Jenny Walty

I have been following the aggression in Lebannon and Israel since it started and I just received this message from Alexandra Jacoby forwarding an email from her aunt in Israel:

My aunt, Zypora, who lives in Hadera, Israel, wrote the letter below to my parents the other day. Hadera is halfway between Haifa and Tel Aviv; it’s just 50 km north to reach Haifa or South to Tel Aviv. Israel is tiny.

Zypora is my father’s sister; she was the subject of a Granada TV (English) documentary in 1998, “Owning Auschwitz”. Some of you saw the documentary at my place, following her back to Poland to confirm whether she and my father inherited the deed to Auschwitz. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, who is interested - let me know and we’ll arrange a time.

I haven’t been back to Israel in a long while, and her letter brought some of what it’s like to be there, what it can be like...

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Sent: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 6:53 AM

Dear Ruthi and Shaul

I am fine, we are all fine-- trying to continue with our lives during these days.

I want to share with you the few hours of sanity I had spent yesterday afternoon and evening.

It was like living on an island of sanity in the middle of this crazy and unstable times, which seem like a huge frightening ocean, full of these scary waves of Bombs, Rockets and Katyushas.

And then, we are in this beautiful Arab town, in this tranquil athmosphere.

As I told you ---I am continuing with my everyday voluntary activities and one of them is helping the bereaved families which were hit by the terrorist's attacks during the last years.

Unfortunately my town, Hadera was hit several times.Only six months ago there was a suicide bomber near our Market Place, six people killed, many wounded, I am 'helping' one of the women to try to go on with her life, her husband was blown up there.

Those terrorists don't distinquish between the Jewish and the Arab population. In our group of volunteers are four Arab-Israeli men from a neighbouring Arab town Baka- El Garbiya, who do wonderful work helping the victim's families in their town and neighbouring villages.

Each of us "works' with one or two families - and we meet once in a fortnight to discuss the problems, to tell each other about our expierences and to share the solutions we found. Weeks before the war errupted, we had scheduled this date for a meeting in the house of one of the Arab volunteers. The day before the meeting - when asked - all of us agreed to meet there.

It's a pity we did not film the whole journey [ twenty miles North in the direction Haifa.....] the sights, the talks in the car among us, while listening to the news on the radio, the weird feeling - it was such a surrialistic athmosphere, a group of eight Israeli- Jewish women in a taxi driven by an Israeli- Arab driver to visit an Arab town situated on the border with Palestine [ yes, this is a real border-town , there is a wall that devides the town between Israel and West Bank-Palestine]

The meeting _ I can't find the words to describe it. It was emotional for both sides, there were moments when it seemed so unreal - sitting there under the shadow of the fig trees - enjoying the refreshments discussing the 'cases' of those we take care of, while in the backround the radio describs the fights in Lebanon, the sirens and the rockets in Haifa, the direct hit on one of the houses in a mixed Arab -Druze polulation town in the North where a fourteen years old girl was just killed by a rocket, the "near hit" of the Hospital, and the noise of the planes and the helicopters above us all the time....

And we are sitting around a beatifully set table, fruits, nuts, the specially baked for this meeting - cakes, cold water and , of course the special black coffee , the smell of it.....and we feel united.

United - not only by the work we are doing, which in our eyes is unique and sacred, we are united not only by the war and the bombs, we are bound together by fate, the killed and the wounded are among all of us. The enemy, these terrorists, the Hizbulla, Nassralla, have united us. Arabs, Jews, Druze, Moslems, Christians - by declaring war on us , on the State of Israel - by the threat to destroy Israel --Hizbulla has united us. The Katyusha rockets kill and wound everywhere.

These few hours we spent yesterday together - show some hope for the future. How did we, free people allow terrorism to take over our world?! We can never, never surrender to terror. We need a total absolute unity and determination of civilized world fighting these fanatics. We need to create a dialog between all the sides of the conflict.

We all want to build a house, to plant a tree, to love and live beside our neighbours in freedom and respect for each other. We all want long term Peace. We all want to stop the hatred, so that our children and grand children won't have to pay the painful price of the wars, the violence, the terrorism.

One of the objects of the leaders should be the advancement of international understanding, good will and Peace through a world fellowship.

Meetings , like we held yesterday, I do sincerely believe --help finding a way to bring this vision into reality.

Love from Israel
Yours
Zypora

Maybe if we were all closer to the stories (we don't always have to agree to care) we'd have more empathy for the horrible situation there and think of a way to help. There's plans in the works for a benefit to raise money for the 700,000 Lebannese refugees, stay tuned for more details...