My Experience in Israel – Peggy Hall

➡ Peggy Hall uses a personal anecdote to discuss her experiences in Israel, and her understanding of the current Israeli-Hamas conflict informed by her educational background in international relations and Arab-Israeli affairs. She compares Israeli and Moroccan cultures and shares her perceptions of security protocols in Israel and the West Bank.
➡ The text recounts the writer’s experience during their visit to Israel, mentioning the intense security measures in Palestinian territories and throughout Israel, including military presence and systematic checks. Despite this, the writer notes a harmonious coexistence between Arabs and Israelis in daily life, typified by popular Arab restaurants frequented by patrons of different cultures. The author also comments on experiencing socialist aspects within Israel’s economy, such as regulated business hours and communal living conditions in kibbutzim. The text concludes with a detailed account of intense security procedures at the airport during their departure, where their conversations with officials seemed more like interrogations.
➡ The narrator recounts her experience of strict airport security in Israel, particularly noting the scrutiny of a younger, unmarried female travel companion carrying a guitar. She reflects on the cultural contrasts and her fascination with learning about various cultures, religions and societal issues, also anticipating a future discussion on adversity she has faced and intends to analyze the history of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Hey, friends, peggy hall back with you from the Healthyamerican. org. I spent close to 90 minutes yesterday doing a live stream, covering a lot of the questions that have been coming up regarding this Hamas attack on Israel. So today I want to share with you my own personal experience of being in Israel. If you have questions about my outlook on what’s happening, please, please, I would refer you to that video that I just did.

And for those of you that are still asking questions that I didn’t have a chance to answer in the 90 minutes video, please stay tuned because I will be doing more videos coming up. In terms of where is the Gaza Strip? Why is that important? Who is Hamas? I’ll give you a little brief history about the creation of Israel. Many of you have asked me for that, and it is of special interest to me because I got my master’s degree in international relations with an emphasis on sort of Arab Israeli affairs, if I’ll put it that way.

Here is a picture. Let’s see if I can get that. This is my husband and Oops, and we are in Israel here. This is a few years before all the hogwash was sloshed all over us, and that is in a place called Caesarea. And just to show you that I was there, and I want to give you a couple of my impressions, because I think it’s important to understand how my view is, let’s say, informed by what I experienced personally.

Before I went to Israel with this small church group, we were doing a in fact, our purpose of going there was to do a community outreach where we were doing some surfing clinics. Yes, my husband and I both surf, and we had some friends at church that were also in the surfing community that had been to Israel many times. And they were putting together a small group. I think there were about ten of us, and we were there for about ten days.

And we had a surf clinic, more than one, where we had Israelis and Arabs who also could be Israelis if they were Israeli citizens. And we had Muslims who also could be Israelis, and we had non Muslims who were Arabs, and we had Israelis who were not of the Jewish faith, who were atheists. I think I made that clear. So there were all people from different faiths and ethnic backgrounds coming together in this surf clinic.

It was very interesting to meet people, to speak to them, to learn about their backgrounds. And while we were preparing for this trip, so many people said to me, peggy, I can’t believe you’re going to Israel. It’s so dangerous there. Aren’t you afraid of the terrorists and being attacked, know, bombs and all of that? And I said, no, if I was afraid, first of all, I don’t live in fear, but if I was afraid, why would I go and it’s in God’s hands anyway, and I have his divine protection and direction and peace.

So, no, I did not go with any fear at all before we arrived in Israel. Obviously, we flew there and we left from JFK Airport. I remember this very clearly, and again, this was years ago, so things may have changed from my personal experience at this time, but I remember we went into a certain lobby, if you will, before we got on the plane, and the boarding process happened super quickly.

So as soon as they opened the doors to the plane, everybody got on, like, at breakneck speed. I’ve never experienced this, and I’ve been on so many flights throughout my life. Then it was as if I barely had a chance to sit down and put on my seatbelt and literally the plane took off. I had never experienced anything that quickly. The flight attendants seemed very rushed, sort of like anxious.

Let’s go, let’s go. Get your seatbelt on. Let’s go. We’re taking off. And I thought, wow, they are not really going to delay at all on the ground. And I don’t know if that is one of their security protocols or not, but it was very interesting. In terms of getting on the plane in JFK, I don’t recall there being any additional security getting on other than the regular TSA.

