{"id":1950,"date":"2023-10-30T07:35:33","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T06:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/?p=1950"},"modified":"2025-06-10T15:31:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T13:31:27","slug":"elida-to-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/elida-to-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Elida to Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Elida to Israel<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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The Swedish sailing vessel Elida arrived in Israel early October with 47 passengers on board \u2013 politicians, journalists, friends of Israel and volunteers in addition to the regular crew and music team.The goal was to express support for the area\u2019s only democracy, Israel, and for the persecuted Christians in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The sailing ship Elida arrived in Haifa at the beginning of October after sailing 4,500 nautical miles from Sweden, about a quarter of the way around the globe. Photo: Ruben Agnarsson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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O<\/span>n a daily basis, Elida stages quayside meetings around Sweden\u2019s coasts and on the Scandinavian tourist routes in Spain and the Canary Isles. Her voyage to Israel, under the name \u2018Pilgrim 2023\u2019, took place the first time on Israel\u2019s 70th anniversary in 2018, partly as a reaction to the Swedish-inspired project \u2018Ship to Gaza\u2019 which gathered a number of anti-Israel organizations before its sailings into the area.<\/p>\n

At nine o\u2019clock Monday morning, October 2nd, Elida arrived at Haifa after being guided into port by local pilot boats and with border police. In the harbour entrance, captain Stefan Abrahamsson played the Israeli national anthem Hatikva on the cornet before checking in the boat and its passengers. 4,500 nautical miles had been covered, approximately a quarter of the way around the earth, since Elida left port on Sweden\u2019s west coast on August 19.<\/p>\n

The day before arriving in Israel, Elida left Limassol in Cyprus for the last 15 hour stretch of its journey across the Mediterranean, in fresh winds and mildly rolling seas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Haifa resident<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Israeli Gabriel Confini from Haifa has sailed with Elida for several seasons.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Up there\u2019s my house, he says, pointing to Mount Carmel, which has welcomed multitudes of boat travelers throughout history as they arrived in Israel via the port of Haifa.<\/p>\n

Philip Holmberg, one of the leaders of Ebenezer Operation Exodus, has been on board for the entire trip.<\/p>\n

\u2013 It\u2019s very exciting to come to Israel again, he says, and for the first time by boat; seeing Mount Carmel from the sea is absolutely fantastic.<\/p>\n

\u2013 We\u2019re now approaching Haifa and motoring the last stretch because the wind has eased. We have a meeting point with the pilot and the military boat will arrive shortly, said Stefan Abrahamsson before the arrival in Haifa.<\/p>\n

During Elida\u2019s visit to Israel, there were political meetings, celebratory visits to the ship and musical events where the music team performed in ports and centers with a repertoire that has been updated with classic Swedish songs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jerusalem \u2013 the capital<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Member of Parliament, Magnus Jakobsson, from the Christian Democrats sailed with Elida to Israel. He was the first Christian Democrat to motion parliament to move Sweden\u2019s embassy to Jerusalem, Israel\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n

Today this is the official policy of the Christian Democrats, among the ruling parties in Sweden\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of September, ten Swedish MPs from the Christian Democrats visited Israel, where, among other things, they met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elida to Israel The Swedish sailing vessel Elida arrived in Israel early October with 47 passengers on board \u2013 politicians, journalists, friends of Israel and volunteers in addition to the regular crew and music team.The goal was to express support for the area\u2019s only democracy, Israel, and for the persecuted Christians in the Middle East. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1946,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-did-you-know"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3571,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions\/3571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}