Can we forget about the war for a bit? If I showed you where I am and who I’m with, would it make a difference to your opinion about the future of The Middle East?
If I told you a boat of 2,000 people left Haifa Port with hundreds of Israeli Jews and Muslims who had paid hundreds of dollars to be there, would you believe me? Would you be shocked?
If you would be shocked, then you probably haven’t really spent any time in Israel. You’ve probably developed an opinion of a place and a people based on social media reports of people who themselves don’t really see the full picture and news reports that show the kinds of things that news reports show.
You don’t need to turn a blind eye to the violence and injustice that exists in order to see the miracles of coexistence and shared success that is Israel. There is injustice. There is violence. And I’m not really sure that it’s so much worse than so many other places.
But, as we docked in Heraklion the graffiti here did not mention any other place. It said “Genocide cruises are not welcome”.
Well, I’m not sure of what a genocide cruise would look like, though some historical examples do come to mind. But none in my country.
Instead, you have a boatload of people from a remarkably diverse country sharing an experience that must seem inconceivable to the casual social media watcher. Hundreds of Muslim women in their hijabs sharing a cruise ship together with their husbands, children and extended family along with hundreds of Orthodox Jewish men, women and children and hundreds more secular men and women, girls and boys, all eating together, traveling together and getting along.
This won’t make the news, but it is a far better picture of what’s happening in Israel than anything you will see anywhere else.
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