 Okay, we're back here at the end of a given Friday at 4.30, and we have a special show today with Pat Border, the intrepid traveler here on Global Connections, and we're calling this oddly enough, since he just came back from Israel, we're calling it on Reflections on the State of Israel from an intrepid travel point of view, Pat Border, welcome back Pat. Thank you very much, I'm delighted to be here. Great stuff. So, you went, why did you go, and where did you go? I went only to the major cities this time, I had been there 40 years ago, and I went back for a good time, but I wanted to see how much it had changed. And I suppose, you want a tour or buy yourself FIT? Buy myself, no respectable tour would take me. Did you have a guide? No. But in Israel, you can get along on English, so you don't need a guide. Easily, and there was one day when I took a daytime tour of Jerusalem, and I had, at that point, I had a tour guide. Okay, so let me turn it over to you, Pat. Tell us, give us a sort of linear experience on what you did, where you went, what you saw. Thank you. I had been to Israel 40 years earlier as a part of a world tour. I had spent two weeks in a very different Israel, which was really controlled by the Labor Party and the people who founded Israel, and their desire for compatibility with their neighbors was such that the operating theory was land for peace. And today it is very much not land for peace. If you look in brief, take it from 30,000 feet, what's land for peace, Pat? Land for peace is trading land in the metropolitan part of Israel in exchange for being allowed to exist and giving up land. The two-state solution, the whole idea behind that was that both the Palestinians and the Israelis would be a part of that peace process. They would both share Jerusalem as the joint capital of two different countries. And all Arabs throughout the entire region would renounce the idea of death to Israel because that's what governs the Arabs. Let me get it straight. 40 years ago, the idea was land for peace. The Israelis were willing to give up land that they had or land that they had taken in the wars, I guess a 67, 6-day war and all that, in return for an agreement for no more war, no more violence, no more terrorism for peace. That's exactly right. That's 40 years ago. So now the big change is what? What is it like now? It's not land for peace? No. What is it? No. It's ultra-security. The whole ethic in Israel is be so powerful that no force within the region can mess with you and Netanyahu has done a wonderful job of that. So let me ask. So I guess inherent in this is that somebody concluded along the last 40 years that land for peace doesn't work and that you could give land but you couldn't be sure you're going to get the peace. You're very close. The major attempt at land for peace was the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. What had happened was private citizens had gotten together to go to Oslo, Norway and work on a peace solution. After a certain period of time, the government picked up on behalf of Israel so that it became an effort of the state and the labor party was still in control. You had the old general, Itzhak Rabin, who had been the chief of staff during the 67 war, almost killed him just from the strain of it but it was a phenomenal victory and for the first time in modern history, the Israelis weren't saying next year in Jerusalem. It was today in Jerusalem. It is and they went to the western wall and prayed and this was God's promise to them literally coming true. It was an amazing period of time and the Israelis produced so many military heroes and that was it. They had all of Israel. But the thing you notice as a visitor is that the areas that had been part of Jordan were preserved as Arab. The story was for us 40 years ago that King Hussein would always come from Oman and stay at the Hilton in East Jerusalem and look out over the beautiful city and imagine it as his. It never was. But imagine it that way. And after the 6 day war, the Israelis owned the whole city and so they were sitting there by their telephones waiting for King Hussein to call them up and say let's make a deal which would have been the logical thing to do and that never happened. And why did it never happen if I can take another sentence? Why did it never happen? Because Hussein was a reasonable person who would have been killed by the rest of the Arab world had he bargained for peace that way. So he was unable to do that. And what I learned 40 years later was when I went back to the same places now there was no effort to preserve the Arab feel to that area. They had changed it to Israeli. So if you went, I stayed in 78 at a little Jordanian place where they were Arabs and we were staying in a not a real cushy place but it was rustic. This year it's all Israeli. They paved it. They put condominiums in the mountain walls on the opposite side and those condominiums are going for $20 million a piece. So the city of Jerusalem has become much more commercialized than it was before. Was it fun? Yeah, it's always fun. Israel is just a place where people living their lives and being who they are is fun for the visitor. And I would recommend that visit to anybody who wants a safe adventure. So let's talk about that. What do you mean by fun? What's the kind of things you could do in Israel to have fun? The sites that you can visit are amazing. In 78 I went to the Golan Heights which had been held