(We are driving from the River (one of them) back down to the Sea in 1989 or early 1990).

This morning we had one of those little pastiche accounts of visits to odd places at times when there was a lot going on. We have bored you before with the mild tingle when our Air Group Commander Captain Fields Richardson- one of the better stick pullers of his generation- that it would be OK to let a few of us off USS Forrestal’s (CV-59) stout haus-pipe and make a feeble stab at seeing the places referenced in the Old and New Testament.

Fields thought that there was unlikely to an outbreak of troubles with the Soviets, and so he slipped off the leash and told us to not get in trouble and try to see something that might mean something to chumps like us after we left the lands held sacred by the three Patriarchal Faiths.

This was the New Year we would welcome a bunch of new things. That internet thing was just one of them. There was some “old” to go with the allegedly new. We were going to straddle a world with less tension between ourselves and the Kremlin. But as we forged east through Homer’s Wine Dark Sea, there was other stuff to account for and other potholes to dodge.
The 1990 Temple Mount killings were not our problem. Or better said, not our direct problem on that Monday, We had completed a curiously muted deployment in which a lot of time was devoted to the marvelous south coast of France. Events in the East continued, not al all concerned with the expiration of the big Frozen Struggle. The Al Aqsa Massacre kicked that off on what became known as Black Monday. The touch of the stones of the Second Temple was still fresh when we heard about what happened at the Temple Mount.

Ari was our hired driver, a veteran of the 1948 fight and father of a young man killed in action. He agreed to blast us from Haifa up to Jerusalem to commence a motorized version of the King James Version. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem can make some great claims. We could leave it at that, or set the stage a little better by just calling it the most sacred place on earth. It was on another Monday morning in October of 1990. It was just before daily Zuhr prayer during the third year of the First Intifada.

The Temple Mount was the location of one of the disputes de jour. Some devout Israeli’s had a plan to lay the cornerstone of a Third Temple. We naturally wanted no trouble, and Ari shepherded us down to the portion of the remaining second Temple foundations. They call it the Wailing Wall these days, and the level of emotion by all of those looking at those great brown stones was something else. Ari then successfully lead us up to the Temple Mount. He did not recommend approaching Al Aqsa’s Dome of the Rock and we complied.

A more detailed account of those days is contained in our book “Last Cruise of the Cold War.” But the rich aura of spirituality envelopes many who walk those stones. That sort of light pervaded all of us on those few short days, shared by residents and visitors alike. Talking to one of the Palestinian kids trying to sell souvenirs in Bethlehem. Fun chat- he was young enough to have a skeptical view of the swirl running his own small business selling respectful souvenirs to the adherents of the other two.

Bethlehem was mostly quiet on that day, tensions and Antifada keeping the crowds down. Ari got us to a tea-house to try to figure out what we would attempt to see in the hours remaining. We looked at paper maps- thirty years back- for geographic clues.

The chant on this Monday in north America is short, going “From the River to the Sea…” Having looked exactly at the Jordan River, we crossed just after dusk. Ari pulled his cab over to the side of the road where the stones of a checkpoint from the 1948 war remained. We decided to push on and not disturb the silence. Down the quiet West Bank road was the Dead Sea and the Fortress of Masada.

If we had known some of what was coming, we might have originated “From the River to the Sea.” For goodness sakes, they were both right there on either side of the car!

We will hold some hope for these holidays, that the participants in the two conficts can try some piece. From whatever River on whose banks we need to agree. T/hey all run down to the sea eventually.

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