20 Years Ago in Gaza, etc.
A some 50-year old Japanese author, not so popular, traveled Israel and the autonomous areas of the Palestinians 20 years ago.
He met a young worker in a hotel in Jerusalem. One day they were in an elevator all alone together, so that the Japanese asked, "Where are you from?" The immigrant valet, whose English was not so fluent, answered, "From Russia." "Which is better, Russia or Israel?" Then, scornfully the valet said, "Of course, Israel."
The Japanese author went to Gaza. A taxi driver requested an extortionate taxi fare when they arrived at the entrance to Gaza. The requested fare looked like 10 times higher than a normal fare. So, the Japanese and the Israeli taxi driver started a quarrel. Then, an Israeli soldier stationed there interfered, resulting in payment of half an initially requested fare.
From the entrance point, he took a bus. Among local Palestinians, there were three different types of bus passengers. In addition to the Japanese traveler, there were a German businesswoman who spoke Arabic and a rich and young Palestinian who dressed well and spoke with the German woman.
The rich and young Palestinian said to the German woman, "Hey, look at this Japanese writer. He looked so cheap. Such men should not come to Gaza." The German woman didn't reply. At a bus stop around which big and luxurious houses were built, the arrogant young Palestinian man got off. In the middle of a market, the Japanese author left the bus to observe the street. Gaza was full of poor houses and poor people, though there seemed to be such rich Palestinians as he had met in the bus.
In Bethlehem, he met an old man who said he had been a journalist and once worked for a newspaper of Jordan. The Japanese traveler bought him a glass of beer in a restaurant of a hotel. The poor old Arab said that when he was working in Paris as a correspondent, he taught Arabic to the wife of Arafat. But when they parted, the old man said, "I cannot work as a journalist any more." So, taking compassion on him, the Japanese gave him a wrist watch he was wearing as a present of friendship.
However, it was more impressive to read his experiences of seeing a young beautiful Arab woman buying a chicken whose head was cut off before her in a shop and holding and carrying out the miserable bird so coolly on the street, and an old woman squatting down on a street of Jerusalem while reading the Torah and sometimes holding and shaking a metal can to which some people threw coins as she was a beggar.
Anyway, the Japanese unpopular author didn't seem to meet God in Palestine though he left Japan after the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo cult terror of attacking Tokyo subway trains with poisonous sarin gas.
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Today, I saw two cars in about 10 minutes that had the car license number "11-11." It was very rare since other hundreds of cars had banal numbers such as "19-95."
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Mat 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: