Three must read articles

1) “Nuclear Israel revisited“, by Joseph Massad. This is a scathing op-ed that defies the (U.S./Israeli) conventional wisdom on nuclear proliferation. It helps put into prospective the history of agression and illegal acquisition of nuclear bombs by Israel. “The United States and Israel, which have been the major threats to world peace and indeed the major global warmongers since World War II, insist on telling the world that Iran, a country whose current regime never invaded any country (but was rather invaded by Saddam’s Iraq in 1981 at the behest of the dictatorial ruling Gulf oil-rich families and their US and French sponsors), is a threat to world peace were it to possess a nuclear device.”

2) “The Open Bigotry of the Neoconservative American Right“, by Mazm Hussain. This piece begins with the Executive Director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, dressed in Arabface, as a case study for the assertion in the title. It then proceeds to give more examples of how famous neocons routinely employ tactics straight from the Jim Crow era. My big takeaway was imagine if Palestinians dressed up liked Jews and said reprehensible things as some type of statement-quasi-political satire; the outcry would be much different than to those who do the same now but in reverse.

3) “GOP and TP on Obama’s foreign policy “successes”, by Glenn Greenwald. This post details yet another example of just how partisan the Democrats and so called ‘progessives’ are. Because Obama, a nice good Democrat, is praised for unilaterally assassinating an American citizen without trial, while George Bush, a big mean Republican, was said to have shredded the constitution just for mere torture. It’s amazing how those who could lampoon Bush for civil liberties abuses could praise Obama when he commits them more egregiously.

Three must read articles

1) “Next week, Palestinian freedom riders will board segregated buses in West Bank“, by Philip Weiss. This brief article tells about an exciting new movement to ‘freedom ride’ in the West Bank. In an attempt to highlight the separate but equal and apartheid policies of Israel in the occupied territories, Palestinian freedom riders will go on buses that only go through the West Bank, but go through illegal settlements which under the prevailing martial law, Palestinians cannot enter.

2) “The new IAEA Report on Iran“, by Nima Sharizi. Just a few days ago I discovered his wonderful work on the Iranian nuclear issue and Middle East politics in general. He does brilliant research and all of his articles, this one no exception, go into exhaustive detail on conventional wisdom and the reality; he’s similar to Greenwald is this regard. In this particular piece he helps to elucidate the significance of the recent IAEA report on Iranian nuclear facilities. He lays bare the convoluted ways U.S. politicians and media have twisted the results for the purpose of fear-mongering the citizenry to come to support illegal military aggression against Iran.

3) “Jewish resident of the West Bank accidentally killed by IDF“, by Mairav Zonszein. This highlights a recent unfortunate incident where an innocent man was killed. It makes clear the double standard within Israeli society that this man is considered the victim of an unnecessary and hostile act, where innocent people are killed routinely for simply being Palestinian.

Three must read articles

1) “Settler attacks during olive harvest not just random fanaticism“, by Moriel Rothman. This is written from a first-hand account of what’s going on on the ground. Moriel is a friend of mine, who is a New Israel Fund fellow, and is working for Rabbis for Human Rights for the year. During the olive picking season he has organized buses of volunteers to go to parts of the West Bank where settlers are notorious for attacking farmers and destroying their crop. I only went out one day to help (the second video was shot the day I was there), but he has been there nearly every day of the season witnessing what’s going on. The piece is a great short summary of his work with some video to accompany it as well.

2) “Book excerpt: With Liberty and Justice for Some“, by Glenn Greenwald. This is a powerful excerpt from Glenn’s new book that I can’t wait to get my hands on. Like many of his articles, the book’s underlying theme is how the powerful elite are immune from the rule of law, while the average American will spend years in jail for trivial things like pot possession. The excerpt featured here is on when Ford pardoned Nixon, and the devastating consequences of that decision. The conventional wisdom has long stated that this was great for the country, and Nixon shouldn’t have been tried because it would of polarized the public. What it really did was let a criminal walk free, and set a terrible precedent that has let the elite in politics and business do whatever they want and not fear any legal repercussions for their actions.

3) “Subway Ad“, by Say Yes to Colonialism. Linked here are just pictures from an interesting organization whose concept is to, “help Zionism say what it really means”. In their first endeavor they help to ‘clear up’ an ad of the reactionary StandWithUs on the NYC Subway.