I could be wrong. This was several years ago, so my know might not be exact on that, but I do remember clearly the taking off and what a sense of urgency that was. When we arrived, we went through our luggage scanning and all of that. We went through customs and we went through the duties. And they had guard dogs, I should say. Well, they look like guard dogs.

They were bomb sniffing dogs, I guess, or drug sniffing dogs in the airport. I wish I could show you pictures of that, but I had actually lost my phone, including most of my pictures. My hubby does have some, if you’re interested. I can do that on another show. But I didn’t want to delay in getting this out to you. I made a few notes to let you know my impressions in Israel, and there was quite strict security when we arrived.

One in our group had to have her entire suitcase open and gone through the others. They just had the dogs sniffing. And then we were asked several questions about where we were going, where we were staying, who we were going to be seeing. And because this was organized by somebody that had been to Israel before, it seems to me that that was a little bit easier for us because we were a part of a group, so we were not really drawing any attention in terms of security risks or anything.

And I will say that the gal that had her luggage checked thoroughly was the youngest of our group. And I’m just giving you some facts she had tattoos, and I don’t know if that was why she was singled out or maybe because she was younger. The rest of everyone, we were all married, so she was also single. So perhaps that fit their profiling. All right. When we were in the cities and we traveled all over Israel, we stayed several days in Tel Aviv and Jaffa, which is right around there.

We spent a few days in Jerusalem. We spent several days touring the entire country, where we went up to the Sea of Galilee, and then we went down to the Dead Sea. And during some of that time, we were driving right along the West Bank. I will bring you another video to tell you all about the Palestinian territories. And I know this is very controversial. There are some viewers that are saying, Why are you calling it Israel? It’s actually occupied Palestine.

So I understand that. My point in this video is to just give you my own personal experience of traveling in that area. We wanted to see the Holy Land. And it was very interesting to me. I will say that having lived in Morocco for several years and then having spent a very short time in Israel, I was struck by the difference in cultures. Whereas Morocco is very sort of lighthearted and very easygoing.

They’re very hospitable, very know marhaba. Come. Come to my house and have some mint tea. There’s music, and it’s a very sort of exotic culture. That was my impression, having lived there. And then when I spent time in Israel, I did feel this is just my own personal impression, more of a sense of things were repressed or suppressed or oppressed. And Morocco is the Kingdom of Morocco. They do have a parliamentary form of government.

I don’t even know if I’m saying that correctly with a monarchy, a very strong monarch who rules, know, with a lot of, let’s say, activity, he’s not somebody that just is a figurehead. So in the system of Israel, where they have a prime minister and their parliament, it is much more the president is not very active, and of course, there’s no monarch. So that was another thing that was different.

There’s so much to tell you about Israel. I enjoyed my stay and my travels very much. I didn’t feel the lightheartedness that I felt in Morocco. I didn’t feel that I had to be on my guard. I actually felt very safe. And I felt very safe because there were people walking around with machine guns everywhere. And when we traveled to Bethlehem, which is in the West Bank, so it’s in the Palestinian Authority, you actually are leaving Israel.

And you have to show your passport. And I do want to show you a picture of what this looks like. Okay, let me share my screen. This is the wall that is surrounding the West Bank. So you can see how impenetrable this is. And in order to enter. We had to go through a maze. You didn’t just walk through a door. There were several different gates and doors that were all shut behind you.

You literally went through a maze before it was your turn to give your passport and have that checked. And then you entered the town of Bethlehem on the other side of this. So this is just to give you an idea of the kind of security that they have around these Palestinian territories. So that was probably the time on the trip when I might have felt a little bit uneasy in that.

We were on the West Bank. We were in the Palestinian territory, but it was such a tourist area with little streets and shops and souvenirs and there were so many different tour groups there, and tour buses. We actually went to see Know. The reason why everybody wants to go there is because it’s one of the holy sites where Christ was born in Bethlehem. So you go to this special place of the Nativity, and I thought it was very well run in terms of how many people they had going in and all of the tourist aspect of it.

But I was struck by the very, very tight security getting in and getting out of the Palestinian territory. There was another time when the person that was driving our little van, as I say, we were very small groups. So there were just one car in one van, and we were driving along. Again, the West Bank, I think it might have been when we were going down to the Dead Sea, but somehow we needed to get back maybe it was coming from Bethlehem.

