Dear Readers, These columns began on my area of America Online, called:  Judaism Today:  Where Do I Fit?   People anonymously sent me E-Mail, and I began to choose one for a public response in my Jewish E-Mail of the Week column. The column has become quite popular and is now syndicated internationally in many Jewish papers and websites.  I hope you find they help you as you think about the Ethics, Spirituality and Peoplehood components of the Jewish way of Life.  I welcome your comments... see the end of the column. Gil PS  Teachers and others, feel free to copy my columns and forward them or use them as you see fit.  Please see the friendly copyright notice at the end.

WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON IN ISRAEL?

Dear Readers:

Less than one week ago, I was asked to represent my city on a quickly organized national solidarity mission to Israel. I agreed with some trepidation, but went with pride because I believe in the importance of the State of Israel to the Jewish people.

Here, I must say, there is something else I believe in -- the Palestinians cannot continue to live under Israeli rule for many reasons, not the least of which is Jewish teaching about justice. Just Friday, I read a quote that General Moshe Dayan said in the 50's that captures this sentiment in pragmatic terms: "Israel won't know peace so long as Palestinian refugees look over the fences and see us plowing fields that once were theirs."

I don't want to get into blame and politics here, but did want to share my general feelings about Israel and Palestinians in a few sentences as backdrop.

We left on Tuesday the 18th returned on Friday the 20th. In a total of 42 hours in Israel, we met Prime Minister Ehud Barak, US Ambassador Martin Indyck, Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert, Likud Leader Ariel Sharon, the Acting Foreign Minister of Israel, Knesset member Natan Sharansky, Deputy Defense Minister, the President of Israel, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, the family of one of the kidnapped soldiers in Lebanon, experts on Israeli Arabs, the media plus we traveled to the Western Wall, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo that has been shot at and two small Jewish villages in Northern Israel that neighbor an Israeli Arab village where there has been unrest.

Throughout all of this travel, life in Israel felt normal and safe. If you did not turn on the news, you would think that nothing exceptional was happening in Israel.

But of course, exceptional things are happening. I have a number of overall impressions from the trip. The most important of which was the profound sadness we heard from every person from the Prime Minister on down, that Arafat is not a person who truly wants peace. Any optimism about Arafat now appears to have been wishful naivete. He has resorted to violence as a strategic tactic. Even the left wing Peace Now advocates seem to have given up on him as a negotiating partner. The level of trust for Arafat is near or below zero. Agreements signed by him are worth less than ashes.

Hours before our departure, we met with the Prime Minister who looked like his own son had been killed. Paraphrasing his comments, he said, Israel will and must make peace with the Palestinian people...there is no other choice since we both live here and violence is not an option. But, apparently, the current leadership of the Palestinians is not prepared to make peace.

This thought was expressed by most everyone we spoke to. Everyone (including opposition leaders and President Clinton a few weeks ago) expressed amazement at the flexibility and extent of concessions Barak had offered Arafat -- including major concessions involving Jerusalem and allowing the United Nations to control the Temple Mount. Yet Arafat was not willing to compromise...or even continue talking.

Instead he made a calculated effort to use violence, children, CNN and the media as a way to pressure Israel. Here I want to make a comment about Ariel Sharon and his alleged provocation by visiting the Temple Mount (and you should know that I am definitely not a Sharon fan.)

Sharon's visit was nothing more than the excuse Arafat was looking for to turn on the violence. The Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF, Major General Yalon, gave us a briefing in which he said, he had written a policy paper in November of 1999 and presented it again this summer, in which he predicted Arafat would negotiate as far as he could and then turn to violence and use the TV cameras.

He showed us arial photography of the hot spots including the site of the tragic and now famous shooting of the 12 year old with his dad. In incident after incident (including that one) he showed us how Palestinians came out to the Israelis (and not vice versa) to provoke violence.

The pattern was often the same. Kids came out throwing rocks and behind them were armed Palestinian adults. Eventually, shots or Molotov cocktails would be sent toward the Israeli forces and fire would be returned. By the way, on the front page of the October 23 USA Today, there is a report of a journalist and photographer who went with an Israeli patrol and saw Palestinian ambulances delivering buckets of stones and bottles for use as Molotov Cocktails. They also describe Palestinian sniper fire in frightening detail.

The General stated emphatically (as a father of 3 himself) that orders to Israeli forces are explicit--never initiate fire and never respond with live ammunition unless first confronted by lethal force. He also pointed out that the few times helicopters or heavy weaponry have been used...the Palestinians were given ample warning to vacate the premises to avoid casualties. I have never heard of an army doing that.

We were shown violence data on a day by day basis, and it was clear Arafat was turning the violence faucet off and on when it suited him depending on other events in the area. We were shown photographs of some of the 40,000 illegally armed "Tanzim" or tiger troops of Arafat...a direct violation of the Oslo accords. We saw photos of Arafat's "summer camps" for young kids where they were learning to fire rifles.

