Nadene Goldfoot
Hebron, city that was already 700 years old when Abraham bought the cave so he could bury Sarah, his wife; an ancient city of Judah lying 18 miles south of Jerusalem; a levitical city and one of the cities of refuge; King David's capital for 7 1/2 years before moving to Jerusalem; where in 1929 there was a terrible uprising of Arabs against the Jews of the city and many Jews were killed; has become an Arab city. In this city are Jews that are surrounded by Arabs, and Yishai Fleisher is one of them.
He tells of the honor and respect that is coming out of the Arabs, and he has many friends. An example of their relationship is a story I want to repeat. It was his daughter's upcoming bat mitzva, and using firecrackers is a custom in his family from his mother's side, the Russians. He couldn't get any to use through the PA or even Israel, but then he had an idea; ask his Arab friends. They also use firecrackers a lot without any problem. So his best Arab friend was very proud to have been asked by him to not only buy the firecrackers but to set them off for the celebration. The Arab friend had previously asked Yishai to their celebration that included a feast, so they do things like this. The Bar Mitzva was highly celebrated. That brought tears to my eyes, especially hearing only terrible things like attacks of Arabs on Jewish homes causing terrible bloody deaths.
Things like this have been going on between the Arabs and Jews, Yishai related. His Arab friends do not like the Palestinian Authority (PA) at all and know it is repressive and corrupt, harming their lives. They tell Yishai that they don't want him to leave them.
Yishai is a rabbi and a writer and broadcaster, spokesman for the Jews of Hebron, pronounced in Hebrew as Khevron, He was on youtube for 90 minutes being interviewed by Benjamin Anthony, who I have watched on ROKU through JBS (Jewish Broadcast System). He mentioned that he sees Jews as a PEOPLEHOOD, for you don't have to be religious to respect our history as a people; our culture, ethics, foods, music, etc. They were talking about even Jews in Israel possibly not realizing the history of Hebron and it's value to us. We don't want to give it away in any peace deal!
Yishai spoke about the Trump agreements made with Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Freedman and agreed with the moderator, but reminded us that concessions came about but so did special agreements they wanted very badly. Yes, concessions made were bad for Israel. Israelis are not for a 2-State solution anymore, if ever at all, and neither are the Arabs. The time of land give-away is past. They saw what happened with Gaza, and I've been harping about that all along, I might add.
He also mentions the term, "Settlers" and "Settlements" and how we hate those terms because of the negative connotations that are given. I was so glad to here that, and then he explained that in getting one of his articles into Newsweek, he used the terms and got it in. If he hadn't, it would have never made it into the magazine.
His reasons of using it was different, but I thought that was his weak argument. He did admit hating the use of it. Benjamin Anthony and I do not use it.
His parting thoughts after 90 minutes was that Jews have a right to Judea and Samaria as it was our rightful land to start with and was illegally captured in 1948, so 1967 just allowed it to revert back into our hands. Now, the A and B section is completely Palestinian and they have been even infringing into the Jewish section of C.
What I got out of it is that the PA are still acting like Arafat's PLO copied by Abbas, not much different and that the Arabs would like to be freer and would prefer to live under the auspices of Israel's rule.
The problem again that I see is citizenship; it's a no go. Israel must remain in the ratio of 20; 80 and be the Jewish State, a one and only special one at that. I don't want to see another Lebanon, Christian Arabs overpowered by the Islamic groups and run out. I'll worry about this tomorrow, as the GONE WITH THE WIND heroine said.
I love it that Yishai has made friends and is living happily in Hebron with Arabs as his best friends. May it always be so. He's living with our very very distant cousins.
Resource:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEs_rm0ODDw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yishai_Fleisher
https://eg.usembassy.gov/25393/
No comments:
Post a Comment