No one in aviation ever moved forward by clinging to the past.
That's why Delta continues investing billions on the industry's boldest moves so that every
mile we fly pushes US aviation forward, too.
It exists at the crossroads of history, religion, technology, and hope.
Israel, the royal tour, is made possible through the generous support and funding of Robert
K. Kraft and the Robert and Myra Kraft Family Foundation.
Through introducing new audiences to the many splendors of a country, by showing them its
cultural diversity and spiritual heart, we have a chance to create more understanding,
more tolerance, and more peace in the world.
Get set for an unforgettable journey to a land that embodies the mystical, the inspirational,
and the divine.
It's a country that sits at the intersection of three ancient fates and on the cutting
edge of the modern world.
It lives on the threshold of history in a region defined by decades of conflict and
a continuing search and struggle for peace.
And on this trip, we're going to soar over towering palaces, ride the rapids of fabled
rivers, and dive with the dolphins.
We'll explore the ruins of lost empires and we'll reach out and touch the stories of
the Bible.
And our guide on this journey is a man with unmatched access to this land.
He's a man who lives and breathes the past and future of his people.
And now he leads his nation as it faces one of the most critical crossroads in its history.
His name is Benjamin Netanyahu, and he is the Prime Minister of Israel.
So sit back and strap in, because for the next hour, we're taking you on an adventure
that most travelers never get to experience.
I'm Peter Greenberg, and this is Israel, the Royal Tour.
Bordered by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and with Saudi Arabia directly to the southeast,
Israel has always been in a tough neighborhood.
It's relatively tiny, slightly smaller than the state of New Jersey.
More than half of Israel is the Negev Desert, but it still has the Red Sea, 118 miles of
Mediterranean coastline, and up north, snow-capped mountains.
The capital of Israel is the 5,000-year-old city of Jerusalem, and that's where I would
begin my tour.
After landing at the airport, I was picked up in the Prime Minister's official car,
and we headed to his office in Jerusalem.
As a journalist, I've been coming to Israel since 1970, and I've always been amazed at
how much the country has changed over the years.
Jerusalem has managed to retain the biblical antiquity that defines its character, while
at the same time serving as the capital of one of the most modern and high-tech countries
in the world.
We entered the gates of the Prime Minister's office, a modest stone building located in
the northwestern part of the city.
As I headed upstairs, I was surprised to see the amount of press coverage the royal tour
was attracting.
Mr. Prime Minister, welcome to Israel, Peter.
Thank you, sir.
Is this your first visit?
No.
Well, this one's gonna be different.
I'm ready.
I'm ready, too.
Let's go.
Before we began the tour, I sat down with the Prime Minister to discuss his life, his political
career, and the challenges his country is facing during this pivotal time in its history.
When you try to give people a sense of place of what this country is, put it in perspective
for me.
Well, it's small.
How small?
You can fly across the width of Israel with a jet plane in about three minutes.
That's pretty small.
And yet you're surrounded by some pretty big countries.
Yeah, but we're damaged.
Israel was created on May 14, 1948, when a UN resolution set aside land as an official
Jewish state in what was formerly the British-controlled region of Palestine.
After 2,000 years, a Jewish nation once again exists, and while there is a rattle of gunfire
in the Holy Land, there is cheering in Washington and Hebrew dances of joy for a Jewish homeland
that has been reborn.
And for the Jews, their new nation was more than just a refuge after the end of World
War II and the Holocaust.
It was a return to the homeland that they believed had originally been theirs some 4,000 years
ago.
We lost the land of Israel, and as a result, we were thrown to the far corners of the world.
We were persecuted, we had pogroms, we had terrible things, including the Holocaust.
And then for the last several thousand years, all we've been trying to do is come back to
our ancient homeland and rebuild our sovereign life as an independent, sovereign Jewish state,
living in peace with its neighbors.
This is what we've sought.
This is what this whole country is about.
It's the rebirth.
It's the great rebirth of the Jewish people.
But from the day Israel first raised its flag, peace has been elusive.
The fledgling country fought several wars with Arab coalitions from Egypt, Jordan, Syria,
Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.
The most significant of these battles was Israel's victory in the Six Day War of 1967,
which greatly expanded the size of Israel's territory.
We were actually three times bigger than we are after the Six Day War when we were almost
destroyed by three Arab armies.
We broke the noose that was supposed to choke us, and we ended up having the Sinai Desert.
We traded that for a peace treaty with Egypt.
We gave a land mass two times the size of Israel, and all our oil.
Can you imagine any country doing that in history, the victory giving up the spoils?
That tells you how much the people of Israel want peace.
But the path to peace has been a topic of controversy and a defining issue for Netanyahu's
administrations.
The son of an Israeli historian and professor, Benjamin Netanyahu was born in Israel in 1949,
and he and his two brothers spent much of their youth in the U.S. when the family moved
to Pennsylvania.
The young Netanyahu soaked up American culture and learned to speak perfect English, albeit
with a slight Philadelphia accent.
At 18, he returned to Israel and joined the Israeli Defense Force, where the three brothers
became members of Israel's Special Forces Unit, the Sire at Matkal.
We were three brothers in this tiny unit at one time, breaking all the rules.