We needed to get back into Israel proper, and we needed to get into Jerusalem. And there are all sorts of very strict security, and this was years ago, so it probably has been beefed up since then. But there know the things that will pop your tires. There were different sections where you had to get through this one and show your passport. And then you’re kind of in no man’s land, literally, I think they call it no man’s land.

And then you had to go through another section before you could leave. So I felt this security was very strong everywhere. As I say, there were people going around with machine guns. My understanding is that every adult, able bodied adult goes through the Israeli military. And so they learn how to use these weapons, and they can fend for themselves. They probably learn self defense and all of that.

So I would say that the Israelis in general, meaning the people living in Israel, they’re pretty tough cookies. I felt that there was a little bit my impression of sort of an edge to them. They were very dynamic and maybe a little bit like, don’t get too close. These were the people that I met. So the other thing that I wanted to let you know, in terms of our trip, it struck me that the country of Israel, although it’s called a democracy, it’s very socialist.

Here’s an example. We were staying at a bed and breakfast, and the meals were not served until I think it was 830. And after a couple of days, we wanted to have a little more of an adventure, my husband and I. So we wanted to branch out into the little town of Jaffa, where we had seen some cute little cafes. And we thought, let’s have breakfast in one of these cafes.

And there were three or four that all were around a central square. And we arrived and we could see the doors opening a little bit. And we came into one, and he said, oh, we’re not open yet. It was probably a little bit before, I don’t know, 730, let’s say, in the morning. And we thought, oh, that’s all right. We’ll just go to the one next door. Then if they’re not open, we go to that one.

And even though the doors were open, they said, well, we know we can’t officially open until 730. So the state of Israel, my understanding, at least in this town, it was uniform. You could not open your shop before it was allowed, reducing any sort of competition. Like, we’re going to have the best coffee and we’re going to open earlier and we’re going to stay open later. There are very strict at this time that I was there very strict regulations regarding when you can open, how long you can stay open, and when you have to close.

I thought that was very interesting. I learned a lot about Israel and about the history of Israel, about the kibbutzes, about the socialistic way of living, about in one kibbutz in particular, they did not have any chairs. You had to sit on a bench because they wanted everything to be communal. They didn’t want somebody to be able to pick up a chair and move it to the corner of the room where they would sit by themselves.

In this one kabbutz, they also had the communal cooking area, so you could not prepare your meals in your room and be on your own. There was another very interesting aspect to this culture that I learned about from a documentary called Children of the Sun, I believe that’s the correct name. And it was about how the children were taken away from their parents, and they were raised in a communal setting.

And this was then at a very young age. And how heartbreaking it was for the parents that would hear the cries of the children all put away in a nursery, so to speak, or the dormitory. And even though these children were like 8910 years old, they still could not be living with their own family. If you’re interested, I can dive into that a little more deeply. It’s not really the focus of this video, other than it was my impression in living in traveling in Israel that people are living in much more of a socialist society than in the United States.

Not what I would call like a free and open democracy from my limited time being there. The final thing that I wanted to share with you was when we were leaving, actually, before I talk about that, I do want to talk about feeling comfortable in these cities and towns. And we saw that some of the most popular restaurants were Arab restaurants run by Arabs. There was a sense of camaraderie, if that’s a word I can use.

I didn’t get a sense that the Arabs were out to get the Israelis and vice versa. They were trying to live in harmony. They were very mixed in these cities, and I think for the most part, the ones that people that I talked to, they said, I just want to live in peace. I want to raise my family. I want to earn money. I want to enjoy my life.

They didn’t have a vendetta against the opposing ethnic group. This was my experience. In fact, I would say the best restaurants that we went to were the Arab restaurants, the Lebanese restaurants, and I love that kind of food anyway. And you would see Israelis, Jews, other cultures eating at these Arab restaurants. So my limited experience in speaking to people living there was that they wanted to just live and let live.

So I never had a sense that there was a terrorist attack that was going to break out or a bomb was going to go off. It was the exact opposite. I probably felt safer there than I did in Orange County, California, because of the strict security. Not that I’m in favor of it, mind you. I don’t want to live in a police state with all that high level of surveillance and security.