by the Syrians and I literally sat in the walled off areas that looked very similar to World War I and that kind of atmosphere where the Syrians would lob missiles into the valley below and all of a sudden that fear went away because after the Six Day War the Syrians were ousted and they didn't have control of the heights. They didn't and they've never been back since. But the prevailing atmosphere was let's make peace and you can have some of this back and we can share Jerusalem and it was very much that way. And that changed when the Netanyahu government took over because the Israeli population is growing. There were roughly six million people when I went there in 78. There are now over eight million people and they have to live somewhere. And so this tension between the occupied areas and the Israeli expansion is such that every time you see this battle between the Palestinians and the Israelis it's because the Israelis are taking land which had previously been loosely promised to the Arab countries and they're starting to settle it themselves. They need space to grow and Netanyahu is in no mood for land for peace. He's got a powerful force and he can defend all of Israel and expand as need be. And so that's what you're seeing. Let me tell you a very small story if I might. At my church they had travels to the Holy Land and I asked the pastor one time how can you be safe there? And the answer was surprising to me because he said well the reason we're safe is because we sign up for the Palestinian tours. Since we're on the Palestinian tours we're safe. The Israelis aren't going to touch us and the Palestinians are going to protect us and so we can go anywhere within metropolitan Israel and beyond and be safe. But if you sign up for the Israeli tours you're more likely to be attacked by the Arabs. Exactly and I thought that's very clever but it's also very surprising. I never dreamed of it in a world and all of the travel to Israel is for the purpose of Christian tours of the Holy Land. I found myself in San Francisco boarding a non-stop flight to Tel Aviv and I started talking to the groups around and they were all Christian groups going to Israel. They're filling a 777 airplane and their whole purpose for going on the trip is to see the Holy Land. It's not business as such, it's travel. You see more and more of that. It seems like the Christian community has a greater presence in Israel. It is advocating for Israel, it is advocating for the future of the Jewish state and it's so interesting to see this kind of support that Israel is getting from the Christian community. It's absolutely right and the thing which is tragic about it is that the Palestinians would like to have a future of their own. Their children would. When you see all those kids throwing rocks they're the same kids that would be college kids if you give them a different chance but the further away you're getting from Land for Peace that makes that possibility dimmer and dimmer. The reason in our discussions that I brought up the Oslo Accords is that at that critical moment, November 5th 1995, the two proponents in the Israeli government were Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin and his sometime rival, sometime deputy, Shimon Peres, who recently died but he had been the president of Israel for a few years, which is an honorific position. What happened on November 5th is that Rabin was heading back to his car from the city square in Tel Aviv and sadly he was assassinated by an Israeli and that was the point when the whole chance of peace was gone because people trusted, they trusted Itzhak Rabin because he had won the Six Day War. He was the general that won the Six Day War. The guy who got all the credit at the time was the general with the eyepatch Moshe Dian, but the real hero of the war was Itzhak Rabin. Yeah, I saw some footage on, was it PBS or CNN recently about that and it was really tragic. It was also tragic that while all of that was happening there was a tremendous amount of terrorism and I recall there was a series of bombings in Tel Aviv, I think it was Tel Aviv, where bus number 18. Oh yeah, there was a lot of that on a main street where the bus stops, there were explosions and bodies all over the place. Over and over again. Over and over again is right. They happened in Jerusalem too, but the terrorists wanted to hit the Israelis where they lived so they went to their commercial city and they were doing that kind of stuff. It was terrible. You know going to a commercial city is about the same thing as going to a break here on Think Tech, so we're going to have a little commercial break right now, okay? I can go with it, okay? We'll be right back with Pat Border. