beer in palestine

the other weekend a group of friends and i made a long awaited pilgrimage of sorts to palestine's only brewery! taybeh beer is brewed in taybeh, near ramallah. taybeh happens to be the only 100% christian town in the west bank. the friendly koury family runs the place. after leaving palestine and making it big in america, they were filled with optimism after the signing of the oslo peace accords in the early 90s, and decided to return to their homeland to start its first brewery. alas, retrospectively their political optimism may have been misplaced, but they're not giving up. mr. koury learned how to brew beer from americans who did it "in their bathtubs". now his daughter is taking over the business. peaceful and pragmatic resistance, they like to call it. we got a personal tour of the brewery, and heard about the plethora of struggles presented by the occupation. things like only having access to running water 2 days each week, though the surrounding illegal israeli settlements get all the water they want 24/7. and the bureaucratic challenges in exporting palestinian product through israeli borders and ports, which is the only way to get anything out of the west bank. a popular beer from palestine clearly does not help israel's rightist leadership propagate their preferred and disturbed narrative - that the west bank is economically stagnant and would be even worse off than it is without israeli "help", and that pretty much everyone in the west bank is a fundamentalist islamist. of course, a brewery in the west bank does face some resistance from the muslim majority in palestine, who aren't exactly big beer fans. but the koury's are adamant that the israeli occupation poses much bigger obstacles than does the muslim majority in the west bank, a sentiment shared by every palestinian christian i've ever spoken to. actually, there are significant numbers of relatively secular muslims who do enjoy the beer, and the palestinian authority even promotes the brewery as a tourist destination. it is also predictably popular among the international crowd - the one and only tony blair visited just a few days before us! due to the challenges of exporting beyond israel, most of the beer is sold in upscale establishments in tel aviv where it is purchased by leftist israelis who support the palestinian cause. we got to sample some product and chat about hops and occupation and boston, which is where the kourys lived in america before returning to palestine.

then we went to peter's place, an atmospheric restaurant positioned at the highest point on the west bank. one can look out over amman, jerusalem and the dead sea as the sun is setting. and the food was amazing, it took us about 5 hours to eat! a must visit place if you ever find yourself in the area. taybeh also has an ancient church called st. georges that was built by the byzantines in the 5th century and rebuilt by crusaders in the 12th. it is said that Christ spent some time there after raising lazarus from the dead. fascinatingly, this church is one of the few in the world where blood sacrifices continue on a regular basis. it is a syncretistic ritual that has its roots in ancient canaanite and pagan religions. they slaughter a sheep in the church and wipe the blood on the walls with their hands. 70-80 lambs per year, apparently.

we then hung out in ramallah for a while before heading back to israel. a day in the west bank never disappoints! a few weeks later we returned to partake in taybeh's oktoberfest!

summer's for studying...

this summer was devoted to studying for the usmle step 1 board exam. 14 hours/day, every day for a little over 6 weeks. for focus' sake, i felt the need to go back to the temperate climate, easy conveniences and loving parents in canada. my parents had recently moved to a new town in southern alberta. i studied at the local community college, where for most of the time, i was the only person there other than the security guards. i almost went insane, but am quite proud of myself for sticking it out. even when i was driving home from the college and running i was listening to audio pathology lectures. it was very nice to be at home with my parents even though the only time i was able to spend with them was a few minutes for dinner each night. special thanks to my mother for cooking and even doing my laundry for me so i could maximize time for studying! enjoying the conveniences of canada was also spendid, things like $6 footlongs at subway. go ahead and laugh, but see if you're still laughing after trying to find yourself a satisfying meal in israel for $6. its impossible. and driving a car again- that was amazing!

southern alberta experienced the worst flooding in its history this summer. one day i joined some folks from our local church to do some serious sandbagging to attempt to save portions of the town. it was nice teamwork. we were even working alongside the canadian military who were sent to help with the effort! attending the church my parents go to there was a highlight of the summer. its an exciting place with lots of little kids running around and a pastor who one couldn't help but respect even after just a couple weeks. the one and only church here in beer sheva - well, my comments are probably best left off the world wide web. lets just say that i love going to church when its the right kind of church. my family also flew down to tennessee for one day to attend my cousin's wedding. it was a great time.

