A Message from GHEF Executive Director, Hiam Simon

Givat Haviva Newsletter
September 20, 2006
By HIAM SIMON

As I sit and write this column, Israel is four weeks into her 7th war. On one hand it is a war like all its other wars – a war of existence; on the other hand, it is a war unlike any of the other since 1948. Then as now the shells are falling in the streets and homes of its cities and villages, not the far desert. Th e war is at home, and the citizens of Israel are bearing it together. But this is not an article about the war. Instead let me take you back to the streets of Israel the last time I was there, a quieter time, in June, before the explosion of violence.

I was in Israel with Michael Ben-Eli representing the Givat Haviva Educational Foundation at meetings of the Inter- Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues, a group that is dealing with the situation and issues confronting Israeli Arabs. Israel was not only quieter then but crowded. Th e roads were fi lled with buses and the buses were fi lled with tourists. Th e hotels had almost no empty rooms.

Th ere were tour-groups from synagogues and there were clusters of college students, part of the Birthright program. Besides the Inter-Agency Task Force, there were missions from other American Jewish organizations and movements, and there were several hundred delegates and alternates from around the world attending the 35th World Zionist Congress which was convening in Jerusalem.

We all came to Israel with diff erent agendas. Some tourists were there to celebrate a family bar-mitzvah. Th e Birthright kids were there for an adventure, one that, hopefully, would help them fi nd their roots. And the delegates, they were there to carry on in the tradition of the force that changed a dream into a reality.

Th e Task Force was there to learn and to better understand the disparity that exists within Israeli society between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs so that we could help in eff orts to deal with it. We spent three days as crowded with meetings as the streets were crowded with people. We visited Bedouin in the South and Arab villages in the North. We sat with Arab sheiks, and then with Bedouin women who had trained themselves to become the primary earners and providers for their family. We sat with mayors and city councils, with elected offi cials and lay leaders, with members of Knesset and with social service providers. We learned about the problems the various groups have in common: a lack of funds for infrastructure and growth, and we heard about the problems that are particular to each community. We spoke to Bedouin in the periphery of the country who feel that they are forgotten citizens, and to Arabs in the North who feel powerless to aff ect change. We took volumes of notes and perhaps too eager to fi nd answers, began discussing possible next steps even before we fi nished this exploration. It was a mission that filled us with new insights and exhausted us with information.

By the time Shabbat came I felt the need to rest in a way that only Shabbat in Jerusalem can off er. On Saturday afternoon I found myself walking on Mount Herzl which is set into a corner of Jerusalem, bordered on one side by Yad Vashem and by Israel’s largest military cemetery on the other. I have walked along these paths before, paying my respect at Yitzchak Rabin’s grave one minute, placing a stone at Th eodore Herzl’s the next.

It was Herzl who, in 1897 founded the World Zionist Congress in Basel, the same Congress that was meeting at that moment in Jerusalem. It was Herzl who said "Zionism is not only the yearning for a parcel of promised land legally acquired for our weary people, but also the yearning for ethical and spiritual fulfi llment." Herzl’s dream was not of just a Jewish State which would be a shelter for the Jews, but a place where we would build a society in which all citizens are treated equally no matter their national identity.