Teddy Kollek was there to transform Jerusalem’s unity from dream to reality.Teddy pronounced the name Jerusalem in his own special way – Yereshalayim. I believe that is closest to the way he called the city which was his life.
He certainly knew how to pronounce Jerusalem properly, if he wanted to. However, he did not. Because Teddy wanted to shape Jerusalem in his own way, in his spirit, at his own initiative, in accordance with his dreams, in his love and also his hates. He also had such things in him – quite a few.
He did not like those who walked on the grass, littered the streets of the city and instilled in it a spirit of separation and fanaticism, and who marred its views and mutilated its surroundings.
To put it mildly, he also did not like those who did not love Jerusalem as he loved it, and there were quite a few people like that as well.
Jerusalem was a marginal, slightly neglected and isolated city, far from the hubbub of action at the center of life in this country in 1967. And then, a once-in-a-lifetime, historical drama occurred. Jerusalem returned to being one city.
This exciting moment, which was unique in the history of our people, almost waited for someone who could understand its dimensions and the opportunities created. Teddy Kollek was that man.
At an age when people already begin to think of retirement, after an exceptional career of building up a kibbutz, of fighting to establish a country, of running the Prime Minister’s Office – close to his great teacher, David Ben-Gurion – Teddy Kollek jumped at the historic opportunity created and flew up, spread his wings and transformed Jerusalem into what it has become:
An exciting, diverse, culturally vibrant city with wonderful museums and theaters, the pedestrian mall, education and sports centers, a city which is expanding and building new neighborhoods, one which is becoming a center of national and international life.
In 1949, David Ben-Gurion declared Jerusalem the capital of the State of Israel. Teddy Kollek made it so.
He did not do so through the force of the memories, prayers and longing which were an inseparable part of the ethos of our people, but rather through the force of creation, construction, industriousness, enthusiasm, patience and impatience in the same measure, depending on the situation prevailing in the city.
Teddy Kollek made Jerusalem his, made it the center of his existence and infected personalities around the world, who could not resist his personal charm and total dedication to realizing his goals vis-a -vis the city, with his enthusiastic spirit.
The poet Yehuda Amichai wrote, “It is sad to be the mayor of Jerusalem.” He did not write those lines about Teddy, rather his predecessor. It was not sad for Teddy. He was happy to be mayor, and knew to spread his happiness to those around him. There were mayors before him who built and labored and contributed to the city. There were those who came after him, and there will even be more. There will never be another Teddy Kollek.
Once in a lifetime – in our lifetime – the city of Jerusalem was unified. And, luckily, Teddy was there to transform the unity from dream to reality.
Jerusalem – unlike any other city in the world – is treasured in infinite memories, those from long ago, of kings, leaders, prophets and preachers at the gates, all of which fit into its wonderful, diverse and colorful music.
At the center of this experience, another name has been added, and from now on it will be an inseparable part of all that was and all that will be.
May Teddy’s memory be blessed – and live forever in this city.
(The above eulogy was given at Teddy Kollek’s funeral last week)
From Far Beneath the Israeli Desert, Water Sustains a Fertile Enterprise
KIBBUTZ MASHABBE SADE, Israel – The day’s coppery last light reflects off the backs of sea bass swimming in fish ponds lined in neat rows on this desert farm.
Fish farming in the desert may at first sound like an anomaly, but in Israel over the last decade a scientific hunch has turned into a bustling business.
Scientists here say they realized they were on to something when they found that brackish water drilled from underground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proved an ideal match.
“It was not simple to convince people that growing fish in the desert makes sense,” said Samuel Appelbaum, a professor and fish biologist at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the Sede Boqer campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
“It is important to stop with the reputation that arid land is nonfertile, useless land,” said Professor Appelbaum, who pioneered the concept of desert aquaculture in Israel in the late 1980s.
“We should consider arid land where subsurface water exists as land that has great opportunities, especially in food production because of the low level of competition on the land itself and because it gives opportunities to its inhabitants.”
The next step in this country, where water is scarce and expensive, was to show farmers that they could later use the water in which the fish are raised to irrigate their crops in a system called double usage. The organic waste produced by the cultured fish makes the water especially useful, because it acts as fertilizer for the crops.
Fields watered by brackish water dot Israel’s Negev and Arava Deserts in the south of the country, where they spread out like green blankets against a landscape of sand dunes and rocky outcrops. At Kibbutz Mashabbe Sade in the Negev, the recycled water from the fish ponds is used to irrigate acres of olive and jojoba groves. Elsewhere it is also used for irrigating date palms and alfalfa.