No Home, No Homeland: A New Normative Framework for Examining the Practice of Administrative Home Demolitions in East Jerusalem

Earlier today The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions gave a press conference releasing its new report on Israeli housing demolition policy in East Jerusalem, and announcing that it will submit complains to the U.N. The following is the press release for the event (which I helped author):

“The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) will submit complaints to the UN’s Special Rapporteurs – claiming that Israel’s policy in East Jerusalem violates international law and may constitute a war crime. 

ICAHD will submit three complaints tomorrow morning to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of IDPs (internally displaced persons), the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, and the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestinian Territories. ICAHD will demand to open an investigation into the legality of Israeli policy in East Jerusalem.

The complaints are based on a report, launched Monday October 31st, that states that Israel is committing severe violations of international law in East Jerusalem. The report, written by Advocate Emily Schaeffer and edited by Advocate Michael Sfard, analyzes Israeli policy and practice in East Jerusalem under international human rights law and international humanitarian law. The report concludes that Israel is perpetrating serious violations of these laws by denying the right to adequate housing, development, and self-determination, as well as violating the prohibition on residency revocation.

Furthermore, the report states that demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem is, in the majority of cases, a war crime of destruction of property. By destroying homes, limiting the possibility to build legally, and denying permanent residency status of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Israel is forcing the migration process on the basis of ethnicity – which violates international law, and is possibly a war crime.

The report also states that there is evidence that the actions and policies implemented by Israel in East Jerusalem are designed to preserve a demographic balance in the city of a Jewish majority – a motive that is forbidden by international law.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is setting a precedent by turning to the UN. This is the first time that an Israeli organization has requested the opening of an investigation into Israeli practices.

“Seeking justice, we appeal to the international community. UN bodies are better equipped to investigate and rule of Israeli profane policies.” Said Itay Epshtain, Co-Director of ICAHD. “Unfortunately, the Israeli High Court disregards Palestinians’ human rights, in particular their right to adequate, safe and permanent housing, development and national self-determination.”

Advocate Emily Schaeffer, author of the report, warns about the consequences of Israeli policies. “The Israeli practices toward East Jerusalem have set in motion a process of displacement of the Palestinians from the city, a process which can only be expected to increase should these policies and practices remain”.

East Jerusalem House Demolitions – Background Information

The pretext for home demolitions in East Jerusalem is solely administrative. Administrative home demolitions entail the demolition of homes and structures built without Israeli authorization.

While Palestinians represent about 30% of Jerusalem’s population, they live in an area that comprises only ​​9% of the city. The state of Israel is spearheading a policy for the Jewish population of Jerusalem to be a majority of 70%, while keeping the Palestinian population at 30%.

To preserve this ethnic ratio, the Israeli government has applied a discriminatory policy against Palestinians in East Jerusalem. One of the expressions of that policy is the extreme difficulty in planning and building new homes. Applications to rezone or increase density are regularly denied, as are applications to build in the small areas that are allocated for residential construction. Palestinians therefore have no opportunity to lawfully meet the housing needs of a growing population.

Palestinians in East Jerusalem hold permanent resident status, and it can be lost if they do not permanently reside in East Jerusalem. Therefore they struggle to stay in the area, but Israeli administrative policy poses a bureaucratic wall that makes it almost impossible for Palestinians to legally build homes.

Israeli policy leaves Palestinians nothing but two choices: stay in the area, build irregularly, and risk a demolition and forced displacement from their homes, or leave ​​East Jerusalem, and endanger their residency status that includes losing the right to return to their homes.

If Palestinians have their residency revoked, they are rendered stateless and residency-less. That violates the right to practice self-determination, and the right to citizenship, residency and nationality, enshrined in international human rights law. This forced deportation, on the basis of ethnicity, is a violation of international law and may constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law.

Demolition of houses in and of itself is a denial of Palestinians’ right to adequate housing. Demolitions have major implications for the victims: the families whose homes are destroyed are not given alternative housing or compensation. A significant number of them spend months in makeshift tents or in the streets following the demolition of their homes. In addition to the loss of value of the home, and the destroyed property, owners are expected to pay heavy fines of tens of thousands of ILS.

