Shalom Yisrael Needs Your Help

Eleven years ago Gilda and I joined an amazing group of volunteers, Shalom Yisrael of Westchester. For more than 30 years Shalom Yisrael has been dedicated to building bridges between Israeli and American Jews. Each year since we began our association with Shalom Yisrael in 2010, the organization has brought eight Israeli women to America for much deserved rest and relaxation. Much deserved because they are involved in professional and volunteer work in their communities along the dangerous borders with the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon. They have been social workers, educators and healthcare professionals who often are first responders when terror or tragedy strikes. 

This year our eight guests reside in the northern region of Israel, within easy range of Hezbollah rockets. They have devoted decades to easing the tensions and burdens of their neighbors, both Jewish and Arab. 

Our guests will arrive April 26 and depart May 3. During their time in New York, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia,  they will visit Jewish day schools in as well as senior centers, cultural institutions and social welfare organizations. They will be hosted by volunteer families.

The Shalom Yisrael program costs more than $25,000 each year. Funding is solely by tax deductible contribution. All of our workers and host families are volunteers. No one is paid for their efforts. 

If you would like to help provide a once in a lifetime experience for these deserving women, please click on the link to our GoFundMe page: 

https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/2020-shalom-yisrael-westchester

Hof Ashkelon Is Their Home in the Shadow of Mortars from Gaza

The question comes up every year: Why do you stay in arguably the most dangerous corner of Israel, the settlements adjacent to the Gaza Strip?

It was the turn of eight women, social workers and trauma care first responders from the Hof Ashkelon region, to respond this year to the heart-rending, oft-repeated question that over a two-week period came from students of Westchester Hebrew High School, staff of Westchester Jewish Community Services, Congresswoman Nita Lowey and members of the Westchester families that hosted them for a fortnight.

Fourteen days of touring, eating and shopping their way through New York and Washington, DC, ended Sunday. But that’s not why Shalom Yisrael of Westchester brought them to America. The goal was to help the helpers maintain and refresh their balance in a turbulent part of the world, at perhaps its most hazardous, impulsive and unpredictable point.

The women are no different than the 16,000 other residents of Hof Ashkelon, a region along the Mediterranean coast south of Ashkelon and north of the Gaza Strip. They are mothers of three or four children. One is a grandmother. Social workers and office workers. Their children go to school. Some are in the military. A few are married. No different than any group of women from the 19 communities of Hof Ashkelon (or the 56 previous first responder women of the prior seven years hosted by Shalom Yisrael from the Sha’ar Hanegev and Eshkol districts that also border the Gaza Strip).

Except, when conflict arises others have the freedom to scoop up their families to leave for safer quarters. These women have made a commitment to stay on sacred ground and help others cope with the consequences of terror.

They are not right wing zealots. They want to live in peace with their neighbors. But they will not cede an inch more of territory. Two of them—Esti and Corinne—already had homes taken from them when Israel abandoned their settlements in the Sinai and Gaza in the hope that peace would ensue. Ceding land won’t happen again, not after Hamas turned their former communities into rocket and mortar launch pads.

Hof Ashkelon is a beautiful part of Israel. Its inhabitants are more than just neighbors. They are united in determination to work together to secure a stable environment for their families. Yet, they know when—not really if, just when—the random mortar attack escalates to full scale hostilities their homes and settlements will be uninhabitable because Hamas has inventoried rockets more powerful than before.

They stay for a simple, primal reason. It is their home.

If they give it up, the border region will become the next district down the road, subject to the same intermittent bombardments they sustain, they say. No. The border stays as is.

Everyday life in Hof Ashkelon is different than in the rest of Israel. Showers are shorter—nobody wants to get caught full of suds should an alarm be sounded. Long past the age when they shouldn’t, children wet their beds. While traveling inside cars, seat belts are not worn, windows are left open, radios are turned off—with seven to 15 seconds warning before a mortar can land, one doesn’t want to have to tussle with undoing a seat belt to exit a car and lie down by the roadside with hands wrapped around one’s head, or worry about reverberations from an explosion shattering glass, or miss an alarm because the radio drowned out its warning.

On the other hand, life in Hof Ashkelon is by choice, as is service as a first responder. Before joining the first responder team Inbal had to commit that while other residents might leave during a conflict she would stay. Shalhevet and her family moved from the city of Ashkelon to Zikim, a kibbutz on the coastline less than two miles from the northern border of the Gaza Strip. When her daughter clings to her leg and pleads with her to stay home, Idit must overcome a normal, motherly response. She must leave her home to help others deal with trauma.

It is difficult not to think of these women and their colleagues, Tsipi, Mali and Ronit, as heroes, but that is the last descriptor they would attach to themselves. They are, simply, part of a people trying to live in peace. Their job is but one performed in defense of their homeland.

They arrived back in Israel Monday afternoon. The Shalom Yisrael 2017 program has concluded but funding needs for this year and future programs remain. Please consider making a donation. 

Send your tax deductible donation to:

Shalom Yisrael

c/o Murray Forseter

11 Brad Lane

White Plains, NY 10605

The links below are to previous posts about visits sponsored by Shalom Yisrael and Gilda’s and my visit in 2011 to the Sha’ar Hanegev region along the northeastern edge of the Gaza Strip: 

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2016/05/along-border-with-gaza-life-is-anything.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2015/05/living-with-tension-along-troubled.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2014/05/ordinary-lives-lived-by-extraordinary.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2013/05/building-community-in-eshkol.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2012/05/rocket-women.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/07/gazing-over-gaza.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-deserved-rest-relaxation.html

Two-State Solution Only Way to Avoid Discrimination and End of Jewish State

Donald Trump says he will leave it to the Israelis and Palestinians to decide if there will be one state or two in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. What may appear to be quite accommodating on his part as he strives to become the ultimate presidential deal maker of a peace between the two parties would in fact be a recipe for a destiny of disaster and discrimination.

Trump’s sideways embrace of a one-state solution emboldens hardliners on both sides of the intractable problem. Israeli right wingers will see it as a wink and a nod toward usurpation of more and more Palestinian land. The inevitable outcome of such a land grab would overturn democratic principles long cherished by Israelis and their supporters abroad, both Jewish and non.

To retain its Jewish identity after taking over land where 2.7 million Palestinians live, Israel would either have to expel them to neighboring Arab states or deny them equal rights, keeping them as a permanent, disenfranchised underclass. Otherwise, within decades voting age Palestinians would outnumber Jews within an enlarged Israel.

It is inconceivable to me that Jews, who for millennia suffered expulsions and inferior status, would countenance such actions upon another people, that they would spurn the natural desire of another people to have their own homeland.

Hard line Palestinians favor a one-state solution because of the demographic balance of power and the long-game calculation that, as with South Africa, the world will not tolerate their suppression. No matter how many patents Israelis register that improve human life, at the end of the day the Jewish state will be trampled under the weight of history.

A single-state solution simply and tragically solidifies the worst, most intolerant sectors of Israeli and Palestinian societies, those who want hegemony not compromise, those who savor hatred not enmity, those who view religion as a cudgel not a balm for mankind.

