View of the Sea of Galilee

 
Paula celebrates her birthday and Israeli Independence Day

Capernaum:  Roman era ruins where Jews lived.  The round grinder riders on the cone to grind wheat.

Mules or slaves roll this grinder.  In the background is the
Franciscan Monastery.

The White Synagogue, built on the site where Jesus may have prayed

A Mogen David from the top of the 2000 year-old synagogue. 
Note the Roman influence in the architecture.  It is Palestinian
policy to destroy all Israeli historical sites so that Jews can’t
prove they were in Israel before the Ottoman Empire.

The Jordan River, south of the Sea of Galilee

The close-up works

This tank memorial remembers the hundred of tank troops who held back the superior forces of the Syrian Tank Corps that tried to invade through the Golan Heights in the first days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  Michael, our guide said that because the Arabs attacked on Yom Kippur, the Israeli reserves were able to get to the battle fronts sooner.  Any other day the roads would have been clogged.
 

The Golan was captured from Syria in 1968.  Israeli Labor party leaders are talking about leasing it to Syria as a demilitarized zone.

En Gev, a kibbutz where we had lunch.  Kibbutzim are disappearing as bastions of Eastern European idealistic socialism.  They are becoming money makers.  More and more the children live with their parents.  En Gev was under episodic attack by rockets and machine guns from the Golan Heights before 1968.

En Gev is proud that their cows give more milk than average cows. 
Give this babe a Maidenform!

Theater in Bet Shean, an ancient city from the
time of King Saul that sat on the trade routes to
the east.  The Romans applied their architectural
magic to it.  And then my new Nikon D80 with
Tamron zoom lens ruined it.  My new Nikon would
occasionally flash F— or ERR or OFF and I later
was taught by Eitan Fried at Kerenor Camera Repairs, in Jerusalem, to reset it.  I lost a lot of great shots. 
The camera and lens are at Nikon for diagnosis.
Since it takes 5 to 45 minutes to get an error I am
not confident they will experience or solve the problem.

Bel Aire Camera, in Los Angeles, allowed me full credit on the Tamron when I bought a Nikon 17-200 VR lens.  I've yet to fully test it.

Israel is on the Africa-Asia rift where the Africa plate drags against the Asia plate.  The results are numerous
earthquakes.  Beit Shean shows this with toppled columns, some of which have been replaced.