Oh! Rav Hillel Where Are You When We Need You??

Givat Haviva Newsletter
November 8, 2006
By HIAM SIMON

I have written this article and re-written it several times. Each time I think it is finished the news of the day insists that either I change it, add to it or tear it up and start all over again. I am hoping that I can get this one finished before the next news cycle.

What strange times we are living in.

Originally this article was going to report in glowing terms about the efforts to rebuild the North. How wonderful it was that the millions of dollars raised here in the United States primarily by the American Jewish Community were being distributed according to the needs of Israelis: Jews, Arabs and Druze without regard to ethnic differences. For the first time money raised by Jews for the Jewish state was being distributed to ALL of her citizens. That was the end of the first draft – short, sweet, up-beat, and a bit proud of our small successes.

BUT even as efforts to rebuild the lives and homes of these victims of the war with Hezbollah was going on…

before I could congratulate YOU for your continued and successful efforts to help insure the equality of services within the Israeli democracy…

before I could explain how Givat Haviva in combination with the efforts of others who have joined the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Affairs was making a real difference in the lives of the weakest segments of Israeli society, before we could enjoy this first step…

the dark echoes of voices from even darker corners began to wail in protest. Suddenly to my embarrassment there were Jews who believed that donations to Israel should only be distributed to a particular portion of its citizens. I could not believe that I was hearing Jewish voices in protest over Israeli Arabs receiving much needed aid. Had they never heard the words of Hillel?

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?"

They may have forgotten Hillel but there were others who didn’t and the voices of fear were answered by many who had never spoken out before.

So I recognized that treating all of Israel’s citizens equally was going to be a long struggle, not to be solved simply with one check, still I knew that the change we had begun would continue, that we had really begun to make a difference. We still had a long way to go; the steps might be small but we would continue to travel down the road to true equality.

I didn’t think we would fall backward, but then politics got in the way of justice. Strength of character fell prey to weakness.

To shore up a failing government, to insure the passage of a national budget that would ignore the economic gaps between the wealthiest and the poorest segments of Israeli society, Ehud Olmert the Prime Minister of Israel invited Avigdor Lieberman and his Israel Beiteinu party to join the government coalition. Crowned with the title of Vice Premier, Lieberman will serve as Minister of Strategic Threats. Lieberman is not a newcomer to the Israeli political scene. It isn’t as if Olmert didn’t know who he was asking to dance with.

This was the same Lieberman who has called for the transfer of Israeli Arabs, who is prepared to trade great swaths of Israel proper (along with the Israeli Arab citizens living there) to the Palestinian Authority to keep and preserve the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Lieberman, whose dream of Israel is not a country where Arabs are free but a country that is free of Arabs, now sits by invitation of the Prime Minister in the government coalition.

This is the same Lieberman about whom Peres and the Labor party swore they would never serve in the same government with, an oath that they seem to have forgotten.

This is the same Lieberman who called for executing Israeli Arab members of Knesset on May 4, 2006, nor was his rhetoric tempered even after he and his party were enfolded into the coalition. He is already on record even as a Government Minister repeating his call for an Arab Free Israel.

The struggle is not over. In fact the struggle needs to be fought on both sides of the ocean. Now is the time to make our voices heard both here and in Israel. Now is the time to take strength from the gains we have made and redouble our efforts to empower those who are society’s victims.