i'm glad the summer of studying is over. it is a right of passage of sorts for medical students, but not really my style. on the way back to israel i had an all day long layover in athens, greece, where i chillaxed on an amazing beach! now we're spending our time in the wards of the hospital instead of listening to lectures - a nice change!

west bank adventures

i made it up to the west bank a few times in the spring. one day, a group of classmates and i visited the city of hebron. we went to the local hospital where we were able to chat with some palestinian medical students and get a tour of the facilities. we also walked around the old city that is hemmed in by ideological jewish settlements. we wandered through the alleyways where the settlers throw garbage and sometimes even acid and alcohol down on the palestinians below. we looked out over the infamous shuhada street, or "apartheid" street, so named because palestinians are not permitted to use it despite the fact that it used to be the main thoroughfare through the city. interestingly, even israel's supreme court recently ruled that palestinians should be able to use the road, but the military disagrees and defies the law by continuing to restrict access. the settlers really wield disproportionate control of the situation, even in open defiance of supreme court rulings. its all extremely sad. it was really encouraging to see some of my classmates make the decision to go see the reality of what is happening in palestine, some of them for the first time. we also visited a glass blowing factory in hebron, where they make all manner of glass things by hand with the help of a huge furnace. if you're interested in learning more about the situation in hebron, my friend michael mcray just published a poignant book about 3 months he spent there volunteering as an advocate for nonviolence with an organization called christian peacemaker teams. the book is called "letters from apartheid street: a christian peacemaker in occupied palestine". you won't regret reading it!

another day i headed up to bethlehem to visit my friend dr dave, director of the middle east studies program, and the intern at the program, chris, a friend from college. i got to sit in on an interesting lecture, and then we went to a nice lady's house in bethlehem with some of the students at the program for their cooking class. we made a nice dessert called basboosa. while there, some protests erupted at checkpoint 300, the main checkpoint through the seperation barrier between bethlehem and jerusalem. we watched as tires burned in the streets and tear gas wafted into the air and found its way into our nostrils. the protests were triggered by the suspicious death of a palestinian prisoner in an israeli prison. a major source of contention is that all palestinians in the west bank are effectively under israeli military marshal law. thus, they can be arrested at any time without any reason and held indefinitely without trial, a policy called "administrative detention". thousands are being held in israeli prisons, including many minors. of course, many are truly terrorists and deserve to be incarcerated. but many others are there simply because the israeli government doesn't like them or the things that they say, and some are never even given a reason for their detainment. huge problems. guantanamo bay disgusts me in the same sort of way. anyway, its fascinating to live in such a charged region of the world. ambivalence with regard to these issues isn't a very palatable option when the tear gas is wafting into your nose and making you cry.

long weekend in america!

one weekend in march i was lucky enough to fly half way around the world to attend the amsa (american medical student's association) annual convention in washington dc! big thanks to the amsa chapter at my school and to my university for almost all of the funding! flew there through both zurich and london - the more flights the more free food and movies, eh! the convention was quite interesting. we heard from the real-life dr. patch adams! turns out he didn't even want that robin williams movie made about him, and he doesn't like it. he's also a pyjamas-in-public self-described communist who did quite a bit of ranting about capitalism. he's worked his entire professional life for free. he did have some very practical and apt thoughts on how physicians can better relate to patients. we also heard from recently retired johns hopkins neurosurgeon, author, and recently potential presidential hopeful dr. ben carson. for me, the best talk was from another johns hopkins neurosurgeon, dr. alfredo quinones-hinojosa. from rural mexico, he "illegally" entered the united states as a child and started picking vegetables. long story short, he ended up becoming a prominent neurosurgeon, and a down-to earth one at that. proof that citizenship or a certain background isn't a prerequisite for living the american dream. when someone suggested that he change his last name because it was hard for americans to pronounce, he changed it by hyphenating and enlongating it in honor of his mother, and as a symbolic flippage of the proverbial bird to those who would want where he came from to hold him back. love it! cnn did a nice piece on him too which can be read here. almost got to see every medical student's favorite pathologist and bodybuilder dr. edward goljan, but alas he got sick at the last minute. a cool thing about the conference was that it overlapped with a conference of the international medical student's association, so we got to meet a bunch of medical students from all over the world! for example, we were hanging out at a party and met the israeli and the lebanese medical student contingents, and we all started dancing together! where else does that happen!?! it warmed my heart. i also got to hang out with my sister maria for a day, which was so nice. also a great day at the zoo with my friend sylvie, with whom i had been skyping quite a bit. and a big thank you to my friend joel who let me stay at his house!

