Opinion – Page 66

Reflecting on Jerusalem Day

The Kotel in Jerusalem. (photo by Marek69)

Jerusalem has been reunited now for 50 years. For five decades, we have had the privilege of praying at the Kotel, the Western Wall. On Jerusalem Day, 28 Iyar, which falls this year on May 13, thousands of worshippers will flock to the city, many before sunrise.

Nothing has ever come easily to the Jewish people. For 19 years, from 1948 to 1967, Jerusalem was cut in half and, at the Mandelbaum Gate, outside the Old City, there were signs: “Danger. Frontier ahead. Snipers nearby … stay out of the middle of the street!” Neighbourhoods and streets were split down the middle. Jews were evicted from their homes and synagogues in the Old City, and the Western Wall was out of bounds. Across the dividing line, Jordanian troops stood with rifles at the ready.

Jerusalem’s story covers thousands of years, but this segment began in 1948. Before the ceasefire was signed on Nov. 30 that year, Moshe Dayan, the commander of Israel’s forces in Jerusalem, met with his Jordanian counterpart, Abdullah El-Tel. In a deserted house in Musrara, they marked out their respective positions. These rough, indistinct marks expanded from the heat and blurred over time, yet they were accepted as the borders between Jordan and Israel in Jerusalem. The map was locked up at Government House and referred to in all disputes.

On June 5, 1967, while Israel was still warning King Hussein of Jordan to stay out of the impending war, a foreign radio station announced the conquest of Mount Scopus by Jordanian troops. It was a mistake, but it confirmed Israel’s suspicions of Jordan’s intentions, and that Mount Scopus, with its Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital, was in danger. The Jordanians believed that Israeli troops would come from east to west, but instead the Jerusalem Brigade attacked from the opposite direction, taking Armon HaNetziv, three Jordanian positions, the Arab village of Sur Baher and Mutzav HaPaamon, before several Arab troops came out of hiding and killed six Israeli soldiers.

Below, on the road to Bethlehem, stands Kibbutz Ramat Rachel. Jordanians and Egyptians fought Israelis on the southernmost part of the dividing line and the kibbutz changed hands three times. However, the Israelis eventually held it, which helped stop the Arab invasion of southern Jerusalem.

Soldiers of the Jordanian legion conquered the British High Commissioner’s residence, but were driven back by the Israeli Defence Forces, who moved towards the City of David. At dawn on Tuesday, 27 Iyar, a unit of paratroopers advanced, taking the police school, the district of Sheikh Jarrah, the American Colony and the area of the Rockefeller Museum. After a bloody battle at Ammunition Hill, the paratroopers reached Mount Scopus.

Jerusalem’s great day was 28 Iyar. With a daring thrust, Israeli soldiers scaled Mount of Olives, advancing beyond the village of Al-Azariya. Armoured vehicles burst through the Lions’ Gate towards the Temple Mount. At 10 a.m. came the announcement: “The Temple Mount is ours. It is in our hands!” Soldiers, even secular ones, ran towards the Western Wall, caressing its stones, their eyes full of tears and with a prayer on their lips, even if they didn’t know the words. A few minutes later, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, then IDF chaplain, blew the shofar at the holy site. David Rubinger, a military photographer, took the now-famous photo that has been reproduced around the world, of a soldier named Yitzhak Yifat (who is now a gynecologist living in Rishon lesion), removing his helmet and looking up at the wall in awe.

One of the first to reach the Kotel was a former Australian, Mordecai (Mark) Rechtschafner, from my hometown of Melbourne. He told me that, although he was overwhelmed by the sense of history at that moment, he was far from euphoric. Heavy losses had been sustained and he had lost many comrades. “I was exhausted, filled with sadness at the unbearable death of so many of my friends,” he said. “The Six Day War ended swiftly, but we paid a heavy price.” Every year, on Jerusalem Day, he comes to the city from Kibbutz Ein Zurim, where he lives, for the memorial service, to pay tribute to the many friends he lost in the battle.

