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| Our Team | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gila lives and raises her son in Tel-Aviv. She studied social
work but soon after she graduated she directed her social talent
to guiding groups most of which were pilgrimage groups. She is a
well- known guide and has been for almost 25 years. As a genuine lover of human beings, Gila developed a deep sensitivity
for human rights and justice. Apart from her work in tourism, Gila works for the geographical
magazine “Eretz Vateva” and its supplement “Metropolis”
– a magazine for cities around the globe.
Born in Belgium and based in Israel, Claude made his first steps
as a guide leading Safari tours in the Sinai back in 1985. Claude did not forget his first love for the Sinai and he guides with us French and English speaking groups in the Sinai, in Jordan and in Israel. Claude is well known for his professionalism as a guide and for his ability to solve any problem that occurs during the sometimes complicated tours that he guides.
Well, as you can see, I like to enjoy life. I like to tell stories
(especially when they are exaggerated...) I like to play the flute,
and generally I like to play around...! My parents are religious Jews, and as obliged by my demanding name, I spent 4 years of my short life in a "Yeshiva" - a Jewish religious high-school, studying the Bible, the Jewish religion, and other sciences, from sunrise till waaaay past sunset... You might think that this was a hard time, but actually I have great memories of that period in my life (especially when I skipped school!). During that period I learned a lot of stuff that helps me in my profession as a tour-guide. Speaking about learning: During my humble life I spent some time abroad, so today I speak five languages fluently: Hebrew, English, German (including this awkward "Sschwytzerdytsch" the Swiss-Germans speak) Danish and Arabic. I even managed to convince quite a few Bedouins that my mother is a Bedouin from Nuweiba, and only my father is Swiss! My father is really Swiss (he loves to eat "Fondue"!). Although he didn't have a Bedouin wife, I did have one stepmother who had a Baptist church in her father's home, and another one, who was a Catholic nun for ten years! This is why I had the chance to learn quite a bit about Christianity, so none of the many Christian groups I guided suffered... When I look back at what I wrote about myself, I start to doubt
if it is my knowledge of the Arab language that made the Bedouins
think that I am one of them. Looking at my picture, I start to think
that my gorgeous moustache, which I never shaved in my whole lifetime,
made me look like a genuine Bedouin.
Salah Musa al Afaly of the Jabaliya tribe was born in Wadi Baghabagh
and lives with his family in Abu Sila, a few kilometers from the
monastery of St. Catharine, at the center of the High Mountain Range
in the Sinai (See map). At a very young age he started guiding the first westerners who came to explore the mountains and developed his skills as the best mountain guide and one of the best storytellers in the region. For over 25 years Salah has guided our groups in the mountain passes, sharing his mountains knowledge and his life wisdom with all our guides and with hundreds of trekkers who have come with us to the region. The special relations between Salah Musa and Gadi Sternbach were documented in a movie ''Salah Musa and Gadi Sternbach''. Today, Salah owns four fruit orchards in the mountains (which are used sometimes for night camps by our groups). He is the company’s main storekeeper and his responsibility includes all the food and supplies for our treks. Salah considers himself very lucky, as he has been able to spend his life keeping his traditional lifestyle and at the same time being in contact with the western travelers and with the changes of the times.
Born 1959 in Duesseldorf, Germany, Married, 3 children. I was an awfully bad student at school. So bad that I decided to become a teacher in order to prove to others that learning does not necessarily have to be painful. As a tour guide with a Master’s degree in Judaic Studies, Theology and some studies in Law I made it my ultimate concern to show how most topics are connected with us and therefore worth being studied. Through my marriage with a Jewish Israeli, topics like Jewish-Christian
Relations and the German-Israeli dialogue have become concrete issues
of my daily life. Raising my children in Jerusalem in such a complicated period drew me nearer to the question of Jewish –Arab relations. In 2001 we sent two of our three children to the mixed Jewish-Arab ‘Hand-in-Hand’ school in Jerusalem. Today this school is one of three of its kind where Jews and Arabs study as equals and try to build a common future in this country. I am deeply involved in the development of this school. Through my former position as assistant to the representative of the German Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation Office in Jerusalem I was well introduced into the political dimension of the Jewish-Arab/Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and during the past few years I have given lectures in Germany on the background of this conflict, its contradictory narratives and the reasons for the prevailing violence in the Middle East. The issue of violence has been of interest to me since childhood. The phenomena of violence prevailing in the classroom, in school and on the street and the question of how a youth or an adult can escape that violence without too much damage to himself and without losing face, became a main issue in my life. In the year 2000 I became a member of the de-escalation team of the city of Bochum, and in 2004 I founded ''SOS-Violence/The Center for Studies of Violence in Israel''. Through workshops and seminars with youth groups, students and teachers we teach techniques of resisting or escaping violence without taking violent action ourselves. At this stage of my life I divide my time between the non- violence organization and guiding and developing quality German tourism in the region.
Atiyah Sleiman of the Jabaliya tribe lives with his wife and two children in Abu Sila, a small village in the High Mountain Range of the Sinai (see map). As a teenager Atiyah started joining the High Range treks first
as a camel driver and later as a cook.
Reuven Moskovitz was born in Schtetl Frumusica in Romania in 1928.
He survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Palestine in 1947, where
he was one of the founders of Kibbutz Misgav Am on the Lebanon border. Reuven is the owner of the Mount Sion Award 2001 and of the International Aachener Peace Award 2003. His book ''Der lange Weg zum Frieden'' (''The long way to peace'') exists in the 4th edition. Together with S.K. Tours in Nature Reuven has orgenized many political oriented groups to Israel, Jordan and the Sinai.
My name is Timi Ben-Yosef. I am married to Noam and father of Alma
and Roy. I live in Jerusalem and work in the field of education. The seven good years ended in 1982. Since than I have kept a constant connection with the Sinai. Each time I am happy to discover that my knowledge of the desert has not vanished. I have the feeling that the curves of the wadies are carved in my mind. Concerning the subject of the Sinai I am proud to be knowledgeable but it is important to mention that for Sinai lovers “knowing” the Sinai is not the main issue. You travel from one range to the other but you do the main travel in the mind’s districts. The Sinai mountains have kept their uniqueness since the Genesis era, through the Exodus to the present time. As our lives in the global village become more intensive and more synthetic the importance of wandering in the Sinai grows bigger. It helps us to approach our mental sources as human beings. The believers among us can feel nearer to God… the sky is so near over there. Wandering in the mountains we hear the blood streaming in the veins. With the desert silence the body functions and the thoughts clarify. This is an experience of basic existence that reminds us where we are coming from and gives room for thought on where we are going to… Along the years I have acquired the professional skills that enable me to have my own personal experience each time that I travel in the Sinai, and at the same time I enable and help the people in the group to have their own Sinai experience. The trip occurs in very strong and realistic surroundings but it is also an individual trip inside. You are invited to join. Over there the sky is not the limit.
The beginning of the 1980’s was the era of the first explorers
of Eastern Sinai and the design of the sand stone region treks. The beginning of the treks in his region caught his imagination
and he and his brothers became the leading mountain guides in the
region. Today Swelem operates a small tourist huts beach. From time to time, when we need a mountain guide for an especially remote trek, Swelem leaves his other occupations and again he takes the place of the most knowledgeable mountain guide in eastern Sinai.
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