The chain of multiple users for the water is potentially a model that can be copied, especially in arid third world countries where farmers struggle to produce crops, and Israeli scientists have recently been peddling their ideas abroad.
Dry lands cover about 40 percent of the planet, and the people who live on them are often among the poorest in the world. Scientists are working to share the desert aquaculture technology they fine-tuned here with Tanzania, India, Australia and China, among others. (Similar methods of fish farming are also being used in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.)
“Each farm could run itself, which is important in the developing world,” said Alon Tal, a leading Israeli environmental activist who recently organized a conference on desertification, with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and Ben-Gurion University, that brought policy makers and scientists from 30 countries to Israel.
“A whole village could adopt such a system,” Dr. Tal added.
At the conference, Gregoire de Kalbermatten, deputy secretary general of the antidesertification group at the United Nations, said, “We need to learn from the resilience of Israel in developing dry lands.”
Israel, long heralded for its agricultural success in the desert through innovative technologies like drip irrigation, has found ways to use low-quality water and what is considered terrible soil to grow produce like sweet cherry tomatoes, peppers, asparagus and melon, marketing much of it abroad to Europe, especially during winter.
“Most development is still driven by the Zionist ethos that the desert was some mistake of God that we have to correct and make the desert bloom,” said Uriel Safriel, an ecology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The history of fish-farming in nondesert areas here, mostly in the Galilee region near the sea, dates back to the late 1920s, before Israel was established as a state. At the time, the country was extremely poor and meat was considered a luxury. But fish was a cheap food source, so fish farms were set up on several kibbutzim in the Galilee.
The early Jewish farmers were mostly Eastern European, and, Professor Safriel said, “they only knew gefilte fish, so they grew carp.”
Eventually they expanded to other varieties of fish including tilapia, striped bass and mullet, as well as ornamental fish.
The past decade has seen the establishment of about 15 fish farms producing both edible and ornamental fish in the Negev and Arava Deserts.
Fish farming, meanwhile, has become more lucrative worldwide as people seek more fish in their diet for better health, and ocean fisheries increasingly are being depleted.
The practice is not without critics, who say it can harm the environment and the fish. In Israel there was a decision by the government to stop fish farming in the Red Sea near the southern city of Eilat by 2008 because it was deemed damaging to nearby coral reefs.
Some also argue that the industry is not sustainable in the long term because most of the fish that are farmed are carnivorous and must be fed a protein-rich diet of other fish, usually caught in the wild. Another criticism is that large numbers of fish are kept in relatively small areas, leading to a higher risk of disease.
Professor Appelbaum said the controversy surrounding fish farming in ocean areas does not apply to desert aquaculture, which is in an isolated, controlled area, with much less competition for resources.
On Kibbutz Mashabbe Sade, Amit Ziv runs a fish farm, raising about 15,000 fish at a time. Up to 500,000 cubic meters of water from the fish ponds is recycled for irrigation every year.
“It’s a matter of better efficiency,” said Mr. Ziv, who pays about 24 cents a cubic meter for water, a government-subsidized rate. “In an area where there is lack of water, being able to use it twice over is a huge advantage.” Mr. Ziv, 39, said there are benefits to raising fish in the desert: the dryness translates to fewer insects and less mold and disease. He also said the warm air makes it easier to keep the pools temperate.
He remembers the stories his parents, who, along with other founders of the kibbutz in 1948, would tell of having to travel long days to get to the fields of the communal farm. They then tilled closer to central Israel, because at the time the local arid ground was thought to be impossible to farm.
“Now,” he said, pointing toward the desert-grown crops, “the fields are all here.”
Mr. Ziv and his dog turned back toward the fish ponds stretched out under green plastic hothouse canopies. It was time to prepare for a shipment of hatchlings that was to arrive the next day.
Fish farming in the desert may at first sound like an anomaly, but in Israel over the last decade a scientific hunch has turned into a bustling business.
Scientists here say they realized they were on to something when they found that brackish water drilled from underground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proved an ideal match.
“It was not simple to convince people that growing fish in the desert makes sense,” said Samuel Appelbaum, a professor and fish biologist at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the Sede Boqer campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
“It is important to stop with the reputation that arid land is nonfertile, useless land,” said Professor Appelbaum, who pioneered the concept of desert aquaculture in Israel in the late 1980s.