The president of Israel told us that when Sadat came to Jerusalem in the 70's he said "no more war, no more bloodshed." What is Arafat saying? If we don't achieve what we want through negotiations, we have other options.

The tragedy in all of this aside from the casualties of course, is what Arafat is doing to the Palestinian people. He uses his own people in well planned, calculated, deadly and counterproductive tactics. For example, the day after Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, Arafat closed the schools, declared a general strike, started broadcasting militant television and gave the OK to his troops to open fire. A few weeks later, he then makes an agreement at Sharm el Sheik in front of Clinton, Mubarak and everyone else to declare a cease fire...comes home and never makes the declaration.

The result? The Israeli government will probably become a unity government...which will include the anti Oslo/Peace Process right wing and Sharon. I'd like to hear Arafat explain how this helps the Palestinian people. For good measure, Natan Sharansky explained to us how money designated for the Palestinians has flowed directly to Arafat personally.

Imagine, how differently all of this would be if the Palestinians had been led by Mahatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King and the leadership insisted on nonviolent protest. They would have had their state (probably a very prosperous one at that) long ago.

Instead, the Palestinians are led by the man who embraces Sadam Hussein. I don't understand why the world has forgotten this and doesn't also ask about the morality of closing the schools and sending children in harms way to provoke violence? (Just as an aside, can you imagine a mother in any Western country allowing her kids to do this?) General Yalon told us that in Arabic, his nickname is "the merchant of blood."

All very sad and depressing...frustrating as well since so little of this information is told to the world. Israel seems unable to counter Arafat's propaganda machine.

So did our mission accomplish anything? I think yes. At a minimum, we picked up facts that CNN and the UN don't talk about that we can share with our communities.

Beyond that, perhaps we provided a bit of a morale boost to Israelis who understandably are feeling isolated and alone. In addition to the unjust world pressure she feels, in the last few weeks there have been 18,000 tourist cancellations. Our trip was widely and prominently carried by Israeli media and every speaker thanked us for our solidarity at this difficult time.

Hopefully, these reasons made the trip a worthy endeavor. In addition, for me on a personal level, I can cite one incident alone that allows me to say the trip was worthwhile.

We heard a most painful speech from the father of one of the soldiers kidnapped, likely wounded and brought into Lebanon by Hizballah. The son is named after the father's brother who died in the Yom Kippur war.

I approached the father afterwards and told him that even though he does not know me and that I live many thousands of miles from Israel in a city he probably never heard of, I think of his son all the time. In addition, I don't know whether it helps, but his son was in my prayers when I stood at the Wailing Wall just a few hours earlier.

I will never forget the look in his face when he told me, each of these acts are drops that fill their cup.

In closing, I want to share a bit of optimism in spite of a gloomy report. Perhaps, Arafat did us a favor by showing us his true colors before Israel had given up all her concessions.

In addition, he is a threat to moderate Arab states in the region...specifically Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They know this and are watching him carefully. We should keep an eye in particular on Mubarak. His recent statements about Egypt not participating in a "war" are encouraging.

Overall, I think Israelis feel confident they will persevere. As one told me, "we overcame Pharaoh, we will overcome this." Or in the words of Natan Sharansky who the Russians imprisoned for years, "through solidarity we defeated the USSR. We can overcome these obstacles too." In this spirit, I hope you will remember what we did when Sharansky was in jail and Jews in the Soviet Union were in peril. We became informed, we wrote letters to our legislators and to newspapers, we attended rallies and some of us even got on airplanes and went overseas. We are going to need to do the same now as Jews in Israel are in peril.

I was inspired and perhaps you will be too by an act we learned about which shows something of the resolve and strength of our people. You may know that one of the 2 soldiers who was lynched in a most ghastly way last week was from the former Soviet Union. Well, last week during our stay, his aunt and uncle made aliyah to Israel.

I'll end with the following that gave me some hope. I was watching the news in Hebrew while in Israel and live from one the hot spots where there had been violence, a Palestinian journalist was being interviewed by the Israeli anchorman. They spoke to each other with respect and treated each other like trusted colleagues.

I believe I was seeing what most Israelis and Palestinians truly want. To live with each other with respect and trust. To earn a living and put food on the table of their children. To live with dignity and in peace.

May this day come soon.

Gil

A FRIENDLY COPYRIGHT NOTICE © Copyright Gil Mann These columns can be found at www.beingjewish.org.  Not only do I give you permissions to copy these Jewish Email columns...I HOPE YOU WILL and that you share them with others!  All I ask is that you never charge anyone for them and that you also include this little copyright notice.  Thank You!

Thanks,
Gil