Bibi Netanyahu’s unequivocal demand that Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and that Israel retain security control of the land west of the Jordan River is appropriate and in no way should thwart Palestinian participation in any peace talks, given what transpired in the Gaza Strip after Israel withdrew from the captured territory.

A two-state solution can and must be hammered out. Trump’s ambivalence toward endorsing a distinct Palestinian state may be a negotiating ploy but it sends a counterproductive message to extremists on both sides of the conflict. 

American Jews are conflicted, torn between two countries they most care about–Israel and America—and the democratic, progressive values both countries have long espoused. A nation cannot claim democratic values while denying rights to those within its areas of jurisdiction.

The United States experienced its defining moment more than 150 years ago. Patriots—and they thought of themselves as patriots—argued for, fought for, and died for the right to keep another human being as property. Southerners were wrong to believe people of color were inferior creations.

Seven decades ago prejudice-almost-two-millennia-old culminated in a holocaust also based on a belief that a group of people were inferior creations.

Today Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, must confront its future amid dangers within and without its borders.

Outside its borders the threat is evident. Inside, however, the threat is equally real from hardline right wingers whose zealotry demands an expansive Israel in the West Bank. At the same time, ultra Orthodox religious zealots deny the validity of divergent sects within the Jewish faith. They are pursuing an exclusive theocracy that Netanyahu has permitted in his determination to remain prime minister. His spineless response to discriminatory religious provocations erodes support of Israel from Diaspora Jews.

No one should underestimate the existential threat posed by Palestinian and Arab intransigence towards its existence, particularly not during this time of Islamic terrorism that condones, even encourages, suicide missions. It is safe to say Israel’s borders, whatever they may ultimately be, would be the most vulnerable in its history.

But that does not provide justification for keeping nearly three million Palestinians in a condition lower than second class citizenry. It does not provide justification for its legislature and executive branch to override a judiciary ruling forbidding expropriation of Palestinian property. It does not provide the moral high ground Israel once deserved and was accorded.

It is impossible for Israel to negotiate a two-state solution, peace and mutual recognition with no one on the other side of the bargaining table. But it is equally impossible for Israel to continue indefinitely as the governing authority over West Bank Palestinians. Annexation of territory is not a long-term solution. New settlement construction on disputed land is not a long-term solution.

Asking the military to enforce a politically divisive position undermines Israel’s national character. Remember Vietnam. An unpopular war tore America apart.

It bears repeating: A nation cannot claim democratic values while denying rights to those within its areas of jurisdiction. 

By Making Us Relive 1968 Sanders Could Propel Trump Into the Oval Office

Full disclosure: I’m not a Bernie Sanders fan. Perhaps it’s because my memories don’t stop at the year 2000 when some believe Ralph Nader’s third party candidacy cost Al Gore the presidency. Those people have to look further back in time—Bernie Sanders is making us relive 1968. His determined bid to radicalize the Democratic Party, and the zealotry of his supporters, could well propel Donald Trump into the Oval Office, much the same way Richard Nixon squeaked by Hubert H. Humphrey because disaffected Democrats and Independents reluctantly rallied behind The Happy Warrior too late to carry the election.

That indeed would be a radical achievement for Sanders, not one to be proud of, however.

One of the first politicians to openly fight to end segregation, Humphrey was a true progressive from a state, Minnesota, that was truly progressive back then. His loyalty as vice president to Lyndon Baines Johnson kept him from breaking off support for the war in Vietnam until late in the election campaign. 

The anti-war activists never forgave him. By the time some fell in line behind him, Nixon could not be stopped. Instead of burying the Republican Party under 12-16 consecutive years of Democratic presidencies, the disaffected Democrats and Independents provided Nixon and the GOP a life line which ultimately gave us Watergate.

Now Sanders and his supporters could very well be handing the keys to the White House to Trump. Donald Trump!!! Are they so crazed for revolution that they would send our country back in time by enabling a Republican president to be elected to work with a Republican Senate, a Republican House and a Republican-stacked judiciary? Apparently so, as quotes from The New York Times show (http://nyti.ms/25lVOeF).

Enough already! Sanders must stop attacking Hillary and focus all his vitriol at Trump.

Bernie Sanders is Jewish, as am I. He grew up in Brooklyn, as I did. He went to Brooklyn College. Me, too. But there is no joy, no pride in seeing Sanders succeed any more than he has because it would harm, perhaps fatally, Clinton’s election as the first woman president. He is damaging the Democratic Party he just recently joined. He is building a wall his supporters will not cross in November to vote for Clinton if she is the party nominee.

I often wonder how Afro-Americans feel about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. How could they feel any pride when he consistently turns his back on his heritage. Earlier this week he was the lone dissenter on a case that overturned the conviction and death sentence of an alleged killer because Georgia prosecutors had systematically excluded blacks from his trial jury. This was no bleeding heart liberal decision. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote the opinion and fellow conservatives Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy concurred. (http://nyti.ms/244KHo2)

Thomas repeatedly fails to see the recurring discrimination Afro-Americans suffered and continue to endure. Bernie Sanders is the Jewish American version of Clarence Thomas.

Perhaps Sanders, and for that matter any politician who wants to speak authoritatively about the Arab-Israeli conflict, should live in and not just visit Israel. Yes, Sanders spent time on a kibbutz some 50 years ago. Today Israel is much different, as are its neighbors. 

Let him live next to the Gaza Strip for a month. Live with the constant threat of missile and mortar bombardments and the uncertainty that attack tunnels are being dug under your very back yard. Then, spend a month in Gaza and see how Hamas has transformed the land into a military zone among residential communities, how Hamas has diverted home building material into tunnel construction, how Hamas indoctrinates children to hate Israelis and Jews. 

Perhaps then Sanders et al would understand why Israel is justified in retaliating not just in kind but in force when Hamas or its surrogates strikes. Hamas wants to wipe Israel off the map. Wants to kill Jews. Israel just wants to live in peace. 

By his choices for representatives on the Democratic Party platform committee Sanders has displayed no love for Israel. http://nyti.ms/1WUXmLB 

Let’s be clear. I abhor actions that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has taken. It is appropriate and acceptable to criticize Israeli policy. But it is neither appropriate nor acceptable to question Israel’s response when its enemy is sworn to its destruction. Survival trumps a proportional response to terror. Only a fool engages in combat hoping for a stalemate.

I am not a one-issue candidate, but Bernie Sanders’ position on Israel has made me more sympathetic to many of my co-religionists who vote Israel right or wrong. In a close election, Jewish voters in New York, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey and other states who are repulsed by the influence Sanders is trying to wield could pull the Trump lever and send our country into an abyss we could be in for generations. 

Along the Border With Gaza Life Is Anything But Routine

It’s been a little more than a week since they returned home to a mostly quiet border. They’re back in their gardens, their kitchens, their places of work. The routine and the out of the ordinary are known to them. Muffled noises from beneath the ground very likely come from another tunnel from the Gaza Strip being built by Hamas. The pounding sound at night is the exchange of artillery fire between ISIS and the Egyptian army. A red alert means you have 15 seconds, or less, to seek shelter before a rocket launched from Gaza may land in your backyard, or worse.