“We should consider arid land where subsurface water exists as land that has great opportunities, especially in food production because of the low level of competition on the land itself and because it gives opportunities to its inhabitants.”
The next step in this country, where water is scarce and expensive, was to show farmers that they could later use the water in which the fish are raised to irrigate their crops in a system called double usage. The organic waste produced by the cultured fish makes the water especially useful, because it acts as fertilizer for the crops.
Fields watered by brackish water dot Israel’s Negev and Arava Deserts in the south of the country, where they spread out like green blankets against a landscape of sand dunes and rocky outcrops. At Kibbutz Mashabbe Sade in the Negev, the recycled water from the fish ponds is used to irrigate acres of olive and jojoba groves. Elsewhere it is also used for irrigating date palms and alfalfa.
The chain of multiple users for the water is potentially a model that can be copied, especially in arid third world countries where farmers struggle to produce crops, and Israeli scientists have recently been peddling their ideas abroad.
Dry lands cover about 40 percent of the planet, and the people who live on them are often among the poorest in the world. Scientists are working to share the desert aquaculture technology they fine-tuned here with Tanzania, India, Australia and China, among others. (Similar methods of fish farming are also being used in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.)
“Each farm could run itself, which is important in the developing world,” said Alon Tal, a leading Israeli environmental activist who recently organized a conference on desertification, with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and Ben-Gurion University, that brought policy makers and scientists from 30 countries to Israel.
“A whole village could adopt such a system,” Dr. Tal added.
At the conference, Gregoire de Kalbermatten, deputy secretary general of the antidesertification group at the United Nations, said, “We need to learn from the resilience of Israel in developing dry lands.”
Israel, long heralded for its agricultural success in the desert through innovative technologies like drip irrigation, has found ways to use low-quality water and what is considered terrible soil to grow produce like sweet cherry tomatoes, peppers, asparagus and melon, marketing much of it abroad to Europe, especially during winter.
“Most development is still driven by the Zionist ethos that the desert was some mistake of God that we have to correct and make the desert bloom,” said Uriel Safriel, an ecology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The history of fish-farming in nondesert areas here, mostly in the Galilee region near the sea, dates back to the late 1920s, before Israel was established as a state. At the time, the country was extremely poor and meat was considered a luxury. But fish was a cheap food source, so fish farms were set up on several kibbutzim in the Galilee.
The early Jewish farmers were mostly Eastern European, and, Professor Safriel said, “they only knew gefilte fish, so they grew carp.”
Eventually they expanded to other varieties of fish including tilapia, striped bass and mullet, as well as ornamental fish.
The past decade has seen the establishment of about 15 fish farms producing both edible and ornamental fish in the Negev and Arava Deserts.
Fish farming, meanwhile, has become more lucrative worldwide as people seek more fish in their diet for better health, and ocean fisheries increasingly are being depleted.
The practice is not without critics, who say it can harm the environment and the fish. In Israel there was a decision by the government to stop fish farming in the Red Sea near the southern city of Eilat by 2008 because it was deemed damaging to nearby coral reefs.
Some also argue that the industry is not sustainable in the long term because most of the fish that are farmed are carnivorous and must be fed a protein-rich diet of other fish, usually caught in the wild. Another criticism is that large numbers of fish are kept in relatively small areas, leading to a higher risk of disease.
Professor Appelbaum said the controversy surrounding fish farming in ocean areas does not apply to desert aquaculture, which is in an isolated, controlled area, with much less competition for resources.
On Kibbutz Mashabbe Sade, Amit Ziv runs a fish farm, raising about 15,000 fish at a time. Up to 500,000 cubic meters of water from the fish ponds is recycled for irrigation every year.
“It’s a matter of better efficiency,” said Mr. Ziv, who pays about 24 cents a cubic meter for water, a government-subsidized rate. “In an area where there is lack of water, being able to use it twice over is a huge advantage.” Mr. Ziv, 39, said there are benefits to raising fish in the desert: the dryness translates to fewer insects and less mold and disease. He also said the warm air makes it easier to keep the pools temperate.
He remembers the stories his parents, who, along with other founders of the kibbutz in 1948, would tell of having to travel long days to get to the fields of the communal farm. They then tilled closer to central Israel, because at the time the local arid ground was thought to be impossible to farm.
“Now,” he said, pointing toward the desert-grown crops, “the fields are all here.”