Until the First Intifada and its ongoing aftermath, the hope of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs seemed a possibility and some believe it still is. Thousands of Arabs used to pour into Western Jerusalem each morning to work. On weekends, the narrow lanes of the Old City’s Arab shuk (market) would be packed with Israeli shoppers, but, today, it is mostly tourists who fill the market. The future is a question mark, as ongoing violence brings renewed tears to families throughout the land.

But the city of Jerusalem remains unforgettable and heartbreakingly beautiful. To me, it is a poem. One night, as darkness descended, I was moved to write these lines:

Black velvet spangled with stars
Is night in Jerusalem.
Splashes of silver,
The sob of the wind,
An ancient perfume,
A taste of nectar.
Skyline of turrets and domes
Is night in Jerusalem.
Pine trees are sighing.
Through a tracery of leaves
Golden lights dot
A midnight canvas.
Landscape of enchantment
Is night in Jerusalem.

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She has written 14 books, including The Pomegranate Pendant, which was made into a movie, and her latest novella, Searching for Sarah. She can be contacted at dwaysman@gmail.com or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.

Civil dissent: a Jewish value

Last week, I participated in a survey on Canadian Jews done by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, in partnership with Prof. Robert Brym of the University of Toronto and Prof. Rhonda Lenton of York University. It’s considered a “landmark national survey of Jews in Canada in 2018.”

The phone call came at 5 p.m. This time coincides with making dinner, school lunches for my kids, feeding our dogs, and keeping the twins and dogs from roughhousing too much in the meanwhile. (Did I mention my biologist husband was away, doing field work?)

However, I knew this was important. This was a situation where my opinions and experiences mattered. I needed to contribute despite being the only adult present to address the chaos at my house.

Often, we think of politics, religion and money as things to avoid. They’re too emotionally laden to make good dinner conversation. Still, we need to talk and think about this to figure out where we stand. If one looks only at the Torah portion of the week, you might see it as black and white pronouncements about how one should behave or observe the commandments. Yet Oral Law is also part of Judaism. We care what the rabbis thought and discussed. Over thousands of years, our ideas developed, changed and grew. Those talmudic discussions include majority and minority opinions, as well as stories and sayings.

In our tradition, subtle differences matter. Opinions matter. According to the joke, if you ask two Jews, you’ll get three opinions.

That’s why I was stunned by the reaction to actress Natalie Portman’s choice to decline the Genesis Prize. In her statement, she lovingly celebrated her Israeli identity, her friends and family and her citizenship. She also explained that she felt uncomfortable with the current government, specifically, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s choices, and its “violence, corruption, inequality and abuse of power.”

A torrent of media and political reaction followed, some of it hysterical in tone. The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Mort Klein, was downright misogynistic. He called the Harvard-educated actor and director “beautiful, but not too bright.”

Portman carries two passports as a dual American-Israeli citizen. Some called for her to be stripped of her Israeli citizenship. Since when is it OK to tell someone they can no longer be a citizen of a democratic country because she spoke out on political issues that concern her?

I’m a dual American-Canadian citizen. If I speak out on a political issue, I am within my rights as a citizen of (either) democratic society. I hear comments on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government or U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tweets wherever I go. All that said, some of those survey questions made me realize – I no longer feel comfortable publicly writing about or speaking either in support of Israel or criticizing Israel’s policies. Why?

All subtlety has dropped out of the conversation.

Old guard, right-wing Zionists who say “I stand with Israel” bristle whenever anyone says something critical of the current Israeli government’s policies. Meanwhile, anyone with liberal or left-wing politics feels uncomfortable with the notion that Israel would deport asylum-seekers, never mind the current violence with Palestinians or the reactions to their using the word “occupied.”

Many have given up even trying to discuss the issues. They don’t want to be attacked. Getting vitriolic responses from friends, acquaintances and family members, or a stream of emails about those “antisemites,” or worse, seems par for the course now.

A New York magazine article online, “Natalie Portman and the crisis of liberal Zionism,” helps explain the dilemma. Many younger North American Jews embrace liberal North American politics about equality and human rights, and feel disconnected from Israel. The old notion of a liberal Zionist or progressive supporter is no longer courted by Israel, either. The support of Christian evangelicals and a growing block of Orthodox, conservative voters might mean that some in Israel believe they no longer need the support of those liberal Zionists of old.

