Teenager Shares His Israel Experiences

Before leaving in April for a five-week stay at Kibbutz Beit Zera in northern Israel, 17-year-old Giovanni Valencia had never even been on an airplane before, let alone a 14-hour flight half way around the world to a country he knew only from violent images on his television screen.

Giovanni, then a senior at Hamilton High School, was one of 10 African American and Latino students from three Los Angeles high schools who traveled to Israel this spring in a program sponsored by Operation Unity, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving relations between different racial and ethnic groups.

Earlier this week, Giovanni, now a freshman at Cal State Long Beach, recalled his adventure for about 150 participants in the “Contemporary Challenges” program at Adat Ari El Synagogue in North Hollywood. A group of sixth-graders from the synagogue school also were in attendance as Giovanni described how the experience changed his life.

“I probably would have never gone to Israel in my whole life, but this was one of the greatest experiences I’ll ever have,” Giovanni told the group. “It changed the way I look at other people and the way I look at myself.”

What impressed him most was the way he was treated by people on the kibbutz, Giovanni said.

“People were very friendly and they were interested in what it was like to live in America,” he said. “They don’t care if you’re white or black, just that you’re an American.”

In addition to living on the kibbutz, where he awoke before dawn to work in the banana fields or digging graves in the cemetery, Giovanni and the others also traveled to historical sites such as Jerusalem, Masada and the Dead Sea, which was his favorite.

“I can’t swim, and the salt content is so high in the Dead Sea that you can just float around. That was really cool.”

Cookie Lommel, an African American journalist who started Operation Unity in 1994, said Giovanni’s group was the second to travel to Israel. A third trip is being planned for next year.

“The main purpose of these trips is to allow students to break down stereotypes and to learn how to cooperate with other people,” said Lommel.