The man they call Bibi went on to become a team leader in the Sire at Matkal and participated
in several missions, including the rescue of airline hostages in 1972, during which
he received a bullet wound to the shoulder.
In the mid-1970s, Netanyahu returned to the United States to study, when an event occurred
that would shatter his family and alter the course of his life.
I was actually studying in business school at MIT, and my older brother Jonathan Yoni
led his soldiers in the rescue of hostages at Antebi Airport in Uganda.
The raid on Antebi?
The raid on Antebi.
He was the commander of the rescue force.
Nearly four decades later, the story of the raid on Antebi remains a legendary tale of
heroism for Israelis.
In July of 1976, Yonatan Netanyahu led 29 members of the Sire at Matkal on a mission
that rescued 106 hostages aboard an Air France plane that had been hijacked by a splinter
group of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
It was like all his operations, a spectacular success.
There were no military casualties, except one.
The prime minister's brother, Yoni, was killed in action.
Yoni and his soldiers were storming the terminal building where the hostages were kept, and
then he was hit, and on the plane back, he died.
And that changed your life?
That changed my life, Peter, because Yoni had died in the battle of terrorism, but he
never thought that terrorism was just a military battle.
He thought it was a moral battle, a political battle.
You have to harness all the free states for a common effort because terrorism is international,
so the response has to be international.
Those principles would indelibly stamp Netanyahu's political outlook as he entered public life.
I started the Jonathan Institute, which was really geared to explaining these ideas to
the world, and that's how I got into public life.
I never grew up thinking I'd be a politician.
That's the last thing I thought.
After serving as the Israeli ambassador to the UN for four years, Netanyahu was first
elected prime minister in 1996.
He was defeated in the 1999 election, but returned to win two more terms as prime minister
in 2009 and again in 2013.
So give me a list, and I'm sure you have one, of the misperceptions of Israel.
Well, the first is that we don't want peace.
We want peace.
I want peace.
We crave for peace.
We greet each other with the word peace, shalom.
Every time you see somebody says to you, shalom, you says peace, and that's what we want.
And I think we can get it.
It's hard, but we have to pursue it.
Every time I've come to this region and you bring up the notion of peace, someone always
says, it's not the right time in the Middle East.
It's not the right time in the Middle East.
So I have to ask you, when is there ever going to be the right time?
Well, I suppose if the Middle East becomes democratic and liberal and free, then you
won't have that problem, because in general, free societies, democratic societies, they
don't want to send their sons and daughters to the battlefields.
But I know that even for a broad peace to endure, Israel has to be a strong country,
strong economically, strong in its ability to defend itself.
It's this idea, you don't make peace with the weak, you make peace with the strong.
It's called peace with strength.
That's a guiding idea that I follow.
Well, one of your predecessors, Menachem Begin, was considered a hardliner, yet he signed
the Camp David Accord.
That's right.
It's a democratic peace.
It took someone who was considered a hardliner to make the peace.
Are you a hardliner?
Well, I'm certainly a hardliner on our security.
I'll never compromise on our security, but I think when I bring a peace agreement to
the people of Israel, they'll believe me, because they trust me to take care of that
foundation of peace, which is you can't have peace without security in the Middle East,
so it won't hold for a day.
I'm a great champion of peace through strength.
I insist on the strength, and therefore I can get the peace.
And yet, there's the elephant in the room, which is Palestinian statehood, settlements.
How do you get over that, still preserve the fabric of Jerusalem, and keep the state of
Israel?
I think you can reach peace with the Palestinians, because we recognize that although we've
been here close to 4,000 years, there's another people that are here now alongside us in our
ancestral homeland, and we'll have to strike a compromise with them.
They're ready.
I'm ready.
I hope they're ready.
I've said that the real formula for peace is a demilitarized Palestinian state that
recognizes the Jewish state, and I think in that short sentence, you've got all the elements
that you need.
At the end, we're going to have to have two people living side by side in respect and
dignity with each other, and with security.
And while a lasting peace has yet to be forged, if you look at the numbers, Israel's actually
safer than New York.
There were American friends of mine who were afraid of coming to Israel, but they got over
that once they passed Kennedy Airport.
It was safe.
You got some surprises for me?
A lot.
You're going to see in this tiny country the most amazing history and the most amazing
future, and you're going to have fun.
The Prime Minister decided to kick off the royal tour, literally, right here at the
Kraft Family Stadium in Jerusalem.
Soccer is the biggest sport in Israel, but these soccer matches had a special purpose.
Well, it's not a regular soccer game.
We have Israeli teams of kids.
Israelis were Jews, Israelis were Arabs.
They learned to live with each other and learn to play with each other.
In his youth, the Prime Minister was an avid soccer player.
I was pretty good, but I left in my prime at 18.
And more than 40 years later, he still had the move.
Having never really played organized soccer myself, I can only imagine what kind of trouble
the Prime Minister was about to get me into.
No trouble.
Just a soccer game.
Just a soccer game.
Now, you were a soccer player.
Yeah, I was.
What position?
Left forward.
You know what my position was?
No.
Left out.
Left out on this one, Peter.
You're dragging me in?
Yeah.
All right, let's go.
Come on.
All right, so I'm going to go be goalie.
What the Prime Minister had in store for me today was something known in soccer lingo
as the penalty kick.
