It's complicated

Thursday, May 28th. The Golan Heights, Kibbutz Chispin

We did so much today. I started off my morning with a 5k run in the Golan's dry heat. I basically know Kibbutz Chispin by heart since I had to circle it like 6 times.

Our first stop was the 77th Brigade Memorial on the Syrian border where we learned about the Yom Kippur war and got to see (and climb on) proper tanks that were in the battle. We also discussed the Iranian nuclear crisis. 

During our awesome lecture by Elliott Chodoff, a major in the IDF reserves, we heard a boom and saw smoke. Crazy to see the Syrian civil war happening in front of us! Still have to process that.

Our next stop was the building where the Syrian headquarters used to be. Now the building is used for military exercises. It was cool to think that Eli Cohen has been here. We went up to the roof to see עמק הבכא, or the Valley of Crying.

It has this name because hundreds of hundreds of Syrian vehicles were stopped there and the soldiers were left wounded and starving without aid for days. No one came to rescue them. The crying and screaming was so loud that the Israelis used the screams as a land mark to navigate around the area. 

Then we went to Har Bental הר בנטל where we discussed The Iranian crisis some more.

Our last stop which was the highlight of my day was the Druze village of Pekein. The Druze are indigenous citizens of Israel who are totally and utterly loyal to Israel and defend our country no matter what. They have their own religion which they describe as a mix of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. We ate at a restaurant that actually had kibbeh! It was sick.

Syked for tomorrow. Stay tuned!