Xref: utzoo can.politics:1516 talk.politics.mideast:813 Newsgroups: can.politics,talk.politics.mideast Path: utzoo!lsuc!dave From: dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman) Subject: From Stones to Visions: Peace in the Middle East? Followup-To: talk.politics.mideast Date: Mon, 21-Mar-88 03:20:35 EST Summary: reprinted from soc.culture.jewish Message-ID: <1988Mar21.032042.5225@lsuc.uucp> Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto From: alu@erc3ba.UUCP (Alan Lustiger) Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish Subject: Dvar Torah: Vayikra: Rabbi Riskin Message-ID: <401@erc3ba.UUCP> Date: 15 Mar 88 15:36:59 GMT SHABBAT SHALOM: Vayikra -- From Stones to Visions: Peace in the Middle East? by Shlomo Riskin EFRAT, Israel -- The rocks and the violence and the accusations continue to dominate the headlines here in Israel. Yesterday a newspaper mentioned that in addition to the usual assortment of rocks, Molotov cocktails and metal objects being hurled at Israeli soldiers and vehicles, something new has joined the ranks of the homemade weapons: potatoes with nails inside. Ingenious, and very deadly. The headline-hungry media, the nations of the world, and now even Amnesty International all want nothing better than to cast this nation, my country, into the role of sinners -- we should, like the Jews in the opening pages of the Book of Leviticus who are commanded to bring sacrifices and confess their sins, also bring sacrifices in the form of sacrificing all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and then confess our sins. But what should we confess to? That we're afraid of violence -- theirs and ours? We are! That we have not always treated the Arabs with the dignity they deserve? The fact is that we don't always treat our own fellow Jews with dignity either. Just read the Letters to the Editor column in any of the Israeli papers. Should we confess that we are the government in power? We are! But go to any hospital in Jerusalem or Petach Tikva or Kfar Saba and see how many Arab patients are under the care of Jewish doctors? Power is also the power to heal. Have we sinned because my country occupies their cities and towns? The truth is that 'occupation' is just another way of saying that for the last twenty years no Palestinian with authority to negotiate a peace with us would recognize our existence. Their charter vows our destruction. Today they speak about Judea and Samaria, but it is no secret that many dream of Acre and Nazareth and Lod, and perhaps that little suburb north of Jaffa. Why not? Isn't 1948 the year they want to eradicate completely from their history? Have we sinned because we punish, and sometimes deport, those who act violently towards us, making them pay for their criminal acts, which some might call revolutionary, but which to us is cold-blooded terror. Have we sinned by living in Judea and Samaria? How many Bethlehemites or Hebronites were forced to leave? The land on which Efrat sits were uninhabited hills before we arrived. Below are Arab vineyards, but has a child from our town every picked a grape without permission? Do we not have historical links here? Are not our forefathers buried in Hebron? Why do the Arabs forget, or choose to ignore, where the name Ibrahim comes from? The 35 Jews who were massacred in 1948 on their way to bring supplies to the kibbutzim in the Gush Etzion region have made this range of hills very much part of our history, contemporary as well as ancient. Have we sinned by coming to Israel altogether? One of the most common rhetorical devices used by Arabs is to say they will grant citizenship only to those Jewish families who lived here before 1948; the others can return to their land of origin. Has no one ever told them that more than half of Israel's population come from Arab countries, and a good number of the rest walked away from Hitler's gas chambers. Are Damascus and Bagdad and Tripoli ready to welcome back their former Jewish citizens? And should the rest of the country buy plane tickets back to Hungary and Russia and Poland? Who's kidding whom? Probably more than 95% of the Jews in Israel have nowhere else to go. In the wake of WW2, which nation in the world opened its borders to Jews, teaching us the most important lesson of the century -- without a land of our own, we remain beggars at the mercy of strangers. I too have a vision of peace but first let me share a story. When I was a rabbi in New York, a period of bitter of racial disturbances erupted all over America; and in New York City, where many of the whites are Jews, the feuding took on a distinct Black vs. Jewish character. For decades, the relationship between the two minorities, had been constructive. But a change threatened as accusations flared up. To help clear the air, the police captain from the local precint came to speak one Friday night during the Oneg Shabbat at our synagogue. His job, we soon realized, was to calm us down, and he made the point that when a Black man says, I'll kill you, he doesn't mean it. It's just a means of expression. Moshe Chaim Teffenbrunn, a sexton in the synagogue who now lives in Efrat, a man who lost his first family to Hitler, got up and asked the speaker how dare he tell us to ignore the threats. When the Nazis came to power, there were many who tried to defuse the Nazis' cry calling for the death of Jews. It's just a way of talking. They didn't mean it! "Well, Captain I ask you, did they mean or did they not mean it? If a man says he's going to kill you, take him very seriously." My vision of peace between Palestinians and Jews is linked to the messianic one of Isaiah in which all nations "...shall beat their swords into plowshares..." It's a complicated dream. I don't even know if all the details are even practical, but it's based on the idea of both peoples sharing the hills of Judea and Samaria, and creating a 'national cooperative'. Why don't we just walk away for good? Because to do that would be like listening to the police captain! As a Jew I cannot blind myself to history and simply pretend that twenty years of threats of extinction and acts of atrocities against innocents, from school children to worshippers in a Turkish synagogue, are to be ignored and forgotten. Closing my eyes will not make it go away. Here is my dream. We, the Jews and the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria, shall become a new nation, different from any other nation in the world. We will share these hills together, like our ancestors the Ishmaelites and the Judeans or Benjamites. Wherever the Arabs live, their villages and cities and hills, will fall under their rule, their country, their language, their schools, their police; and where we live will be our land. If a Palestinian will want to live in an all-Moslem state, he has 22 choices. If a Jew will want to live in an all-Jewish state, he has only one. Can one land share two masters? If we, Arab and Jew, learn how to live together, not merging our identities into one nation, but leaving it distinct and separate, two nations on one land, and yet manage to live in peace, who knows where this venture will lead? If we succeed, we may even become a model for the end of wars for all time for all people. Shabbat Shalom Copyright Ohr Torah 1988. This essay is distributed by Kesher --the Jewish Network. For information regarding its use, contact the Kesher BBS at 312-940-1686. For more information, call (212)496-1618. -- Alan Lustiger |_ | | AT&T Engineering Research Center / |( Princeton, NJ {AT&T Machines}!pruxc!alu (copied fom s.c.j. by David Sherman) -- { uunet!mnetor pyramid!utai decvax!utcsri ihnp4!utzoo } !lsuc!dave