in Lod Shattered an Israeli Mindset

One Summer Later

How the Riots in Lod Shattered an Israeli Mindset

by MiriaM Sara Leff

“They were Jews in need of help. Of course, I went.” Akiva’s fierce answer was in response to my question of why he chose to go to Lod to protect the endangered Jews there one year ago. He told me, simply, that he had no choice.

He could not sit back on his living room couch and watch what was happening on television. Not that he has television. Akiva Hacohen is religious, married, and a father of nine. He lives in the Shomron in the small agricultural town of Yitzhar. Last summer, he was one of hundreds who heard what was happening in Lod and dropped everything, choosing to wade through fire – literally – to save his brothers.

The sweet dream of coexistence which Lod embodied was smashed with the first rock thrown at a windshield.

Now, it’s one year later. So much has changed on so many levels since the riots of last year. Lod feels like a different city now. Arab and Jewish relations all over Israel have been radically impacted. The Israeli psyche has subtly shifted.

Before the riots, Arab-Jewish relations in Lod used to be good: Jews and Arabs lived in the same apartment buildings. They would borrow milk from each other for a morning cup of coffee. Arab and Jewish children played together in the city soccer league, and both Arab and Jewish husbands sat together on the pavement at sunset, exchanging stories and cracking seeds in true Israeli fashion (or smoking the hookah, Middle-Eastern style).

Lod used to be the symbol of what the rest of Israel should aspire to become: a picture-perfect co-existence, sometimes distant but always amicable.

Lod has always been a poor, immigrant city. The ratio of Jews to Arabs in Lod is roughly 70:30. The exception is one neighborhood, Ramat Eshkol, where the ratio is reversed (30:70 Jews to Arabs).

Twenty-five years ago, a Garin Torani decided to move to Lod. Literally meaning “Seed of Torah,” a Garin Torani is a movement of Jewish religious families, typically centered around a yeshiva, that moves to cities or towns with a low socioeconomic demographic. Their aim is to strengthen Jews’ ties with Judaism, connect between religious and non-religious Jews, and promote socioeconomic growth.

Thirteen years later, inspired by the first Garin’s success, another Garin Torani moved to Lod, this time specifically to the neighborhood of Ramat Eshkol. There, relations with the Arabs were much cooler than in other neighborhoods. In Ramat Eshkol, Jewish kids never played with Arab kids or went to the same after-school activities. Jews and Arabs did not borrow or lend to each other; they did not mingle or converse. Only the polite “good-morning/good-evening” nod. Still, it was peaceful.

Ramat Eshkol was the center of the Lod riots in the summer of 2021. It was a warzone. But not a war with invading armies; this war was waged by homegrown terrorists. Israeli Arabs hurled huge blocks of stones from rooftops down on the Jews below. They shot fireworks and live ammunition. They tossed Molotov cocktails at Jews, cars, trash cans – anything that would catch a blaze. They destroyed equipment belonging to the law enforcement and to the municipality. They smashed windshields with rocks. They broke into private Jewish homes and ransacked them. They set fire to Jewish schools and a museum. They burned synagogues. Students in a pre-army yeshiva were caught in the flames and struggled to rescue books from the Beit Midrash. They managed to escape with the Torah scrolls. Many Gemaras and other holy books burned in that furnace.

The Israeli Arabs ruled the streets with terror. Police and first responders were ordered not to enter the neighborhood. When frantic Jews called the police to beg for help, saying that a barrage of stone-throwers were outside their apartment building just waiting for a Jew to emerge so they could stone him to death, they were told that the area was considered too dangerous for the police to enter.

When other Jews called the fire department, reporting that their friendly Arab neighbor had pointed out to the mob which cars were owned by Jews and that all the Jewish-owned cars were aflame, they were politely informed that Ramat Eshkol was currently too dangerous for the fire department to enter. Magen David Adom gave wounded callers the same response.

Those who did come to the rescue of the Jews of Ramat Eshkol were hundreds of other Jews from all over Israel. Akiva was one of them. Ten days before the riots began, on April 30th of last year, Hamas leader Yechye Sinwar called upon his brethren in Lod, Ramla, and Jaffa to fight against Zionist occupation. Sinwar urged those who didn’t have guns to use axes, and those who didn’t have axes to use knives.

Sinwar’s chilling speech was significant because, for the first time, big, established cities in the heartland of Israel were identified as “occupied” by Hamas, and thus, targets for liberation. Hamas’ declared goal was no longer Israel’s recession to the 1948 armistice lines or the destruction of outposts built on hilltops; the declared goal was the destruction of the entire State of Israel. The soldiers he called upon to fight were not the usual Palestinian Hamas terrorists: he called for Israeli Arabs, those Arabs who are Israeli citizens, who can vote, get free health care and schooling from the State of Israel, and share the other benefits of Israeli citizenships.

