On August 5, 2000, the lives of two families living in Israel, one Jewish and the other Arab, were changed forever.  
   That hot summer day, a six-year-old Jewish boy named Gosh Leftov went swimming at the Ein Gev Beach in the Sea of Galilee in Northern Israel. But the once-joyful sounds of swimming and playing soon turned to desperate cries as he found himself swept into deeper water and unable to return. He screamed to shore for help.  
    Nearby a 25-year-old Arab man named Omri Jadah was also taking a break from the late summer heat with his cousin, Mohammed. Mohammed, who cannot swim, described the events of the day as follows.  
   Omri, who was not a good swimmer, heard the child’s calls for help. "The child tried to come back, but couldn’t. He began to cry, so Omri went to rescue him. He took the child in his arms and tried to return (to shore) but couldn’t. The current took him away. So Omri cried out ‘I can’t come back, can anyone rescue me? ’Then a man swam over and took the child from Omri. Omri gave him the child. We could see Omri bobbing up and down. We thought he was swimming. But at one point, he disappeared."  
    Next, an Israeli woman swam out for Omri, but could not find him. 20 minutes later, he washed up on shore, alive but unconscious. He was taken to nearby Poriya Hospital in Tiberias in serious condition and passed away three days later. He left behind a pregnant wife and two small children.  
   "What feeling can I have when someone has died for my child?" said Gosh’s mother, Tania, who immigrated to Israel four years ago from the former Soviet Union. "I feel guilty that this man, Omri, died." She went to Omri’s home the day he died to thank the Jadah family and console them.  
    She was not alone. The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli citizens reached out to the widow and children of Omri Jadah with an influx of letters, phone calls, and donations offering thanks and assistance.  
    "I look at this first of all as a courageous act of a human being who exchanged his life for that of another," said Avraham Paritzky, a member of the Israeli Knesset who came to console the Jadah family. "He did not ask about Jewish or Arab, he simply did the right thing. And I am honored to be here in memory of such a person."  
    At a time of strife and conflict,Omri Jadah is an inspiration to all who keep the dream of peace in the Middle East alive… may his memory be a blessing.

   Some 30 years ago on the eve of the Six Day War (the battle that resulted in the reunification of Jerusalem and the liberation of the holiest of Jewish sites, the Western Wall), a young soldier found himself sharing a tent with an older man who was a Holocaust survivor.  

   They were stationed in the Negev along the Egyptian border when they retired for the evening and the older man removed two laundered and ironed sheets from his rucksack and carefully spread them out on the ground,gently smoothing out any creases that might have set into the fabric.  

   The young soldier was amazed."Here we are, in the middle of the desert, covered in dust, deprived of sleep, we haven’t washed ourselves properly in days, and this guy insists on smoothing out his sheets!" the young soldier thought to himself.  

    Noticing his incomprehension, the survivor explained:"During the Holocaust, I was forced to work in the ghetto washing sheets for German soldiers. We had no sheets in the ghetto but every day we washed sheets for the Nazis. During those years, I vowed to myself that if I ever survived, I would always sleep on clean sheets."  

    With that the older man said good night, turned over on his side, and went to sleep.

  Eli Rubenstein is the Director for the March of the Living in Canada and the Religious Leader of Congregation Habonim in Toronto.  

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