Tour Of The Golan Heights- David Sussman

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oh I call me [Music] sh don't forget H [Music] sh [Music] fore I call me [Music] oh oh I call me sh my oh so oh [Music] [Applause] for [Music] I call me sh oh I told me I oh oh I call me sh oh I told me D oh sometimes it's pling so easy to see but I know that he's taking care of me taking care of me so I do well with my vision for today and let things play out in a Godly way my little human eyes just don't get the picture here but I got no reason to fear I call me sh oh I told D oh call me somebody oh I told me d i [Music] oh don't forget how sh I am [Music] m [Music] I call me oh so oh I call me sh my oh I told me [Music] [Applause] oh for [Music] I call me sh oh told oh I call me sh oh I told oh sometimes it's planning too easy to see but I know that he's taking care of me taking care of me so I do way with my vision for today and I let things play out in a Godly way my little human eyes just don't get the you here but I got no reason to [Music] fear [Music] me hey everybody this is David susman and I'll be your first presenter here in a four-part series being brought to you by project Inspire before we get started I just want to say thank you to Rabbi Simka Barnett and Rabbi yoseph fredman and to everyone at project Inspire for coming up with creative and innovative ways to bring Israel into your homes and connect you to your Jewish identity and of course our shared Heritage and for remembering US tour guides whove been suffering quite a lot here during this pandemic period so thank you again for making this all possible this is a four-part series today my myself David susman will be bringing you to the Golan Heights in Israel's North I'll be followed by Rabbi Ken Spiro and Patrick Amar who will be bringing you to various sites in the city of Jerusalem and last but definitely not least Steve gar will be bringing us to the holy city of KRON Hebron and the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the matriarchs all of these to tours will be excellent for you and your families to connect with Israel and if you haven't signed up for the future tours make sure you do so and I hope you enjoy today's tour of the Golan [Music] Heights today we are focusing on the beautiful Golan Heights the Golan Heights is a small parcel of land although you wouldn't think that with the amount of attention it receives in the media today but it's only roughly about 50 m long and maybe 13 Mi wide at its widest point but strategically speaking this cliff and Plateau is seriously important for the safety and protection of the entire nation of Israel what are the boundaries of the Golan Heights well to the north you have the large Mount hermone Rising t 10,000 ft above sea level it even boasts its own ski resorts to the South you have the yarmuk river which flows into the Jordan River and at that point you have Syria Jordan and Israel all touching one another at a beautiful place called Kat gader these great hot springs that one can visit on their trip here to the Goot to the east you have the rad River and to the West behind me you got the gorgeous hola Valley one of the bread baskets of Israel but it always wasn't a Bread Basket in fact that huge green Lush area you see behind me was nothing but swamp lands for literally Millennia it wasn't until those modern zionists came here those stiff neck Jews that we know how we that we know we can be that were so stubborn and refused to leave even though there was starvation and malaria there they said This is Our Land we will make it bloom once again well in the 1950s with the help of the French believe it or not they built these trenches on the eastern and western side and drained the swamp leaving behind Black Gold no not oil but an extremely new nutrient rich soil that the farmers here in Israel took full advantage of but like any human we took too much advantage of it and we over tilled it over fertilized it abused it what happened was in the early 9s Caverns opened up underground and spontaneously combusted you had these infernos raging underg green underground which was destroying the vegetation up above that's when Israel realized that by draining the swamp we had caused severe ecological damage so we reintroduced the swamp with the agmon lake in addition to reintroducing that swamp we also reintroduced the traditional migration pattern of the birds traveling from Europe to the west and the rest of Asia to the east that are going down towards Africa for the winter and then back home for the spring and summer months which makes Israel a prime location for bird watching literally 500 million Birds each migration season passes through the land of Israel just look at some of these beautiful sites right here of that bird migration in the agone Lake Region so how do we get here how did Israel take possession of the Golan Heights so to answer that question we got to go back to the sixday war which takes place in June of 1967 because the entire Golan Heights was controlled by S between 1949 and 1967 and they built hundreds of bunkers like the one I'm sitting on right now that speckled the entire Golan Heights and especially along the cliffs that look down onto the hula Valley down below you have dozens of uh kibot and agricultural developments and thousands of Jews who were living there during that time they were under constant Threat by The