And these Arab citizens of Israel responded to his call.

The riots began on May 10, 2021, a Monday, Yom Yerushalayim: a national holiday celebrating the unification of Jerusalem and the liberation of the Temple Mount in 1967. Jews, young and old alike, march through the Old City, waving Israeli flags and singing.

This march, known as the Dance of the Flags, has been a tradition for the past 54 years. Needless to say, Arabs view it as an act of Zionist aggression.

Last year, on Yom Yerushalayim, Hamas issued an ultimatum: The Dance of the Flags must not enter, or even approach, the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, or else. As it turned out, the “or else” were three rockets fired in quick succession at Jerusalem. Arabs in Jerusalem began rioting.

That afternoon, the Imam of Lod (an Arab religious leader, equivalent to a rabbi of a city) spoke at length in the Lod mosque. In his tirade, the Imam spoke about the Zionist occupation of Al-Aqsa, the mosque built on the Temple Mount. He urged the Arabs to fight for their honor.

The Israeli Arabs in Lod heard his call and began attacking Jews and destroying Jewish property.

Akiva heard about the riots on the second day. He sent a shout-out to various WhatsApp groups, asking who was willing to go to Ramat Eshkol with him. Hundreds responded to his message. Akiva told them there was no need for such a massive force; it was the second day of the riots by now, police were probably reacting, there was nothing much to do. He wanted only twenty-five men.

He realized just how very wrong he was when he and his men approached Ramat Eshkol. Even from afar, they could hear shouts of the Arab mob and smell smoke from the fires. They were stopped by a makeshift police barricade right at the neighborhood entrance. The chief of police was there, together with the then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The chief of police told Akiva and his friends to go home; everything was under control.

It was useless to argue. Akiva and his friends moved away, trying to come up with ideas how to bypass the barricade. A Jewish resident of Lod, Shlomo, found Akiva’s group. Shlomo lived in a quieter neighborhood at a distance from Ramat Eshkol, but when he heard what was happening, he and some of his Jewish friends gathered together to help. They had not yet formulated a cohesive plan of action, particularly since none of them possessed firearms, but they all knew they had to do something for the Jews of Ramat Eshkol.

They were so relieved to meet Akiva’s group. The Lod group guided the Shomron group through alleyways to bypass the police barricade. Another policeman tried to stop them. They found a way around him.

In Ramot Eshkol, they saw a group of twenty Arabs running towards a synagogue, trying to set it on fire. It was the only synagogue to which police assigned protection, but the four policemen on duty there were not allowed to step foot outside the building. They stood helplessly within the fence while they were pelted with rocks, dirt, sticks – anything the Arabs found to throw at them. Akiva and the men ran towards the Arabs, and the mob instantly dispersed. He and his men continued chasing them.

Since none of the Jews of Ramat Eshkol had adequate security training, Akiva set up a makeshift command and control center in one of the abandoned Jewish homes. Of seventy families, only fifteen chose to remain in Ramat Eshkol during those six days. The rest were escorted out by groups of Jewish men. Sentries occupied their now-empty homes, both to protect them from looting and to report back to headquarters what was happening in the streets.

Police were present only in three locations in Ramat Eshkol: that one synagogue, a school which had been burned down the night before, and a small police station. When the police patrol drove from the station to the synagogue to bring the four policemen there food, they were so scared they requested that Akiva’s men escort them.

On the third night of terror, a Jewish man was shot. The ambulance refused to enter Ramat Eshkol. Akiva ran through the spray of bullets to rescue him, and then Akiva and his men half-dragged, half-carried the wounded man all the way to the neighborhood’s entrance, all the while under a rain of fire.

The violence continued all through Shabbat. Only this Shabbat, Akiva and others like him did not return home to a peaceful table but, instead, continued to save Jewish lives and property.

In neighborhoods outside Ramat Eshkol, Jews were afraid to leave their homes. The riots had not yet touched them, but they knew that some of their neighbors, perhaps most of them, were part of the mob trying to murder the Jews of Ramat Eshkol.

Night after night, as Hamas fired hundreds of missiles from Gaza, these Jews shared communal bomb shelters with their Arab neighbors.

“It was surreal,” Eliana, an activist in the Garin of Lod (not Ramat Eshkol), said.

She described to me how, on the first night the rockets were flying, she was running to the bomb shelter with her children while her Arab neighbor stood on her porch with her family, all clapping their hands and shouting gleefully, “Allah-u akbar” (G-d is great – the Muslim battle cry in Israel).

Many of the Arabs of Lod seemed oblivious to the danger they themselves were facing from the rockets, delighting instead by the destruction and fear they were witnessing in their Jewish neighbors. In Ramat Eshkol, the Arabs were too busy wreaking havoc to seek shelter from the missiles.