You ready, Peter?
I'm in such trouble.
Come on.
Oh, come on, that was an easy one for you.
Now you know why I was left out.
Now listen.
You're much too close.
You're going to kill me.
It's not close.
It's a short.
It's a small goal.
One more.
Okay.
Peter, I'm sending it right to your hands.
Okay.
Catch the ball.
Catch it.
You ready?
Yeah.
Look for you.
You got it.
When world leaders appear on the royal tour, they get to show their personal side and sometimes
the most amazing surprises happen.
Oh, one more.
Okay.
But nobody could have predicted this.
You okay?
Something happened.
I don't know.
Makalah?
Something snapped.
You heard it.
Yeah, I heard it snapped.
That snap was a torn tendon in the prime minister's left leg.
And in Israel, that's front page news.
The prime minister's leg was placed in a cast for eight weeks.
He was filming a segment for a TV show hours later in Netanyahu.
He released this YouTube video which showed his left leg in a thick new cast.
As for the royal tour crew, we had no choice.
We packed up and flew home.
Fast forward several months, we returned and the royal tour version 2.0 was back on track.
And the prime minister wasted no time.
We quickly boarded a waiting military helicopter.
If we took off into a cloudless sky, the prime minister filled me in on what he had in store for me.
Israel has three large bodies of water that the locals refer to as the med, the dead, and the red.
And today he says we're headed for the red.
The red sea that is, all the way at the southern tip of the country.
As we left the city behind, I was treated to some panoramic views of the Negev Desert.
Once you get up in the air, that's when you realize how small this really is.
It's tiny.
But in history it's huge.
The prime minister told me that the mountain ahead had special meaning for him.
It's called Har Khatum, also known as the Units Mountain.
And it's tradition that all new members of the Sayat Matkal Kamando unit scale that mountain
and create the insignia of their crew.
In their youth, the prime minister and his two brothers all climbed Har Khatum
and their marks are still there today.
We had been flying across the Negev for about an hour,
when suddenly the barren desert gave way to the waters of the red sea.
After setting down just outside the city,
it was a short drive to the Israeli naval base in Elay.
Ready to go?
I'm ready to go.
I'm a boat captain myself,
so I'll always look for any excuse to get out on the water.
I'll get out on the beach,
I'll get out on the beach,
I'll get out on the beach,
I'll get out on the beach,
I'll get out on the beach,
I'll always look for any excuse to get out on the water and take the control.
But this time, the prime minister pulled rank on me.
Oh, he wants to drive, he wants to drive.
So why did I know you were going to do this?
Of course I'm going to do it, let's go.
I'm the prime minister.
Oh, I forgot.
All right, give it some gas.
Every time I come down here, I'm reminded,
if you want to know about the geography of the Middle East, it's right here.
It sure is.
This is a beautiful bay, and it's boarded by four countries.
Now if we go, what, a half a mile that way, we're in Jordan?
That's Jordan, Saudi Arabia is there.
Wow.
This is still Israel, but Egypt is around the bend.
Literally.
That makes this gulf a pretty important waterway
for both the shipping economies and the militaries of all four countries,
not to mention a pretty central spot for thrill seekers from all over the world.
Look at this, look at this.
Well, I've been here with my own kids.
We had a ball they didn't want to leave.
It was a week, you know, totally relaxation.
After a few minutes zipping across the gulf, we reached our destination,
the dolphin reef.
I had been to many dolphin preserves in my life,
but never one quite like this.
That's because the dolphins that live here are truly wild
and can come and go as they please.
I'm told that here, it's about free will, not captivity.
The dolphins enter and exit the preserve through a door that opens to the Red Sea.
You should go in the water.
Well, I'll go in the water.
Are you going in the water?
I'm not going in the water.
I'm the prime minister.
Get in the water.
Nice.
It's good, isn't it?
It's great.
So you see any dolphins down there?
I see a dolphin dressed as a diver.
That's a Jewish dolphin.
The dolphins here live as they would in the open sea,
hunting, playing and socializing with each other.
But because these dolphins are wild,
they haven't been trained how to interact with humans.
What they do here, they do naturally.
Sometimes they want to play, sometimes they don't.
It's entirely up to them.
Yeah, there it is.
Oh, yeah.
They roam the gulf, then they come back.
What?
They feel at home here.
They're very intelligent animals, smarter than many people.
Why are you looking at me?
And with that, we were on the move again.
And for our next stop, we would traverse almost the entire length of the country.
From the southern border,
we flew to the northernmost point on the Mediterranean coastline.
There, directly on the border with Lebanon,
sits a very special place for all Israelis,
but particularly for the prime minister.
Peter, come on. Let's see.
Oh, this is cool.
Yeah, this is wonderful, isn't it?
Peter, I'm told that this is the steepest cable car in the world,
but it is one of the shortest.
So not too far to drop.
It's a drop.
If you drop, it drops.
At the base, the majestic chocolate walls of Rosh Hanikra rose mightily above us.
I learned that these hills had a history of entry.
During World War II, a train line connecting Egypt and Turkey
ran right through these cliffs.
So this was the train, right here.
Yeah, this was a rail line built by the Brits,
and the train went right through here.