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m., aloha. Hey, aloha and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studios. I'm Andrew Lang, the host of Security Matters Hawaii. I'm airing here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time and I'm trying to bring this community information, security information specifically that will help you live a safer life, help keep our community safer and help keep our businesses safer. So join me because Security Matters, aloha. Okay, we're back with Pat Border. That's his global connections. We're talking about his reflections on the state of Israel after a trip there. And from the standpoint of Pat Border as an intrepid traveler, he's traveled a lot and I think he will continue to do that. So anyway, one of the points, the references you made earlier, Pat, was that you felt safe. At the same time, there's tension. And we all know that there's tension. And maybe the tension in some ways is higher than it used to be. Maybe in some ways it's not. I mean, there are two vectors here. One is that the Palestinians are unhappy and their leadership makes them hostile. And they repeat the message on and on about how they want to eliminate the state of Israel as a Jewish state. And we'll take it all over, not just the Golan Heights, not just Gaza, but the whole place. All the way out to the Mediterranean. Yes. Did you feel that? Did you see that? Was that spoken in your presence? Not at all. And I have to be very guarded now because, remember, the Israelis have a wall. Now, I'm not endorsing walls. So don't quote me saying that. But the wall has kept the Palestinian population out. So the people who do work in Israel can't just cross the road in 15 minutes. They have to go 20 miles out of their way to get to a checkpoint. The other vector we've heard about, though, and I was standing in Netanyahu and all that, is that there are many, many Arabs who have gone to Israeli schools, colleges, graduate schools. They've become lawyers and doctors and researchers. They're involved in the Israeli tech industry. And they're ubiquitous around Israel. Did you see signs of that? Yes. A couple hundred thousand people are Israeli citizens, even though they're Arabs. And some of them made it into the Knesset as representatives. So there is an Arab population in Israel, and it functions well. It's well-represented in government. And that's great. But a couple hundred thousand people don't make peace. We're talking millions. Yeah. Well, the other issue I just want to throw at you and see if you saw it, observed it, thought about it. And that is Israel is a democracy where you have a lot of disagreement among people. You know, they disagree intellectually, disagree in the interpretation of what the government should be like and do like and how democratic decisions need to be made. And the Knesset is full of various parties, various factions, various views of the world. And so I wonder if you saw that either in the newspapers or in your travels in Israel. Yeah, you can see it in the newspapers. And some of the issues I really wasn't that up on. But it exhibits itself in a civil way. But I have to tell you that after two weeks there in 2018, I saw nothing that raised my blood pressure or put me into a sweat. Just nothing. In terms of fear. Absolutely. I wandered on many days, miles out of my way in Tel Aviv, to come across as much as I could and really never did. Really never did. So whether that means Wall's work or whether it means that the Israeli military is so effective that they simply, they've morphed from David into Goliath. I've often felt that the Israeli military has morphed from David into Goliath. But they're friendly. If you go to the tourist places, you can get the Israeli Defense Force caps, just like the Cubs or any of those other places, so you could root for them. And I went to Yad Vashem, which is the one part of his... It's a Holocaust museum. It's a Holocaust museum. From 40 years ago, it's 10 times as large as it was before. So that's one area where if you wanted to go to Yad Vashem, you'd have to hire a car, go there and spend the whole day. It's that big. It's enormous. It's enormous. Did you see, you know, I remember my own trip, which was also about 40 years ago. I saw these young kids, 16, 17, 18 years old, in military uniform because there's conscription in Israel. There probably should be conscription here, too, as far as I'm concerned. And they would be riding on the bus next to you. And they would be carrying their weapons on the bus next to you. And they were smiley face, pinchable, little red cheeks. They were little kids. They were cute little boys. Little boys. And they were menches they were doing their job for the country. And I remember how much I liked that. I liked the nature of a citizen engagement between all the factions and ultimately it's for defense. If you invite me back again, I'll finally dig out that photo that I have of me with an Israeli rifle in my hand with a bunch of those delightful kids. Is that right? Oh, it was. They were delightful. And I said, can I have a photo with you? And they said, absolutely. Well, here, take a gun. I guess they liked you. Yeah, it happens in some places. Before we started, Pat, you were talking about the changes in religion, or at least religion as you saw it, Jewish religion, the celebration of the Sabbath and holidays, the signs on the street of religious people. What did you see this time it was different? Oh, completely different. My favorite restaurant while I was there was a place on Rehov Dizingov, which is this huge road that is the spine for the whole city. In Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv. And I wandered down there the first day I got there. And I saw a nice, spring and easy little restaurant called Benedict's. And I didn't think anything of it. But I was hungry one day and I went in. And their favorite dish is, guess what? Eggs Benedict, which has ham. Got in it. It's got ham and bacon and all that sort of stuff. And all these Israeli people are sitting around in this restaurant that they're thronging to this restaurant. So I would say somehow that that aspect of kosher is kind of