syrians Who were sitting in this bunker right here staring down at them and occasionally firing upon them as well Now The Six Day War was a miraculous War I mean they don't even teach The Six Day War at West Point for military strategy cuz it's it's mind numbing we it's mindboggling we just can't understand it was miraculous really six days a small nation the nation of Israel against the mighty Egyptian I almost want to call it Empire like the mighty Egyptian Army which is funded and supplied with Armament from the Russians as well as the syrians how in the world is Israel going to be victorious in fact we prepared for this war by digging Mass trenches not to stop tanks from entering Israel but for burying our dead that's how serious this was we knew that NASA the Egyptians and Syria that they were going to attack they had thrown out un peacekeepers and lined up their troops and their tanks and their armaments on our border near the Sinai desert near a lot stretching all the way up to the Gaza Strip and we knew that we needed to strike first so we flew in early in the morning in the beginning of June and literally just bombarded their entire Air Force giving us supremacy of the air now before we end our discussion about the war and the battles that took place here I want to move to another site and I want to discuss an individual who may be one of the most major um personalities of the Six Day War even though he died in 1965 so come with me so I'm sure many of you saw the Netflix documentary about Ellie Cohen called the Spy arm man in Damascus so he is the individual who probably had the biggest impact on The Six Day War here in ' 67 even though he died in ' 65 and that's because he went Behind Enemy Lines as a by pretended to be a Syrian and was so successful that he actually became friends with the president of Syria in fact some people say that he was One Heartbeat Away from becoming the president himself that if the president had died many people would have rallied behind Ellie Cohen to become the next president of Syria just imagine that unbelievable character lots to talk about him and lots to discuss but we don't really have the time but definitely look them up and if you haven't seen the spy on Netflix you got to watch it it's really unbelievable but here in the Golan he told the generals and the ministry of Defense in Syria to plant eucalyptus trees like you can see behind me over there to give shade for the soldiers and to build Barracks here and to create some type of recreational activity if there's Living Water Pools places where people could cool off a little bit here in the hot summer well this is also where later on the syrians would actually put their stashes of weap weaponry and when we came into' 67 we knew exactly where to bomb because of these eucalyptus trees and you can see bombed out Bonkers all over the place and you can still see a standing mosque right behind me where some of these Syrian soldiers would actually go and pray and all of this amongst the beautiful Golan Heights that is so gorgeous right now as we're still in the middle of winter if you can believe that there's a huge storm coming up here pretty soon and uh but yet it's very green the flowers are Bloom there's snow on the hermone the birds are chirping the butterflies are flapping their wings all over the place and here we are sitting in the middle of a war scene from like you know 55 years ago you know 1967 any who let's move on and tap into some of the historical Jewish aspects of the Golan height so come with me let's talk about the Heyday of the Golan Heights which is about 1500 years ago During the talmudic period when there was over 200,000 people living here in the goolan now put that in contrast with today's population which is around 36,000 half of which are the Drew people minority living here in Israel whom we'll talk about a little bit later during the show well this t mudic period here in the Golan with 200,000 people living here spread out over 40 different villages with a population of roughly 5,000 in each their main source of income was olive oil olive trees grow great in this region and there are many different stations to the pressing of olive oil this is in fact the second station after they uh initially crushed the olives they come here and put the sludge in these baskets and with these weights press it down and extract even more oil that oil was important because that was you know that was the oil of the day right today we need oil to run this world well back then they needed olive oil it's the way that people used to light their houses with with candles on Shabbat right we still to this very day light our shabas candles usually with olive oil or at least that's the best way that's that's the optimal way to light your shabas candles is using olive oil and the Tuda period is important in Judaism because that's when the oral tour was codified it's when we took all of that oral transmission from generation to generation to Generation all the way back to harini to Mount Si when we received the written Torah the oral Torah described how to fulfill those mits votes well that all ended after the destruction of the second temple when the Romans kicked us out of Jerusalem and forbid one another from teaching Torah so this great Rabbi Rabbi Yehuda Nasi and the the great ream of the time had this massive debate that lasted you know many many years in order to codify