But I’m just giving you my impression that I never felt that there was the verge of a terrorist attack at any point. Here’s what I want to tell you about when I was leaving Israel. We left the rental car, and it was quite a bit away from the airport. Then they required that a driver, one of their official drivers, would take you from the rental car area to the airport.

So again, think of it in terms of security. That would reduce any sort of car bombings or carjackings or people driving into the airport or whatever else they might have on their mind because it was so controlled that only the official drivers could drive in. As we’re driving in, the driver was saying, how did you enjoy your stay? I thought, oh, he’s making small talk. Well, the small talk turned into an interrogation, and it turned into one where he was trying to trip us up.

So he said, did you spend time in Elliott, which is a tourist area close to the Gaza Strip in the southern part of Israel. And I said, no, we didn’t go there. We were pretty much in Jerusalem, galilee and Tel Aviv. Oh, but you enjoyed Eliad. No, we didn’t go. I three or four times he tried to trip me up into saying that I had been to this other place, which is right near the Gaza Strip.

So I don’t know if that’s just their modus operandi. I don’t know if he didn’t understand my English, but I believe that he was. And I believe that all of those drivers and everybody working at the airport, for that matter, has undergone very high level, let’s just say, security training to try to profile people, to see if they look nervous or maybe even with their physical appearance. There’s somebody that they’re profiling a certain age.

As I said, the gal that was traveling with us that was unmarried and was younger, she was the one that got singled out. And that’s what happened when we got back to the airport. Now, granted, she was traveling with a guitar. That would raise some eyebrows, I think, because it seems to me kind of cumbersome, and I don’t know I have never traveled with a guitar, but to each his own.

And as we were leaving, you go through the security again, and they ask you all these questions where did you go? Who did you see? How long were you there? And I will admit, it was quite intimidating. They’re behind these glass bulletproof booths with all the military garb on. Things may have changed in the years since I’ve been there, but this was my experience. So when our traveling companion, who was single and younger with the tattoos and the guitar, she was singled out again upon departure, and they took her guitar, and it seems like they took the guitar apart.

Maybe my memory isn’t serving me on the exact details, but I know that they searched it quite I don’t know how much you can search a guitar, but that was my experience with, wow, they are really serious about their security. So we also went through the metal detectors. There were also the dogs again, but I don’t recall going through the scanner that they have, like in the other airports that I don’t go through anyway because I don’t want all that extra radiation.

And then when we were departing Israel, interestingly, I felt that it was much more relaxed in terms of the vibe at the airport and the boarding of the plane, in contrast to the departure when everything was urgent and rushed. So that’s what I experienced. I’m glad that I went to Israel. I don’t know that I’ll be going back to Israel. I do like to travel. I’m fascinated by other cultures, other countries.

I am not here to pit any ethnic group, one against the other. I may have told you in the past that I speak Arabic. I lived in Morocco for many years. I am not of the Muslim faith. But I’ve studied just I’ve studied Christianity, I’ve studied other things because I’m curious about why people have certain beliefs and what drives their faith. So I just have a naturally open mind, and I’m curious about learning more things.

So I also want to let you know that I’m going to be wrapping up here, and tomorrow I’m going to be bringing you a video about how I’m being attacked. So certainly not on the level of what we’re being shown in Israel, but it’s so interesting talking about topics that are hot button topics and how people just use that as an opportunity to attack the messenger. I’m going to talk to you about the different topics, where that comes up.

I might even share with you a couple of the comments that I’ve gotten on both sides of the fence. And then I’m also going to share with you a little bit more about the history of the Gaza Strip of the West Bank. And I will continue to bring you shorter videos since yesterday’s was 90 minutes. So if you want more of the healthy American this afternoon and evening, more of Peggy Hall, I encourage you to go back and watch the previous video that I did, the Deep, deep, Deep Dive, which was not so.

Much about showing you the breaking news as it was an exercise in critical thinking and how to read between the lies that the media is spewing. And I know that you, my savvy, sophisticated, healthy Americans, knew exactly why I presented that yesterday. And I’m so grateful to have you all on board. You can always find me over at my free substac, peggyhall substack. com, where you can get a lot of this commentary in a written form and always Here, 04:00 p.

m. . Pacific, Monday through Friday, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming broadcast. .