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