Jerusalem.

Outside the Jaffa Gate, one of 7 open gates to the old city.

Called the Jaffa Gate because it was the start of the old road to Jaffa.

Jerusalem.

Outside Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. A memorial to Oscar and Emile Schindler.

Jerusalem.

Outside Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. A memorial to Raoul Wallenberg.

Jerusalem.

Outside Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. A memorial to Oscar and Emile Schindler.

Jerusalem.

Outside the old walled city.

Jerusalem.

Outside the old walled city.

Jerusalem.

The old walled city.

Jerusalem.

The Western Wall (Wailing Wall) at dusk on Friday, the beginning of the Sabbath. There was a teeming mass of Jewish people there.

At the Israel museum in Jerusalem.

At the Israel museum in Jerusalem.

The Shrine of the Book at the Israeli Museum at Jerusalem which houses fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls found at Qumran. It is built in the shape of an urn like one that they were found in.

The Knesset, the home of the unicameral Israeli parliament. The 120-member Knesset is elected every four years under a system that provides for proportional representation for even quite small political parties. Voters (age 18 or older) choose among national lists of candidates (21 or older) offered by political parties and groups. (The whole nation is a single constituency; there are no districts.) If a party's list, for example, receives 5 percent of the vote, the first six persons (5 percent of 120) on that list become members of the Knesset. The parties determine the order of names on their lists. Since it is difficult for a single party to win a majority of the seats, government by coalition is common in Israel.

At sea level on the way to the Dead Sea.

The rugged Judanian Ranges between Jerusalem and Jericho.

The rugged Judanian Ranges between Jerusalem and Jericho.

The cave at Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947. A shepherd boy threw a rock into a cave and it shattered an urn containing some of the scrolls.

The Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea.

Two reprobates plastered in Dead sea mud.

Eight reprobates plastered in Dead sea mud.

The level of the sea drops further each year and the shore line becomes further away from the resort because more and more water from the Jordan river is used for irrigation both in Israel and Jordan.

Close to the shore of the Dead Sea.

Reading the paper in the Dead Sea.

Reading the paper in the Dead Sea. The water was very slimy from the large concentration of salt.

Looking up past the cable car to the top of Masada. Masada was chiefly developed by Herod, who made it a royal citadel. His constructions included two ornate palaces (one of them on three levels), heavy walls, defensive towers, and aqueducts that brought water to cisterns holding nearly 750,000 litres.

Ruins of old storehouses on the top of Masada. After Herod's death (4 BC), Masada was captured by the Romans, but the Zealots, a Jewish sect that staunchly opposed domination by Rome, took it by surprise in AD 66. The steep slopes of the mountain made Masada a virtually unassailable fortress.

On top of Masada.

A view of the old Roman camp at the base of Masada.

Masada.

Pillars underneath the floor of a Roman bathroom. Fires were lit here to heat the room. Jets of water were squirted into the room, instantly turning into steam. The first sauna?

A view of the rugged country near Masada. Masada's unequaled defensive site baffled even the Romans' highly developed siegecraft for a time. It took the Roman army of almost 15,000, fighting a defending force of less than 1,000, including women and children, almost two years to subdue the fortress.

The besiegers built a sloping ramp of earth and stones to bring their soldiers within reach of the stronghold, which fell only after the Romans created a breach in the defenders' walls. The Zealots, however, preferred death to enslavement, and the conquerors found that the defenders, led by Eleazar ben Jair, had taken their own lives (April 15, AD 73). Only two women and five children - who had hidden in a water conduit - survived to tell the tale.

Looking down the ramp built by the Romans to conquer Masada. Masada was briefly reoccupied by the Jews in the 2nd century AD and was the site of a Byzantine church in the 5th-6th century. Thereafter, it was abandoned until the 20th century, except for a brief interval during the Crusades; the Arabs called the mountain As-Sabba ("The Accursed").

The Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation at Nazareth (completed 1966, on the site of a previous church of 1730 and a crusader foundation). It has an upside down lotus flower as its roof. In it is the Grotto of the Annunciation, where, according to the New Testament, the archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary and announced that she was to be the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:26-31). The grotto has part of a mosaic floor dating back to the 5th-6th century. The Church of the Annunciation is the largest Christian house of worship in the Middle East.

Tiled mosaics, similar to Egyptian drawings, on the floor in a church at Tabigha on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Ruins of the ancient city of Capernaum on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was Jesus' second home and, during the period of his life, a garrison town, an administrative centre, and a customs station. Jesus chose his disciples Peter, Andrew, and Matthew from and performed many of his miracles there.

Among the remains discovered during the excavations at Capernaum was a rectangular synagogue dating from the 2nd-3rd century AD; an older synagogue dating from the time of Christ may be buried beneath its foundation.

An ancient olive press at Capernaum.

Looking at the Golan Heights from the boat on our cruise on the Sea of Galilee.

English fails on the Sea of Galilee!

Eucalyptus trees along the Jordan river close to where it flows out of the Sea of Galilee. It was here that Jesus was said to have been baptised.