You may wonder why my columns don’t discuss Israel much. I’d respond with what Israelis told me as a teenager, living on an Israeli kibbutz. “If you want to weigh in on Israeli politics? Move to Israel and vote. Otherwise? We’ve heard enough from you North Americans.”

I tend my garden, as Voltaire says – I write about Judaism, religion, family and about where we stand as Canadian Jews. Our religion teaches us to learn, analyze and form opinions, like the rabbis do. As a citizen of both the United States and Canada, I defend wholeheartedly Portman’s right to speak out on politics and human rights issues that matter to her. It’s an essential part of free speech and the democratic ideal. One has to wonder whether the virulent reaction to her statement says more about Portman, or about the people who have responded so negatively.

In a democracy, we should be able to express well-considered opinions and disagree about things in a civil way, without fear of threats. Why would anyone consider it acceptable (Jewish) behaviour to threaten, embarrass or demean someone else? Many rabbis taught us: threats, embarrassment or denigrating others are just not Jewish things to do.

Joanne Seiff writes regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Place blame where due

For weeks since March, each Friday, thousands of Gazans have rallied at the border with Israel, leading to violent confrontations with the Israeli military. The objective is to build up to an incursion of such proportion that Israel’s military is unable to prevent an invasion into Israeli territory. The stated goal of the so-called March of Return is to catalyze the movement toward a “right of return,” which would have the not coincidental consequence of demographically threatening the Jewish nature of Israel.

Of course, even tens of thousands of Palestinians trying to breech the border will not result in this goal. Instead, there is an unstated goal: Hamas seeks to turn global opinion (further) against Israel. Shamefully, it seems that a few dozen Palestinian lives is a small price to pay, in Hamas’s worldview, for the PR benefits they deliver. As the New York Times reported Sunday, at least some of the protesters believe that they have nothing to lose. “It doesn’t matter to me if they shoot me or not,” said a 22-year-old protester interviewed by the paper. “Death or life – it’s the same thing.” That attitude will suit Hamas just fine.

To overseas audiences, march proponents depict it as an unarmed, peaceful, civilian-led mass action – and a peaceful protest is something we could accept, if not agree with. However, evidence shows that it is stage-managed by Hamas and anything but peaceful. Flying swastika-festooned kites with petrol bombs are sent over the border, massive tire fires are set to obscure the view of Israeli soldiers and tug-of-war lines are formed to pull down the border barrier, while crowds simultaneously hurl projectiles. At this past weekend’s action, there were reports of a few protesters armed with pistols.

Writing in the Times two days earlier, Fadi Abu Shammalah, executive director of the General Union of Cultural Centres in Gaza and a documentary film producer, insisted that he loves life, but that he is prepared to risk it to give his children a future with dignity.

A more effective means to ensure that Palestinian children live a life of dignity would be for Shammalah and others like him to write opinion pieces in the New York Times and to agitate elsewhere for the Hamas leadership to abandon both violence and their refusal to live in coexistence with the Jewish state. These are the two prerequisites to Palestinian self-determination. But such actions could well get Shammalah and others killed faster than marching against the border with Israel.

A sovereign country has the fundamental right to protect its borders from invasion. Ideally, this could be achieved without the use of live ammunition, and should minimize casualties as much as possible. Killing unarmed protesters is not acceptable.

Exclusively blaming Israel, however, is unjust. But this is more than misplaced blame: it has the precise consequence of rewarding Hamas’s strategy of sacrificing its own citizens. The more world media and activists condemn Israel and reward Hamas, the more Palestinians will be pushed toward the border. In such a scenario, the blame lies not solely with Israel or even with Hamas. The blame must be shared by these overseas enablers who, by rewarding Hamas, truly deserve part of the responsibility for the deaths and injuries.

Cynicism and realism

Last week, thousands of Germans of all faiths and identities participated in a “kippa march,” standing in solidarity with German Jews who feel endangered in the current political climate. In 2017, there were 1,468 reported antisemitic attacks in Germany, most perpetrated by members of the far-right.