Mr. Ziv and his dog turned back toward the fish ponds stretched out under green plastic hothouse canopies. It was time to prepare for a shipment of hatchlings that was to arrive the next day.
A wish for Israel in 2007
We still have time to recognize our failings and correct them.Perhaps the most worrying sense of a most worrying year was that of helplessness: that the people in charge didn’t quite know what they were doing and that we were all suffering the consequences.
Love or loathe him, Ariel Sharon was a figure who inspired confidence. As they had when they followed him into battle, people here believed in him.
He changed course more often than other politicians would have been forgiven for doing: alienating the Left by invading Lebanon in 1982, the Right by disengaging from Gaza a generation later and many across the spectrum as a consequence of the welter of corruption allegations that swirled around him.
The policies on which he was running for a third term as prime minister were inherently contradictory: He was going to finalize Israel’s borders. He didn’t think there was anyone on the Palestinian side with whom he could seriously negotiate such a permanent state of affairs. But neither, he said, was he going to act unilaterally.
That didn’t add up, but the public was going to reelect him anyway, evidently persuaded that, when push came to shove, Sharon would know better than his leadership rivals which path to follow.
The men forced by Sharon’s ill health to fill his shoes radiate no such aura of capability. Their stewardship of the summer’s war demonstrated glaring inadequacies. The combination of a prime minister with limited security experience, a defense minister with next-to-none, an ex-air force commander as chief of staff and an absence of the necessary political-military forums in which the most basic principles of action would be debated added up to a recipe for failure.
There are those who have defined the fallout from the war with Hizbullah in soccer terms. Israel turned in a performance worthy of a “yellow card” – a warning that our conduct was falling below acceptable standards. But our inadequacies were not “red card” aberrations – we were not being banished from the field. We still had time to recognize our failings and correct them.
It is to be fervently hoped that the innumerable committees of inquiry, the headline-making ones and the smaller ones that have focused on narrower aspects of our security apparatus, are indeed affecting the rethinks and the reforms so urgently needed.
The resilience of the Israeli public is not in doubt. The wisdom and acumen of its leadership? That’s something else entirely. And the challenges – grappling with the Palestinians, thwarting Iran, alleviating domestic inequalities – are only mounting.
I chanced upon an Israeli cabinet minister on Sunday, 11 or so hours before the end of 2006, and asked him what he would wish of his own government in the coming year. That we should stop frightening our own people, he said, and make sure that it’s our enemies who are worrying about us.
There are worse things to wish for in 2007.
(Reprinted with permission from The Jerusalem Post(
Love or loathe him, Ariel Sharon was a figure who inspired confidence. As they had when they followed him into battle, people here believed in him.
He changed course more often than other politicians would have been forgiven for doing: alienating the Left by invading Lebanon in 1982, the Right by disengaging from Gaza a generation later and many across the spectrum as a consequence of the welter of corruption allegations that swirled around him.
The policies on which he was running for a third term as prime minister were inherently contradictory: He was going to finalize Israel’s borders. He didn’t think there was anyone on the Palestinian side with whom he could seriously negotiate such a permanent state of affairs. But neither, he said, was he going to act unilaterally.
That didn’t add up, but the public was going to reelect him anyway, evidently persuaded that, when push came to shove, Sharon would know better than his leadership rivals which path to follow.
The men forced by Sharon’s ill health to fill his shoes radiate no such aura of capability. Their stewardship of the summer’s war demonstrated glaring inadequacies. The combination of a prime minister with limited security experience, a defense minister with next-to-none, an ex-air force commander as chief of staff and an absence of the necessary political-military forums in which the most basic principles of action would be debated added up to a recipe for failure.
There are those who have defined the fallout from the war with Hizbullah in soccer terms. Israel turned in a performance worthy of a “yellow card” – a warning that our conduct was falling below acceptable standards. But our inadequacies were not “red card” aberrations – we were not being banished from the field. We still had time to recognize our failings and correct them.
It is to be fervently hoped that the innumerable committees of inquiry, the headline-making ones and the smaller ones that have focused on narrower aspects of our security apparatus, are indeed affecting the rethinks and the reforms so urgently needed.
The resilience of the Israeli public is not in doubt. The wisdom and acumen of its leadership? That’s something else entirely. And the challenges – grappling with the Palestinians, thwarting Iran, alleviating domestic inequalities – are only mounting.