on keeping my mouth shut

there are many things i'd like to rant about. they'd make this blog juicier. alas, not here, not now.

the rest of second year

just from this blog, it would seem that my life is just one holiday after the next. actually, i spend almost all my time studying. m2 as its called (the second year of medical school) was a lot more interesting than the first, but also significantly more academically demanding. instead of semesters, the courses were divided into "systems", each lasting 2-5 weeks and culminating in a final exam. these fascinating systems had titles like hematology, endocrinology, pulmonology, cardiology, gastroenterology, nephrology, musculo-skeletal, reproduction, neurology and neuroanatomy, interspersed with anatomy of the thorax, abdomen, head and neck, limbs, etc. i especially loved the anatomy, as we got to spend our afternoons (and some eery solitary all nighters too) in the cadaver lab - truly a remarkable place! throughout the year we also had twice weekly sessions on the hospital wards in which we learned various physcial exam skills and how to perform a medical interview in hebrew. the hebrew was, and continues to be, rather rough for me. i put in some serious effort though, especially toward the end, and managed to pass the clinical osce (practical exam) at the end of the year in hebrew! overall though it was a great year! i truly love studying medicine, and though sitting around with your face in a book isn't always the funnest thing one can imagine doing, i wouldn't want to be doing anything else.

some random other things that happened:

-did some zumba! epic sport! lots of hebrew commands that can be tuned out; just dance! at the first session i was the only male there, with about 60 ladies. at one point our chain-smoking leader makes an announcement in hebrew, and everyone turns towards me and applauds. weird, right? after i learned that it was because i, a male, showed up to a zumba class! lol, a truly special memory!

-during the jewish holiday of purim, we had a customary costume party. before that, my conservative jewish friend read the megillah, or story of esther, in hebrew. a custom during this reading is to make noise with noisemakers and air horns and incessantly boo whenever the name haman is mentioned. because he wanted to eliminate the jewish race. his name is mentioned probably at least 100 times in the story, so lots of booing.

-a new shopping mall opened in beer sheva - the largest mall in israel! some may know that i am obsessed with malls, so needless to say i was living with eager anticipation. it is an amazing place! it even has an h&m, which is probably the most epic thing to have ever happened to beer sheva. one more reason to visit!

-i ran the dead sea half marathon again, with a good group of classmates.

-some of my friends organized an excellent ted event at ben-gurion university, tedxbgu. there were a few very interesting speakers. my personal favorite was a blind arab israeli lawyer named abbas abbas. no one, not even his family or doctors, believed he could amount to anything in life because he was blind and had other disabilities. on top of this, success for arabs in israel doesn't exactly come easy. against all odds, he was able to graduate with a law degree from hebrew university and founded an organization that seeks to defend the rights of disabled arabs in israel. he was so enthusiastic that he kept shuffling further backwards without realizing it, and was soon speaking from the back corner of the stage. no matter. it was so inspirational on so many levels to see this blind arab commanding the attention of an auditorium full of israelis. doesn't happen as much as it should, but it did that day. i probably cried a little.

-my roommate and i had two fourth year students from our program live in our apartment for a number of months. minsoo and david. david taught himself a few languages while here, and also self-taught himself how to play the oud, a classic arab instrument. i like to think i played at a least a small part in convincing him to perform a song in arabic at their class's graduation ceremony, and he absolutely nailed it!

a study break in beirut :)

i spent about 5 days of my passover break in the "paris of the middle east" - beirut, lebanon - and it was an excellent time! lebanon is an enigma in so many ways. 40% christian, 60% muslim (both sunni and shi'ite, as well as druze and every other imaginable muslim sect). in beirut, bearded islamic fundamentalists rub shoulders with some of the most hedonistic party-goers that exist anywhere. sometimes they're even the same people. there are seemingly more luxury german cars in lebanon than there are in germany, and recently more syrian refugees than can be counted. bullet-riddled buildings destroyed by decades of brutal civil war stand next to truly glamorous shopping malls.