The gesture is lovely. However we cannot help wondering if the whole “Je suis Charlie,” “We are all Muslims” or the “Ich bin Eine Jude” movements that pop up as gestures of solidarity are not at least slightly misplaced.

We will leave it to others to speak for their communities. But we would note that there may be a degree of comfort among some people in Europe and North America to criticize Jews. Since Christianity is descended from Judaism, it seems that there is felt more freedom to criticize Jewish behaviours, including the policies of the Jewish state. After all, the thinking might go, we are all part of the same family; it’s practically constructive self-criticism. Yet this ignores millennia of significantly divergent experiences and theology.

While the idea that donning a kippa will help keep Jewish neighbours in Germany safe, recent European history should give us reason to worry that today’s gesture of solidarity could be repurposed as a cover for criticism tomorrow on the pleasant idea that Ich bin Eine Jude.

This is a cynical response to a kind gesture, we realize. But sometimes cynicism and realism are not unrelated.

The tough choices

The value of ahavat ha’beriot, the love of God’s creations, is open to broad interpretation. The animal world, the environment, as well as other people, can all fall under this crucial tenet of Judaism.

Like positive values and most good things, of course, this is easier in theory than in practice. We all want a clean environment and a better world, but we also want the convenience of automobiles, abundant and varied food, and the panorama of disposable consumer goods that we associate with the “good life.”

Awareness is, on the one hand, the most important factor in social change. On the other hand, it can overwhelm us to learn the full scope of our impacts on the world. Leave aside the huge looming catastrophe of climate change and consider for a moment the impact of a single, almost universal item of clothing: the cotton T-shirt.

Some bumper sticker wisdom urges us to “live simply, that others may simply live.” We do not always think of our wardrobe when considering our carbon footprint. Yet, after housing, food and transportation, for many people, clothing is one of the largest expenditures. Since voting with our wallets is one important way of making change, it is worth considering the impacts of our wardrobe choices. And what we wear on our backs says more about us than merely our fashion sense. It speaks (whether we know it or not) about our views on the environment and matters like child labour and fair wages.

To this end, one might think that a basic T-shirt would be a good choice. Yet it can take up to 2,700 litres of water to produce the cotton required for this simple garment, according to the World Wildlife Federation. Caring for the T-shirt over its lifespan takes further resources: each load of laundry takes more than 150 litres of water. Throwing it in the dryer (with a full load) consumes even more energy resources than the washing machine – about five times as much. Hanging it instead on a clothesline would reduce the shirt’s carbon footprint by one-third, but who remembers those? (Walk down a back lane in Vancouver a generation ago, and clotheslines snaked across almost every yard.) That few of us would be prepared to make this comparatively small shift indicates the glacial – to use an ironic term in the context – pace of human change in a time of rapid change in the environment.

Our food choices are even heavier with impacts. Researchers at institutions including the Weizmann Institute of Science calculated the use of land area, water and nitrogen fertilizer in animal food production. Potatoes, wheat and rice require half to one-sixth of the resources needed to produce pork, chicken, dairy and eggs in a calorie-for-calorie comparison. (Beef takes as much as five times the resources as chicken.)

Livestock for food are estimated to create about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions while using vast amounts of agricultural and water resources. Reducing or giving up meat consumption results in a huge reduction in resources. Producing a kilogram of protein from beef requires about 18 times more land, 10 times more water, nine times more fuel, 12 times more fertilizer and 10 times more pesticide than producing a kilogram of protein from kidney beans. But, again, many people love a steak or roast chicken and giving up these pleasures is not on the agenda.

This is not to instil hopelessness that even our simplest choices are leading to environmental disaster. Rather, it is to be aware of the power of small changes to have significant results.

We can extrapolate the outsized impacts of larger choices. When faced with the realities of carbon fuels on our environment (and health), most of us will not choose to sell our cars. But we might use them more judiciously. Or buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle. And, when it comes to making big political decisions that impact our environment and health, we might consider that, on balance, we should be moving toward investing in alternatives to fossil fuels, not pouring public or private billions into perpetuating deleterious and nonrenewable resources. We may not go cold turkey on gasoline and oil overnight, but our discrete choices should be leading incrementally in the right direction, not the wrong one.