I chanced upon an Israeli cabinet minister on Sunday, 11 or so hours before the end of 2006, and asked him what he would wish of his own government in the coming year. That we should stop frightening our own people, he said, and make sure that it’s our enemies who are worrying about us.
There are worse things to wish for in 2007.
(Reprinted with permission from The Jerusalem Post(
US reaps mutual benefit of aid to Israel
Advances common interests of promoting freedom, fighting extremism, and seeking peace.A recent letter to the editor of the Wilmington News Journal (Delaware) questions what America gets for helping Israel. The writer poses this question out of hostility toward Israel or, perhaps, opposition to foreign aid in general.
But even among the majority of Americans who support aid to Israel, many do not appreciate just how close the strategic relationship is between the United States and its democratic ally, and how greatly both countries benefit from that relationship.
The US and Israel cooperate extensively on defense, intelligence and economic matters. By doing so, they advance their common interests of promoting freedom, fighting extremism, and seeking peace and prosperity.
Nearly 90 percent of US aid to Israel is military. Israel’s military not only defends its citizens against enemy attacks, but also serves as a powerful presence in the region to deter terrorism and aggression.
Israel’s current adversaries are Hamas and Hizbullah – terrorist organizations that wish to destroy it. These groups are funded and armed by Syria and Iran, regimes that are vehemently anti-Western and anti-American. Israel’s military strength keeps these extremist forces in check in the eastern Mediterranean, without the need for a single American soldier. This situation contrasts with the Gulf region, where the US has had to send troops because there is no equivalent to Israel to provide stability.
Much of the money spent on Israel directly benefits the US, with 74% of Israel’s military aid being used to buy US goods.
Joint programs with Israel’s high tech military industry have led to advanced weapons systems, including the Arrow ballistic missile defense system. This system is the only one in operation that has consistently succeeded in shooting down missiles at high altitudes and speeds. The development cost has been shared equally by the US.and Israel. The manufacture is a joint venture of American and Israeli aerospace industries.
US troops use several Israeli technologies, including unmanned aerial vehicles, decoys to confuse enemy radar, and reactive armor on Bradley tanks to repel enemy fire. The US and Israel coordinate strategies for combating terrorism and weapons proliferation. They share highly sensitive, often real-time, intelligence.
Israel is arguably the world’s leading expert in collecting intelligence on terrorist groups and in counter-terrorism. It provides intelligence and know-how to the US American satellites provide timely intelligence on missile launches to Israel.
Partly helped by US economic aid, Israel’s economy has been growing and is now essentially self-sufficient. Israel initiated a reduction of US economic assistance in 1998 from $1.2 billion to a complete phase-out in 2008.
Over the same 10 years, military aid has gradually increased from $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion, following a 12-year period when there were no increases. This outlay represents one-tenth of 1% of the US budget.
Israel has many pressing needs beyond its budget for which it does not seek US aid.
Building of transportation infrastructure, as well as absorption of immigrants, for example, is made possible by private contributions and investment grade bonds.
Following the devastation from 4,000 Hizbullah rockets targeting Jewish and Arab civilians this summer, Jewish philanthropies raised $350 million in emergency funding for reconstruction.
Economic cooperation between the US and Israel has increased over the years and now brings important mutual benefits. In 2005 there was $26 billion in trade between the two countries, including $33 million of exports from Delaware.
The US and many states have cooperative agreements with Israel to promote joint research, industrial partnerships and free trade. Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and Motorola have located major facilities in Israel.
The US also uses economic agreements to promote peace. Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) have been established by trilateral agreements between the US, Israel, Egypt and Jordan.
In these zones, products containing both Israeli and Arab content are manufactured and exported tariff-free to the US Another program promotes cooperation between Israeli, Arab and American scientists.
Imagine the benefits to the entire region if the Palestinians and other Arab governments followed the lead of Egypt and Jordan in making peace with Israel. In addition to the many bilateral benefits, US-Israel cooperation provides incentives for regional peace.
(Originally appeared in edited form in the Wilmington News Journal)
But even among the majority of Americans who support aid to Israel, many do not appreciate just how close the strategic relationship is between the United States and its democratic ally, and how greatly both countries benefit from that relationship.
The US and Israel cooperate extensively on defense, intelligence and economic matters. By doing so, they advance their common interests of promoting freedom, fighting extremism, and seeking peace and prosperity.
Nearly 90 percent of US aid to Israel is military. Israel’s military not only defends its citizens against enemy attacks, but also serves as a powerful presence in the region to deter terrorism and aggression.