But in 1948, during Israel's War of Independence,
Jewish underground fighters feared that the Arabs might use these tunnels
to send soldiers into Israel,
so they destroyed the rail line.
Today, the tunnel that leads into Lebanon remains sealed.
Okay, let's go.
We headed to an opening in the bluff side.
So where are we going now?
We're going into the rock, into our blue grotto.
It's Israel's Capri.
Come on.
There's one.
Oh, there we go. Wow.
Oh, look at that.
Hello.
The grottos of Rosh Hanikra are cavernous tunnels
formed by eons of sea action on the soft chalk rock.
Back in the days before the cable car,
only experienced swimmers and kayakers
were able to visit these grottos.
And 40 years ago, when he was in the army,
the prime minister himself swam into these caves.
We left our gear, took off our fatigues.
I'm not sure we were all with underwear,
but I think we were.
I'm not sure.
But, you know, we were young then.
It wasn't such a problem.
According to the prime minister,
he returned here once again with his army unit,
but not for fun.
This time, they laid a trap to lure some Syrian officers.
I was here waiting for the Syrian general command.
We let them go through the trap.
But they got him.
They got him.
And then they exchanged them.
They exchanged them for pilots.
For Israeli pilots who were sitting in Syrian jails.
It happened here.
Let's go.
Before we left Rosh Hanikra,
the prime minister told me he wanted to try his hand.
Or, should I say his feet,
at a different form of transportation.
Peter, pedal away.
All right.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Wow.
This is cool.
Not bad.
There's a light at the end of the tunnel.
Keep going.
Here we go.
Speed bump.
Whoo.
This is all the way to Tel Aviv before.
Peter, you should.
We should do this more often.
No, I mean, you should come every day.
I'm ready.
Don't let me out of my cage.
When I can come out of here,
it's literally a breath of fresh air.
Sure.
Here we go.
I'll pick up some speed here.
Here we go.
Good.
Good.
Good.
Good.
Good.
Good.
Guys, you got to get out of our way.
We have things to do.
Next, the prime minister told me we were going to a place
that would mix history with a little fun.
It's a place that has played an important role for Israel,
dating back to biblical times,
the Jordan River.
This river has had tremendous historic,
cultural, and practical importance for Israelis.
But today, it also serves another purpose.
It has become a getaway spot for Israelis to escape the heat
and enjoy a day on the water.
We were joined by the prime minister's wife, Sarah.
Peter, are you okay?
I'm good.
All right, let's go.
Of course, when you travel with the prime minister of Israel,
you also bring along just a little bit of security and press.
Not to mention, a few travelers who suddenly find themselves
rafting alongside a head of state.
I'm shocked.
A politician shaking hands with kids.
You know, Peter?
Yep.
Never in the history of rafting have so few been
accompanied by so many.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
You got a rope, Peter.
I'm doing it.
It doesn't move with only one side.
I'm doing it.
There we go.
There we go.
Yeah.
That's it.
This is great.
You're delegating now.
Yeah.
You're delegating.
I like this.
Do you remember the great song,
The River Jordan is chilly and wide?
Yeah.
Well, it ain't chilly and it ain't wide.
It's narrow and warm, but it's got a long history.
And the history of our country and our people
is intertwined with it.
And the history of Christianity, you know,
Jesus was baptized downstream here, not far away.
Today, many Christians still come to Israel
to be baptized in the same waters as Jesus.
And the Jordan also holds special significance for Jews.
The Bible says that Joshua led the slaves of Egypt
across this river and into the land of Israel.
Today, Israel and its surrounding countries
use the Jordan River as a supply of fresh water
and for agriculture.
As a result, the river's flow rate
is far below what it once was.
This is definitely not white water stuff,
but there's more adventurous parts downstream.
All right, let's go.
Let's go to the rapids.
I never knew that the Jordan River had rapids.
My pulse quickened.
Peter.
Give some elbow grease here.
OK.
You want some gas?
Yeah.
Step on it.
Here.
Oh.
Let's look at God.
Woo!
Oh, here we go.
Woo!
And with that, our trip down the roaring rapids
of the Jordan River was over.
We drifted past the press, headed to shore,
and we were on our way to our next adventure.
All right.
Next, we returned to Jerusalem.
As we cruised along in his motorcade,
the prime minister said he wanted to show me
a few of the most important sites in this ancient city.
Today, the domes, spires, and minarets of three faiths
rise over Jerusalem's old city walls in quiet harmony.
Three of the world's major religions,
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
all consider Jerusalem to be among their most holy cities.
But during much of its 5,000-year history,
Jerusalem has been anything but harmonious.
In fact, it has often been called
the most contested piece of real estate on earth.
Over the millennia, Jerusalem has been attacked
some 52 times and destroyed twice.
And the conflict over Jerusalem still simmers today,
as both the Israelis and the Palestinians
claim the city as their capital,
though neither claim is widely recognized internationally.
Good morning.
Peter, I want to show you what I consider
is the best view of Jerusalem outside the walls of Jerusalem.
The prime minister says that while the old city of Jerusalem
is a tiny place less than one square mile in total,
it is huge in the history and consciousness of mankind.
We're standing on the Mount of Olives, the old cemetery.
And this is the place where Jesus is supposed
to have ascended to heaven.
This is this panorama of Jerusalem.