“They” are eight women from the Eshkol Regional Council of Israel who spent two weeks in the New York metropolitan area and Washington, DC. The Eshkol district encompasses 32 communities housing 14,000 residents on 190,000 acres east of the southernmost 40 kilometers of the Gaza Strip and seven miles along the northern Sinai border with Egypt. 

They came from kibbutzim and moshavim as guests of Shalom Yisrael, a Westchester, NY-based organization celebrating its 30th year of bridging connections between Israeli citizens and their American counterparts. During the first 23 years of its existence, Shalom Yisrael (then known as Zahal Shalom) sponsored wounded veterans and civilians. For the last seven years guests of the organization have been women who serve as trauma care first responders and security officials in their respective home towns.

How do you react when a door slams shut? If you’re like most people, you’re startled. You turn toward the sound, quickly ascertain the origin of the noise, and go on with your life.

If you lived in the Eshkol region, the bang of a sharply closed door might engage a condition we in the United States have come to recognize as PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder. Years of rocket barrages from mortars and missiles launched from the adjacent Gaza Strip, coupled with almost nightly artillery clashes between the Egyptian army and ISIS in the nearby Sinai Peninsula trigger rapid heart beats and feelings of “we’ve been here before.” 

“Before” means a time of war, last experienced full time two summers ago. 

“In the first morning that I woke (in Westchester),” said Yehudit, a 46-yer-old responsible for the administration and security of her moshav, Yated, “I heard strange sounds, sounds that I had forgotten, sounds that I had forgotten from my past. And when I paid attention I understood that these were the sounds of the tree leaves and the sounds of birds. And I heard the sounds of silence and tranquility.

“Suddenly I was really frightened because I understood that I am already used to waking up to the sounds of explosions. And that’s a bad sign.”

Their everyday life has been transformed. Truck traffic has vastly increased on the region’s roads from deliveries of building material to Gaza, though the flow recently has been tightened because of Hamas’ tunnel building activity (http://nyti.ms/27J4IF6).

No one wants to be caught in an embarrassing situation in case of a rocket attack, so short showers are taken. Before entering the bathroom a towel and robe are laid out just in case a quick exit is required. 

Nira’s 13-year-old son chooses to sleep in the family’s safe room rather than his own bedroom. Not every residence has a safe room. The government supplies a safe room for homes within four and a half kilometers of Gaza. Those living further away have safe rooms only if they pay for them on their own, at a cost of roughly $10,000. In those areas, the only government-provided security is a shelter for kindergarten children. 

Safe rooms are needed because the heralded Iron Dome missile defense system, jointly developed by Israel and the United States, cannot protect them. They live too close to Gaza, so close, in fact, they can see Hamas training exercises. 

They long for a return to a time when they interacted freely with the citizens of Gaza. They are convinced Gaza residents want to live in peace as well, but Hamas does not let them. Before Hamas took control of the strip, many Palestinians worked on their farms—60% of Israel’s produce is grown in the region. Israelis had their cars repaired in Gaza and bathed on its beaches. 

Israelis have a reputation of being a stubborn people. Even during the 2014 conflict, when one-third of all the rockets that landed in Israel fell in the Eshkol region, elderly citizens in the district refused to abandon their homes. Instead, every day they came to the senior center. 

The Shalom Yisrael guests displayed their own mettle. 

“When I landed in New York two weeks ago,” said 58-year-old Yael of Kibbutz Urim, the head of occupational therapy at the senior center, “the weather was pretty cloudy, raining, and I thought to myself, if I can get used to missiles I can get used to rain. 

“But to missiles and noise of war you never get used to, and you get used to rain because the rain grows a future, and noise of war destroys the future for peace.”

Wherever they went, from visiting high schools to meeting with U.S. Representatives Nita Lowey, Eliot Engel and Susan Davis, the same question kept surfacing: “Why do you continue to live there?”

The answer, Yehudit said on her last night in Westchester, could be found in a poem written by Ehud Manor:

I have no other country

even if my land is aflame

Just a word in Hebrew

pierces my vein and my soul—

With a painful body, with a hungry heart, 

Here is my home.

Living With Tension Along a Troubled Border

They are flying Sunday night back to their homes 6,000 miles away, both literally and figuratively, home from the two-week respite they have enjoyed in America to their tension-filled existence living next to people who would like nothing better than to see them and their families breathe no more.

They will be returning to Israel, to kibbutzim and moshavim in the Eshkol region adjacent to the Gaza Strip where every day includes the unknown. Will a rocket be fired at them? Will terrorists emerge from an as yet undiscovered tunnel? And, the newest concern, will a sniper snuff out a life from a distant, camouflaged perch?

Each year for the past six, Westchester-based Shalom Yisrael has brought to America eight women engaged in first responder trauma care activities from the settlements near Gaza (for 23 prior years wounded veterans of the Israeli Defense Force and injured civilians were guests of the program). As with the previous five groups, this year’s crop of valiant women possess no extraordinary powers. Except, maybe, a determination to withstand the pressure and tension of living in a free-fire war zone simply because…it is their home. They are no more stoic about it than the residents of the canyons around Los Angeles who endure mudslides and fires only to rebuild. Or those along our shorelines who clean up after hurricanes ravage the coastlines they love. Or the hearty Plains people of tornado alley who emerge from underground shelters to resurrect their lives. It is their homes, and though Mother Nature might be the bane of most American disasters, fellow human beings traumatize the Israelis.

A two-year-old study on post traumatic stress disorder, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that Israelis, in general, recover from catastrophic events much quicker and easier than other nationalities, most likely because every day they are confronted by terror, or, at the very least, the thought of terror. If so, then the Shalom Yisrael guests would be at the top of the charts.

Fifteen seconds. If they are fortunate that is how long they have to seek shelter once an alarm sounds, if it sounds at all, before a deadly rocket lands. Some can run to government-funded safe rooms in their homes. Others, those living more than four and a half kilometers from Gaza, have safe rooms only if they paid for them on their own, at a cost of roughly $10,000. In those areas, the only government-provided security is a shelter for kindergarten children.

The Eshkol district, home to some 14,000 residents in 32 communities, important to Israel as the provider of 60% of the country’s produce, has suffered more rocket attacks than any other region. The vaunted Iron Dome defense system cannot protect them. They are too close to Gaza. Eshkol shares a 24-mile border with the Gaza Strip and a seven-mile border with Egypt.

And yet, like those before them, this year’s Shalom Yisrael guests would welcome a return to the pre-Hamas status of Gaza, a time when commerce and people flowed more freely across the border, when Palestinians worked in their fields, when they visited the beaches along the Mediterranean. They are less strident than the Israeli government and its leadership. 