Israel’s current adversaries are Hamas and Hizbullah – terrorist organizations that wish to destroy it. These groups are funded and armed by Syria and Iran, regimes that are vehemently anti-Western and anti-American. Israel’s military strength keeps these extremist forces in check in the eastern Mediterranean, without the need for a single American soldier. This situation contrasts with the Gulf region, where the US has had to send troops because there is no equivalent to Israel to provide stability.
Much of the money spent on Israel directly benefits the US, with 74% of Israel’s military aid being used to buy US goods.
Joint programs with Israel’s high tech military industry have led to advanced weapons systems, including the Arrow ballistic missile defense system. This system is the only one in operation that has consistently succeeded in shooting down missiles at high altitudes and speeds. The development cost has been shared equally by the US.and Israel. The manufacture is a joint venture of American and Israeli aerospace industries.
US troops use several Israeli technologies, including unmanned aerial vehicles, decoys to confuse enemy radar, and reactive armor on Bradley tanks to repel enemy fire. The US and Israel coordinate strategies for combating terrorism and weapons proliferation. They share highly sensitive, often real-time, intelligence.
Israel is arguably the world’s leading expert in collecting intelligence on terrorist groups and in counter-terrorism. It provides intelligence and know-how to the US American satellites provide timely intelligence on missile launches to Israel.
Partly helped by US economic aid, Israel’s economy has been growing and is now essentially self-sufficient. Israel initiated a reduction of US economic assistance in 1998 from $1.2 billion to a complete phase-out in 2008.
Over the same 10 years, military aid has gradually increased from $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion, following a 12-year period when there were no increases. This outlay represents one-tenth of 1% of the US budget.
Israel has many pressing needs beyond its budget for which it does not seek US aid.
Building of transportation infrastructure, as well as absorption of immigrants, for example, is made possible by private contributions and investment grade bonds.
Following the devastation from 4,000 Hizbullah rockets targeting Jewish and Arab civilians this summer, Jewish philanthropies raised $350 million in emergency funding for reconstruction.
Economic cooperation between the US and Israel has increased over the years and now brings important mutual benefits. In 2005 there was $26 billion in trade between the two countries, including $33 million of exports from Delaware.
The US and many states have cooperative agreements with Israel to promote joint research, industrial partnerships and free trade. Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and Motorola have located major facilities in Israel.
The US also uses economic agreements to promote peace. Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) have been established by trilateral agreements between the US, Israel, Egypt and Jordan.
In these zones, products containing both Israeli and Arab content are manufactured and exported tariff-free to the US Another program promotes cooperation between Israeli, Arab and American scientists.
Imagine the benefits to the entire region if the Palestinians and other Arab governments followed the lead of Egypt and Jordan in making peace with Israel. In addition to the many bilateral benefits, US-Israel cooperation provides incentives for regional peace.
(Originally appeared in edited form in the Wilmington News Journal)
When disease can heal
The patients don’t seem to care if a Russian Jew or an Arab Muslim occupies the neighboring bed.It’s surprising, and a little morbid, that peaceful and thorough coexistence in Israel takes place where death is often near. Most of the patients in the internal medicine ward where I work are elderly and suffer from chronic diseases. Most of them will be discharged, but they know that their rheumatism, heart disease, cancer or diabetes will never truly end.
As the largest Arab city in Israel, Nazareth has only a minimal Jewish population, and I expected all the patients at Nazareth Hospital to be Arab.
But the hospital also serves the nearby Jewish town of Nazareth Ilit, as I learned during an encounter that seemed, at first, rather unfriendly.
An old woman rang the bell by her bed, and when I arrived, I greeted her with a warm “good morning” in Arabic. She stared at me coldly for a moment and pointed to the bathroom.
I was, admittedly, a little miffed. Was my foreign accent so clear in just two words? Did she not like Americans?
But no, this was not my first encounter with anti-Americanism. The woman was a Russian immigrant from Nazareth Ilit and understood less Arabic than I did.
As my first day wore on, I realized that our patients are Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs, Jews, immigrants from the former Soviet Union and even Argentineans. But this diversity is not as astounding as the acceptance and goodwill with which the patients and hospital staff live. The hospital witnesses birth and death, disease and recovery, but the most important healing it sustains is that of an entire nation.
