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Photos made during the trip to Israel in 2009. All the pictures are clickable:

Jaffa and Tel Aviv

A street in Jaffa early in the morning

Jaffa, Old City

Museum of Independence in Tel Aviv

Museum of Independence in Tel Aviv. It’s at this table where David Ben-Gurion was reading out the Declaration of Independence 14 May 1948…

Galilee: Tiberias, Safed, Golan Heights

Safed, a view of Upper Galilee

Safed, Old City

Safed, Old City. In the background are the mountains of Upper Galilee.

Safed, Abuhav synagogue

Mount Meron and the Northern Command post of the Israel Defence Forces

The Tel Dan Reserve in the Hulah Valley. The Dan River is the largest tributary of the Jordan river.

Looks like Weathertop (Amon Sûl) hill in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fiction 😉

Golan Heights. The landscape looks almost like that in Iceland 🙂

Tiberias, near Astoria hotel

Tiberias, in front of the monument to the Jewish soldiers perished in the Second World War, near Astoria hotel.

This tree is already unable to go out of the bar 😉

On the shore of the Sea of Galilee

Spa centre in Tiberias

Such a dinner costs only 100 shkalim for three persons (the third is photographing). It’s enough for the whole day 🙂

Haifa

Jerusalem

Shalom Yerushaláyim!

King David’s Tomb

The bell tower on the place of Ascension

The “Russian Candle”—an Orthodox bell tower on the Mount of Olives, the place of Ascension.

Jewish quarter in Old City

The Temple Mount and the Western Wall

Near the Western Wall

Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives

In the background is the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. It’s still in use because it’s supposed that Messiah will descend upon the earth right here and those who are buried here will be the first ones to see him.

Can you guess which of the balconies are real? 😉

The Shrine of the Book. The Dead Sea Scrolls are kept here.

The Knesset

Near the entrance of the park across the street from the Knesset

In the courtyard of the Supreme Court building

The moon over Jerusalem

Military cemetery on Mount Herzl

National military cemetery. No communal graves, the tombs of the soldiers and officers are equally modest. In Israel, they prefer to remember each one personally.

Latrun

A 'sentry' at the entry to Yad La-Shiryon

A ‘sentry’ at the entry to the Armored Corps Memorial Site and Museum (Yad La-Shiryon)

Stairs to the exposition

The Armored Corps Memorial Site building in Latrun

The Armored Corps Memorial Site building in Latrun. To the right of it, a composition of stone blocks can be seen and then the left end of the memorial wall with the names of all Israeli tankmen who perished in wars of Israel (making photos of the wall itself is not permitted).

Merkava Mk IV, one of the best tanks in the world.

‘Sakharov Gardens’ in Jerusalem

Coming back to Jerusalem. In Israel, they prefer to plant trees in memory of famous people instead of putting up monuments, that is why it is this nice garden which became one of the first memorials in the world in honour of Andrei Sakharov.

A Trip to the Desert and along the Desert

Planting trees on Tu Bishvat

Planting trees on Tu Bishvat. It’s still in Jerusalem, early in the morning. From here we went to an archeological dig:

The entrance to a cave of Zealots

In the cave of Zealots

In the cave of Zealots. The light in the picture is of a flash. In fact it was pitch-dark.

A dinner in a Bedouin village

In the Judaean Desert

The Judaean Desert

The Dead Sea

The Negev Desert

The Negev Desert. A rare case when the disk of the sun shining through the clouds is rather bright, but looks extremely clear-cut. That day one could look at it unwinkingly.