It’s warm in the Middle East. As the climate heats up so often do cross-border tensions. Shortly after the 2014 Israeli women returned to their communities along the Gaza Strip all hell broke loose. Missiles and rockets dropped from the sky. From beneath the dirt of their farmlands terrorists emerged from tunnels. Among the visitors from Eshkol this year was the widow of one of the last two Israelis to die in the 2014 conflict, casualties of a rocket barrage one hour before the cease fire was to go into effect. Pain is still evident within her. But she perseveres. As does Israel. 

The links below are to previous posts about visits sponsored by Shalom Yisrael and Gilda’s and my visit in 2011 to the Sha’ar Hanegev region along the northern edge of the Gaza Strip: 

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2014/05/ordinary-lives-lived-by-extraordinary.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2013/05/building-community-in-eshkol.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2012/05/rocket-women.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/07/gazing-over-gaza.html

http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-deserved-rest-relaxation.html 

Stairway to the Animal Kingdom and a Letter from Israel

I've often fessed up I hate exercising. But I do take advantage of natural exercise moments, such as taking the stairs rather than the elevator. After leaving the car on the fifth floor of Gilda's self park regular garage at Mount Sinai hospital Wednesday afternoon before a doctor’s appointment, I chose to walk down the stairs. Halfway down I saw an animal curled up on the landing. Furry. Grey with a black streak down its back. Pointed snout. And a black Zorro mask across its eyes. He, or she, took one look at me and went back to sleep.

I quickly retreated away from this slumbering raccoon and jumped on the elevator. I advised the garage attendant to call the police or animal control squad. It took him a while to understand me. He said he’d call housekeeping. A few blocks later I stopped in the hospital’s garage security office and told them about the raccoon. They, too, promised to call the proper authorities. When I returned to the garage 90 minutes later the attendant said no one had shown up. I did not go looking to see if the raccoon was still napping.

At what age do we transfer authority? Here’s the thing. When visiting with the sleep apnea specialist Wednesday I couldn’t stop thinking how young he was. Probably no older than our son Dan, who is 35. I’m used to conferring medical authority on doctors older than me, or my age, or at least in their fifties. But as I age—and I expect to continue to do so for decades—doctors I see will be getting progressively younger. I’ll have to train myself to trust them.

I have the same questions concerning education experience and gravitas when I see young, talking heads dissecting world events on television. Or when their cohorts talk business, except when it comes to technology. When I watch a baseball game the players don’t seem as young as they really are. Again most of them are younger than Dan, but they look older. Or am I merely transferring my age bias to my brain and making them appear older?

By the way, I’ve decided to do an in-hospital, overnight sleep apnea test rather than an in-home test. My young doctor convinced me the results would be more useful.

Letter from Israel: Gilda's cousin lives in Kvuzat Yavne, a kibbutz about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Gaza Strip. Her kibbutz is among the most successful, with a varied economy including the canning of pickles and olives that she helps manage. Here's an excerpt from an email we received Wednesday:

“So much has happened and is happening. We average 2-3 missile attacks a day. Our homes have no secure rooms but the rest of the kibbutz is covered. Some of the missiles have hit pretty close. The Iron Dome is a miracle and has been shooting most rockets out of the sky. The fallout from this is very dangerous in itself but less than direct hits.

“Two new ways to get around: 1) always plan where to run for cover if you’re caught outside when an air raid siren goes off; 2) when driving, always have the radio on loud so you can hear when they break in with an announcement of an attack. If it’s by you, stop the car, get out and take cover.

“Our son Eldad was called up during the first few days and is now on the border with Gaza keeping watch to prevent infiltrations . Much as it is worrying, those that have family members fighting  inside Gaza have even greater fear.

“To those who attended Eldad and Tehila’s wedding on Kibbutz Saad (which Gilda and I did, along with her brother, sister and her husband), the kibbutz (on the border with the Gaza Strip) today is an armed camp. Heavily shelled. There were two direct hits in front of the dining room right where the chuppa was. The elderly, children, and most of the residents have moved to safer surroundings. 

“We have 60 seconds to make it to shelter; they have basically zero. Funny how there were once emergency plans to evacuate Saad to us…

“All the kibbutzim around the Gaza Strip are empty of almost all their civilian residents. It’s impossible to live with constant shelling and bombardments. The fear of tunnels has turned the whole area into a nightmare. Shelling is something you learn to live with, no matter how nerve racking, if you have a safe room to take cover in. Infiltrating terrorists through a tunnel under your home is a whole new ball game. Every evening now we hear the numbers of the soldiers killed over the last 24 hours.”

Building Community in Eshkol

So I asked the woman, what was the news back home? What were the people feeling about the latest incidents?

Silly me. I thought Batia would tell me about reaction to the air strikes by Israel in Syria and the rise in tensions along Israel's borders. Instead, the news of the day, she told me, on the lips of all, was the report that one of the unmarried news anchors of Channel 1 was pregnant. As if that wasn't enough of a blockbuster, an anchor of Channel 2 was involved in a traffic accident. No word on her condition.

Life goes on. Amid the bombs and rockets, life goes on.

Batia was one of eight women brought to the United States by Shalom Yisrael to enjoy two weeks of rest and relaxation  from the daily stress of living and working in the Eshkol Regional Council in Israel, the most frequently attacked district of their country. Situated along the southern portion of the Gaza Strip, hugging the border with Egypt, the Eshkol area is home to some 13,000 residents. It was a mostly peaceful 1,000 square miles when the women chose to live there, not out of any Zionistic fervor but because Eshkol was beautiful and away from the hustle and bustle of city life in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. 

All that changed in 2005 after Israel withdrew from Gaza. After Hamas brutally ousted Fatah, mortar after mortar attack ensued. It was from the Eshkol region that the soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and held for five years in the Gaza Strip until released in 2011. The incursion into Israel last year by terrorists who stole two armored Egyptian vehicles occurred in the Eshkol region. Last November, when 1,200 rockets landed in all of Israel, 463 fell in Eshkol.

Some of the communities in Eshkol are so close to the border there isn’t time for an alarm to sound. Only the percussion of an exploding rocket or mortar startles residents into defensive activity. It is then that Batia and her colleagues spring into action as first responder trauma care providers. That’s not their primary jobs. Normally, they are social workers and psychologists in schools and welfare agencies, administering to the needs of the area’s population. When explosions break the tranquility of the day—a rocket landed Wednesday—they are transformed into first responder trauma care providers. 

By necessity, their discipline has been mostly self taught. As I wrote last year, when eight other first responders visited as part of the Shalom Yisrael program, the 32 communities of Eshkol (14 kibbutzim, 13 moshavim and five residential communities) are vulnerable in space and time. If their homes are within four and a half kilometers (2.7 miles) of the border they have been outfitted by the government with “safe rooms” built to withstand a direct hit. In communities more than four and a half kilometers from Gaza, no safe rooms are retrofitted to existing homes. The only government funded security is a shelter for kindergarten children. If they are lucky, they have, perhaps, 15 seconds to seek cover. 

