So how did the Hollywood celebrities recently in Israel find it here?
According to this article, they really dug it.
Sitting with AnnaLynne McCord at Jerusalem’s Inbal Hotel on Sunday morning, the blond actress comes off as a regular person with some well thought-out opinions, and not as a Hollywood ‘celebrity’ one would expect. McCord is currently known for her role as Naomi Clark in CW’s 90210.
While her manager insists that she eat her omelet, McCord is excited to share her experience and perspective of Israel in what is her first trip to the country with the organization “America’s Voices in Israel.” McCord explains that she was not afraid to travel to Israel and was excited to meet the people who experience the country every day.
“I’ve heard a lot against Israel back home, but I always knew there was a lot more to this country than what I’ve read and seen in the news,” McCord told me.
“The first question that I’ve always thought about in regard to the conflict here is how much of it is a holy war?” McCord explains that she knows the Biblical history of the region well, having “grown up with the Bible” and believes that there is “no room for the world to judge Israel or anyone in this conflict.”
“I believe there are always three sides to the story — your side, my side and the truth,” said McCord. “Until you actually live in someone else’s shoes, you can never judge.”
“With all that negative coverage about Israel, I was amazed by the resilience, human spirit and optimism that people here have facing daily turmoil. You have to come see Israel for yourself to understand this — that people can still have an amazing existence, with love and patriotism, despite all the odds.”
The one characteristic that McCord says she particularly likes about Israelis is that “they don’t care what you think, what the world thinks. As an actress, I definitely relate to that because people write mean and nice things about me all the time. I do what I have to do, no matter what the critics say. Israel does the same.”
McCord and her acting colleagues, among them Omar Epps (House), Zach Roerig (Vampire Diaries) Paget Brewster (Criminal Minds), Mekhi Pfifer (8 Mile, ER), Paul Johansson (One Tree Hill), Holt McCallany (Lights Out), Holly Robinson Peete (Hangin’ Out With Mr. Cooper) were particularly impressed with Israel’s state-of-the-art facilities for special needs/disabled children.
Read the whole thing.
On a personal note, I was hoping to ask some of them myself, since I was supposed to meet them Thursday night, but for reasons I will not go into, it did not pan out.