out the door. Now, when I was there 40 years ago, I went up to the Sea of Galilee, which is actually, today, it's called Lake Kenneret. Well, you can float on your back. No, that's a different one. But it was a kibbutz in 1978. Yes, in the north. I went there. It's way up north. And this time, I didn't go there, but I looked it up on the web. It's now a big hotel. The kibbutz is sort of that sense of it's a Boy Scout sense almost of you join and you put in your part. You build it. You keep it alive. You make it grow. Now it's turned into a big hotel and it's a real draw. If you're going to be up in the Lake Kenneret area, you want to stay in North Kinosar. All the kibbutz have different business models. They all do different things. A lot of them are still agricultural. A lot of them are on the border. A lot of them on the border and in certain fear of being on the border. I know one kibbutz in the northeast there where most of the kibbutz is underground because they've received so much rockets and firepower in the Golden Heights. But anyway, so what about the good life on the boardwalk? Now not decent golf, but on the boardwalk in Tel Aviv. I remember my own trip and it was like Atlantic City back in the days of Yor or Jones Beach. It was a fabulous recreational area. You're right, but it illustrates how Tel Aviv has no, it doesn't have much room. So everything is jumbled together. The old port of Tel Aviv, back in the days of the British Mandate, it was the only place where the Jews had a foothold into what now is Israel. Everything else was all Arab. Haifa, way up to the north from Jerusalem, was Arab. Now it's Israeli. But the thing that amazed me, they have an almost reckless sense of traffic. Let me show you just one photo that kind of illustrates, maybe two photos that illustrate. This is a photo on the boardwalk. And they made the boardwalk so that it is usable by people of all ages. And it's made of really short hard wood. And they make it undulate so that it's got hills and valleys in it, which means you can ride your bike and ride it down the hill. That's great. And all things. But look at these little scooters that they have. They're all electric powered. And what's astonishing about them is that they can achieve speeds up to 30 miles per hour. So they get into the traffic in Tel Aviv. And it's breathtaking. The only thing I was ever afraid of was that some poor kid, like the ones you see there, would get run over by a car. Because they didn't observe the traffic laws at all. If you can imagine those little vehicles like you see here zipping in and out of traffic. But there are traffic jams, aren't there? I heard a story where they tried to respond to the danger of it because a very influential Israeli person lost his son when he got clobbered with a car and was killed. So they changed things maybe a little bit, but not enough. I mean, the stuff that I saw was breathtaking. It was daredevil. And I mean, I suppose from the standpoint of watching a Hollywood adventure, it's sort of fun to watch. But you just really feel for the people and say, grow up. You're going to kill yourself. I'm reminded of a show we did a couple of years ago when it was a spate of stabbings on the streets of Jerusalem. I'm sure that happens from time to time. I don't think they talk about it much. But there'll be a Palestinian and he'll turn on somebody just after they pass on the sidewalk and try to stab him to death. And what happened was a lot of people were dying because of that attack. So the Israelis had to figure out a way to get medical care to them before they died, before they bled out. And what they decided to do was use these scooters. And so they put paralegals and doctors on these little scooters. And it ran through all this heavy traffic. They could get to them in a matter of minutes or seconds and save their lives. And that was their response to the stabbings. You know, if I had one of those scooters, I'd probably still be practicing law because I could be able to drum up enough business just by being everywhere at exactly the moment. But these scooters were astonishing. For bicycles, they had an electric bicycle so that in order to start it up, you'd go one cycle with your feet and then the rest of the time. And it's all silent. It's not a gas powered engine. So you see a bike go by and nobody's pedaling it, but it's going at 30 miles an hour. That was very, very ordinary in the time that I was there. And I haven't seen anything anywhere else. I mean, you start to see those kind of electric powered tricycles, but they're not powered like they are in Israel. In Israel, those bicycles and the standing devices, they're amazing. I don't even know what to call them. What about the food? I remember my own experience was I fell in love with the yogurt. The yogurt was like the best in the world. It is. And the citric fruits were also fabulous. And you could live on a really healthy diet. And it would be very tasty. And great food. Yeah. At the shopping centers, their version of a food court was little stands throughout the entry level. And some of the things, I'm sure they were healthy. I didn't recognize them as anything I had ever seen before. But I will tell you, they also have Burger King. Oh my god. There you go. Show us some more of your pictures. OK. I talked to you about the port. The port was an amazing place because the Israelis at a superficial level controlled it. And it was kind of nice that