You've got the golden dome of the rock,
which is a holy shrine for the Muslims.
And to the back of them is the western wall,
the wall of Herod's Temple, which is the most sacred site of Judaism.
That's the Russian Orthodox.
And that's the Church of Gethsemane,
where Jesus had the Last Supper.
Remember the Last Supper?
I wasn't around, but I heard of it.
Yeah, you heard about it?
That's where it took place.
That gate right over there, that seal, what's that gate?
That's called the Golden Gates of Mercy.
The Jewish tradition says that when the Messiah comes,
He'll go through that gate.
Christian tradition said He already went through the gate.
In any case, you want that gate open.
Now, that was sealed by Suleiman the Magnificent
about 400 years ago, a Turkish Sultan.
And they said that He did it for defensive purposes,
but it may be that He didn't want the Messiah to come.
We're not sure.
In any case, let's hope He'll come.
Before 1967, you couldn't even come visit here.
No, this was Jordan.
This was the border.
Jerusalem was divided into two,
like a Berlin Wall smack in the center.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War,
Jordan annexed and occupied much of Palestine,
partitioning Jerusalem in half,
and separating the Arab and Jewish populations.
And for 19 years, Israelis, including the young Netanyahu,
were not allowed to visit their holy sites in the old city,
or even the graves of their families here
in the old Jewish cemetery.
But all that suddenly changed one summer morning in 1967.
I was 18 years old.
The Arabs were shelling the Jewish part of the city,
and I woke up in the morning, June 5th,
and these artillery shells are falling all around me.
So I thought, oh man, I'd better get out of here.
Within just six days,
Israel had won a decisive land war
and had taken control of the Gaza Strip
and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.
The Golan Heights from Syria,
and the West Bank in East Jerusalem from Jordan.
We heard that Jerusalem was liberated.
So it was an amazing sight.
Just throngs of people began to walk in the streets
towards the Temple Mount.
We came to the Western Wall,
another wall of our ancient temple,
touched the stones, and people were absolutely in tears.
It was the yearning of ages.
But perhaps just as important to the young Netanyahu
was that he could now come here
to finally pay proper respects to his grandparents.
So this is the oldest active cemetery in the world.
As far as we know, it goes back to 3,000 years
to the time of King David.
So that's a pretty way back to go.
It is.
This is the grave of my grandfather, Nathan,
my grandmother, Sarah.
And after 67, we came up here
discovered that the grave was still intact,
not desecrated, thank God.
So, Mr. Prime Minister, what is the epitaph?
Well, it says that he roused
the slumbering members of his nation
with his powerful voice.
So he was one of the founding fathers?
He was of that generation.
Now we have the state of Israel,
thanks to people like him.
Now what's the significance of the little stones?
That's to indicate by Jewish tradition
that somebody visited the grave.
Let's put him on.
Well, we were here.
We were here with Nathan and with Sam.
Yeah, I think this is the greatest view of Jerusalem
from outside the walls.
I want you to see it inside the walls.
And you can just walk there. It's great.
But you'll have to do it alone.
Why is that?
I gotta go to work.
So can I meet you in a few hours?
Do I have a choice?
No.
Okay, let's go.
While the Prime Minister headed to his office,
his car whisked me across Jerusalem
to the Old City,
dropping me off right in front
of its most famous entrance.
The Prime Minister wants to see me in the Old City,
so I'm gonna take a route through the Damascus gate
and do it since I'm 20. Come on.
The Damascus gate is the main entrance
to the Muslim quarter in the Old City.
And as I stepped through,
it almost felt like I was time-traveling back 2,000 years.
While the Old City is divided into four quarters,
Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian,
the Muslim quarter is undoubtedly
the most colorful and lively section.
And it's here.
In the soup, where I began my real quest,
a search for my own holy grail.
Only the holy grail that I see is of the edible kind.
Can I see?
Where? That way? Okay.
I don't remember the shop where I last found it,
so I'm navigating by smell.
I'm not much of a foodie,
but when it comes to this sacred object of my desires,
I suddenly have a most discriminating power.
Oh, you can find Kanafe in...
America.
But it's not like it is here.
And then, in a moment of delectable deja vu,
I knew I had arrived.
Kanafe, right?
Kanafe. Okay.
There it is.
There, tempting me like a sugary siren,
was the most beautiful three-cheese Kanafe I'd ever seen.
Kanafe is a classic dessert from Ottoman times,
a cheese pastry soaked in sweet syrup
and sprinkled with chopped pistachios.
You don't come to the old city without getting Kanafe.
You want some? You can't have it. Come on.
After my brief indulgence,
I continued on the Via Dolorosa into the Christian Quarter.
The Via Dolorosa, or Way of Grief,
is widely believed to be the very path where Jesus walked,
carrying the heavy cross to his own crucifixion,
and ending here,
at the site where many scholars believe
Jesus was actually crucified and buried.
Today, on this spot,
stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This church is one of the main destinations
for Christian pilgrims who come to the Holy Land.
For many, the highlight is laying hands
on the Stone of Anointing,
which marks the spot where it is believed
Jesus' body was prepared for burial.
It was time to meet back up with the Prime Minister.
I passed by all sorts of Holy Land souvenir shops,
but I'd already found what I came for.
