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February 5, 2008

Israel Office

Rest in Peace in the Holy City: Jerusalem Municipality Agrees to Set Up Pluralistic Cemetery
Precedent-Setting Verdict on Haifa University's Discriminatory Housing Policy

SHATIL

NIF Outside Israel

NIF Staff Study Tour to Israel

Weekly Message

“Life goes on,” I consoled my hysterical young sons, who had just watched their favorite football team lose the Super Bowl. “Don’t worry,” my wife reassured them, “your Saba (grandfather) is not going to make you pay him five dollars for losing a bet on the game.” Thirty-six hours later, the trauma seems to be fading; after all, we are only talking about a football game.

After experiencing my sons’ anguish over something so trivial, however, I wonder what it must be like to watch your children grow up in an environment where every day you fear that rockets may fall on your home, their school or the neighborhood playground. And, it does not help that the vast majority of your fellow-citizens are enjoying their good fortune and reveling in the relative calm. Only rarely, or so it seems, does anyone give thought to what is happening in your town of 20,000 people.

What are your choices? Leave town, if you have the means and will. Encourage your kids (and yourself) to overcome the fear of being hit by a rocket, given the statistical unlikelihood of such an eventuality.

And, what do you expect from your government? To launch a military operation, even as you realize this will not stop the rockets, but will cause much death and injury for your fellow citizens and those who live across the border. Or, negotiate with a group that remains rhetorically committed to eliminating the country that you call home.

Perhaps, your gaze wanders across the security fences. Your eyes scan for rocket launchers, but all you are likely to see are the shadows of an impoverished people. Many of them, you suspect, worry about the traumas that their children are suffering from the fear of misguided missiles, or from the limited amounts of food that can be placed on the table, or from the lost years of education that are penalizing a whole generation.

A couple of weeks ago, we were reminded of Martin Luther King’s dream for America. Today, with all the challenges we still face in this country, we seem closer to the proverbial mountain than when Dr. King uttered those words. And for those of us who focus our attention on the Middle East, we dream, like most of the people in the region, of a brighter day, when the children of Sderot and the children of Gaza will not experience the trauma of living in a war zone.

As for my fortunate children, I know that they too will feel the pain caused by death, illness and heartbreak, which are an inevitable part of our lives. Yet, I am grateful that for now, watching the Patriots lose a football game constitutes their major trauma. I pray that parents all over the world will be able to say the same.

In this week’s NIF News, we report on the decision to establish Jerusalem’s first-ever non-Orthodox Jewish cemetery. We also report on a precedent setting prosecution brought against two senior Jerusalem rabbis for racist incitement following complaints by an NIF grantee. SHATIL profiles staff member Shlomo Berihun, Coordinator, Assistance to Ethiopian Immigrants Project and reports on the Taibe Women’s Market Fair. Additionally, we highlight the recent staff study tour to Israel.