A few days ago, I was talking to a Jewish Israeli who told me that he wanted to move to the United States. “Why?” I asked him. He told me that Arabs were ruining the country. We were standing outside of an elementary school. The person I was speaking with was in eighth grade.
My past ten days in Israel has been a whirlwind experience. We’ve seen so much and spoken with so many people that it’s difficult to process everything. Israel is a country filled with hatred, anger, and fear. But what I’ve seen in the past week and a half is that it’s also a country filled with hope. We met with the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development, NISPED, an organization that promotes interfaith communication between Jews and Muslims. We visited a Bedouin village that remains unrecognized by the Israeli government; that means that they receive no government support, and thus they have no paved roads and a poor water supply. NISPED works to help the many unemployed women in these communities to get jobs as weavers, photographers, and teachers. We met with Rabbi Uri Regev, a lawyer and reformed rabbi who founded the organization Hiddush-for religious freedom and equality, which, among other things, aims to instill the values of the Israeli Declaration of Independence across the country. Israel is a Jewish state, but in its Declaration of Independence, it grants equal rights to all citizens, regardless of their religion. Unfortunately, many citizens today are denied these rights. We spoke with Arab women who strive for education and employment of women in their communities. We spoke with the President of IsraelExperts, Joe Pevlov, who educated us about the complicated history of Israel’s borders. I stayed with a Greek Orthodox Christian family, who welcomed me into their home as if I was one of their own family members. Though Israel has faced countless issues since its inception as a Jewish state, and continues to face many more today, what I saw showed me that there should always be reason for optimism.
I initially wasn’t sure how to respond to the eighth grader’s statement. He said it so casually, as if this was a basic fact of life. This was a student from Ramla, which has a significant Arab population and was, from what I had been told, one of the more diverse and tolerant cities in Israel. If this student thought this way, what might the rest of Jewish Israeli students be thinking? I paused and asked him what he thought of the situation in Beit Shemesh, where members of the Haredim, and ultra-Orthodox sect of Judaism, had thrown rocks at an Orthodox Jewish girl because she was not, in their eyes, dressed modestly enough. I told him that there are probably many people around the world who have never met a Jewish person and might assume that all Jews behave that way, because that’s what they saw on the news.
“But most Jews would never do that,” he said.
“I know,” I replied. “And most Arabs are not like you see on the news either.”
Our conversation couldn’t have lasted for more than five minutes, and I don’t know if the student I spoke with has thought about it since. But I’m still thinking about it, over a week since my return from Israel. He nodded as we talked, and I hope that he was coming to a realization that all of us on Israel Leadership Mission came to over our ten days in Israel. Israel is a tiny country, but it has more complicated issues. If people completely dismiss other groups of people simply because they stereotype them based on what they see or read in the news, then Israel will always be a country torn in multiple directions. But we saw in Israel some of the thousands of people working to make Israel a more harmonious country, one that lives up to the diversity outlined in its Declaration of Independence. I don’t know what that eighth grader thinks now, or if our little conversation changed his thinking at all. But if he left that day even a little more enlightened that alone would be enough for me to consider my entire Israel Leadership Mission trip to be a complete success.
-Micah Margolies