Since 1967, Israel has demolished more than 2,000 homes in East Jerusalem. Between 2000 and 2011, 771 homes were demolished. The number of demolition orders issued to homes in the area currently stands at about 1,500.”

Speaking for myself and ICAHD, we hope that this report helps to trigger an international outcry at Israeli policy in East Jerusalem, and a change in the discriminatory practice of house demolitions to Palestinians.

Update: This post in a smaller form appeared on Mondoweiss

Three must read articles

1) “The arms firm behind the suppression of OccupyOakland and Palestine’s popular struggle” Max Blumenthal. “With the rise of the Occupy Wall Street, a new generation of mostly middle class Americans is learning for the first time about the militarization of their local police forces. And they are learning the hard way, through confrontations with phalanxes of riot cops armed with the latest in “non-lethal” crowd control weaponry.” While this is new to middle-class Americans, this has been routine IDF practice when dealing with protesters, be they Israeli, Palestinian, or international. As explained in depth in the article, it’s even the same company! Now that the practice of military crowd control  is hitting home, maybe Americans will be able to greater empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.

2) “Testimony of an Israeli activist who was robbed and beaten by settlers while attempting to assist the olive harvest“, by Ofer Neiman. This is a brave story of an Israeli peace activist who wanted to do nothing other then help Palestinians pick their olives in peace. I can empathize because I actually did this last week (maybe a post will come out of it soon…). Lucky for me though, there was no confrontation with settlers, and I wasn’t violently beaten to a pulp. Stories like these help paint a picture of the new reality: Right-wing Zionism is not just about Jews vs. Everyone else; anyone who opposes unlimited settlement expansion and violent intimidation of Palestinian farmers is an enemy, even if you’re a Jewish Israeli.

3) “The Israeli government funds Jewish terrorism”, by Yossi Gurvitz. One example in depth of Israeli state-funding for terrorism. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has been following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as heralded Israeli leaders were often elected with full public knowledge that they were known terrorist leaders and supporters. It can just be hard to always remember this amidst the constant propaganda about other terrorist states, and why they’re so horrible and evil, and how great it is to live in a democracy. America and Israel don’t actually accept the Bush doctrine that claim to believe in, “states that knowingly harbor terrorists are terrorist states [therefore unilateral action against these states would be permissible…]”, because then it would apply to them too.

First post on Mondweiss!

An edited version of my article about the ethnic displacement of Bedouins just appeared on Mondoweiss! Mondoweiss is fantastic blog that I’ve been reading regularly for about the last year. I highly recommend this site to anyone who wants to really learn and follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The prisoner swap shines a light on Israel’s approach to Palestinians

I know I’m a little late to the game here, but here are some thoughts on the prisoner swap, and other random things that came to mind when thinking about the swap:

Hamas requested the release of popular Palestinian leaders Marwan Barghouti, Fatah leader and Ahmed Sa’adat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Israel refused to consider the release of these two men, both of whom were found guilty in Israeli military court of attacks against Israeli soldiers. Israel refused to free these men, yet on the list of the 1,027 other prisoners freed, there are unarguably more violent and more dangerous people. What possible motive could Israel have in keeping the popular political leaders in while releasing those that were convicted for attacks that killed a massive number of civillians?

The Israeli government has no desire to have any popular Palestinian leader free, because a leader that would actually take steps to end the occupation is perceived as not in Israel’s best interest (unlike a subservient Palestinian Authority). This exchange reveals that while Israel cites security as the guiding principle behind all decision making with regard to the Palestinians, the safety of the Israeli public comes second to the disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people.

In the American and Israeli media, even ‘left-leaning’ papers, like Ha’aretz and the New York Times, referred to the Palestinian prisoners being released as terrorists, when in fact many were not convicted of any crime. Even when they were convicted in court, it was done in military courts that do not safeguard the rights of Palestinians. The military courts do not comply with international standards of due process. For example, there is no presumption of innocence, rather a presumption of guilt so the burden of proof is on the defendant.  This applies for all types of trials, from parking tickets to violence against civillians. It is made worse by the fact that Palestinians are not informed of the actual charges against them until their court hearing. The attorney has to respond immediately, with no time to study the charge. They can’t fully study the charge because there can be secret evidence that the defendant is not allowed to see, and there is no mechanism to ever see what the secret evidence is. The whole trial is in Hebrew, so most defendants have no idea what is going on. The hearings are on average three minutes and four seconds. In 2006, the acquittal rate was .29%. I could go on and on (for a more comprehensive analysis of the apartheid system that exists see this ICAHD report. Arbitrary arrest, incarceration, torture, and administrative detention (i.e. imprisonment without due process) are important pillars of the legal system employed against Palestinians.  

