There were many moments when it hit me, many moments when it struck me that Israel is more than the markets and the hummus and the desert and the Dead Sea and the Western Wall and all the other sites. It's a comfort, a sense of familiarity, of belonging and peace. I felt very safe in a space that is portrayed in the media as a war zone, in a land that once seemed so foreign to me. I didn't see a war zone or feel like I was far away. Instead, I saw and felt something else, something that connected me to Israel in a way that I wasn't expecting.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A group of refugees from Darfur on a visit to Yad Vashem lingered next to a model of the crematorium at Auschwitz, taking in the ghastly sight of bodies carried on cots and pushed into ovens.