Tourism in Israel is being hammered. The Al-Aqsa uprising that began last fall has prompted a flood of trip postponements and cancellations, particularly by Americans who saw no need to put themselves or their children at risk when stones and bullets were flying in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
As you might imagine, living in Israel right now feels schizophrenic. We continue with our regular lives — going to work, eating dinner, shopping, praying, catching a movie — and meanwhile, not far away, our soldiers are at war. The newspapers appear, the soccer games go on, people chat over coffee in the cafes, and the war goes on and threatens to get bigger. The most abnormal thing about it may be that one begins to accept it as normal.
The sign to the left, posted by Israeli Jewish and Arab students at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology around the elite Rehovot campus, reads: \”We, the Arab and Jewish students of the Technion, who daily sit together in the same classrooms in cooperation and friendship, express our pain over the recent outbreaks of violence in our country. It is up to us to continue living here in mutual dignity, peace and security. We call on every Technion student to speak out against violence, and on every citizen to work on behalf of good neighborly relations.\”
The Jewish community in the West Valley and surrounding areas was rocked Feb. 5 by the murder of William and Bertha Lasky, former members of Temple Solael.
The acid test for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat came last week when he made his fateful visit to the White House to discuss Bill Clinton\’s framework agreement — a roadmap designed to set the parameters for negotiating the tough issues that separate Israel and the Palestinians. Arafat failed the test.
Sovereignty over the Temple Mount is apparently so explosive to the Arab world that the question may have torpedoed the Camp David summit in July and helped spark the Palestinian violence of the past three months.
\nThe government of Israel has wisely chosen to cooperate with a U.S.-led international commission that began investigating Israeli-Palestinian violence this week. Led by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, the commission hopes its work will reduce the violence in the region and lead the parties back to the negotiating table.
The October Violence is the short-hand designation for the deadly sniping, shooting and police action between Palestinians and Israelis, including the unprecedented call-to-arms of Israeli Arabs. If American Jews accept \”October Violence\” as the title (Palestinians call it \”the riots,\” while the American press reprises the frightening \”intifada\”), two months later we haven\’t yet found a way to talk about it, even among ourselves.
A shattered shop window with a yellow star, a mountain of shoes, an arch with the grim irony \”Arbeit Macht Frei\” inscribed upon it: These images alone can summon up the historic nightmare of the Nazi Holocaust.
One of the most riveting – and controversial – photographs to have emerged from the recent violence in Israel was that of a bloodied and dazed young man with an angry Israeli policeman standing behind him shouting. While the young man was first identified by the Associated Press, the photo\’s source, as a Palestinian, it soon became clear that he was an American studying in an Israeli yeshiva – a victim of Palestinians, who had dragged him from a car, beaten and stabbed him; the policeman had been shouting at the Arab assailants. The New York Times, which ran the photo and mistaken caption, published a subsequent correction and follow-up article. Grossman, who is recuperating and undergoing physical therapy for his wounds, feels not only blessed to have escaped his would-be murderers, but richer in a sense for his harrowing experience. He penned the piece below for Am Echad.
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