ABRAHAM FUND
Israel Arab Mayor Shows
Common Ties That Bind
By TIM BOXER
“WHAT happened to us?”
the mayor of the Arab town of Bak el Garbia in northern Israel wondered at
the Abraham Fund dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. Since its founding in
1989, the organization has supported dialogue and coexistence among
Israel’s Arabs and Jews. Dinner guests included Ronald S. Lauder, Robert
K. Lifton, Ambassadors Moshe Raviv and Ali Yahya, Seymour Reich and Mayor Jalal
Abu-Tuameh, described happier days when thousands of Jews from nearby
Hadera would come to his town on Saturdays to shop. The mall in Hadera
would host hundreds of Arabs who’d come every Friday night from the
surrounding villages.
Since the current spate of
violence began, this two-way economic traffic has ceased.
“Is
this accumulation of events, painful as they might be, powerful enough to
destroy the interaction that was achieved during tens of years of
coexistence and mutual respect?” Abu-Tuameh asked.
Portraying himself as the son of
a proud Arab, Abu-Tuameh said he has long been
“a friend, partner and colleague to Jews,” having dedicated his
life to “coexistence and cooperation between Arabs and Jews.”
UN Ambassador Richard
Holbrooke stated flatly, “Arabs and Jews have to live together or
they will kill each other.”
Upon receiving the Abraham
Fund’s Pioneer of Coexistence Award, Holbrooke pointed to the Balkans
where he was able to bring Serbs, Croats and Muslims together to negotiate
peace in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995.
“There have been no killings
since,” he said.
The key, he insisted, is
education.
“Hatred is taught by demagogues
through bad history textbooks,” he said. “The suicide terrorists in
the Middle East were born out of a history that teaches what they’re
doing is noble when in fact it is cowardly.”
Now that the Mideast has again
exploded in violence, people who have supported the goals of the Abraham
Fund – fostering an atmosphere of tolerance and respect between Jews and
Arabs in Israel – are faced with two alternatives.
The first choice is to give up on
organizations like the Abraham Fund. The second choice, said president
Judith Eigen Sarna, “is to get more involved with efforts to strengthen
relations between Jews and Arabs, and to promote the values that the
Abraham Fund stands for.”
For Sarna, the choice is simple:
“I am too optimistic and not old enough to give up on the possibility
that the world can become a better place.”
Sarna announced establishment of
a $1 million emergency fund to get even more Israeli citizens, Jews ands
Arabs, involved in the coexistence campaign.
“Jews and Arabs will not
disappear,” said David Libai, chairman of the Abraham Fund’s
Israel Public Council. “They need to learn to live together.”
Rabbi Michael Melchior,
minister for Israel society and the world Jewish community, warned against
turning the Palestinian-Israeli struggle into a religious battle for which
“there will never be a resolution.”
“This
is a territorial conflict between two people with a claim to the same
land,” he said. “We have one God and there is room for Christians,
Jews and Muslims in the same country.”
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