Still, life goes on, as close to normal as the Israelis will permit. Tamar, a mother of three boys, 10, 5 and 3, and a 13 year old daughter, demonstrates her resiliency and determination by refusing to give in to fear. She purposely drives the road near the Gaza Strip rather than a route further away from danger. She will not allow the terrorists to alter her lifestyle. 

During their two week stay in New York and Washington, DC, which ended on Mother’s Day, the women visited many cultural and historic sites. And, of course, they shopped. But perhaps their most unique experience involved an aspect of Judaism they had never encountered. They are secular, for the most part, even to the edges of agnosticism because of the smothering influence the religious right has on the Israeli way of life. Their host families brought them to their respective synagogues on Saturdays, where they experienced prayer services far more inclusive and welcoming than any they knew of in Israel. Several received a joint aliyah, an honor of being called up to the Torah. And the Friday before they left they joined a demonstration in Madison Square in Manhattan in support of Women of the Wall, the Israeli group trying to gain equality for women at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Again, they received recognition from the New York community.

Community. Even though Eshkol is bombarded more than any other region, it doesn’t get the foreign press Sderot generates from attacks at the northern edge of Gaza. At times, the residents of Eshkol can feel isolated, alone. But two weeks of sharing and nurturing from heretofore strangers, two weeks of freedom from terror, recharged their internal batteries and revealed to them that their values were shared by a community across the ocean. Life can go on, knowing they are not alone. 

Media Equivalency is No Public Service

We've just concluded one contest wherein the mainstream media felt an obligation to practice equivalency, a bizarre belief that meant it could not point out factual mistakes of one candidate without noting miscues of the other, no matter how egregious the former’s lies were and how insignificant the latter’s were. Brazen and emboldened by a comment from his pollster, Neil Newhouse—"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers"—Mitt Romney constructed a campaign of lies and innuendoes, confident that for every whopper he told, the mainstream media (I know, I sound sooo Fox Newsy) would soften the correction by pointing out one of President Obama’s misstatements. 

We’ll return to Romney shortly, but first let’s consider another media mess, the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.  Last night CBS News aired video of an Israeli air strike assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari, the military leader of Hamas. It also mentioned other air strikes within the Gaza Strip. Aside from marveling at the precision of the takeout of al-Jabari, the report left the uninformed wondering just why Israel had sent its planes into Gaza at this time. CBS failed to mention the rocket and missile attacks Arab terrorists had launched over the last month, 1,000 in all, according to Israel’s U.S. Ambassador, Michael Oren. Anyone listening to Scott Pelley might have concluded Israel was the aggressor when it simply was retaliating for repeated attacks no nation would tolerate.

CBS was not alone in its under-reporting. NPR’s All Things Considered program today said “fighting began” after the Israeli air strike. Doesn’t NPR think indiscriminate rocket fire amounts to fighting? Do we really think Hamas and its more evil cousins launched those missiles with no hope or expectation they would murder or at the very least maim Israeli civilians? Are we expected to admonish Israel because its military is more precise and effective? 

Tensions along the Gaza frontier could escalate into a mini-war or a full scale affair there, as well as in the north with Hezbollah. I hope not. One thing to remember is that Israel's Iron Dome missile defense is not impervious and by that I don't mean infallible. As I explained six months ago after spending time with trauma care providers who live and work in the border settlements near Gaza, Iron Dome is meant to protect larger cities, such as Ashkelon, Be’er Sheva and Tel Aviv, not the small kibbutzim and moshavs adjacent to the Gaza Strip. 

Residents of the districts near the border have about 15 seconds’ warning of incoming rocket fire to seek shelter. Homes within four and a half kilometers (2.7 miles) of the border have been outfitted by the government with “safe rooms” built to withstand a direct hit. In communities four and a half to seven kilometers (4.2 miles) from the border, no safe rooms are retrofitted to existing homes. The only government funded security is a shelter for kindergarten children. Beyond seven kilometers, everyone is vulnerable. No safety measures are provided.

For a modest depiction of conditions in the border settlements near the Gaza Strip, read this post from May 2011: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-deserved-rest-relaxation.html

Now back to Romney. We found out Wednesday just how much of a scuzzball the Mittster really is. After disavowing his infamous “47%” comments during the campaign, Romney exposed himself once again as a bigoted, boorish man. In a telephone call to donors and supporters, he explained away his loss as a natural outcome after President Obama gave away stuff to buy votes. Free contraceptives (because college girls like to have sex). Free health care for children until they are 26, (presumably because they like to get sick). Tuition loan relief (because not everyone has millionaires for parents and can afford to pay for college out of pocket). Romney took no responsibility for running a lousy campaign, one that essentially wrote off half the country as “victims” who only want to take handouts from the government (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/romney-blames-loss-on-obamas-gifts-to-minorities-and-young-voters/). 

Though Romney showed he is beyond redemption, GOP governors apparently comprehend the shallowness of his and their party’s appeal to young people, women, Latinos, Asians and Afro-Americans. During a meeting Wednesday of the Republican Governors Association, several rebuffed Romney’s representation of the election results as a gross misrepresentation (http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/11/15/republican-governors-put-blame-on-romney.html). 

Calamity Mitt

There’s an exegesis that major calamities suffered by the Jewish people occurred through the ages on the ninth day of the month of Av, known in Hebrew as Tisha B’Av. Calamities such as the destructions of both temples in Jerusalem 656 years apart, first by the Babylonians and then by the Romans. 

Tisha B’Av was commemorated over this past weekend, coinciding with Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel and Jerusalem. Need I say more? No, but I will.

Despite what Sheldon Adelson and other near-sighted people, including some of my friends, think, the worst development for Israel would be Romney’s election. As he so mis-ably demonstrated yet again on his “world tour” of England, Israel and Poland, Romney has no idea how to speak diplomatically. After publicly insulting the British, he publicly insulted the Palestinians. No amount of backtracking can remove his lack of diplomacy. Perception is reality in the eyes of the Palestinians. He has given them no reason to believe he would be an honest broker of a fair and equitable peace (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/us/politics/romney-angers-palestinians-with-comments-in-israel.html?_r=1).

Palestinians are industrious. Educated. They have been productive citizens and residents wherever they have been given an opportunity. The tragedy of the Mideast is that too many Arab countries used them as pawns, consigning them to live in squalor instead of absorbing them into society, as Israel did with Jewish refugees who had to flee repression in Arab countries. Romney naively attributed the economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians to “culture.” That’s but one of the reasons.  I don’t have the time or inclination to expound on the full set of reasons. Perhaps, given all his money, Romney can hire experts who could educate him on the differences between the two peoples.

As could be expected, Romney was well received by Israeli hawks for his no-questions-would-be-asked-nor-criticism-leveled should Israel decide to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Just as candidate Barack Obama in 2008 expressed sympathy for those living near the Gaza Strip under constant danger from missile attacks and condoned retaliation, Romney scored points when he said, “We respect the right of a country to defend itself.” Romney also fawned on the Israelis, and further angered the Palestinians, by saying Jerusalem was Israel’s capital. 