Jewish law known as Hal but Hala doesn't really mean law it comes from the word h which means to go it's the way of the Jew it's the lens in which we use to judge right from wrong in this world now it has been expounded upon expounded upon and expounded upon where you have tens of thousands of books known as sarim all about Jewish law or the way of the Jew and you have to understand that the rabbis that you're connected with they are like PhD scientists in Jewish philosophy and the way of the Jew they went and studied in Yeshiva for 10 years for 15 years and they didn't stop there they continue to learn you know and probably will all the way until they're 120 well Jewish law is so defined that it goes so far as to tell you what shoe to put on First and I know what you're thinking right now you're like what Sho have put on first like no no wonder we're so neurotic you know that you know it it guides our actions in life so precise it tells what shoot I don't want that well you know what if you don't scratch the surface in Judaism then all you will see is an ancient archaic way of life but all of these Act and all of these mitz fault that we have as soon as you scratch that surface just a little bit and understand the reason behind it then you'll see the beauty in all those actions now which shoe do we put on first in the morning we put the right shoe on first because we want to like step forward in life with the right foot right and the right side in Judaism represents hassid it represents kindness so when we get up in the morning we put that right shoe on first we are reminded that when we go downstairs and greet our spouses and our children and our family and our community and our workplace and whomever we come into contact that day that we want to come in contact with them with kindness with the right foot first you know I'm just going to share a very very quick story I was doing a virtual tour in Yad morai and this place is on the border of Gaza and they produce honey here in Israel and we went out to the Honeycombs you know to the the beehives and we took out one of the Combs and it was covered it was all gray and it had little bits and pieces of grass and leaves in it from you know the bees coming back with the pollen and the honey and it looked disgusting and The Beekeeper said now take your nail and just make a small incision and I did that and all of that golden beautiful honey started to pour out that's the same here in Judaism you need to scratch the surface ask the questions find out the meaning behind The Commandments and the mitzvot in order to attain that higher sense of living that you can't get through our ancient way the way of the Jew let's now head to a national park here known as gamla to see the ruins of a second temple period Village that existed here all the way up until the Roman came and destroyed it in the year 66 CE so let's go unfortunately the Nature Reserve here in gamet is closed due to covid-19 so we can't access the ruins that they back to the second temple period but I do have some great footage from my television show land of the Bible where we did a great show here preco time so let's enjoy some of that footage and I'll meet you with my friend Yakov Sullivan who's a captain in the 188th tank Brigade who that was stationed here in the Golan Heights to talk a little bit about the logistics and what is happening here today and of course the Civil War that's been raging in Syria the Golan Heights has been the scene of warfare for thousands of years we can read in the Bible of the conquest of Joshua we know that there was battles here during the first temple period as well as the second temple period in fact the ru ruins of a city you see behind me was one of the three fortified cities here in the Golan during the Great Revolt where the Jews rebelled against the Romans well the Romans sent their number one General a guy by the name of vpan with three Roman Legions to defeat that City but the city was well fortified and not only that the only way to descend to the city was through a very narrow path it's the same path that tourist can walk down today to visit those ruins this gave the advantage to the Jews inside that City and they were actually able to repel the Romans well the Romans regrouped they attacked the city again they breached its walls and they defeated the city and all 9,000 people were eventually killed today after excavations have taken place tourists can visit the national park here in and see the ruins of that great battle but not only that archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old synagogue one of the oldest that has ever been discovered so not only is a trip to gamla an educational experience about the great Revolt but it's also a spiritual pilgrimage for many let's continue as we learn more about the modern battles that took place here on the Golan Heights [Music] so here we are with my good friend major yako civan who lives in a small yesu a neighborhood known as yonatan and it's literally 7 miles from the border of Syria how does that make you feel one I talked about the period of time where there was no government here that was a rare window of opportunity where the barriers fell down and we had an opportunity to have a direct connection with the locals living here when you say barriers you mean like the border the Border didn't fall down actually a new a new fence was built but I mean the