To help gain a tiny bit of leverage in a one-sided power relationship, Hamas kidnapped Gilad Shalit. It’s important to remember that it is not illegal  for Palestinians to take a soldier of the occupying power as a prisoner. Indigenous people have a legal right, under international humanitarian law, to violently resist occupation against military targets; whether that is smart tactically is another question entirely. If repressed people can’t resist occupation against the military, and have no recourse in discriminatory courts rigged against them, what can they do? Because the IDF is superior to various Palestinian militias in every way, after the second intifada Palestinians realized that violence against the military and civillians doesn’t make any sense. Recently they called for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) from Israel, and from illegal Israeli settlements in an effort for non-violent resistance against the occupation. Now major Jewish groups, including the left-leaning J-Street, accuse BDS of ‘de-legitimizing’ Israel. How should Palestinians resist the illegal occupation when even non-violent resistance is not allowed?

In truth, Israel is de-legitimizing itself by its own actions. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the organization that I interned for earlier this year, launched the youth wing of JVP, Young Jewish and Proud.  It started off with a bang, interrupting Netanyahu at the 2010 Jewish General Assembly. They cried out,

“Young Jews say the settlements delegitimize Israel!
Young Jews say the Occupation delegitimizes Israel!
Young Jews say the siege of Gaza delegitimizes Israel
Young Jews say the loyalty oath delegitimizes Israel!
Young Jews say silencing dissent delegitimizes Israel!”

These powerful words highlight the very legitimate criticism of Israel. Instead of focusing on how people around the world are out to get Israel, those who consider themselves defenders of Israel should ask themselves what Israel is doing to earn the scorn. Hint: every criticism is not disguised anti-semitism. 

Three must read articles

1) “29 Life lessons learned in traveling the world for 8 years straight“,  by Benny Lewis. The title really says it all here. I found many of his lessons a nice refresher to how I to try live my life every day such as, ‘There is no such thing as Destiny. This is excellent news!’, ‘Deferring your happiness to the future is terrible idea’, and ‘Seek out people with different beliefs and views of the world to yours and get to know their side of the story’. This one post and Benny’s other posts on his website inspired me to ‘become fluent in Hebrew‘ earlier in the week! Even if you’re not looking to learn a new language in the coming few months, it’s excellent read.

2) “The CIA’s impunity of ‘torture tapes“, by Glenn Greenwald. This is the second post by Greenwald on my must read articles list and believe it or not, it’s been very hard to limit him to every other week thus far. Between 95 and 98% of his posts are as close to perfect examples of writing you can find; I’m still surprised every week that a single human can be so consistently analytical and inquisitive. This op-ed details an example of the codified system of lawlessness in the United States: how CIA officials obstructed justice by burning the evidence of their illegal activity and no one has been indicted or investigated!  His new book, With Liberty and Justice For Some, along with most of his posts exemplify this thesis and it’s an important message for everyone, especially American citizens to know; there is very little that is more harmful to a free society than a two-tiered system of justice that removes the powerful from the rule of law.

3) “Why Jews need to talk about the Nakba“, by Noam Sheizaf. This is a detailed narrative of a Jewish Israeli’s journey to understanding and coping with the reality of the Nakba,’…we were engaged in the wrong kind of questions, such as the debate on whether more Palestinian were expelled or fled. The important thing is that they weren’t allowed to come back, and that they had their property and land seized by Israel immediately after the war (as some Jews had by Jordan and Syria, but not in substantial numbers).’ I think the prevailing Jewish narrative that the period surrounding 1948 was of one of heroism and moral courage, with no mention of the massive campaign of ethnic cleansing, is one of the main obstacles to peace; the state and society of Israel needs to take moral responsibility for the refugee problem before any technical solutions can be discussed. Here is the story of one man who is helping to pave the way for peace.

