JEWISH WORLD

By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI D uring the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamist militia, I was sitting in a restaurant in the city of Haifa when the siren warning of an incoming rocket interrupted my meal. Arab and Jewish diners found shelter in the narrow kitchen, crowd- ing against one another in awkward silence. “Coexistence,” one woman finally said, with palpable irony. Today, Israel faces its first nation- al threat that isn’t security related, our first civil emergency that has nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the coronavirus, Israel’s Arab and Jewish citizens are facing a crisis that is finally bringing us together. Israeli media regularly feature stories of Arab-Jewish intimacy in the quarantine wards. Images of coexistence have gone viral — like the photograph of an Arab doctor bringing a Torah scroll into an iso- lation ward. It is hardly coincidental that the trigger for this unprecedent- ed focus on Arabs, who form 20 percent of the population, as exem- plary citizens is an epidemic. Our nationalized health-care sys- tem is one of the few areas of Israeli society that is fully integrated. Nearly a fifth of Israel’s doctors, a quarter of its nurses, and almost half its pharmacists are Arabs. Arab doctors head hospital departments and emergency rooms; one heads a hospital in the Galilee. Jews and Arabs encounter one another most intimately in maternity and cancer wards. I srael’s ability to create a shared identity for its Arab and Jewish citizens is complicated by its relent- less security challenges. For Jews, military service is central to their national identity, while Arabs are exempt from the draft, deprived of the unifying experience of Israel- iness. For Arabs, a history of govern- ment land confiscation and sys- temic budgetary discrimination, as well as the seemingly endless occupation of the Palestinians, has By JONATHAN TOBIN O utside of Israel, it was the alternative ceremony that got the most coverage. The commemoration was Yom Hazi- karon — the country’s Memorial Day that occurs the day before cel- ebrating the Jewish state’s Inde- pendence Day. It began with a one-minute siren that sounded throughout the coun- try and continued at the Western Wall, where President Reuven Rivlin and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi led a small ceremony that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, had no audi- ence. Most Israelis, all too many of whom have lost a loved one or friend who was killed during the country’s wars or as a result of ter- rorism, dealt with the pain of the day of remembrance in their own way, as they were not able to go to cemeteries, closed this year because of the ongoing lockdown. But outside of Israel, most of the attention was neither on official efforts to remember the fallen nor the private grief of the families. Instead, much of the press was reporting about the efforts of peace activists to essentially hijack the nation’s day of mourning and turn it into a day devoted to promoting coexistence and mutual recognition of the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians. T his “Joint Memorial Day” event, which was started in 2006 by Israeli parents of fallen sol- diers, is organized by two groups with both Israeli and Palestinian members: Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle Families Forum. But this year, it received an out- pouring of support from American Jewish groups, including the Re- form movement’s Union of Reform Judaism, J Street, the New Israel Fund, Peace Now, as well as the openly anti-Zionist IfNotNow and Churches for Middle East Peace, an interfaith Christian group that is also deeply hostile to the Jewish state. Indeed, it is likely that this for- eign support helped boost the Internet audience for the ceremony this year — increasing from a reported 20,000 tuning in to the 170,000 who supposedly watched it online via Facebook. That allowed organizers to claim to The New York Times that it had been “the biggest joint Israeli-Palestinian event in history.” According to the organizers, the continued on page 28 Not The Same Victims Do not equate Palestinians with Israelis CANDLE LIGHTING continued on page 23 115 Middle Neck Rd. Great Neck, NY 11021 516-594-4000 The award-winning independent Jewish newspaper of Long Island Publisher & editor-in-chief Jerome Wm. Lippman Assistant Editor Jeff Helmreich Features Editor Barbara Weinblatt Travel Editor Tania Grossinger Editorial Assistant Megan Batt Contributors Douglas M. Bloomfield, Shira Dicker, Lawrence J. Epstein, Marcelle Sussman Fischler, Ezra Goldstein, William B. Helmreich, Sandy Portnoy, Joseph R. 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Local Offices: 1441 President Street Brooklyn, N.Y. 11213 311 W. 37th Street New York, N.Y. 10018 Israel’s Arab Moment COVID-19 could bring all Israelis together Palestinian “moderate” leader Mahmoud Abbas has said that he welcomes “every drop of blood spilled” by terrorists, which is a particularly anti-Israel sentiment. PERSPECTIVE The convergence of the virus with Israel’s political convulsions has created an opportunity for a truly Israeli civic space shared by Arabs and Jews. Young Arab-Israelis at a Haifa bar pre-quarantine. Thousands of them volunteer for national service, defying the Arab political leadership. We should be wary of efforts to establish a false analogy between those who died to save Jewish lives and those whose purpose was to spill Jewish blood. ANALYSIS 4 JEWISH WORLD • MAY 8-14, 2020 Friday, May 8 Candles 7:42 pm Shabbat ends 8:51 pm Friday, May 15 Candles 7:49 pm Shabbat ends 8:58 pm