Interestingly, Romney, and for that matter, most other politicians, have chosen to stay silent on a more imminent threat to Israel and other Western countries, namely, the huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction in Syria that could fall into the hands of terrorists or unstable factions should the government of President Bashar al-Assad tumble. Would Israel and the United States risk a foray into Syria to secure these stockpiles? Israel is already distributing gas masks in its northern regions, but the threat would be far wider to the Jewish state, indeed, to the world at large if groups like al-Qaeda or Hezbollah had access to these WMDs. 

Romney always seems to be trying to say what he thinks his audience wants to hear. Back in Great Britain he opined he would restore the bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office. Sounds great to an Anglophile. Churchill was the symbol of British grit in World War II, the staunch anti-Communist thereafter, originator of the term “the Iron Curtain.” But what do India and other non-Caucasian members of the United Kingdom think of Churchill? Reading about the fall of the British empire, Gilda has related to me stories of how racist Churchill was, how he felt Indians were inferior people, and thus could be sacrificed (read that, starved) so Anglo-Saxons would have enough food during WWII. Millions in India died after their foodstuffs were shipped to the British Isles. 

Perhaps Romney wasn’t aware of this “small” fact. I, for one, wasn’t aware of it until recently. But I’m not running for president. My comments won’t anger a nation. 

Capitol Gains, Unholy Acts, Billions and a Beauty

Capitol Gains? He’s tall, lanky, decently good looking, but not my type, and I’m not talking about sexual attraction. I’m talking politics. Paul Ryan, the wunderkind of the Republican Party with the widow’s peak dark hair line (a little like Eddie from “The Munsters”), passed me on a walkway into the U.S. Capitol. I realized too late who it was to stop him and express my thoughts. Besides, he was engaged in conversation with another man. 

As he paused at the steps where only congressmen may enter the Capitol, I alerted the eight Israeli women I was chaperoning they had just seen one of the most powerful men in the country. It was a far more exciting moment than what they had just witnessed from the gallery of the House of Representatives. The House was in session, if you could call it that. Barely a dozen members sat in the seats reserved for 435 members. We watched parts of two presentations, the congressmen speaking to the balcony, or more precisely, to the cameras affixed to the balcony so their words could be beamed back to their districts and recorded for posterity. 

It wasn’t easy explaining American politics to women who daily tend to trauma victims along the Gaza Strip or in a shelter for battered women and children in Jerusalem. They have political concerns of their own, especially after a major initiative was announced this week to forge a coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party with the more left-leaning Kadima. One of the hopes among many Israelis and supporters of Israel around the world is that this new government majority will be able to reduce the influence of ultra-religious parties in the daily lives of Israelis. Israel is a Jewish, democratic state; it was never intended to be the religious state it was increasingly being turned into by the power ultra-religious parties exerted because of their ability to make or break coalitions.  

Holier Than Thou—Not! Deviant behavior is not restricted to any one group. The “pleasure” many in the Jewish community took in the decades-long troubles of the Catholic Church with sex abuse cases while virtually nothing came to light among their brethren has vanished now that details of extensive abuses and cover-ups within Hasidic communities have been reported in The NY Times. 

Whereas in the Catholic Church perpetrators were shielded from punishment by leaders of the church, the Hasidic sects, from their rebbe leaders to their “blind” followers, ostracized the victims and their families for coming forward, not those who assaulted and abused. 

It’s another shameful example of religion working against, not for, the benefit of those who need it most.

So How Come I’m Not a Billionaire? Or at least related to one. 

After I returned from Washington, Gilda was very excited to show me an article in New York magazine. It was the cover story, “The Zuckerbergs of Dobbs Ferry.” Zuckerbergs, as in Mark Zuckerberg, he of Facebook fame and fortune.

Seems the Zuckerberg parents bought their Westchester home in 1978 (so did we). Seems Ed Zuckerberg was an early adopter of home computer technology, especially online banking using a Citibank modem (so was Gilda). Seems Ed’s wife, Karen, ridiculed him for using a computer to pay bills rather than simply writing a check (as I ridiculed Gilda). 

Ed and Karen Zuckerberg still live in Dobbs Ferry. We still live in White Plains. The similarities end there, except for the fact Ed has a scraggly salt and pepper beard like mine. He might have more money, but I have more hair.

Bio Pic: I heard Vanessa Williams talking on NPR about a memoir, “You Have No Idea,” she and her mother Helen wrote about their lives, particularly her selection in 1983 as the first Afro-American Miss America. For those not familiar with the full story, Williams was stripped of her title late in her one-year reign because of nude pictures she had posed for prior to her selection. Release of the photos did not jive with the pure-as-driven-snow image the Miss America pageant wanted to cultivate.

During her reign Williams was a spokesperson for American Greetings. The Cleveland-based greetings card company brought Williams to the annual Houswares Show in Chicago. It was there, as editor of Chain Store Age, I met Williams and had my picture taken with her. She was (still is) beautiful. 

Rocket Women

Long time between posts. Sorry about that ...

Just back from what has become an annual three-day trek to Washington, DC, accompanying eight Israeli women who provide social welfare services to their countrymen. A group called Shalom Yisrael sponsors their two-week rest and relaxation tour of New York and Washington. Two were from Jerusalem. They work in a shelter for battered women and children. The remaining six live in the Eshkol region along the border with the Gaza Strip. They are first-responder trauma care providers, along with being targets themselves, as are their families, to the frequent missile attacks from across the border. Over the four day period surrounding the holiday of Purim (March 8), for example, 80 of the 200 missiles landing in Israel fell in the communities of the Eshkol region. A rocket not so long ago landed on the desk of one of the women. Fortunately, it was a Saturday so no one was working. 

Israel has implemented an “Iron Dome” defense against rocket attacks, but what is not widely known is the missile shield is in place to protect larger cities, such as Ashkelon, not the small kibbutzim and moshavs adjacent to the Gaza Strip. Residents of the Eshkol district have about 15 seconds’ warning of incoming rocket fire to seek shelter. 

Here’s another fact gleaned from my time with these brave, resilient women—homes within four and a half kilometers (2.7 miles) of the border have been outfitted by the government with “safe rooms” built to withstand a direct hit (fyi—since the first Gulf War all new residential construction in Israel must include a safe room). In communities four and a half to seven kilometers from the border, no safe rooms are retrofitted to existing homes. The only government funded security is a shelter for kindergarten children. Beyond seven kilometers, everyone is vulnerable. No safety measures are provided.

If you’re as surprised as I was to find this out, you’re in good company. As they related this state of affairs over breakfast in the Congressional Dining Room to Representative Nita Lowey, the ranking Democrat of the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, she sat with mouth agape. Clearly the success of the Iron Dome, while a source of national pride, has done little to make the lives of these vulnerable Israeli women and their neighbors any safer. 

What also emerged from the breakfast meeting was a suggestion that our government needs to do a better job explaining how foreign aid not only helps other countries but also is a direct contributor to American jobs and our economy. Almost all foreign aid monies must be spent in the United States on equipment, materiel and other goods before being shipped overseas. Foreign aid is a good example of your tax dollars at work, here and abroad.  