U.N. Meeting on Palestinian Bedouin ethnic displacement

Update: Due to the confidentiality of the meeting (that I was unaware of when writing this post), I had to eliminate a few sentences in the post.

This afternoon I went to a meeting at OCHA, the United Nations office for the coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Humanitarian Country Team of the U.N. has sub-clusters such as Health, Education, and Protection.  Within the Protection cluster, there is a displacement working group, which ICAHD, the organization I intern for, falls under. This working group has many different task forces, one of which is called the Area C task force.

Let me briefly explain the task force’s scope: The task force deals with issues of displacement in Area C of the West Bank. As defined under the Oslo Accords, Area is C is under “Full Israeli civil and security control, except over Palestinian civilians. These areas include all Israeli settlements (cities, towns, and villages), land in the vicinity of these localities, most roadways that connect the settlements (and which Israelis are now restricted to) as well as strategic areas described as “security zones”. These areas constitute 72.2% of the land area.” This effectively has no meaning any more because the IDF and the Israeli government exercise near full control over the entire West Bank. Monitoring forced displacement from this small area of the West Bank is the task force’s charter.

My boss, Itay Epshtain, was the person who invited me to accompany him to the meeting. As we were driving to the building Itay pointed out that ironically the Ministry of Justice and the District Court are illegal settlements in OPT (occupied Palestinian territory). The U.N. office is also in East Jerusalem (OPT) and while the Jewish areas of Jerusalem were dead due to the holiday of Sukkot, this was just a normal Thursday in East Jerusalem. It was difficult to find parking, as the office is right across from a school. After that small hassle we made it into the conference room smoothly and the meeting was about to begin. I had no expectations because I’ve never been to a meeting like this before so I was quite excited.

We got there just a couple of minutes before it began and when it started it jumped straight into introductions; the task force of approximately 25 people has apparently has changed a lot since its last meeting. After the speedy exercise of saying your name and forgetting everyone else’s you haven’t already met before, it was straight business for the next two hours. As is protocol in the U.N., the whole meeting was entirely in English. Although there were very few native English speakers in the room, everyone had a remarkably good command of the language. Based on the slight accents I could tell that at the meeting were people from all over Europe (yes, basically just Europe). While there were slight differences in terms of certain strategies, there was not one major disagreement with what anyone said. Itay was the only Israeli in the room (ICAHD was also the only Israeli NGO in the room), and there were no Palestinian NGOs. I learned a lot at the meeting in terms of what is going on the ground and more importantly, a little bit of insight into how the U.N. and various humanitarian NGOs conduct themselves in the OPT.

The following is a summary of what I learned from the meeting in terms of the political situation. I then researched and verified the facts when I got home and tried to put it into the greater context of the occupation:

The Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), which is in charge of all civil operations in the West Bank (though in practice routinely blurs the line between civil and military), “…is committed to removing all Bedouins from the West Bank”, and plan to start with the Jerusalem periphery. Forced deportation, the practice of forcibly removing civilians from their homes, is an example of a war crime (4th Geneva Convention, Article 49).

The roughly 2,300 Bedouin community that the ICA is targeting reside in 20 communities in the hills to the east of Jerusalem, in the E1 settlement bloc. More than 80% of them are refugees. Over two-thirds are children. The communities have all lost access to land due to settlement expansion, most have demolition orders pending against their homes, none have access to the electricity network and only half are connected to the water network. Despite receiving humanitarian assistance, 55% of Bedouin/herding communities in Area C of the West Bank are “food insecure”; the U.N. defines food security as Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Over 200 families were re-located from the area in the 1990s, some by force. Of these, more than 85% report they had to abandon their traditional livelihoods. More than 500,000 Israeli civilians live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including in east Jerusalem, built in contravention of international law (4th Geneva Convention, Article 49). In this year alone, at least 755 Palestinians had been forcibly displaced due to demolitions and 127 due to settler violence – some 40% of these were Bedouin.