So I made my way to our rendezvous point in the Old City,
at a location that the Prime Minister had insisted
that no trip to Jerusalem would be complete without seeing.
Well, here we are, the Citadel.
The Citadel has been the prize of every occupying power
since it was first constructed over two millennia ago.
So it's constantly under renovation,
constantly under conquest,
and we reconquist.
And while the Citadel and the rest of this remarkable ancient city
have been marked by centuries of division and conflict,
the Prime Minister says that now, things may be changing.
Consider this, Peter, in thousands of years of history.
This is the only time, under Israel,
that all three faiths, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism,
have complete freedom of access to their holy sites here in Jerusalem.
The Prime Minister then took me on a special nighttime tour
of what many consider the most holy site in Judaism.
The Western Wall, also called the Wailing Wall
for the sorrowful prayers offered here,
has been a site of pilgrimage for centuries.
The Wall is all that remains
of the ancient Second Temple of Jerusalem,
or so I thought.
We were joined by the Prime Minister's wife, Sarah,
and their youngest son, Avner.
We are approaching the temple built by King Solomon
3,000 years ago,
and this has been the spiritual center of the Jewish people
for 3,000 years.
Wow.
It's a holy place, so I got this for you.
You got it.
Now we'll walk in.
Now we'll walk.
What we see of the Western Wall above ground
is only a small section of the temple's retaining wall.
The rest of it lies hidden beneath the streets of the Old City,
in the Kotel Tunnels,
a huge excavation project that has uncovered the foundations
of the great temples that once stood here.
The first temple was built by King Solomon
around the 10th century B.C.
We're very close to the place where Solomon's temple
stood 3,000 years ago.
The Babylonians came to Jerusalem,
destroyed the temple, exiled the Jewish captives to Babylon.
The Jews came back from Babylon,
rebuilt the temple in exactly the same place,
and then a few hundred years later it was refurbished.
That's an understatement.
It was refurbished by King Herod.
Because he was the master builder.
He was a builder on a magnificent scale,
but he didn't just build the building,
he changed the landscape.
He took part of this mountain away,
then built a huge platform on the mountain top,
just a table top, 100 feet tall.
And then on top of that,
he built a magnificent temple.
Herod's expansion of the Second Temple
began in the first century B.C.
and became the focal point of Jerusalem,
with Jews from distant parts of the Roman Empire
making pilgrimages by the thousands.
But in the year 70 A.D., Roman legions arrived
to quell the Jewish revolt,
and Herod's temple was destroyed.
Over the centuries, the dome of the rock
and newer construction covered the area,
leaving most of the ruins of Herod's temple walls
buried under streets and buildings.
So the significant of that wall?
That's the western wall.
And all that's exposed is this piece,
which is only 200 feet.
And a 1400 feet that were hidden for generations.
For Jews, this small piece of wall
not only holds profound religious importance,
it also is an icon of Jewish identity.
The Romans destroyed that Second Temple,
and we've always dreamed of coming back to our land
after we were exiled from it, 2,000 years.
And will you touch that wall tonight?
Yes, of course.
We continued on through the tunnels.
Down here, every turn brought us to another piece of history,
aqueducts, arches,
even original 2,000-year-old Roman roads.
But what the Prime Minister really wanted to show me
was a particular section of the temple wall.
So Peter, here's one of the stones of Herod's
rampart to the temple.
Look at it. It just goes on and on 45 feet.
It just keeps going.
It's huge.
Just enormous.
500 metric tons in weight.
It's like two jumbo jets full of passengers.
It's one big rock.
You know, when the Roman general Titus
destroyed the Jewish temple in 70 AD,
he destroyed the pieces of wall on top of this stone.
But when they got to this point,
the Romans couldn't defeat this stone.
They defeated them.
But unlike the massive stones of Herod's wall,
the holiest place in these tunnels is also one of the smallest.
And it's believed to be the spot that is closest to the Holy of Holies,
where the Ark of the Covenant stood,
which contained the stone tablets
upon which the Ten Commandments were written.
So this is the closest point to the temple.
It was 97 meters that way.
You see that they put in these notes in the crevices.
You make a prayer or a wish, fold it up,
put it in the rock.
It gives you the feeling that you're close to God.
Well, we're going to exit the tunnels,
but we never really exit,
because it's always in our hearts.
The next morning, before leaving Jerusalem,
the Prime Minister invited me to a place
that few people ever see, his home.
Hi, Peter.
Hi, Peter.
It's so good to see you here in our home.
Sarah is a working mother.
She not only has many official state obligations,
but she's also a child psychologist.
You see, Peter, this is where we welcome President Obama,
President Bush, and President Putin.
And now you? And now you?
I'm a good company, huh? Yeah.
Besides being a location to welcome world leaders,
Jerusalem also holds a special place for Netanyahu's family memories.
So you see here the history, you know?
We are here for the third time.
The Prime Minister is now serving his third term,
and it's the third time the Netanyahu's have lived here
in the official residence.
Their two boys, Avner and Ya'er, are older now,
but their childhood was anything but typical.
He was here five years old, over the years.
Yeah, and his brother, they tore up the pillows.
President Clinton chased them.
They tore up the envelope. Yeah.
It was a lot of fun.
