U.S. Catholic educators in Israel say rockets give them new outlook

Published: 2006-07-18

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Some 30 Catholic educators from the United States found themselves in the line of fire in northern Israel as the recent crisis between Israel and Lebanon began, but several said it gave them a new perspective on the Middle East. Despite the flare-up on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, the educators decided to travel to Israel as planned as part of the Anti-Defamation League's Advance Bearing Witness program, designed to give educators an opportunity to gain firsthand knowledge of Israel against the backdrop of Jewish history, the Holocaust and Catholic-Jewish relations. The group was traveling in the north and was to spend the evening of July 14 in Tzfat when word came that Katyusha rockets had fallen on the city. "It was a surreal feeling. For us as Americans, it is so outside of our experience, aside from 9/11, which was a paradigm shift for us," said Pat Sykora, a religious studies teacher at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif. "We hadn't expected to be in the middle of a war zone."

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