first things first, you must realize that getting to lebanon from israel requires some determination, more than one passport and some thorough planning (read about my route in the previous post). you also have to hide any evidence of anything israeli or hebrew, or you will be immediately deported. i found a great place to hide the passport with evidence of israel (good guess but no it was not in an orifice of my body, although that would have made a great story for the grandkids!). it was also a challenge to never use any hebrew words while i was there. i managed right until the very end when i accidentally said "toda" (thank you in hebrew) to the taxi driver who gave me a ride to the airport. he gave me a look that said "i know exactly what language that just was", so i quickly ran into the airport! they know their basic hebrew from the movies. anyway, due to the extremely charged ongoing history of animosity between lebanon and israel, i felt that i had no choice but to lie to everyone in lebanon about where i currently live. once you start, your lies have to become increasingly complex. it messed with my mind a little; didn't feel right. but also a fun challenge sometimes - to make up as crazy a life story as possible and still have it come off as believable :)

i stayed at a near-perfect hostel (hot showers would have upgraded it to perfect) called saifi urban gardens in a trendy and rapidly gentrifying area of beirut called gemmayze. everyone was extremely friendly. the vernacular is arabic, but most of the older generation also speak french, and most younger people also speak english, many with perfect american flair!

here are just a few of the friendly folks i met. all bros, i know. i guess the ladies must not be quite as friendly.

-ralph is an oral surgeon who divides his work between beirut and kuwait. the only reason he works in kuwait is so he can afford to satiate the significant material demands of his lebanese wife.

-azhar is a recent medical graduate from aleppo, syria who, due to the ongoing civil war there,  is unfortunately now an unemployed refugee staying in the hostel. he was also preparing for a united states medical licensing exam, a fact over which we bonded.

-muhammad was my roommate in the hostel, a software engineer from england and an aspiring photojournalist. he kindly introduced me to what must have been dozens of his beiruti friends. the prime time for meeting new people in beirut is between the hours of midnight and 5am.

-zaki is a palestinian-iraqi who grew up in baghdad. we talked about the present state of affairs in iraq and he told me he could totally arrange for me to come hang out in baghdad any time! i must say it is super tempting :)

-rami was going to visit his grandmother in baalbek, a town in lebanon's isolated and ultra-conservative beqaa valley the next day. after what turned into a deeply philosophical discussion, he genuinely invited me to come with him and hang out for a few days. if only i had more time.

-leo was a french journalist, in lebanon to cover the influx of syrian refugees. he was intrigued by the fact that i had survived walking through the south beirut palestinian refugee camps of sabra and shatila wearing shorts and socks that didn't match.

-i met saleh on a bus in south lebanon. we discussed topics such as who our heroes are in life. he said hassan nasrallah, the leader of hezbollah. i said Jesus :)

the sights to see in beirut include the pigeon rocks, which are huge islands of rock sticking out of the mediterranean; martyr's square, in which stands a statue pierced with countless bullet holes and missing appendages thanks to years of civil war; and the 20-something story bombed out shell of what was once a holiday inn in downtown beirut. also, the beautifully green and tranquil downtown campus of the american university of beirut, an english-only institution known as one of the best universities in the middle east. i even happened to meet a few medical students who go there!

one day i visited the south beirut palestinian refugee camps of sabra and shatila. these "camps" have an unfortunate place in history due to a massacre of over 3000 innocents that occurred there in 1982 by the "christian" phalangist fighters, with the implicit support and assistance of the israeli military (former prime minister of israel ariel sharon was defense minister at the time, and was forced to resign over the incident, before later becoming prime minister - only in israel). the camps were created by palestinian refugees when they were forced from their homeland when the state of israel was created. though they have been in lebanon for over 60 years, unfortunately these folks are still prohibited from becoming lebanese citizens, and as such are barred from such careers as medicine and the law. thus, i would suggest that the oft used argument that these people shouldn't be considered refugees anymore because they've been where they're at for such a long time doesn't really hold up. the conditions in the camps are really terrible, with some of the highest population density anywhere in the world and very poor sanitary conditions - for example, only recently getting adequate sewage disposal. i had been told that it was a dangerous place, but i decided to check it out anyway. it did end up striking me as a little sketchy. the streets were rife with militia-type guys with guns, and i definitely felt like everyone was glaring at me. absolutely huge posters of yasser arafat (former leader of the palestinain liberation organization) and sheikh ahmed yassin (quadriplegic former spiritual leader of hamas before he was assassinated by israel) adorned the streets. i was tempted to take some pictures, but opted not to as there are many a story of people being apprehended at gunpoint for doing just that in these camps. i love me a little tourism adrenaline!