During those days of rocket attacks and riots, Jews like Akiva and Shlomo continued to help their fellow Jews. Jews in the Garin Torani like Eliana reached out to secular Jews who were not a part of the Garin, checking in with them to ensure that they were safe and had food. In event that they needed provisions or wanted to be evacuated, Jewish sentries would arrive to help.

When, finally, after six intense days, the police entered Ramat Eshkol, and they worked together with Akiva’s and Shlomo’s groups to bring quiet to the neighborhood.

Comparisons to the horrific Hebron riots of 1929, Kristallnacht, and Kishinev, are, of course, inaccurate, but the fact that those were the images conjured by the Israeli public and media indicates the

Sinwar urged those who didn’t have guns to use axes and those who didn’t have axes to use knives.

feelings of utter fear, shock, and betrayal. Worst yet, just like during those pogroms, the government did nothing to help the residents of Ramat Eshkol while the riots were ongoing.

What happened in Lod last summer destroyed the feelings of security Israeli Jews felt. No longer were there “good Arabs” – those who are citizens – and “bad Arabs” – those who are affiliated with Hamas in Yehuda and Shomron. The former, most Israelis typically ignore until something horrible happens. But now, no longer was Israel’s number one enemy safely in Gaza trying to infiltrate. The enemy was, shockingly, within us.

Though there were larger cities in which mobs of Arabs wreaked havoc, including Jaffa, Ramle, and Haifa, Lod has become the symbol of last summer’s riots. In Lod, the extent of the violence was colossal and in stark contrast to the serenity that used to be. The sweet dream of coexistence which Lod embodied was smashed with the first rock thrown at a windshield.

Another, deeply painful realization for Israelis was that unlike Kishinev or Kristallnacht or Hebron, this government that did nothing was not Russian, German, or British; it was our government.

Once upon a time, Lod symbolized Jewish learning and growth. The ancient city of Lod is where Rabbi Akiva watched the water drip-drip into the rock and made the astounding discovery that he, too, could learn the sacred truths of Torah. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, Lod (or Lud in Arabic) was mostly an Arab city. In 1947, the UN designated Lod to be a part of the Arab territories. When the fighting broke out shortly after, Haganah forces succeeded in conquering Lod and many of its Arab residents fled. Those Arabs who remained were resettled in the twin city of Ramle. Lod became home to Jewish refugees from African, Arab, and Eastern European countries. Over time, Israeli Arabs slowly moved back and, before last year’s riots, lived tranquilly with their neighbors.

Today, Lod symbolizes to Jews a feeling of deep betrayal and the shtetl-old fear of pogroms. To Arabs,

Lod symbolizes the goalpost for their next conquest.

Living in Lod has become as Zionistic as living on a hilltop. Over the past year, 60 new Jewish families have moved in. New projects, schools, and synagogues are being constantly built. Eliana told me that where the Jews have been hit hard – that’s where they will rebuild, and then from there build even more. Arabs and Jews hardly look at each other anymore. Eliana mentioned that she’s not exactly afraid, just wary. Shlomo, who is her husband, got a gun.

For Akiva, the riots are not a story of the past but a warning for the future. He has founded an organization called “Arei Israel,” The Cities of Israel, a non-profit which trains city Jews to protect themselves. Just this week, a Jewish apartment complex in the Old City of Jerusalem was attacked three days running. The third day, one apartment caught fire. Akiva drove that evening all the way from Yitzhar to teach those Jews how to create their own command center and fight back.

“Once Israeli-Arabs decided they are capable of being enemies of the Jews, no place in Israel is safe,” Akiva explained. “We work with the police, but Lod taught us that we need to know how to work without them, too. Arei Israel is where the real mission lies.”

There is one other thing the riots have taught us: Jewish unity triumphs. It surpasses every government, including our own. It cares nothing for political correctness, scandals, and public outrage – and believe me, as an Israeli, I saw plenty of all that coming both from within Israel and from without – as Jews who protected the Jewish residents of Lod were maligned and condemned for their independent actions. Bottom line: we’re here for each other: Akiva, Shlomo, Eliana, and those countless others who, even had I known their names I could not fit them all into this article; Jews who came for five minutes and Jews who stayed for the entire duration of the riots; those who rebuilt the Jewish homes of Ramat Eshkol stick by stick; all these brave people embody the true Jewish spirit. These are Jews who feel responsible for their brothers.

Jews who protect each other.

Special thanks to Akiva Hacohen and Eliana Lachyani for sharing their experiences. To learn more about Arei Israel visit: www.ail.org.il. To contact Eliana directly for information on the Garin Torani’s projects in Lod, email: eliana@lodaim.co.il.