Antisemitism exposed

It recently came to light that Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, was a member of at least one closed Facebook group where antisemitic rhetoric and hatred, including the most ridiculous assertions based on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other such bunkum, was liberally purveyed.

David Collier, an independent British researcher, released an in-depth analysis of the kind of content that appeared in the group to which Corbyn and other leading Labour activists belonged. Members of the group routinely threw around phrases like “Jewnazi” and “Zionazi.” Members posted articles about the “Rothschild Empire,” the “Zionist agenda and New World Order” and “Jewish organ trafficking,” the latter, as the title implies, being a modern incarnation of blood libel.

About Mein Kampf, one poster urged: “Everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked.” Members have claimed that Hitler “supported Zionism” and that the Holocaust is being exploited so that Jews can oppress others – all the while shielding themselves with the assertion that “criticizing Israel isn’t the same as antisemitism.”

When caught, Corbyn, who has called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends,” defended his online association with antisemitism by saying, “Had I seen [evidence of antisemitism], of course, I would have challenged it straight away, but I actually don’t spend all my time reading social media.” In fact, even the most cursory glance at the page would indicate this is a site with which no legitimate public figure should be associated.

An older incident was made public about the same time, in which Corbyn defended the artist in a case where a local government opted to paint over an overtly antisemitic mural on a public wall. Later, Corbyn would claim he hadn’t really looked at the mural, which clearly depicts stereotypically Jewish looking men divvying up money on the backs of the oppressed, while the symbol of the Illuminati, a figment of the antisemitic movement’s imagination, hovers above them.

The fact that overt antisemitism, which has existed in the Labour Party for some time, has finally had a bright light shone on it, has brought some surprising reactions. Some MPs and other Labour activists have called for MPs who attended a rally against antisemitism to be blackballed from the party. You read that right.

Those whose dogged campaigning has brought the unseemly underbelly of antisemitism on the British left to light seem to now face the daunting task of ensuring that the blame for the problem – and the task of fixing it – falls to the perpetrators, not the victims.

Rituals can help us with loss

My nephew L’s public elementary school principal just died unexpectedly. She wasn’t old, and it was very sudden. The school closed for an afternoon so everyone could go to a memorial service. He’s upset … as any 9-year-old kid would be. His family lives near my parents, in Virginia, so, when my brother called for grandparent backup, they went right over. They needed to help my nephew start learning and talking about death.

This is so hard, but, in some ways, we are lucky. Judaism has rituals, information and thousands of years of coping with this topic. We can joke about it, sure, but nobody comes out of this thing called life alive. Better to have some things in place ahead of time, so you’re ready for it.

There are those who try to protect kids from sad or upsetting events, and keep them home and shelter them from funerals. This is a disservice to kids, who need to learn how these things work. I experienced several deaths and attended funerals as a little kid, as close family and friends died. Watching my family members mourn, going through shivah and attending services with them to say Kaddish helped me get a grip on the losses of people I loved, even though I wasn’t old enough to do much of this myself.

By comparison, my husband didn’t lose close family members until he was a young adult in his twenties. He didn’t have a deep understanding of traditional Jewish practices, about what would happen and how. In a short span of time, he lost all his grandparents and his mother. Going through the rituals, attending services to say Kaddish and to mourn his mother, was very hard. It was a long year, and we were in grad school, far away from family. However, we used those rituals as a crutch, and it helped us get through it together.

Although my mom is retired, she worked as a Jewish educator and administrator for many years. She still helps manage arrangements for the sale of Jewish burial plots for her Virginia congregation. My mom often helps people as they deal with a sudden death, a long illness or another difficult situation. She was recently invited to talk to the Grade 6 religious school class as they studied Jewish mourning and death.

It turned out that L’s older brother, age 12, was in that class. Although he recognized many of the pictures in my mom’s presentation, he said he learned some new things, too. He recognized the 140-year-old cemetery in Alexandria, where he visits and helps out sometimes. My mom covered basic traditions, but she also talked about how we can comfort friends who lose grandparents – the real details that help us cope with loss. Most poignant for me, though, was the new story my mother told me that she’d mentioned in the class. It was a way to help kids learn to support friends with their losses.