another day i headed to the hills of south lebanon to visit an infamous new hezbollah museum. hezbollah's paramilitary branch is considered a terrorist organization by much of the world, and they consider destruction of the state of israel to be their primary objective. let me obviously and emphatically disclaim that i do not support this objective and that i think any group that employs terrorism is terrible, even when/if if they do have valid reason to be upset with their situation. this said, i thought it would be fascinating to visit their brand new, 60 million us$ museum, which was funded by iran. the "tour" starts with a 13 minute movie about the "resistance" in south lebanon, overlayed with emotionally-stirring war movie type music. israel occupied south lebanon from the mid 80's through 2000, with another another war in 2006. the climax of the film comes when hassan nasrallah, the bearded fundamentalist cleric who leads hezbollah, has his fist in the air and looses control of both the volume and resonance of his voice when describing how the group can hit ben-gurion airport in tel aviv with their missiles at any moment's notice. such passion. i was then given a tour by another bearded cleric, dressed in camouflage, who spoke perfect american english. he showed me the museum's centerpiece, "the abyss", meant to symbolically represent the future of israel as they see it going down. bizarre and surreal. a huge hole in the ground is filled with captured israeli tanks and helicopters that were shot down in the 2006 war. israel also used cluster bombs during that and other wars, which were on prominent display. these bombs are illegal according to international law, as they are designed to inflict maximal civilian casualties. in no way defensible, but at least israel's prime objective isn't to wipe south lebanon from the face of the earth. the facility also included trenches and bunkers used by paramilitary fighters in their resistance, including the founding leader of hezbollah before he was assassinated by israel. they have published a schematic of the power structure and leadership of all the branches of the israeli military, previously classified information which they claim to have discovered covertly, and which israel was apparently very angry about when they found out. they also have maps of israel with the quantity and types of military aircraft at each israeli air force base, for example, and schematics of their rockets hitting these targets. throughout the place were stationed, symbolically and anything but subtly, many rocket shaped gold-plated receptacles for monetary donations to the cause. i'll bet that this will be one of the first places taken out in the next of the long string of israel-hezbollah wars.

the museum was far up in the mountains, and the clerics/tour guides didn't have any cell phones to call for a taxi, so i started what turned out to be a 4 hour hike down the mountain to the nearest highway. it would seem that the whole of south lebanon is covered in posters of recent martyrs for the hezbollah cause. a guy gave me a ride on his moped for a while, and eventually an extremely elderly and seemingly senile but unbelievably hospitable couple gave me a ride in the their rusted out, sputtering mercedes benz. we crawled along at 2 km/hour as the man mumbled along to his classical arabic oud music while the woman kindly and slowly spoke words to me which i was unfortunately completely unable to comprehend.  i spent that evening in the south lebanese city of sidon/saida, where i found an abandoned and locked up crusader castle out in the ocean, connected to land only by a causeway. i snuck into the premises, and chanced upon a group of 3 teenage boys who showed me all around inside the castle. on the roof, looking out over saida, one of them broke out in arabic song (with some akon mixed in there too), and the 4 of us vigorously danced away all our problems. it was really nice, just like the whole trip :)  hopefully one day in the future the typical citizens of israel and lebanon will legally be able to visit each other's beautiful countries. until then, i feel especially honored that i'm able to experience both!

getting to lebanon the circuitous, post-soviet way!

