This is John Batchelor, conversation with Cliff May, the founder and president of the Foundation

for the Defense of Democracy, about his recent visit to Israel, to the Nova Music Festival

Field, and what he saw there there and that it is open in his opinion to people

who come to Israel to look at where the violence one day started the war that

is not ending.

Cliff also observes how though tourism is down in Israel,

there are people who are coming and they're there

and they're surfers. Surfers right offshore. He uses the word surreal.

Is will and more time. Cliff May, more of this later. I don't think you need special

permission. I was with a group of journalists.

Maybe we had some permission, maybe we were vetted in some way to get there, but it seemed to me that people were

mostly just walking around mostly Israelis you don't have a lot of

visitors to Israel right now you have some you have the evangelical Christians who still come

some Jews but I mean the tourist industry is down a lot because

you got a war in the south and a war in the north.

And yet in a surreal way, you see people surfing off of Tel you and sitting in the restaurants on a Saturday night

in Jerusalem.

So it's a little surreal.