When my mom was 12, there was a phone call in the middle of the night. She heard her dad crying, which she’d never heard before. His father, her grandfather “Poppa,” had died. Her friends at school came up to her. They were sorry to hear about his death. Poppa used to carry around big packets of Juicy Fruit gum in his pockets. He’d hand out sticks of gum to all the kids at the end of High Holiday services. Those friends helped her remember her grandfather in a loving, wonderful way.

In Leviticus, which we read each week at synagogue at this time of year, there are long lists of “shoulds” and “should nots” and instructions for how we should do things. Some of these rules seem rigid. Many aren’t really applicable in a world without ritual sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem. However, we have both rabbinic teachings and the Tanakh sacrifice experience. We’re offered tools for how to mourn and how to manage through hard times. That history can propel us forward.

My family and community “practised” with kids so they were ready. True, it may be bending someone’s rules to recite Kaddish in the backyard over a beloved pet who has died. It may not be exactly correct to light a yahrzeit candle and recite Kaddish over a beloved (non-Jewish) elementary school principal who has died, but this “practising” doesn’t matter to most. The Jewish rituals and traditions that exist around death aren’t really about the person who died. It’s about how the rest of us will move forward.

Death is a part of life. It’s dang hard. However, hard things don’t go away because we decide not to talk about them or face them. Instead, brave people conquer difficult challenges through facing them head on. My nephew L is one of those brave people. He uses a wheelchair, signs and uses an iPad communication device to talk – and shows such compassion. He told my mother, “Now I know how you felt when your mom died.”

This week, my nephew heard that we are about to adopt a new dog. He hadn’t realized that one of our dogs died last fall, right before Yom Kippur. He was reassured that our dog Harry was old, and very sick … and that is how most of us die. However, it’s through talking about this that we can move on towards celebrating a new “family member,” too.

Talking about death isn’t easy, but we need to do it – in calm, peaceful ways – long before something sudden happens to us or our families. Talking about death in a Jewish context and acknowledging the value of the rituals that help us cope with it may be one of the deepest ways we can celebrate life.

Challenges in Mideast

The Russia- and Iran-backed Assad regime in Syria employed chemical weapons against its own citizens again last week. It’s hard to imagine that the atrocities in Syria could be any worse. Indeed, it is chilling to imagine what Syrian forces would be doing right now had Israel not neutralized that country’s nuclear capabilities in 2007.

Despite the horrific images coming out of Syria, much of the world’s attention, including that of the United Nations, was focused on Israel’s response to rallies on the Gaza border. It was striking to hear the outrage about Israel’s reaction to the Gaza events while a few hundred kilometres away the most atrocious acts were being perpetrated on a people by their own government. That said, the loss of life in Gaza is startling and we hope that the Israel Defence Forces can find non-lethal ways to defend against the protesters.

At the same time, it has been difficult not to be frustrated about the placement of blame. Portrayed by apologists as a peaceful rally – the so-called March for Return – the Friday events, for the second consecutive week, were a violent assault on the Israeli border. The planned action featured Gazans burning hundreds of tires in order to obscure the visibility of IDF soldiers. While tallying up the number of dead – 26 have been killed, according to the Associated Press Monday – it’s clear that the associations of some of the dead have been lost on most audiences, as at least 10 have been reported to be known combatants in the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Islamic Jihad and Hamas’ terrorist wings.

On Friday, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yehya Al-Sinwar, was employing what outside observers will likely dismiss as flowery rhetoric for domestic audiences when he exclaimed on Al-Jazeera that “We will take down the border [with Israel] and tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

Whether the actions of the IDF are deemed justified, the Diaspora community must continue to press for a non-military solution where possible and demand that the IDF remain restrained when demonstrators are unarmed. With a video surfacing that allegedly shows an IDF sniper shooting an unarmed Palestinian man while other soldiers cheer, there are calls for an investigation within Israel from across the political spectrum. As one Israeli politician said in the Times of Israel, “The battle isn’t just between us and Hamas; it is also for ourselves, for our values and for the identity of Israel society.”

