Showing posts with label Arab/Palestinian-Israel Conflict. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arab/Palestinian-Israel Conflict. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

This is a crazy inexplicable country

Photo of Gilad Shalit's helicopter
(he's in the one on the left)
taken by Lori Abramson
from her porch in Yokne'am
I thought about writing about Gilad Shalit's return yesterday, making this holiday a true Sukkat Shalom - if only for a moment. We had an amazing conversation in Confirmation class last night with our tenth graders. They were truly split on the issue of exchanging dangerous (potentially lethal) prisoners to bring one man home. They got how important it is for every parent to know that no price is too high to bring their children out of captivity. They also got how giving in to hostage takers may lead to more hostage taking and how releasing terrorists may lead to more deaths. They took sides. And they understood and were conflicted about the side they didn't take. They also understood that no matter their position, it was good that Gilad was finally home and alive.

Then I read this piece by Robbie Gringras on the Makom site. As usual, he is more eloquent than I could ever be. 

19/10/2011 | 12:21
Robbie Gringras

We were driving home from Amirim when we saw them. Silhouetted against a dusky sky, two helicopters were climbing their way over the hills with the Mediterranean behind them. Who would have thought the sight of two ugly military helicopters flying north could make us whoop with delight and almost swerve off the road?

Gilad was on his way home.

We stopped in the local supermarket to do some pre-holiday shopping, but found ourselves drawn to the electronics section. There was a wall of plasma screens, all tuned to Channel 2, volume on full. As the live coverage showed the Shalit family clamber out of the now-parked helicopter and make their way home in convoy past the cheering people, we found we weren’t alone. Over forty people were crowded round the TV screens, their trolleys half-full, staring at the images as a grandparent might stare at the video of a grandchild’s first steps.

We all shared snippets as we watched: how none of us had been able to get dressed in the morning, so fixated were we to the news; how frail yet indomitable Gilad had seemed in the Egyptian TV interview; how Iscar had continued paying Gilad’s father’s salary throughout his full-time campaign to free his son.

Then we saw the family reach their house, shuffle through the singing crowds and the flying white flowers, and close the door behind them. Everyone breathed a sigh of satisfaction, wiped away the tears that had gathered or overflowed, and wheeled off back to the shopping.

And as I wandered in a daze round the vegetables and preserves, I jumped from thought to thought: 
  1. This is a crazy inexplicable country. Strange wonderful things can happen here, though rarely because of strategy or logic. This place and this people is ruled by the heart, the spirit, and the soul. For good and for bad. It’s a ridiculous way to run a country, but we must work with what we have. Whenever we begin to talk about ‘logical solutions’ to conflicts in this region, or ‘mutual interests’, we must learn a lesson from this prisoner exchange. For sure politics and interests were involved, but the engine was more emotional and spiritual than rational.

  2. How often in the past few decades has this country shed tears of happiness? I guess it is a rare thing for any country to elicit what is, generally speaking, a family kind of emotion. But tears of sadness, despair, and even rage flow in abundance here. Yesterday the tears were happy, and they were shed both by Israelis and by Palestinians.

  3. We didn’t see much of the Palestinians’ celebrations. To see that you needed to switch to CNN or BBC, because Israeli TV wasn’t interested. I normally rail against this insularity, but not yesterday. The many families whose loved ones were blown to pieces by the same people hailed as released heroes in Gaza, did not need to have those images pushed in their faces. None of us did.

  4. Which led me to wondering about this unique occurrence, a day when both Israelis and Palestinians are celebrating the same event. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. If past experience is anything to go by, it probably will change little, but it’s worth noting nevertheless. Sometimes a light in the darkness is just a flash of a gun, but sometimes it can be a lighthouse, and sometimes it can signal the distant end of a tunnel.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

We Are No Longer Accepting Comments For This Article

I spotted the new issue of Time magazine while I was in line at the grocery store with my cart loaded in preparation for my Erev Rosh Hashanah cooking marathon (actually not such an ordeal, with a great new fast and easy roast beef recipe from Arthur Schwartz). The cover was intriguing and troubling.Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace winked out from a string of daisies in the form of a Magen David. I didn't pick it up, because I knew I didn't have time to read it and I was pretty sure I wanted to begin the New Year with other thoughts. The ideas suggested by the cover wouldn't go away if I waited for the weekend. Those kinds of ideas don't ever really go away.

By the time I got around to reading the story (and don't just read it online - the print version is fuller and presents a visual gestalt that the web version does not), there were many responses floating in the blogosphere. A partially annotated list of some of them is below. After reading the story and the blogs I am every bit as disturbed as I expected to be in the grocery store. I am glad I waited until after yontiff, since it seems like the monster under the bed of my childhood has crawled out again - and it is not cute and fluffy like Sully from Monsters, Inc.

The title of this posting comes directly from the Time Magazine web site which shows the article by Karl Vick. I assume they have shut down the comments due to either the volume or intensity of the responses they have received in the nine days since it was posted. Clearly, they would like to let their article be the last word on the subject.

When you read Daniel Gordis or Rick Teplitz - and you MUST read them, you will understand that there is trouble in River City. I could reiterate what they say. I could be alarmist, intellectual or angry. Welcome to the Next Level and Davar Acher are blogs that are primarily about Jewish Education. So I want to issue a challenge and an invitation to all of you who read them, since you are among some of the most creative educators I know.

How will we teach this to our students? Obviously there are different needs for learners of different ages. I don't think I will be pushing the issue in Kitah Bet (2nd) or Hey (5th). But Kitah Zayin (7th) and above students are going to have some questions that we are honor bound to address. I have created a document in Google Docs which can be accessed by clicking here. It is a blank document right now. Please go there and fill it with your ideas for addressing the issues raised - Anti-Semitism, Zionism, Media Bias, Anti-Israel, Civil Rights, Peace, Arab/Palestinian-Israel Conflict, or any other that occurs to you. They can be a sentence, a link or a fully articulated lesson plan. Whatever we all put there is available for all of us to use. And as you develop things, please add to the document. Invite others to share. Just having the link (http://bit.ly/diEM3D) gives you permission to edit, just like a wiki. All I ask is that you do not change other people's words. Comment freely, supplement and add your own ideas.

A Partial List of Blog Responses
Cross posted to Davar Acher

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