mental barrier meaning if I wanted to contact a Syrian farmer 10 years ago there was a government in between I couldn't talk to the average local suddenly the average loal has no government his son was just shot there's no functioning medical system in Syria there's no government so he brings his son to the border with Israel and an IDE of soldier comes to the border and takes his son and saves his life in the hospital in saf or naria and we're talking about six over 6,000 syrians treated in Israeli hospitals over 1400 Syrian children why did we do this first of all because we're Jewish secondly because we realized that this is a key for the day after we understood at some point the Assad regime the Syrian regime together with their Iranian friends will take over the region again and we were planting the seeds for the day after now I told you Iran is trying to recruit here they're having a very hard time the locals are not just joining them because if Iran wanted to use us as a common enemy with the locals and tell the locals yes we don't really get along but you know what there's Israel they're the devil let's fight them we're not the devil anymore they have to pay a lot of money and locals are joining them I can tell you David in the past few months there's been uh intensive riots against the Iranian regime against the Iranian presence in Southwest Syria uh the locals actually assassinated the head recruiter of for the Iranian militias who was going around the Villages trying to recruit young guys to come and join these anti-israel militias and they they assassinated him meaning something something happened here um today there's tens of thousands of syrians in Syria today who are still wearing clothing they got from Israel who might even being eating food they got by Israel whose life were saved by Israel and this is a game Cher this is something that gives me hope for for a better future wow amazing so hopefully this new Administration in America will keep the sanctions on Iran preventing more fighters from Hezbollah and militias funded Again by Iran and will continue the Diplomatic work in building relationships across the boorder I think this is all incredible you also run a program called slingshot now a lot of our viewers out here when Co is over please God will be soon plan on bringing their families to Israel so tell us a little bit about the program that you run here at tsaki okay so I'll say I served in the idea for almost a decade and today when I I protected my country I fought in the 2014 Gaza war and when I left the Army four years ago uh I found a way to continue to contribute asides from my reserve duty um so I explain to people from the world what's happening here and Israel's challenges so they can bring out our voices around the world like we just explained but also I do motivational speaking in the Army and I try uh motivating the soldiers who are protecting our homeland so asides from my motivational programs I also make sure that I always every time you know you brought dozens of groups to the Golan and we always go out and treat the guys and make sure you know how much they know how many people love them in the world well incredible you know as major said I have brought dozens of groups to his presentation at telak and everybody loves it meeting the soldiers saying thank you to the soldiers learning about the heroism from the various Wars that were fought here and of course the courageous activity that is being taking place right now here in the Golan major thank you so much for your time and I hope to see you again soon in healthier times one of the great things to do here in the Goan Heights is to visit one of the several wineries in the region and wine from the Golan hides is world renowned because The Vineyards are grown in that volcanic rock that we talked about earlier which gives the wine a real full body flavor now the biggest Winery here in the Golan one of the most popular ones is the Golan Heights Winery and if you've been to Israel most likely you've been here they produce some excellent wines from the hermone which is their least expensive all the way up to the yarden which is their most expensive now an interesting aspect of wine in Judaism well first of all we need to realize is that it is a fundamental aspect of Judaism right we say kides on Shabbat the holiest day of the year which we celebrate every week on a glass of wine havdala when we take Shabbat out on Passover we have four cups of wine if you're male and you had a Brit Mila the mo who does the circumcision puts a drop of wine in your mouth in ancient times Israel was known to produce some of the best wines in the world we exported a lot of our wines so how come when people think of kosher wine they think of manevitz which is horrible you got to be at least 70 years old to enjoy manevitz my mother God bless her soul she's 82 years old every time that I visit her she opens up the refrigerator and says let's have a and she takes out some mana chevit and I'm like Mom we really have great kosher wine now in fact some of the wines here in Israel are winning Awards around the world I just want to share one incredible little story that I heard from uh I believe his name was Yak flam who owns the flam Winery just outside of Jerusalem he won an award in France a wine competition and and and during that when he received the wine they said wow it's amazing what you've been able