It was, however, a leading figure in the Fatah government of Mahmoud Abbas, which runs the West Bank, who pointed out what should be obvious to the world. Dr. Mahmoud Habbash, a supreme judge in the Palestinian Authority Islamic court and Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, accused Hamas of “trading in suffering and blood, trading in victims” to get sympathetic headlines worldwide.

It seems to be working. “Solidarity” marches around the world included chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will soon be free.”

Against this backdrop, it may seem odd to raise the issue of Israel’s treatment of African refugees. As a Jewish newspaper, we feel it is our obligation to defend Israel from unjust accusations and attacks, and it is our duty also to condemn actions by Israeli governments or others that betray what we believe to be the just course.

Last week’s flip-flop by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was a disgrace and an insult to the values on which Israel prides itself.

A week ago Monday, Netanyahu announced an agreement with a United Nations refugee agency to alleviate a conflict about what to do with 38,000 African asylum-seekers currently in legal limbo in Israel by relocating about half of them to Western countries, including Canada. The next day, after getting pushback from right-wing members of his coalition and some aggressive residents of south Tel Aviv (where most of the migrants live) who want few or no migrants to remain in Israel, the prime minister reneged on the deal, seeking again to eject all 38,000.

As we have said in this space previously, it is ludicrous to suggest that 38,000 Africans – or half that – threaten the Jewish nature of the state. Neither, contrary to Netanyahu’s allegations, would the acceptance of these refugees – who fled violence and war – create a precedent.

If Israel wants to create a situation where it can avoid unwanted refugees while ensuring that it meets the obligations of a democratic state, it must develop the systems to appropriately adjudicate refugee claims. At present, situations like this – affecting the lives of 38,000 individuals – are being addressed arbitrarily and inappropriately. Israel, like Canada, Germany and other democracies, needs to have a standard by which the world’s homeless, who happen to find temporary refuge within its borders, are assessed and treated fairly within clearly defined legal parameters that recognize both the rights of individual non-citizens and the necessities of Israel, from the perspective of both the security of its citizens and the Jewish nature of the state. These are not incompatible objectives.

There is no shortage of challenges facing the Middle East. The situations in Gaza and Syria seem intractable. The fate of 38,000 migrants should not be so difficult to resolve.

The bond between Israelis

This photograph by Ziv Koren is from My Jerusalem: The Eternal City, a collection of reflections on the city by notable Israeli and Diaspora (mainly American) Jews edited by Ilan Greenfield and published by Gefen Publishing House last year.

I read a lovely quotation recently: “I met a hundred people going to Delhi. And every one of them was my brother.” I often feel that way in Israel. In the 40 years I have lived here, I have met saints and sinners, business tycoons and homemakers, and many, many others. But, by the very fact of them pulling up their roots, leaving behind their birthplaces and culture, here they become ordinary people leading extraordinary lives. I once had a friend, sadly passed on, who used to say that he stood on the corner and watched all the poems walk by.

Israel makes demands on us. We don’t just drift along acquiring more and more material possessions – a bigger home, a more luxurious car, a wardrobe of designer clothing. No matter how rich or poor we may be, when our children turn 18, they are expected to serve their country, either in the Israel Defence Forces or national service (Sherut Leumi). Almost everyone I know is a mother, father, grandparent, sister, brother, wife or daughter of a soldier, and there is always the fear for their safety, or of terrorist attacks that can occur anywhere, changing lives forever. And the six-day work week doesn’t leave much time for leisure, or keeping up with friends and family scattered around the country. Yet there is a resilience here. On the whole, we are optimists. It is almost a cliché that, if you live in Israel and don’t believe in miracles, then you are not a realist. We live on miracles and expect them – the Entebbe rescue and the Six Day War victory are just two examples.

Stand on the corner of any Jerusalem street and, in the space of 10 minutes, you can hear several languages. There might be a monk in a long habit; a soldier whose face is etched in weariness; a teenager with earrings and tattoos; tourists with cameras slung around their necks; a housewife trundling a shopping cart; a Charedi Jew with peyot; and everywhere people talking on their mobile phones. A gregarious lot contributing to the rich mosaic of our society. Each one unique.

