Drawing on many years of experience running week-long missions to Israel, HonestReporting launched a new initiative on April 14, taking a group of 40 people on a one-day field tour of the Jordan Valley and Israel’s northern border with Syria.
Both local English-speaking residents of Jerusalem and the surrounding region were joined by tourists visiting the country for the Passover holiday who wished to take the opportunity to see Israel’s strategic issues up close thanks to the expertise of acclaimed military, counter-terrorism and political analyst Elliot Chodoff.
Stopping first in the Jordan Valley, Chodoff gave a detailed overview of the strategic importance of the range of mountains that form a physical barrier that protects Israel’s eastern border and has done throughout history. The group also visited the “Island of Peace,” on the border between Israel and Jordan, which was ceded to Jordan as part of the 1994 peace treaty yet is leased back to Israeli farmers to continue cultivating the land.
Continuing north to the Golan Heights, the HonestReporting group had a unique experience of walking through the crumbling remains of the former Syrian military headquarters on the Golan prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, a place that Israeli spy Eli Cohen had walked many years before. With the sound of tank shells and gunfire echoing from the Syrian side of the nearby border, Chodoff explained the multi-faceted conflict going on in Syria, an ethnic war being fought by multiple groups aided from the outside by countries such as Iran, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
With the pastoral views from Mount Bental, a high peak overlooking the Syria from where UN peacekeepers continue to promote the facade of their relevance, it was hard to imagine the bloodshed and suffering going on only a few kilometers away. The site of a major battle in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the group was able to visit the preserved army bunkers as well as taking in the incredible scenery with the snow-capped peaks of Mount Hermon glistening in the sunshine.
Throughout the day, Chodoff drew upon his expertise and knowledge of strategic affairs and terrorism to present the issues surrounding the Iranian nuclear talks and proposed deal and the very real threat that a nuclear Iran poses for Israel’s security. The group also benefited from an insight into the origins and ideologies of the various and competing terrorist organizations in the region, most of them offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Tour participants were overwhelmingly enthused by their experience.
California native Linda Levy, now of Jerusalem, said:
Today was a wonderful day. It was most informative. We are pretty well informed but there were tons of new information that we didn’t know and new ways of looking at things so it was excellent.
These words were echoed by Uriel Ben-Mordechai who said:
Our tour was exceptionally informative. Elliot Chodoff, our military analyst and lecturer was extremely articulate, very unique and provided one of perhaps the most valuable tiyulim that I’ve ever experienced to the Golan in the 33 years that I’ve lived in Israel.
Summing up, Les Glassman said:
I hope you have more of these tours and I highly, highly recommend it for anybody to join the tours and to read what HonestReporting do – their activities are vital.
Following this success, HonestReporting will be organizing more field trips in the future in addition to our regular Missions to Israel.