Gazing Over Gaza

One week ago today, from a hill in the Israeli moshav of Netiv Hasara, the northern Gaza Strip unfolded before my eyes. It was a sunny, quiet day.

Six times over the last two days rockets fired from that same region fell inside Israel. No one was injured. Israel retaliated with an air strike. No one was reported injured.

The Gaza Strip I looked out upon, along with Gilda, our friends Dave, Gemma, Phil and Margie, is a rolling stretch of houses and fields, with no outward indication of unyielding conflict. Except, to gaze at Gaza your eyes have to first pass over a security wall, perhaps 25 feet high, topped by machine gun turrets.

There’s a constant breeze in your face as you stand on the hill, a nagging thought in your mind that a sniper could easily pick you off if so inclined. You joke you’re thankful you’re not the tallest one in your group.

We were in Israel the first 11 days of July primarily to attend a wedding and tour the country with Dave and Gemma, best friends from Britain who’d never been to Israel. We traveled to the Sha’ar Hanegev (Gates of the Negev) region to visit with first responder trauma care providers who visited New York in May of the last two years as part of a rest and relaxation program sponsored by Shalom Yisrael, a volunteer group I joined last year (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-deserved-rest-relaxation.html).

After a day of touring several kibbutzim, we dined in Kfar Aza, at a home several paces from the spot a mortar shell landed three years ago, killing a neighbor, a father of three and Israel’s national engine-powered paragliding champion. Jimmy Kedoshim, 48, died while tending the garden in front of his home.

I have no doubt there are people on the other side of that fence who want friendship and amity, if not actual peace. Before Gaza became a synonym for incessant, random rocket and mortar fire, there were many friendly exchanges between the two Semitic peoples. As related by my hosts, workers from Gaza routinely came across the border to work in Israel’s fields and factories. Israelis brought their cars to Gaza for repairs. They visited the beaches of Gaza. When a Palestinian fell in love with an Israeli, he sought refuge with his Israeli employer to avoid the death threat his family imposed on him, a sentence eventually rescinded when the affair ended.

It is one of the ironies of this seemingly intractable conflict that people who live in the shadow of terror are among the most pacific of their fellow citizens. Time and again they expressed an affinity for the residents of Gaza, people they mingled and traded with before Hamas took control and turned the narrow strip of land into a missile launching pad.

On the other hand, one of my retired military friends from Tel Aviv has hardened his dovish position of years back. He now fears a Hamas-led Palestinian state on the West Bank—he has no doubt Hamas would take over there from Fatah, as it did in Gaza. Such an eventuality would make Israel’s population centers vulnerable to missile, rocket and mortar fire, would make air travel into and out of Ben Gurion airport hazardous because of ground to air missiles.

In Sha-ar Hanegev, settlements are picturesque villages of single family homes inhabited by hundreds to several thousand residents. On the other side of the fence, multi-story apartment houses dominate the landscape. Its among the most densely populated areas on earth. Yet, Gaza is not a blighted ghetto. Consumer goods abound. Ample food and medicines arrive daily in trucks from Israel.

One wonders what Gaza could become if peace, true peace, settled over the area. Gaza has beautiful beaches, an industrious, educated population.

Fanatics have co-opted the dialogue, on both sides of the fence. Ordinary people just want to live in peace, without fear. Perhaps, in our lifetime, it will happen. As the Arabs say, “inshallah,” God willing.

More Than One Issue

I resent the Republican Party trying to cast me as well as other Jewish voters as one-issue voters, that issue being support for the State of Israel.

Israel is important. Very important. But it is not the end all and be all of why and how I choose candidates. Social issues, budget issues, judicial issues, foreign policy issues, economic issues, all these and more figure into my calculation.

I’m steamed as I write this because I just fielded a call from the Republican Jewish Coalition trying to cast the GOP as more favorable to Israel than Democrats and particularly President Obama.

Israel should not be a wedge issue. Democrats as well as Republicans may disagree with Obama. That’s their right.

But according to the young man who called me, Obama wants Israel to return to pre-1967 borders.

Wrong! Obama’s position as explained anew during his speech to AIPAC, the Israel lobbying group, earlier this week, has been borders should be “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” after negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. It’s a position that corresponds to those of past presidents going back to Clinton, along with past prime ministers of Israel.

Obama called for a “sovereign, non-militarized (Palestinian) state.” He rejected efforts to de-legitimize Israel. He demanded Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist, reject violence and adhere to all existing agreements before it could be considered worthy of being a partner in negotiations. He called for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped five years ago.

If Israel is to be an issue, let’s get beyond the usual bromides of support. Just what type of support does the GOP want to provide? Unlimited, uncritical acceptance of whatever Israel does? Israelis can’t always agree on the right policy. It would be foolish to believe anyone in Washington knows better than those in the vortex of the conflict.

For the last two years I met 16 trauma care first responders from the communities bordering the Gaza Strip. You would think that with constant bombardments from Hamas and its cohorts they would be hawkish. No. They favored peaceful resolution of the conflict, with dignity and respect on both sides. They empathized with Palestinian families who shuttered at the retaliatory strikes by the Israeli Defense Forces.

It is callous for Republicans (and Democrats) to try to make political gain out of the Israel issue. And let’s be clear—it is not just Jewish voters who are in play. Israel enjoys wide support among evangelical Christians.

But as I told my young caller, I would be more susceptible to Republican overtures if the GOP exhibited more Judeo-Christian concerns for the needy, the more vulnerable members of our society. Though he tried time and again to bring the conversation back to Israel, I wouldn’t let him. I want a president and a Congress that respects the rights of all, cares for the downtrodden, provides opportunity for all, endorses and expands educational opportunities, builds and repairs infrastructure for today and tomorrow, invests in science and technology, leads global efforts on climate change and human rights, provides universal health care. These and much more. And yes, I want a president and Congress that supports Israel in reaching a just and lasting peace with its neighbors.


(Editor’s note: From time to time—which means when I remember—I will include the following disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my dear wife, Gilda.)

A Not So Warm Welcome Home

A perverse welcome home greeted the eight Israeli trauma care providers who spent the last two weeks enjoying R&R in New York and Washington, DC. Even before they boarded a return flight home, their country had to defend itself against Arab extremists who would deny its very existence. The storming of border crossings was not a message of support for Palestinian statehood. No, it was a repudiation of Israel’s right to exist, period.

While they were away, the Sha’ar Hanegev region they live in and serve, on the edge of the Gaza Strip, was mostly quiet. It’s doubtful it will remain so.

Just hours before she left Westchester, Orly, a social worker, related to me a family story that epitomizes life for many of the young residents, on both sides of the border. Born and raised in conflict, children are conflicted by the everyday sights and sounds of battle.

Her nephew has known few days without gunfire or shellfire during his 10 years. Several months ago he was to go with his family to China. He exhibited abnormal anxiety. He was more afraid of light than darkness. He feared there would be too many lights on the streets of China at night. To him, light meant snipers would have an easier time sighting targets.