to do with our grapes particularly shardon and he says you got it wrong Chardon is not a French grape it's an Israeli grape because when you take the word shardon and you break it down to two Hebrew words you get sh Adonai which is God's name shonai Shard right this is the gateway to heaven and that's why on Shabbat after a full week of working you know back in the day in the fields but today at the office wherever it is and always looking behind your shoulder who's looking at you checking your pockets and somebody trying to rip you out what you know in the world and then all a sudden it comes Shabbat and you're supposed to enter this spiritual time how do you bring it down or bring it up in order to tap into the sanctity of this time well you do it on a coast yine on a glass of wine shardon the gateway to heaven so we can't come here to the goal on without talking about the Drew's people a very interesting minority living here in Israel roughly about 120,000 and they are an intricate uh piece of the fabric of Israeli Society in fact we have members of knesset who are from the Drew's people and a large percentage of the males actually serve in the military here now they're an offshoot of Islam coming out in the 11th century and as a result they were persecuted by the Muslims around the Middle East so they sought out safety by settling in The Valleys of the large mountainous region here near Mount Hermon and further north in Lebanon in Syria and even in Jordan the community you see below me is called mijal Shams and this is the capital of the Drews people here in the Golan Heights so we have a very special guest with us today from the Drews Community his name is bougie he's a guide here um showing people around and showing the hospitality of the Drews people so he's going to tell us a little bit more about the life of uh the Drews here in order to do this interview we're just going to keep it safe then we're going to put on our mask bougie thank you so much for joining us today we really appreciate taking the time and telling us a little bit about your people so please tell us a little bit about the livelihood what you guys do here I mean it is so beautiful so take it away hello well first of all thank you for having me and uh I want to tell you a little bit about Maj in the beginning Maj is um it's about 11,000 people live here and all of them are GRS except for about maybe 2 3 families are Christians H and it's a very nice place as you can see beautiful like in Spring in summer and in Winter you have the ski you have the tourism here yeah there's not so much snow I thought there would be a lot more snow Yeah well it's coming in two days two days big storm there's a big storm coming uh hopefully it won't be too much actually um I want to say a few things about maal chams it's um the it's in the north and here if you can see behind me you have the buildings where the buildings and and the green starts that's Sia there so you can W from our vantage point you can actually see the fence you know so the building stop you have a fence and where it's green that's serious the buildings are are right next to the fence they live there and uh we can actually see Syrian buildings as well on the other side Syrian cars and all what you can see and uh yeah yeah uh it's a very touristic place we are famous with food a lot of people come here for food good hospitality and uh yeah very nice people and come to ski also uh talking about tourism the main thing here is not only ski it is snow and ski but also the cherries season which is in May June it's full with tourism everyone comes here to eat right from the tree as you know this is the new organic uh and uh something more about the Drews the Drews live always oh they have always lived in um on the mountains or higher places uh farming uh is in every Drews Village you see farmers and they are hardworking ER as to holidays we don't have we have one holiday the whole year which is nothing then we don't have another holidays like Shabbat for the and stuff so they always work so uh they are hardworking people um so are you looking forward to the snow coming in a couple days and maybe Israeli tours obviously International tours can't come here today but Israeli tours yeah hopefully W with without the corona it was a lot better sure hopefully it will continue to be good and hopefully the there will be some skiing this year uh with this situation well you know my kids who are six and a half have never really had a memorable experience in the snow so maybe after this storm you know we could come visit and maybe stay by you of course you're more than welcome B you've been great we really appreciate your time thanks for joining us and let's continue as we Explore More of the Golan Heights thank you very much one can't talk about the wars that took place here in the Golan Heights without visiting what is now known as the valley of te were an incredible battle took place during the yonip PO War of 1973 and it's called the yonip PO War because on October 6th 1973 Syria surprise attacked the nation of Israel that's right on our holiest day the syrians bombarded the northern region of Israel and here in the Golan Heights which was liberated as we discussed earlier in 1967 now all of the trees you see planted here were planted in memory of the soldiers who fell in battle in this incredible site the reason why it's called the Valley of Tears is from