way. Where you see those buoys there, there is about a 10-inch pipe. And this is right next to the dining facilities, right next to the really nice restaurants where I dined a couple of times. And I looked at it. And my original thought was, well, they're landlocked. Well, it's not a landlocked, but it's a surrounded country. And I suppose they're pumping in petroleum from out in the ocean. I later found out when I looked on the web that this was a green version of sewage disposal. And so all this stuff is jumbled together. They've got art museums and really nice restaurants in the middle of garbage disposal. This site that you see, and I think I have a more close-in photo, that crane that you see probably hasn't been used in 60 years. It's long since locked up. But I've got a close-up photo of it. And I think I have something that's a little bit better. So they've got all this stuff jumbled together. You can't swim in that water. They have gates up against it the whole length of that. No, because they don't want people to get sick in case there's a spill of any sort. Whether it's no matter what it is running through those pipes, it could be very injurious to people's health. They say the Israelis and the research facilities in Israel are very advanced in technology, in biochemistry, in agriculture, and so forth. And I wonder if you saw that. Was that visible to you in any way? No, I heard about it. If you watch the finance shows, you see really high tech in Israel. And I have no doubt that it's there. I didn't see any of that at all, because those are mostly in the outlying areas between the Ben-Gurion Airport, the International Airport, and- Between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, yeah? Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's where the airport is between the two cities. Right, that's right. That's right. And going through the airport was kind of the same way, but a lot of the waiting areas where people dined, they were carrying their baggage, too, because all the airlines there at the airport wouldn't take bags until two hours before the flight. So I found myself walking around with my luggage and dining at a restaurant. That was for security. That was clearly for security. And I don't know how security worked there at all, because it wasn't really like any other airport that I'd ever been through. I wish I had more photos of the airport itself, because they had these wonderful photos and displays of each decade of the Israeli existence. Oh, interesting. Oh, it's lovely. It really is. The airport was phenomenal, but I had packed all of cameras and such for security reasons. So I really didn't have a camera, but I wish I had. And they had facilities for all over the world. The flights that came into Israel all came from far-flung places. I mean, I hopped on an airplane in San Francisco, Baghdad by the bay, and I didn't get off that airplane until I was in the land of Milk and Honey. That is quite something. I mean, that is something. It's a long way. It's halfway around the world. It is on the clock. It's literally 12 hours separate. 12 noon for them is midnight for us. But when I was going in that direction, they had tailwinds over 150 miles an hour. It was on that trip. We didn't take the polar route. I was traveling across the Kansas-Nebraska border to get to Israel because they shaved off a couple of hours of travel. It's amazing. Now, coming back was quite a bit different. I found myself flying over Yugoslavia in all those places that are less friendly sorts of locations for the US. We got up to Greenland and Iceland and all that, and then slid across Canada and right into San Francisco in just over 13 hours. Well, we're almost out of time, Pat. And I wanted to try to get from you your essential takeaway on this here, essential reflections. What impressions did Israel make on you on this trip and in your life? You can go there and have genuine good times with people who are genial and love visitors and are genuinely friendly. And I would go again for that reason alone. But you'll never again see the Israel that I saw in the 70s. It just won't happen because they were at a different stage of their history. And it was that beginning generation. The first Likud prime minister was Menachem Begin, who came in in 77. And so he was there and was the prime minister when I was there. But that was only the beginning of the fundamental changes. They'll always be in Israel. It will always be safe. But as I said a little bit before, from a military standpoint, it's morphed from David to Goliath. It's the 800-pound gorilla. Well, it's like really everything in the world. It's like if your family came from Japan in 1890, for example, and you could go back and try to recapture that old Japan, it's gone. It's gone. Everything has changed, including in this country. And it may be moving faster here now. But the fact is that the world is changing. Europe is changing. Africa, Asia, Russia, it's all changing. The last? That's why travel is so broadening, isn't it? It is a revelation every time. If you don't come back surprised, you didn't stay long enough, really. And on that note, we'll close. OK. If you don't come back surprised, you didn't catch it, you didn't catch it, you didn't stay long enough. That's why I'm going to South Africa next. All right. Will you come back and report to us? I will. Pat Border, Intrepid Traveler, here on Global Connections. Thank you, Pat. Thank you.