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

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

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

Dan River in Tel Dan Reserve — 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, in front of the monument to the Jewish soldiers perished in the Second World War, near Astoria hotel.

A tree in a bar — This tree is already unable to go out of the bar 😉

A dinner 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

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

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.

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

In the courtyard of the Supreme Court building

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)

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 — ‘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. It’s still in Jerusalem, early in the morning. From here we went to an archeological dig:

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

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.