A week before our planned trip to Israel for a family wedding Iran launched several rockets towards Israel. We spent a week asking ourselves will we or won’t we be able to fly to Israel? We packed our suitcase after Shabbat and drove to Luton airport for our Wizzair flight, which took off, and landed on time at Ben Gurion airport. We took the train to Jerusalem where we were staying and caught a taxi to our hotel. The taxi driver was an Israeli Arab who spoke Hebrew and English and lives side by side with Jews, Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem. We took several taxi rides during our short stay in Jerusalem and almost every driver was an Arab Israeli who we found to be courteous, chatty and friendly.

We visited and prayed at the Kotel, which was very busy and we walked the streets of Jerusalem. It was wonderful to see the pavements and restaurants full of people shopping and eating. Jerusalem was a vibrant bustling city and I was struck by how normal life appeared. Constant news reports of conflict and war can create the impression of a city under siege, but the reality on the ground was very different. The streets of Jerusalem were bustling with........

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