Thursday May 8, 2008 Independence Day in Israel!!

Today is the Independence Day here in Israel! Actually it's May 14th, but they celebrate it as a national holiday today. Israel officially turns 60 this year and there's going to be quite a bit of celebrating here. Lots of Christian organizations, heads of state, including Bush, who'll be here on the 15th of May with Gorbachev, UK's Tony Blair, and Benny Hinn, yep, good ole' Benny will be here.
But today was the day that the nation celebrated. There were quite a few loud firecrackers and fireworks, which was sort of a dreadful sound, because it sounded just like guns and bombs going off. Not something you want to hear in the Middle East.


The picture on the left is very famous here in Israel. It is of three soldiers at the Western Wall after the notorious Six Day War, in 1967 fought against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. A miraculous war in that Irael ceased the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza strip in 6 days. An amazing feat considering they were immensely outnumbered in size. And of course, those three areas today are the three most sensitive areas here in Israel.
I liked this picture, because those three soldiers are still alive, hence the pic on the right.



All across the nation people were celebrating. I'm not sure if they report these sorts of things in the American media. I think they just focus on the tensions and the negative stuff.





But it was quite a day!!