The relocation deal proposed to the roughly 20 Bedouin small communities that live in the Jerusalem periphery is to move inside a major municipal garbage dump. This is a ‘settlement’ not of two parties negotiating (relocation agreement), but of the ICA giving a compensation package. This is akin to saying, “sorry we are unilaterally removing you again (first time was in 1948) from your homes, but take this money and we’ll call it even?”  The ICA has argued that this is a step up from their current lifestyle (mainly because the ICA is essentially bribing them by building up their new infrastructure and giving them money). Many at the OCHA meeting brought up that the current Bedouin lifestyle is only in a humanitarian and cultural crisis due to Israeli colonization and restrictions on their lifestyle. One question that was raised as to whether the new ‘deal’ the ICA is proposing meets basic standards of living and a minimum standard of cultural perseverance (as enshrined in international law and previous agreements on the part of the Israeli government).

There is an ethical dilemma for NGOs and those generally in the human rights world here. When a case of deportation or something similar gets high media visibility, it makes it more likely that the Israeli government will punish the occupied population. Many at the meeting spoke of how increased just humanitarian support always results in more demolition orders and a furthering of the elaborate matrix of control. Sometimes the soundest advice for Palestinian communities is to ‘settle’ with the Israeli government, and in turn get maybe slightly more land and cash in their new package. The ICA and the Israeli government have long understood the colonial principle of ‘divide and conquer’ by cutting deals with small individual communities and fundamentally bribing them not to resist colonization.

OCHA is a U.N. humanitarian organization and is not political. This is quite different than ICAHD, where our mission is political. The OCHA strategy is to help the Bedouin with cash, livestock, etc. so they can make a ‘freer’ (the word free is quite relative when dealing with Palestinians) decision; there is slightly less pressure on the community to bend to the will of the Israeli government when their basic humanitarian needs are meant. Because of this, the ICA strategy is to make life as terrible as possible for the Palestinians where they are now, while making the land where they want the Palestinian population to be moved to as desirable as possible so they ‘choose’ to move. ICA is planning to make this forced relocation happen in 2-3 months, so it’s very important that the story of the Bedouin community gets heard in the international community soon. It’s only a matter of time before the ICA tries to forcibly remove the Bedouins elsewhere in the West Bank. The Israeli government wants to urbanize a traditionally rural population to make it easier to judaize the West Bank, and to more easily control the Palestinians. It makes strategic sense that they are trying to remove those in the E1 settlement bloc first, because full colonization, as planned, would effectively divide the West Bank into two parts, eliminating any illusion of territorial contiguity that was once there; it unarguably destroys the possibility of any two state solution that isn’t legitimized apartheid.

**For another take and some more facts on the issue, check out Amira Hass’s piece in Ha’Aretz.

I’ve decided to learn Hebrew

I will be fluent in Hebrew by the end of my year in Israel. This was not a goal of mine before coming here. I thought maybe I’d pick up a little bit, but I had no plans to work for it in any meaningful way. After interacting with many Israelis over the weekend who for 95% of the time spoke Hebrew I felt left out. I felt not a want but a need for Hebrew. After a recommendation from a friend, I began reading the blog Fluent in 3 months and will be using the author’s ‘methods‘. I am now quite determined to speak the language.

This was a hard to thing to come to because of my failings with the language of Spanish. I took Spanish class between 6th-11th grade, had a Mom fluent in Spanish, and yet I could barely speak Spanish by the end of my junior year. For a while there was a big mental setback in mind: that I just naturally wasn’t good at language. While this may be true, it’s irrelevant and a pathetic excuse. People have overcome much harder things than learning Hebrew in 6-9 months. Like all other things it’s really just a matter of if I want it or not. Now I do. I’m done intellectualizing myself out of why not and starting today, I will be very social and use Hebrew as close to 100% of the time as I can.

I hope to understand the many benefits of speaking a language that isn’t my mother tongue. For some reason – maybe because I look Israeli? – natives who haven’t met me before always begin to speak to me in Hebrew. There has literally not been an exception I remember on this journey. This is even in Jerusalem, a place where there are tons of Americans and Europeans. I hear more English on the street that I live on than Hebrew!  This is quite lucky for me because I think what really drives one to becoming conversational in a language is the intense real world pressure of communicating a point to a native speaker.

The first (second if you count playing squash with a 70+ old man keeping score and complimenting him in Hebrew an accomplishment) of my many mini-goals is to be able to speak only Hebrew to shopkeepers, store owners, and waiters within the week. If anyone has any suggestions for my next goal I’d love to hear them!