They may be strangers, but Israelis won’t hesitate to speak to you … on a bus, waiting in a queue, sitting at your doctor’s office. They may ask you where you bought your shoes, where you work, how much you earn, and why haven’t you dressed your child warmly enough. One big family. It’s not just idle curiosity – they are really interested.

This is what’s so endearing about living in Israel. We all express our identity differently, in the way we dress and the words we speak, but, in the end, it’s a similar identity. We are bonded by birth, by choice or by belief and it creates a link – invisible perhaps but, when needed, we will help each other. It’s an unspoken commitment. How lucky we are!

Marching in right direction

Estimates of the number of people – most of them teens and young adults – who rallied in Washington, D.C., last Saturday range from 500,000 to 800,000. They called for sensible gun control legislation and mourned lives lost to gun violence, mobilized particularly by the memory of the mass murder of 17 in a Parkland, Fla., school Feb. 14. Many more rallied across the country and even in Canada. A small group gathered in solidarity at Vancouver’s Jack Poole Plaza.

Despite the horrors that inspired the marchers, the day was uplifting and inspiring. Survivors of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas school shooting – who have become the faces and voices of the movement – proved youthfulness was not a barrier to eloquence or to courage. In fact, they may have proved it was a prerequisite.

After nothing changed when 20 children, 6 and 7 years old, plus six adults, were killed at Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut, in 2012, many of us concluded that nothing would ever be done to confront gun violence and the monetary and grassroots power of lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association. What the Stoneman Douglas students determined was that, if the adults of the world were not going to protect them, they would take matters into their own hands. The movement they have launched – and the dialogue they are fomenting – is being compared with the anti-Vietnam War movement that mobilized their grandparents’ generation.

It will take time to see if the power they seem to have unleashed develops into something long-lasting. Voters aged 18 to 29 consistently have the poorest turnout record among American (and Canadian) voters.

While it is encouraging to see the political waves being made by the movement, it is a cause of additional naches to witness the role of Jewish young people. Synagogues and JCCs became makeshift hostels for Jewish students piling into D.C. last weekend.

Zoe Terner, a Florida leader in the Reform movement’s North American Federation of Temple Youth, spoke at a Shabbat event the night before the march. “This is how we grieve,” she told JTA. “Tomorrow I will pray with my feet and, with every step, I will think of those few hours a month ago when I didn’t know if my friends were alive or dead.”

Students from Minnesota, who traveled 21 hours to the capital, wore T-shirts reading “Dayenu,” repurposing the Passover refrain to echo the anti-gun movement’s chant “Enough!”

We can’t help noting with a bit of disappointment the appropriation of the term #NeverAgain, which the movement adopted in good faith. Perhaps they were unaware that it has been the rallying cry for Holocaust remembrance and education for decades. It is one oversight in what has largely been a seamlessly orchestrated affair. Of course, groups cannot claim monopoly on sentiments like “Never Again,” but we wonder if it loses some resonance when used for other purposes. Perhaps parents and teachers have not sufficiently educated successive generations on the lessons of the Shoah. Or, just as likely, it may be that a familiar refrain expressed the urgency of the moment: the Jewish population of Stoneman Douglas high school is estimated at about 40%. (Several of the murder victims were and a number of the vocal activists are Jewish.)

The movement for sensible gun legislation in the United States faces hurdles. While last weekend’s rallies were an important start, and this fall’s midterm elections a crucial testing ground, it is difficult to foresee the trajectory of the cause.

A commentator on CNN over the weekend noted that the issue of marriage equality reached a tipping point, from where opposition to same-sex marriage reversed to majority support in a remarkably short time. By contrast, the debate over reproductive freedom has seen two sides dig in their heels for decades, with little middle ground.

Moreover, gun control is a more complex matter than the comparative yes-or-no approach one can take to gay marriage or abortion. There are dozens if not hundreds of permutations that gun regulation and control legislation could take.

But, for whatever challenges the youth movement for sensible gun policies faces in future, last weekend was the sound of millions of feet marching in the right direction.