Jerusalem is without a doubt the most holy place on Earth. Three major religions, with billions of adherents, have some of their most important sites here. One of these sites is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. When the crusaders marched across Europe and beyond, their ultimate goal was to enter this church. If you visit, you can see the crosses that these crusaders etched into the walls upon their arrival.
This church is different than all churches you will ever find. It is more a warehouse of churches, representing the different sects of Christianity, built over the sites of Christ's crucifixion, burial & resurrection. This golden mosaic dome is within the church, a few feet away from where Jesus is said to have been buried and was resurrected.
During the 1950s and 60s, around 1.2 million land mines were laid in the Golan Heights, the Arava Valley, the West Bank, and along the Jordan River. The majority of the mines that need to be cleared in the Golan Heights were put there by Syrian forces. Other mines were placed by the Israelis to thwart invading soldiers and tanks during the first decades of the state’s existence. Israel later fenced off these minefields but the fencing is not always properly maintained. This has led to uninformed civilians crossing into the minefields, sometimes with terrible outcomes.
These landmines contaminate a combined area of 50,000 acres. Along with unexploded ordnance from previous conflicts, vast swaths of agricultural land in the region are inaccessible.
In the late 1990s, an Israeli government audit found that hundreds of minefields no longer contributed to Israel's security and that no government agency had presented a plan to clear them.
In 2009, Jerry White, an American who survived a mine incident in the Golan Heights, drafted a call to action and a legal framework for humanitarian de-mining in Israel. In February 2010, 11-year-old Israeli boy Daniel Yuval lost his leg to land mine while walking in the snow in the Golan Heights. Following this incident, Daniel joined the Mine-Free Israel and petitioned the Prime Minister and Members of Knesset to support the draft bill. The campaign secured the support of 73 Members of Knesset, as well as the Government, and became a law on March 14, 2011.
Following the adoption of the bill, the State of Israel established its National Mine Action Authority, which began work in the Arava Valley in 2012. In 2013, de-mining activity continued in the Arava and spread to the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
Since the authority was established, it has cleared over 1,700 acres of minefields and other areas suspected of being mined. The Israeli Defense Ministry is intent on removing the remaining mines so more territory is safe to hike in. The de-mining rate is currently about 350-500 acres per year.
The Florentin neighborhood of Tel Aviv was predominantly a low-income neighborhood since it's establishment in the 1920s. Florentin was initially populated primarily by poor Jewish immigrants from North Africa, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Bukhara. As with much of Southern Tel Aviv, for many decades the area has suffered from urban decay and poverty. Beginning in the 1990s, the area has seen much change. With the opening of many artists' workshops, and the decline of the traditional garment and furniture production industries that had once sustained the area, it has become increasingly popular with artists and bohemians, who flocked to the area for its lower-rents.
The area is specifically known for its vibrant street art. The mix of garages and abandoned buildings in the area attracted many artists who used the areas' crumbling walls as a canvas for large works. Street art in Florentin often has strong political message. Local political conflicts between rival political groups have also taken place through graffiti battles on the walls of the neighborhood. Much of the graffiti is merely in text form, involving quotes of Hebrew poets, religious passages, and the dialogues taking place between different graffiti artists.
Florentin is one of the most lively and active neighborhoods in Tel Aviv today. It hosts numerous artists' workshops, cafes, bars, galleries, restaurants, markets and graffiti tours.
The 2014 Gaza war was a military operation launched by Israel on July 8, 2014 in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Following the IDF Operation Brother's Keeper, Hamas started rocket attacks, targeting Israeli cities and infrastructure, resulting in seven weeks of Israeli operations.
The stated aim of the Israeli operation was to stop rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, which increased after an Israeli crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank was launched following the 12 June kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers by two Hamas members.
On August 26, an open-ended ceasefire was announced. By that date, the IDF reported that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups had fired 4,564 rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel, with over 735 intercepted in flight and shot down by Iron Dome. Most Gazan mortar and rocket fire hit open land. More than 280 fell on areas in Gaza, and 224 struck residential areas. Militant rocketry also killed 13 Gazan civilians, 11 of them children. The IDF attacked 5,263 targets in Gaza; at least 34 known tunnels were destroyed and two-thirds of Hamas's 10,000-rocket arsenal was used up or destroyed.
The "Iron Dome" is a mobile all-weather air defense system. The system is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to 70 kilometres (43 mi) away and whose trajectory would take them to a populated area.
During the 50 days of the conflict where 4,594 rockets and mortars were fired at Israeli targets, Iron Dome systems intercepted 735 projectiles that it determined were threatening, achieving an intercept success rate of 90 percent. Only 70 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza failed to be intercepted.
This is one such Iron Dome missile cutting across the sky of Tel-Aviv to intercept a rocket fired from Gaza during the 2014 Gaza War.
Masada is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel situated on top of an isolated rock plateau. It is located on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, 1,407 ft below sea level.
Herod the Great built a large fortress on the plateau as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt, and erected there two palaces between 37 and 31 BCE.
According to Josephus, the siege of Masada by troops of the Roman Empire at the end of the First Jewish–Roman War ended in the mass suicide of 960 people – the Sicarii rebels and their families hiding there.
In 73 or 74 CE, the Roman legion surrounded Masada, built a circumvallation wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau. When Roman troops entered the fortress, they discovered that its defendants had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and committed mass suicide or killed each other, 960 men, women, and children in total. Josephus wrote of two stirring speeches that the Sicari leader had made to convince his men to kill themselves. Only two women and five children were found alive.
This is the mosaic room of the Western Palace on Masada, built beginning in 35 CE. The mosaic room contained steps that led to a second floor with separate bedrooms for the king and queen. The courtyard was the central room of the Western Palace and directed visitors into a portico, used as a reception area for visitors. Visitors were then led to a throne room. Off the throne room was a corridor used by the king, with a private dressing room, which also had another entrance way that connected to the courtyard through the mosaic room.
