June 5/2015

Telling the Truth about Israel

This week, I was uplifted by special events, featuring two important Israeli organizations telling to the truth about Israel, as complex and imperfect as it may be.

On Wednesday, at the Green Valley Country Club a team of Philadelphia teens played a special exhibition match with teens from the Israel Tennis Association (ITC) (ww.israeltenniscenters.org).  The ITC is a social service organization that brings together thousands of Israeli Jews, Arabs, Bedouins and Druze to promote understanding, cooperation and friendship on and off the court. ITC’s goal is to develop future generations of leadership in Israel by providing children with life skills through tennis. In addition to playing tennis, five of ITC’s young adults, from across Israel, told their inspiring stories about life in Israel.

The following night audiences at two synagogues in Greater Philadelphia were witnesses to powerful and moving testimonies given by a self-declared religious Zionist “settler” and a Palestinian peace activist.  Ali Abu Awwad & Rav Hanan Schlesinger decided to move past each side’s preconceptions of each other and work together to find a pathway to peace. The presentation of those two competing narratives didn’t attempt to hide the differences, but rather jointly search for common ground, realizing this is the only way to move forward.

Their tour stop here in Philadelphia was under the auspices of Friends of Roots (www.friendsofroots.net)    (Judur/Shorashim) a grass-roots organization centered in Gush Etzion drawing together self-declared religious Zionist “settlers” and Palestinians to find pathways to peace. For example, Roots staff have met both with a 10-12 grade in an Arab school East Jerusalem and students at Yeshivat Mekor Chayim – from the very class from which two of the students who were kidnapped and murdered last June came. The questions were hard, the emotions real and the future nurtured.

It is moments such as these, that the hard questions, the challenges tackled and the true emotions of the State of Israel are revealed.

Sadly, these voices are not listened to around the global. Along with the disheartening calls from to divest from Israel, there appears to be a special standard created for Israel – there is one for a Democracy, another for a dictatorship and another for Israel. In the midst of this struggle, I drew great encouragement from those displays of the truth.

Shabbat Shalom,

  

Yaron Sideman
Consul General Of Israel,
Mid-Atlantic Region