all of the loss of life that took place here during the Yon kipur War now just imagine first of all it's yon kipor it was a surprise attack the only soul soldiers here defending Israel from the syrians were two tank brigades you had the 77th and the 188th the 77th which was located here in the northern part of the Golan Heights was led by Colonel avigor kahalani and he tells about the battles that took place during the 6th and the 7th of October that the fighting became so close to one another that you couldn't even see the difference between the Israeli lines and the Syrian lines and no place is that depicted better than right here where you literally have an Israeli tank almost touching a Syrian tank now these tanks were brought here later on they weren't actually this close but they were dozens of feet apart from one another when the commander of this tank saw the Syrian tank and first of all just look at the two tanks okay the Israeli tank outd ated it's like ancient in those times okay Israel of course added some Armament and added new technology inside but this is like ancient technology compared to the incredible t62 night vision capability precision shooting tanks that were given to the syrians by who else other than the Russians that's right the Russians supplied all of this and all of these tanks are coming in we were so outmatched both in number as well as the technology however where we reign supreme is with the heart the devotion the passion and the understanding that a battle for Israel is a battle of life and death and because of that the soldiers here were able to fight with such incredible bravery that even though they found themselves just literally dozens of feet apart from one another they were able to load the cannon shoot the Dank defeat the syrians and lead them or should I say push them into any Retreat and then we did our counter offensive right we actually did an offensive against the syrians and pushed them back into Syrian uh territory that we were literally in Cannon shot of their Capital the city of damasus unbelievable bravery that has now given us this beautiful Valley which is known as the valley of tears but now maybe it should be known as the valley of blessings because as you look around you can see how green how Lush how beautiful it is with Vineyards and pastures and Groves and Orchards and such incredible amount of life that is just blooming everywhere you look and we have to thank the incredible soldiers who fought here during the Yom Kore War nimrod's Fortress is one of the largest fortresses that has been discovered from the medieval period not just here in Israel but all over the Middle East called nimrod's Fortress dating back all the way to Nimrod from The Book of Genesis who was described as a mighty Hunter and the Fortress here which was built by the mamlukes in order to protect the major trade route which consisted of the hola Valley that we saw a little bit earlier uh just a little bit to the west and this trade route connected Beirut and Lebanon through the hola Valley and then across the Golan Heights all the way to damasco making this an important Junction and the mom luks who built this saw the importance and strategic advantage of building this Fortress up high so that you can see far and wide and protect your interests come let's walk through the Fortress and see some of the beautiful sites [Music] [Applause] [Music] here one of the most beautiful Stellas Stone inscription that was discovered here in the land of Israel and for sure here in the Golan Heights has to be the buy Bar's inscript ion the beautiful stone Stella that we see here chiseled out of limestone in Arabic talks about the warrior Byars who defended the mamluk people and the Arabs who were living here in the land of Israel in the 13th century from the onslaught of the largest standing army ever assembled by man and who are we talking about obviously not the Romans but genas Khan and the Monga World they were heading south towards Africa but it would be B bars and the mamluks who were living here that would stop them in their tracks making what Byars one of the greatest warriors of all time just like any good Fortress nimrod's Fortress also has a secret exit the secret exit is also equipped with special windows that are broad on the inside but narrow facing outside and this was for Archers to shoot their bow and arrows out the window at any advancement a army is making on them so let's walk through the secret passage check out some of those windows as we head out of this area [Music] hope you all enjoyed the tour today of the Golan HIDs from the northern section of nimrod's Fortress all the way down to gamla and several points in between you know it's just incredible to see this Rich Heritage of Jewish life here that dates all the way back to really the Book of Genesis through the first and second temple period the talmudic period of course and now in the presence as we met major yako Sullivan and all the residents of the Golan Heights thank you again to project inspire for making this happen and for all of you for joining me and if you have any questions pertaining to the tour today or anything about Israel or visiting Israel please contact me via Facebook look me up like my page I got great content there as well David susman Israel tours in the meantime let's enjoy this incredible sunset here over this beautiful Reservoir the Golan Heights he