Jews, Arabs and Eretz Yisrael

When Jews started to trickle back to Israel one hundred years ago, out of a history of oppression by their Christian and Arab hosts in many countries, they found a small Jewish community in Israel, and a desolate country tended by indigenous Arabs. From the beginning they saw the Arabs living here as possessors of wisdom-of-the-land, and tried to learn from them and live with them.

Unfortunately, the history of that connection repeated itself again and again. The Arabs were friendly, willing, lived symbioticly with the better educated Jews, until one day they up and attacked, often murdering people they had lived with for tens of years. Hevron is a classic example, where one day (1929) the Arabs up and rioted, killing the doctor who had been treating them for years, and brutally (knives and hatchets) attacked the jewish population.

Today, little has changed, except the willingness of some of the Jews of Israel to be murdered. I live in a settlement amidst Arab villages. On one side is Jilazoon, where Sirhan Sirhan, the murderer of Robert Kennedy grew up. On the other side, Kriyut, where the fellow who left a bomb in a refrigerator in the center of Jerusalem, is from. Periodic attacks on cars travelling the road by these villages include Molotov cocktails, rocks, and occassionally, bullets. One mother of seven from Shilo was shot to death on a travelling bus. A sixteen year-old boy was murdered on a hillside nearby. A number of children and adults have been wounded in shooting attacks. My next-door-neighbor was hit in the head by a rock the size of his head.

The Arabs fundamentally reject our right to live here. Peace is not the issue. We have tried to peacefully coexist for 100 years. When Israel controlled Jerusalem, all holy site were open to Arabs and Christians. The picture at the right shows what the Arabs recently did to Joseph's Tomb, when we turned it over to them, after they had shot and killed Israeli soldiers. I pray that the time will come when all those who violently reject that simple right will quickly find themselves outside the borders of this country. Until that time, we will continue to turn these once-barren hillsides into flourishing communities.

A more important question, one that will ultimately have more influence on the shape of the life of this country, has to do with the re-emergence of a total Jewish culture. In part, the inability to decide what to do with a violent Arab population stems from the uncertainty as to what we want from ourselves. We are no longer the insular jewish community of the shtetl, nor are we yet the independant jewish society that existed here in the times of the kings and the prophets. The attempt to integrate those two, and create a new and unfamiliar society that will flourish and express God's will in today's society, is the challenge we face, the process we are in the middle of, and the look of our future. Stay tuned. It's a wild ride, but it's the only worthwhile show in town.
Ncoom

Desecrated synagogue in Efrat The grafitti says: Hitler destroyed Viruses