i decided to hit up lebanon this passover break! because lebanon and israel don't get along particularly well, one must make every effort to ensure that neither county's immigration knows that you've ever been to the other. thus, i had to take a circuitous route to get there through a third country. actually, it ended up being 5 different third countries! the first stop was the ukraine, where it was unbelievably cold and i really wished i would have brought along a hat and some gloves. at the airport in kyiv, the bus that was taking us to our airplane got stuck in a snowdrift on the tarmac for a considerable amount of time! as it lurched back and forth trying to get unstuck, elderly people were falling and hurting themselves. the next stop was odessa, also in ukraine, on the black sea. i learned that in the era of imperial russia, this was the 4th most important city in the empire. it has paled in significance since then, but is still quite a nice city. i wandered around the expansive outdoor market for most of the day, listening to audio pathology lectures, before catching a train in the late afternoon to chisinau, moldova. thankfully i did manage to catch the train despite discovering mere minutes before it departed that it was leaving from a location other than the main train station! it was a pleasant and warm little ancient train, with a huge picture of an orthodox Jesus with a halo looking down from the front of every car. of course, it was inevitable that i become very well acquainted with one of the region's token alcoholics with absolutely no concept of personal space, who spoke to me in slurred, drunken russian for the entire 7 hour journey, seemingly unable to comprehend that i wasn't understanding a word he was saying. all part of the experience!

a fascinating thing about this train trip was that it went through a little known de-facto independent country called transnistria or transdniester, which occupies a narrow ribbon of land along the dneister river in the eastern part of what the rest of the world considers to be moldova. moldova itself doesn't recognize transnistrian sovereignty, but the latter has their own military, border controls, currency (the rouble), etc. the place is considered a last remnant of the soviet union, as they have an obtusely omnipresent communist government, soviet symbology along the lines of hammers and sickles, and until very recently, required bribes for foreigners to even get in. unfortunately due to the train schedule it wasn't really feasible for me to stop in their capital tiraspol to take a look around, but their border guards did enter the train to rough up our passports some. rumor has it there's not much going on there other than the admiration of soviet statues. traveling back in time is always fun though!

the train then continued to chisinau (pronounced kish-ee-now), the capital of moldova, where i spent 2 nights. i stayed in a hostel room with a permanent resident of the hostel, an ebullient middle aged irish guy who generously offered me anything i might want from his wide selection of prescription anti-psychotics, tranquilizers and stimulants that were spread about the room. i said thanks but no thanks. he also shared with me a plethora of conspiracy theories, and at any given time seemed to be either putting on or taking off some contextually inappropriate article of clothing. an interesting character. my initial plan was to meet up with the moldovan family of my israeli friend victor, but unfortunately that didn't work out due to inadequate planning in advance on my part. chisinau was interesting, but one got the sense that there wasn't a whole lot to see. one obvious exception was an epic new large and glamorous shopping mall called MALL DOVA. get it!!??! amazing place. moldova is known for the attractiveness of their females and for being the poorest country in europe. despite being quite poor on average, there is tremendous wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, which leads many to question the legality of the methods used by those few to become so unbelievably wealthy in just the relatively short time since the dissolution of the soviet union. interestingly, at certain times in history well over half of the population of what is now moldova has been jewish. tens of thousands of the huge wave of post-soviet immigrants to israel were from moldova, including the infamous current israeli foreign minister avigdor lieberman, who somehow manages to hold onto his job despite being a racist bigot and facing trial for fraud. but i digress.

then it was stops in munich, germany and a night in istanbul, turkey before touching down in the fascinating land of lebanon! read about it here!

december in america!

after spain, i headed to the good 'ol usa for three weeks! my sister and her 3 congenial roommates in harrisburg, pa were kind enough to let me sleep in their living room! it was a lot of fun to meet some really nice new people in the english language again! frequented subway (like every single day), chipotle, walmart and the local ymca - a highlight was zumba class! lots of studying. crashed a random church christmas potluck where i made some new friends! my sister and i ate an amazing amish meal communally with some random strangers! what is it about america and all the highlights invariably centering around food? nostalgically drove my old car around rural pennsylvania in the middle of the night with country music cranked. driving cars- that might be one of the things i miss most about that side of the world. i had to fly back on christmas eve to be at school on time. christmas day i spent wandering the deserted streets of geneva, switzerland, cold and alone. it wasn't the end of the world though. considering that geneva is surrounded by france, i decided to use the day to walk to france to blow my remaining euros on a turkish doner for lunch. then back to school!