The patients at Nazareth Hospital are not classified by their race or native language; there are not separate rooms for Jews and Arabs. Patients go to the chest clinic if they have heart disease, to the dialysis ward when their kidneys fail, to the psychiatric ward if they are mentally ill. Disease renders other classifications secondary. Even the language barrier does not seem so formidable. If a patient speaks Hebrew or Russian, we can communicate with gestures. If she speaks Arabic, she can have a good chuckle at “the English” person speaking Arabic.
The patients don’t seem to care if a Russian Jew or an Arab Muslim occupies the neighboring bed. When ankles are swollen, hair is gray, joints ache and hearing is all but gone, it doesn’t matter who is on the other side of the curtain. The patients in the internal medicine ward have at least one thing in common: their reliance on an American aide nurse who doesn’t speak a word of Hebrew or Russian and who routinely confuses the Arabic phrase for “I need to go to the bathroom” with “I want to take a bath.”
Take for example Dr. K, an Arab doctor and an important administrator at the hospital several years ago. Once, a young Russian woman, friendless and mentally ill, arrived at the emergency room after a drug overdose. No one knew her name or age, and she spoke only Russian. She died shortly after she was admitted to the hospital.
Dr. K refused to let the woman be given a pauper’s burial in an anonymous grave by city officials; he did not want her to be alone during an event of such cultural significance. He arranged for a complete burial procession and interred her in his family’s traditional burial plot.
Easterners tend to form more collective identities than often-individualistic Westerners. Middle Eastern children are raised with an acute consciousness of the history, characteristics, traditions, victories and grievances of their people. Acts of acceptance and coexistence, then, are performed on the part not only of the individual but also of his people. While death is terrifying, those at Nazareth Hospital know that its prospect can spur us toward acts that make peace with the living.
As the largest Arab city in Israel, Nazareth has only a minimal Jewish population, and I expected all the patients at Nazareth Hospital to be Arab.
But the hospital also serves the nearby Jewish town of Nazareth Ilit, as I learned during an encounter that seemed, at first, rather unfriendly.
An old woman rang the bell by her bed, and when I arrived, I greeted her with a warm “good morning” in Arabic. She stared at me coldly for a moment and pointed to the bathroom.
I was, admittedly, a little miffed. Was my foreign accent so clear in just two words? Did she not like Americans?
But no, this was not my first encounter with anti-Americanism. The woman was a Russian immigrant from Nazareth Ilit and understood less Arabic than I did.
As my first day wore on, I realized that our patients are Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs, Jews, immigrants from the former Soviet Union and even Argentineans. But this diversity is not as astounding as the acceptance and goodwill with which the patients and hospital staff live. The hospital witnesses birth and death, disease and recovery, but the most important healing it sustains is that of an entire nation.
The patients at Nazareth Hospital are not classified by their race or native language; there are not separate rooms for Jews and Arabs. Patients go to the chest clinic if they have heart disease, to the dialysis ward when their kidneys fail, to the psychiatric ward if they are mentally ill. Disease renders other classifications secondary. Even the language barrier does not seem so formidable. If a patient speaks Hebrew or Russian, we can communicate with gestures. If she speaks Arabic, she can have a good chuckle at “the English” person speaking Arabic.
The patients don’t seem to care if a Russian Jew or an Arab Muslim occupies the neighboring bed. When ankles are swollen, hair is gray, joints ache and hearing is all but gone, it doesn’t matter who is on the other side of the curtain. The patients in the internal medicine ward have at least one thing in common: their reliance on an American aide nurse who doesn’t speak a word of Hebrew or Russian and who routinely confuses the Arabic phrase for “I need to go to the bathroom” with “I want to take a bath.”
Take for example Dr. K, an Arab doctor and an important administrator at the hospital several years ago. Once, a young Russian woman, friendless and mentally ill, arrived at the emergency room after a drug overdose. No one knew her name or age, and she spoke only Russian. She died shortly after she was admitted to the hospital.
Dr. K refused to let the woman be given a pauper’s burial in an anonymous grave by city officials; he did not want her to be alone during an event of such cultural significance. He arranged for a complete burial procession and interred her in his family’s traditional burial plot.
Easterners tend to form more collective identities than often-individualistic Westerners. Middle Eastern children are raised with an acute consciousness of the history, characteristics, traditions, victories and grievances of their people. Acts of acceptance and coexistence, then, are performed on the part not only of the individual but also of his people. While death is terrifying, those at Nazareth Hospital know that its prospect can spur us toward acts that make peace with the living.