The following is a blog entry written by Miriam Eshaghian, Hasbara Fellow from UCLA who is participating on the winter Israel program.

We started off the day going to the border of Israel and Gaza where we learned about the effects of Israel’s gain of the Gaza Strip after the Six Day War in 1967 in addition to the effects of Israel giving up the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians. Unfortunately, after Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the Palestinians led by Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel and vandalized multimillion dollar greenhouses left behind to stimulate their economy.  Since I attended Jewish Day school until 12^th grade, I have learned much of this history prior. However, after listening to speakers discussing Israel’s territorial history at the border, I feel more responsible to advocate on behalf of Israel and its continuous struggle with its neighbors.

Our next stop was Sderot.  For years I have learned about Sderot and the fact that it is under constant attack of Qasam rockets from Hamas. I have heard stories of children with post-traumatic stress disorders and it was astonishing to see that every few feet there were bomb shelters, in addition to seeing firsthand the remains of Katyusha missiles that Hamas had fired after making them out of common materials like pipes and nails. It is amazing that Israelis are able to take such a difficult and inhumane situation and continue to try to live a normal life to the best of their ability. We visited a children’s playground made completely out of bomb shelters, and it helped me turn my learning into a reality.

Lastly, we ended the night with a controversial Israeli speaker who firmly believes that Israel is an apartheid state. This gave us an opportunity to exercise the tools and facts we learned on the trip. It gave us a preview of what we can expect on our campus. This has been an amazing trip thus far and I’m excited to continue what I have learned on the UCLA campus.