PURELY COMMENTARY essay
W
alking under the silver-laced sky late at night on May 20, with our beloved dog Lucy, I look up at the moon, which is not new, in fact, it’s very old, much older and wiser than we all are, and I pray: Help me Shoshana to help people Lavan understand. It’s a simple prayer, on the surface, for a writer who always uses words to explain life. But its complexity confounds me, and I feel despair, against the background booms in the distance. For this is Israel, and a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has just been announced to begin at 2 a.m. tomorrow morning, so of course, there
are booms in the background. There have been for 11 days. Only these are actually the fireworks of our nearest Arab village, and our Arab neighbors celebrating a wedding. For we are in the North of Israel, and things here are very different. Ever since the violence began, Arabs and Jews have been tirelessly working together, organizing peaceful protests, visiting each other, planning peace-work activities and talking together. “My family has been here for 500 years,” says the father of our Bedouin friend, a restaurant owner in Zarzir, one of the Arab villages closest to us. “We are not moving. We will always be here, and we will always be friends with our Jewish neighbors. You are always welcome here.”
SHOSHANA LAVAN
Israeli Arabs, Jews Refuse to Be Enemies
The T-shirt made by our Arab neighbors and friends:
His son adds, “Treat this as your second home. You are like family to us.” (Next week, it will be our turn to host him and his family, in our kibbutz.) This is just after he has taken us into the back of the restaurant to show us the hun-
dreds of T-shirts he has had printed to give out at peaceful demonstrations, with the words: ARABS AND JEWS REFUSE TO BE ENEMIES, in Hebrew, Arabic and English. His co-partner of the idea, our Jewish friend and neighcontinued on page 8
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JULY 1 • 2021
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