His brother, one year younger, had developed fear of the outdoors. He would leave the house only if his grandmother held an umbrella over his head, a shield, soft though it was, to keep him safe from falling rockets.

During a visit to Central Park last weekend, Orly watched children freely running around and playing. She became sad. She realized it was because Israeli children in her settlement restrict play to areas near bomb shelters.

Children are born into conflict, but the enmity and bigotry of their parents must be hard-wired into them. In the year I was born, 1949, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific exposed this sorry state of the human condition in a poignant, honest song, “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.” Read the lyrics and ponder that until we break the cycle of intolerance, children will continue to fear the sunshine:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Well-Deserved Rest & Relaxation

The ladies go home Sunday evening.

They’ll travel back to Israel, to their homes in the communities on the edge of the Gaza Strip, an area known as Sha’ar Hanegev (Gate of the Negev).

For nearly 10 years they and their families and neighbors have been under constant tension amid the threat of indiscriminate rockets, missiles and mortars hurled from over the border. Reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. When an alarm sounds, and it is not a guarantee one will, they have perhaps 15 seconds to find shelter. It’s a traumatic existence trying to live peaceably in your moshav or kibbutz right next to an enemy whose apparent only goal in life is to take yours.

Dealing with trauma is their everyday routine, in their personal and professional lives. They are psychologists, nurses and social workers, first responders when the bombing starts, sometimes rushing into action even as more incoming is on the way. They help young and old residents cope with the reality they are targets of a movement committed to their annihilation.

For two weeks ending Sunday, eight Israeli care givers will have enjoyed some well-deserved rest and relaxation, living with families in Westchester while visiting New York City and Washington, DC. They were brought here by Shalom Yisrael, a Westchester organization that for some 25 years has hosted groups of Israelis, usually victims of terror, military veterans or injured soldiers. Like last year, Shalom Yisrael welcomed trauma care providers to America, most for their first U.S. visit. Gilda and I housed one of the women a year ago. This time, as I did in 2010, I accompanied them on a three day trip to Washington ending late Wednesday night.

It’s hard to fully appreciate what these unassuming women do. We take it for granted when soldiers storm into the breach of battle. They’re armed. Fulfilling their duty as the spearhead of defense is their job, what they are trained to do. But how many civilians would leave their families and the relative safety of a shelter when Qassam rockets start to fall to minister to the elderly and the young, to comfort the fearful, even as you must suppress your own anxieties?

Rockets land daily. The calm after the Israeli military response of two years ago has long since dissipated. The effects of constant bombardment exhibit themselves in subtle ways. Children associate the color red with the Red Alert warnings, so many choose not to use red paint when drawing. With so little time to rush to a shelter or safe room, teenagers take shorter showers, just in case. They leave the bathroom door open. Some are afraid to go to the toilet, lest the shells come at an inopportune moment. Bedwetting beyond normal years is prevalent. Slipping back into a parent’s bed is common. Children, even teenagers, are afraid to be alone. Eating disorders affect many. After the recent attack on a school bus, which critically injured one high school student, the only child still on board, children are afraid to ride the buses. Even the bus drivers, mostly all military veterans, are anxious because they’re responsible for the children.

The spirit of the trauma care providers is indomitable, sometimes beyond comprehension, sometimes bordering on the comical. They didn’t care if it rained during their visit. What’s a little water, one said, when she has to consider more metallic, explosive matter raining from the sky as she takes a walk around her village each morning. Another reacts to a Red Alert by quickly opening the doors of her home not only to passersby but also to the dogs and cats that have become traumatized by the bombardments. Observing a Washington intersection signal that counted down the 30 seconds to safely cross a street, a third woman noted she’d become quite proficient in knowing exactly how much she can accomplish in the 15 seconds before a missile lands. She could hang several pieces of laundry. Matter-of-factly another shows me a picture of her home pockmarked by shrapnel after a shell exploded nearby. Moments before her husband stood where the rocket landed. He walked away, but a cherished friend remained and died. Yet they express empathy for the Palestinians when they hear the pounding the Israeli military inflicts in retaliation on Gaza. No one should live with the fear of incessant violence, they say. They are not hard-liners. They are left of center politically. They just want peace.

They are extraordinary in how ordinary they are. They shop for their children and husbands, hoping those back home will not complain too much about their gifts. They shop for themselves. Just a few more days left to check off all the items on their shopping lists. Then it’s back to the ramparts, otherwise known as home.

Double Standards

The loss of any innocent life is to be regretted, but two concurrent protests against the use of force by U.S. and Israeli military forces raise some troubling double standard questions. Actually, it’s a double-standard squared problem, as I will explain.

I am all for democratic countries waging war under “civilized” principles that include safeguarding civilian populations and never knowingly setting out to harm non combatants. It’s a standard all too often ignored by their foes. But one reason we believe America and Israel engage in “just wars” is the manner in which they are prosecuted. Both countries try to avoid civilian casualties.

The U.S., according to CBS News sources, has killed more than 500 terrorists in Pakistan over the last two years. They include the third-ranking Al Qaeda leader, killed in the last week. All died without the loss of a single U.S. serviceman, thanks to the technological efforts of our increasingly sophisticated unmanned drone air force. But in killing those terrorists, 30 civilians also died, CBS reported. Scores of civilians have died in Afghanistan from drone attacks, as well. A United Nations report claims drone strikes “amount to a license to kill” without being held accountable since neither the U.S. nor the Pakistani governments acknowledge the drones are operating over Pakistani soil. Further, the rise in drone warfare could lead to its adoption by other countries that would not be as discriminating in its use, the U.N. said (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/03drones.html?ref=world).

The death of nine activists aboard a ship trying to pierce the blockade of the the Gaza Strip has once again raised voices protesting Israel’s right to defend itself. Hardly a whimper is heard when North Korea sinks a South Korean vessel, or when one Muslim faction blows up innocents praying at a mosque. But when Israel justifiably tries to determine if contraband and explosives are part of cargo bound for an enemy that has vowed its destruction, the world seems to awaken from its lethargy. Even the United States seems ready to castigate a reliable partner in the war on terror.

And yet, and here’s where the double-standard squared part comes in, read through the remarks made by a U.S. official justifying the drone attacks: “The United States has an inherent right to protect itself and will not refrain from doing so based on someone else’s exceptionally narrow—if not faulty—definition of self-defense.” Perhaps someone in the Obama administration needs to put that statement, substituting Israel for the United States, in front of the president and every other world leader and their respective staffs. No government in a state of war, as Israel is with Hamas, should be expected to sit by idly while its enemy arms itself with weapons that could penetrate major population centers. Hamas already has shown it does not wage “civilized” war. It purposely fires missiles into civilian areas.

I regret the loss of life on the Mavi Marmara. I regret Israel’s military precision failed to secure its objective without the loss of life. But I most regret the absence of a single, civilized standard adhered to by all combatants and the failure of the American government’s understanding that Israel has no room for slight miscalculations, that its existence depends on eternal vigilance. As candidate Barack Obama said during a visit to Sderot on the border of the Gaza Strip, "If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that."