Sarah says that despite all the attention
and the security bubble surrounding her sons,
as parents, they've always tried to help them to lead fairly normal lives.
But tell me the truth, in 1999, when he was out of office,
did you suddenly feel a little more free?
Yes. Are you kidding? Much more.
We had the time of our life going to Australia,
and being in the Great Buryary,
having some time with our kids. Disneyland.
So basically the answer is, Mr. Prime Minister,
you're no longer Prime Minister. Where are you going?
Disneyland.
And while our next destination wasn't Disneyland,
it turned out to be maybe the most eye-opening stop on the entire tour.
And it was located in the city of Haifa.
Israel, the Prime Minister had explained,
does not have the wealth of natural resources that its neighbors enjoy.
But as I was about to discover,
Israel had actually turned that into an asset.
Well, we were lucky to be one of the few countries in the Middle East without oil.
You call yourself lucky?
Yes.
Why?
Because we had to use our brains.
To prove his point, the Prime Minister brought me to the Technion,
the Israel Institute of Technology.
This is the Technion. It's Israel's MIT.
And it's done some wondrous things.
The Prime Minister gave me a tour of the amazing projects being developed at the Technion.
For starters, pushing the frontiers of information storage.
So this is the first nanobible.
If you look through the magnifying glass, you see that speck?
Oh, yeah.
The whole Bible on a speck of dust.
You can have limitless storage of information.
How about a robotic snake equipped with a wireless camera
designed to allow first responders to investigate dangerous environments?
You can detect whether it's safe to get into the building.
So fires, earthquakes, earthquakes.
9-11.
9-11.
Now, you can't, and you don't want to risk rescuing.
He can leave part of his body behind.
This is...
Oh!
You can take him to several sections and send each section to a different room
to explore different rooms.
And another tiny robot, capable of performing spinal operations
with more accuracy than a surgeon's hand.
And even a pill camera that takes doctors on a tour of a patient's digestive tract.
Right.
Now, it's already went into the stomach.
Oh, there it is.
Oh, my goodness.
You look beautiful.
But the invention I found most wondrous was a bionic suit
that enabled Radhikaalov, a paraplegic, to walk for the first time in 25 years.
Everything is changed.
It's a new life.
It's good for you, and it's good for everybody.
It's good for humanity.
The Prime Minister not only wanted to show off his country's high-tech development,
but also its high-tech cities.
And the country's modern-day, multicultural, and financial hub
was less than an hour away in Tel Aviv.
You know, when I first came to Israel,
this is when I first saw the Mediterranean.
Isn't it beautiful?
Tel Aviv's location on the shores of the Mediterranean
has long made it a draw for visitors.
But in recent years, luxury developments
and high-end accommodations have turned Tel Aviv into a world-class city
and made it a worldwide destination.
But before the hip beaches and high-rises of Tel Aviv,
there was Jaffa.
This ancient port city sits just south of Tel Aviv
and was a hub for trade routes for thousands of years.
From the days of the ancient Egyptians,
Romans, and Byzantines,
all the way through to the British Empire.
In fact, Jaffa was where Netanyahu's own family got its start in Palestine.
You know, my father came here in 1920 to the port of Jaffa right there.
And that's how he got here?
That's how he got here.
Tel Aviv began as a small Jewish suburb of Jaffa in the early 20th century,
then exploded in population as Jews fled Europe before World War II.
Today, Tel Aviv is the second largest city in Israel,
and a construction boom that began in the 1990s
has dramatically changed the city's landscape.
When I first came here, there were no high-rises in Tel Aviv.
Well, that's actually what my son told me.
He was five years old, and he said,
Daddy, we don't have a skyline.
And I said, relax, kid, I'll get you a skyline.
While Tel Aviv has become Israel's financial and cultural hub,
it's also a great place for fun,
even if you're a prime minister who constantly lives inside the bubble
surrounded by security and press.
Well, you know, thanks for coming here and taking us out of the bubble.
So let me see if I get this straight.
It's okay for him to be on a raft?
Yes.
Soccer?
No.
This one, no, we'll remember whatever.
I love soccer.
I love playing it, and even more, I love watching it.
Exactly.
But you know something?
I never saw him riding a bike.
You've never seen him riding a bike?
No.
Well, what do you know?
And when you race against the head of state,
guess who always gets the yellow jersey?
But it's when the sun sets over the Mediterranean
that this city really comes to life.
With an average age of only 34,
the young people of this young city
have made Tel Aviv a world-renowned destination for a non-stop nightlife.
The prime minister, Sarah and I,
decided to check out the scene at a local watering hole.
The Vicky Christina Bar,
a Barcelona-inspired nightclub in the heart of Tel Aviv.
It's a city that never stops.
It goes on 24 hours.
But when I first came to Tel Aviv,
the place closed at 6 o'clock at night.
It's become just a hub.
It's a high-tech city, fashion city, culture city.
We were joined by the prime minister's oldest son, Yaier.
It was midnight in Tel Aviv,
and Yaier's evening was just getting started.
The prime time of the night in Tel Aviv is around 2, 3 a.m.
and it's continued till sunrise.
So basically what you're telling me is that
what you guys are wearing tonight,
you're wearing to work tomorrow.
I just want to make sure I got that.
And speaking of work tomorrow...
Yaier, I've got to go.
