Written by Eli

After a Saturday exploring the Old City and East Jerusalem, we spent Sunday touring the New City of West Jerusalem with our amazingly knowledgable and cool tour guide. He took us through a cross section of residential neighborhoods, all of which had stories behind them. He explained to us how the original Palestinian people living there were forced out of their houses by the Israeli government during the 1948 war. We also saw a booth protesting the Israeli government to try to get back Galid, who was an Israeli soldier taken by Hamas as a hostage five years ago and has become a popular symbol for the Israeli people.
Craig's photo:

Next we went to the market in West Jerusalem, where we grabbed falafels for lunch and ate in a park. Priceless moment of the day: Ben and Siena guessing correctly the wifi password of a nearby house - "moses." After that we went to a cemetery on Mt. Herzel, which is named after the founder of the Zionist movement, and saw the graves of various Israeli prime ministers and soldiers. After that we went to the Holocaust Museum, which was a little bit of a disappointment to some of us, including me. It seemed as if the tour guide (not ours, a different one) was trying to force certain emotions on us and telling us how to feel instead of letting us interpret the experience for ourselves. (Props to Ben for finding the lost headset - they wouldn't let us leave until we returned all of them, until the last one was discovered in the wrong basket)
We met over dinner with four Palestinians living in Israel, who were our age and really interesting to talk to. They were former participants in Seeking Common Ground's summer program, and we saw a photography project one of them made with the theme of Palestinian roots in Israel. Afterwards, we met with two members of the Bereaved Family Forum. These were an Israeli man and a Palestinian woman, both of whom had lost loved ones to the conflict. They both told us how at first they wanted to take revenge. The Israeli man described how he overcame that desire: "I realized that if I shot the Palestinians, that would only cause their family members to want to take revenge on Israeli's, and I would be continuing this cycle." Listening to them talk was incredibly humbling and moving. We ended the day with a check in/debrief, and we all shared our individual thoughts and observations about the trip so far.
Eli at the Blog: