The art of travel writing in Israel (Part I)

A look back on over 15 years of writing and promoting Israel as a travel destination.

While waiting for my family’s luggage at Thessaloniki airport last month, I picked up a magazine called Incredible Greece. Printed on glossy paper, it was filled with awesome photos and articles about Greece’s history, nature and food. As I flicked through the pages I started to feel pangs of jealousy. Firstly, I was jealous of how many wonders Greece has to offer. Secondly, I was jealous of its space – Greece is six times bigger with a population of 10.4 million, compared to Israel’s 9.3 million. Thirdly, I was jealous of the journalists who got to write these travel articles. I couldn’t help thinking – in a parallel universe this could’ve been Incredible Israel.

Instead, Israel is portrayed globally as a war zone, not a traveller’s haven. In the first five months of 2024, only 400,000 tourists entered Israel, a drop from over two million tourists in the same time in 2023. It’s not surprising as the ‘forever war’ of Gaza rages on and many airlines have cancelled their flights until mid-2025. Greece, on the other hand, has experienced a tourism boom, despite high temperatures and wildfires.

Greece and Israel share many similarities – the ancient capitals of Athens and Jerusalem, the hip cities of Thessaloniki and Tel Aviv, and bountiful beaches. But the most notable difference is that modern Greece is not bogged down by war. Unlike Israel, which has faced wars ever since its creation.

A lonely start
Exactly 60 years after the State of Israel was declared in 1948, I made Aliyah in May 2008. I was a young travel journalist from the UK and I wanted to continue writing in Israel. I soon found that a career in journalism in the Middle East wasn’t going to be easy, especially as I didn’t want to cover politics.

But while I was studying Hebrew at ulpan and a masters at Bar Ilan University, I started to write articles for Haaretz, Time Out Tel Aviv and the Jerusalem Report, mostly on NGOs. Then one day I opened my junk mail folder and saw an email from an editor from Lonely Planet in Melbourne from a few months earlier. I almost forgot that while I was still living in London, I applied to be a Lonely Planet author. They invited me to do a writing audition about a place of my choice. So I researched and wrote a mini-guide on Old Jaffa, complete with hand-drawn maps. I remember my difficulty in summarising 4,000 years of history in just two paragraphs.

Not expecting too much, I sent my Jaffa guide and months later I got the gig I really wanted – to co-author the new Israel & the Palestinian Territories book.

“Only mad dogs, Englishmen and Lonely Planet authors go out in the midday sun.” Photo by Matan Perlmuter on Unsplash

Lonely Planet authors are obliged to visit the places they write about and so in early 2009 I set off on a research trip across the Negev desert, Sinai and Petra.

On this bumpy road trip, I visited every hostel, winery, cafe, kibbutz, camel ranch, and Bedouin camp I found along the way. I nearly got stranded on Mt Sinai, after all the tourists had left, I found myself alone with a few armed Bedouin taxi drivers. And while walking around Mitzpe Ramon, without any shade, I learnt the true meaning of ‘Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun’.

The guide that came out in bookshops in 2010 had new sections that I added including the ‘Negev’s Wine Route’, ‘Gourmet Goats’ and ‘A Spice Odyssey’, a piece on the Nabataeans. “Often overlooked in school history lessons, the Nabataeans were ancient Arabs,” I wrote. “They were nomadic people until Rome became aware of the profitability of the spice route and muscled in on their trade.”

TLV becomes trendy

Photo by Yoav Aziz on Unsplash

One year later I was so proud to write about Tel Aviv for Lonely Planet’s top ten cities of 2011. Throughout the early 2000’s, due to the Second Intifada, Tel Aviv was viewed as a dangerous place, epitomised by the tragic Dolphinarium nightclub bombing in 2001. But by 2008, the city had a new lease of life – a younger generation of Israelis started moving back, there was an influx of people making Aliyah, and even the Dolphinarium was the site of Friday’s eclectic drumming beach.

TLV was now a trendy destination – a Mediterranean Manhattan, the San Francisco of the Middle East that hosted the largest Pride parade in the region that attracted visitors from all over the world. Tel Aviv’s municipality was building a 10km bicycle lane, the old outdoor Gordon Pool was reopened, the seafront Independence Park was renovated, and all over the city there were new bars and kid-friendly cafes. Low-cost airlines like EasyJet started flying to TLV and I even wrote a piece for their in-flight magazine.

This was the height of the hype around Tel Aviv. “Tel Aviv is the total flipside of Jerusalem, a modern Sin City on the sea rather than an ancient Holy City on a hill,” I wrote in 2011. “Hedonism is the one religion that unites its inhabitants. There are more bars than synagogues, God is a DJ and everyone’s body is a temple.”

This line was quoted by Haaretz, CNN and a host of other sites, and I was even interviewed live on Tel Aviv 102FM in my very broken Hebrew. 

For the next edition of Lonely Planet’s Israel guide in 2012, I covered the Negev and Tel Aviv. This was when I was delving deeper into the underground scene and discovering street artists like Know Hope, singers like Riff Cohen and stories by Etgar Keret.

“While the State of Israel hits the headlines, the state of Tel Aviv sits back with a cappuccino. Lovingly nicknamed the Bubble, Tel Aviv is a city of outdoor cafes, leafy boulevards and long sandy beaches.” I ended my intro by writing, “The diversity of its people, music, museums, art galleries and graffiti all testify that Tel Aviv has soul.”

Yet it wasn’t all one big party. As the ‘Arab Spring’ was rising, Tel Aviv had its own ‘summer of discontent’ in 2011 as thousands marched and camped outside for social justice. Tel Aviv had quickly become a victim of its own success and the cost of rent and property was sky high.

To be continued…