A time for healing

We mustn't continue to sweep Arab problems under the carpet and allow their resentment to fester or we'll have more unrest and more rioting.

By DAVID KIMCHE
David Kimche 88 (photo credit: )
David Kimche 88
(photo credit: )
Like so many of my countrymen on Yom Kippur, I made my way to the local synagogue for the Kol Nidrei service. After the dramatic opening Kol Nidrei prayer, the cantor repeats three times, in order to underline its importance, the following passage, whose English translation reads: "And it shall be forgiven to the whole congregation of the children of Israel, and to the stranger who sojourneth among them; for all the people act ignorantly." Forgiveness? We beseech the Lord our God to forgive, but we ourselves don't know the meaning of the word. Those thoughts came to my mind when I read of the rioting in Acre. So, OK, an Arab made a very bad mistake and drove into a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur, understandably arousing the ire of those living there. He apologized for his mistake, and came to the Knesset so that the entire population of Israel should know of his apology. Fine. But forgiveness? "You should be behind bars. You are lying," was the shouted response of one of the leaders of the religious MKs, Effi Eitam. Didn't Effie Eitam go to synagogue for the Kol Nidrei prayers? Didn't he repeat three times the prayer for forgiveness for the stranger in our midst? Poverty, high unemployment figures (three times the national average), discrimination and poor education form the backdrop to the tension that led to the riots in Acre on Yom Kippur. A similar situation exists in other towns with mixed populations in Israel. The danger of a recurrence of the violence is ever present. There are extremist hotheads, Arabs and Jews, who spread rumors one against the other and who will exploit any excuse to make trouble, just as happened in Acre. Our religious leaders should be in the forefront of the effort to strengthen coexistence and prevent a repeat performance of the ugly scenes we saw in Acre. Luckily, President Shimon Peres convinced the chief rabbis to accompany him on his visit to the city last Monday. At least that offset to a certain extent the disgraceful outburst in the Knesset, and the fact that in Acre, the city's chief rabbi refused to echo the proclamation of the local Arab leaders seeking to restore calm to the city. A FEW years ago one of the leading lawyers in Egypt, a former ambassador in Moscow, asked to meet with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Shas spiritual leader and former chief rabbi. He had asked to visit Yosef in order to better understand the attitude of a person he considered to be a major factor in Israeli society. Aryeh Deri organized the meeting. The Egyptian came to the rabbi's house accompanied by a Palestinian who is now the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, and a Jordanian who had been the commander of the Jordanian Air Force. "He speaks as if he were a member of 'Peace Now,'" the former Egyptian ambassador exclaimed of Yosef in utter disbelief after the meeting. His colleagues concurred, adding their own remarks to relay their astonishment at what they had heard. We were standing on the pavement outside the rabbi's home in Jerusalem. For the past hour we had listened to the rabbi's views on how to solve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Yosef had lectured his interlocutors on the need for peace between Israel and her neighbors and on the sanctity of human life. "Life is sacred, not land," he stressed repeatedly. He decried the policies of those who would be willing to spill blood for the sake of so-called sanctity of land. Turning to another subject, the rabbi declared: "If I could help the family of Eli Cohen [the Israeli Mossad agent who was hanged in Damascus in 1965], by bringing back his remains for a Jewish burial in Israel, I would go personally to Damascus and plead with the Syrian ruler for the need for peace." His visitors were visibly impressed by Yosef's moderate views. That meeting took place several years ago, when Deri still lorded over Shas. What a difference, then and now! Compare that meeting to the remarks made these last weeks by Industry and Trade Minister Eli Yishai, who took over the helm of Shas when Deri was forced to leave. The mere thought that the government might still reach a peace deal - albeit a "shelf agreement" not for immediate implementation - with the PA had him up in arms. What a difference between his extremist, anti-peace attitude and the views that his mentor, Rabbi Ovadia, had expounded to his Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian guests a few short years ago. The Palestinians, it must be said, have much to blame for the move to greater extremism in Israeli society, an extremism evinced so clearly in the change that has occurred in Shas. The rise of Hamas, the refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the continuing violence and the hate propaganda in the Palestinian media have all contributed to turning so many Israelis against peace and towards the belief that no good can come out of any agreement with the Palestinians. Yet we would expect our religious leaders to act to restrain the move to extremism in our own population. How many times does Eli Yishai, for instance, utter the word "peace" when he says his daily prayers? We have yet to see a strong denunciation by rabbis or by leaders of the religious parties of the violence committed daily by religious youth in the territories, alongside the condemnations of the violence committed by the Palestinians. How refreshing it would be if, for example, Rabbi Yosef were to take a strong public stand along the lines of the remarks he had made to his Arab guests a few years ago. Instead of the shouting match that took place in the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee when Jamal Taufik came to apologize for driving into a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur ("I have made a mistake. I want to ask for forgiveness"), we should have heard a dignified condemnation of the violence that occurred, committed by Jews and Arabs alike, in the streets of Acre. OUR NEW government will in all likelihood be installed in the coming days. It must not ignore the events that have occurred in Acre. We have more than a million people in our midst who are Palestinian Arabs but who are, nevertheless, Israeli citizens. For the past 60 years of the existence of the modern State of Israel they have been discriminated against; their schools and education system don't match up to the Israeli norm; the funds allocated for infrastructure in the Arab sector are minimal; building permits are withheld; and unemployment in the Arab towns is rampant. We must not continue to sweep their problems under the carpet and allow their resentment at the discrimination to fester. If we do, we will have more Acres, more unrest and more rioting - and we will only have ourselves to blame.