Herodian Fortress  | The Lone Oak: Perhaps the most cherished tree in Israel  |
To my perpetual amazement, the majority of tourists are "in the dark" about the historically and Zionistically resplendent Gush Etzion. This region, commonly referred to as the West Bank, is a drop south of Jerusalem. Either a half or full day can include several of the following sites, which are ---incredibly----within just 5 square miles of each other:
- An audio-visual show about how a few dozen isolated kibbutzniks and Hagana defenders faced the onslaught of thousands of Jordanian Legionnaires and local Arabs on the eve of Israel's birth in the 1948 War of Independence; You will also find out why that oak tree is so important.
- Herodion: A 2000-year old mountain fortress, one of King Herod's most spectacular building projects;
- a young couple living in their large homemade Mongolian tent;
- a many-chambered cave in a majestic canyon;
- a small factory where a man invented how to compress mounds of brown, gushy olive oil press waste into "charcoal", rather than destructive coal-mining;
- a family who dug under their house to make a small winery and found a vertical 2000 year old Roman pillar supporting the house.
- An organic grape vineyard, grown by a Chabadnik from Boston, who produces wine in his home cellar.
- Trails to small springs.
- Israel's longest omega line, stretching over a pine-forest valley;
- Calibre 3: where bodyguards are trained, and where tourists can take a 2-hour course in counter-terrorism;
- A shack where volunteers daily give free snacks to hundreds of soldiers on guard duty in the area, founded by 2 widows whose husbands were terror victims;
- The Lone Tree Beer Brewery;
- A water tunnel to wade through which was part of an ancient Roman aqueduct;
- A dirt road that follows the ancient route of the Patriarchs, passing ancient mikvahs, farming terraces, and a field where a famous Maccabee battle took place.
