, American, or whatever. I just don't want to be kicked out of my house." It was brilliant. No politics, no religion, no blaming. A simple request to not be evicted or have the constant threat of eviction from his home. And I couldn't agree more. No person should be under constant fear of losing his home. The West Bank settlements are a different story, but East Jerusalem is very simple. They should not be evicted. If they live there, then they live there and no law (Absentee Property Law) and no organization (ELAD/JNF) should be able to cheap people out of their homes.