You know, I hold a day job. I've got to work.
What are you going to do?
Oh, I'm going right back to the hotel.
I'll see you later.
You got it.
Yaier's parents made their exit,
and that meant only one thing.
Alright, party!
The royal tour was nearing its end,
but the prime minister told me there was one sight
I absolutely had to see before leaving Israel.
In this remote, mountainous region of the desert,
bounded by the lifeless Dead Sea,
nothing grows and life is harsh.
Yet in the first century AD,
it was on this plateau, 1,300 feet high,
that one of the most legendary and iconic stories
of Jewish history played out.
Masada.
Peter, we're standing on a watchtower
in the center of Masada.
Let me explain to you what happened here.
This is the time of the great Jewish rebellion
against the Romans, 70 AD,
Jerusalem was destroyed,
and about 1,000 rebels, zealots,
are on this mountain top.
The Jewish rebels had overrun the Roman garrison
that was stationed here,
and they made Masada their home.
But despite its imposing presence,
Masada was not originally built to be a fortress.
100 years earlier, it was King Herod,
who constructed Masada as a luxury retreat.
Herod's personal palace
was a three-tiered testament to Roman engineering
that cascaded down the northern face of the plateau.
The top level was Herod's living quarters.
The middle level held his library and study,
and the lowest tier was an ornate entertaining hall,
adorned with tiles and frescoes.
He's got these hanging palaces overlooking the Dead Sea.
It's beautiful.
He didn't spare any cost.
And there were a lot of water systems here
because he liked his baths.
Herod's methods for trapping and storing water
on a mountain in the middle of the desert
were nothing short of an engineering marvel.
There are flash floods here that occur in the desert,
and there's a big torrent, and the water gets lost, right?
Not all of it.
See that?
Herod's elaborate system of aqueducts carved into the mountain
channeled and collected the water
into a series of cisterns and reservoirs
that could store over 10 million gallons.
The Jews lived on Masada for several years,
but the Romans hadn't forgotten.
The Romans had a conception of absolute power in their domain.
They said, we will not leave any place,
even an isolated mountaintop,
we're gonna crush everything.
Roman governor Flavius Silva
arrived at the base of Masada with 15,000 troops.
And they built a circling wall
that goes up and down and around.
There's a camp over there?
Then they put camps, that's the camp of Silva,
the Roman commander, but they've got other camps
lining this all around,
including on that cliff so they can look into Masada.
But the Jews held one strategic advantage.
The only path to the top of Masada was too narrow
for the Romans to move the battering rams and catapults
they would need to breach Masada's walls.
Flavius Silva realized he would need another way in.
They started building a ramp.
And the people here could see this happening day after day after day.
They saw it progressing very systematically.
The ramp required moving hundreds of tons of earth and stone
and took almost three months to build.
They know what's going to happen.
The Romans will bust through.
And when they do, they'll make them slaves or dead.
In the spring of the year 73,
the Jews watched as the Romans prepared their troops
for an assault that would begin the next morning.
It was also the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
On the day that celebrates Moses taking the Jews
out of bondage in Egypt,
the whole idea of freedom for our people,
they know that in a few hours they're going to be slaves.
And they have to make a decision.
They said we don't want to die as slaves
and we don't want to be butchered.
They took their lives.
And when the Romans burst through and they came in,
it was completely silent.
Since Jewish law forbid suicide,
a group of ten men performed the sacrifices
and then killed one another,
with the last one taking his own life.
Today, the story of Masada remains an inspiration
to the Jewish people.
There's so many stories in these stones.
The whole powerful adventure of Jewish history
is told in these rocks.
Well, it's certainly a story of suffering and sacrifice.
And redemption, because, you know, we came back.
We lost this 73 A.D.
and then we had another rebellion against the Romans.
We lost that one, too.
We were dispersed.
We were flung to the far corners of the earth.
That's it. We were over.
Except we weren't over.
We came back.
And it never gave up the dream.
Next year in Jerusalem for 100 years, 200 years,
1,000 years, 2,000 years.
Next year in Jerusalem.
And we came back, rebuilt this land,
and now we're standing on the heights of Masada,
looking down at the Roman camps.
And I'd like to tell Silva, the Roman commander,
hey, buddy, we're back.
And we're here to stay.
Near Masada, the prime minister said he had something special
he wanted me to experience.
From the majestic heights of the Masada mountaintop,
we descended to the lowest point on earth,
almost 1,400 feet below sea level.
Here, the Jordan River nears its end,
where natural salt deposits in the earth seep upward
and mix into the water.
That water, 10 times saltier than any sea water on earth,
flows into a lake that is uninhabitable for fish or animal life.
The salt has earned this lake the name the Dead Sea.
The salt content of the Dead Sea makes the water naturally buoyant,
meaning you don't really swim in the Dead Sea,
you float.
And that's where we ended our day.
Hey, Peter, isn't this wonderful?
Just floating in the Dead Sea, 1,200 feet below sea level?
You know what? It is pretty cool.
I mean, think about it, just me and you.
So tell me, what do you got next?
Nothing. That's it.
Party's over. I gotta go back to Jerusalem.
I've got a country to run.
That's it?
That's all folks.
To learn more about the Royal Tour, visit pewtergreenberg.com
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