wfn.org | On a holy day for seeking forgiveness, Israelis activists pray for

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Note #6211 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

an end to the violence
9-October-2000
00349

Soul-searching

On a holy day for seeking forgiveness, Israelis activists pray for an end to
the violence

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Veronica Cohen was looking forward to Yom Kippur, the
holiest day of the Jewish Year, when devout Jews collectively seek atonement
for sin.

	But Cohen sat in her modern Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem, carefully
watching her children and a friend's children, praying quietly that none of
them will be mobilized by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

	"God forbid that one of us be mourning a child in a year's time," she said. 

	Cohen's son, 25, has already served his stint in the Israeli army, but he
will be deployed for military service if the past 10 days of rioting turn
into the full-blown war that nearly everyone dreads. Already 70 Palestinians
and two Israeli soldiers are dead, and thousands of Palestinians and a few
dozen IDF soldiers have been wounded.

	"It looks terrible right now," Cohen said, who has long been engaged in
dialogue with Palestinians. "It looks like we've been dragged into a
situation where the things we've hoped for are now put off for decades, for
years. We've allowed ourselves to spiral into a near-war situation. It's
terrible ... not the end of a dream, but a postponement.

	"Unless a miracle happens.  It is good to believe in miracles."

	It seems that nothing short of a miracle will be required to quell the
violence that has drawn Palestinians and Israelis into a kind of 
choreographed bloodletting that is reminiscent of the "bad old days" when
terrorists' bombs went off, when civilians died, when the nation lived
always at the brink of war.

	The crisis has only deepened over a weekend meant for repentance and
restoration.

	Despite Israeli peace activists who have been carrying signs with slogans
such as "Stop shooting!", "Down with the occupation", "Get out of the
Territories" and "Killing Palestinians is not the way to peace," and despite
the efforts of the "Women in Black," Israeli women who stand silently to
protest the killing) the violence goes on.

	The protesters speak of "revulsion" of ring-wing politician Ariel Sharon --
who ignited the conflict by a making a provocative visit to the Temple
Mount/Haram a-Sharif -- and of President Ehud Barak, who they say is
behaving like a war hero instead of a statesman.

	But as of Oct. 8, the largest Israeli peace organization, Peace Now, was
still quiet, some members arguing that they do not want to "undermine" Barak
because the political alternatives -- Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, a
militant former prime minister -- are much worse.

	On Sunday morning, tanks, heavy artillery and helicopters were surrounding
Palestinians cities in Gaza, where Israeli bulldozers have demolished some
streets to make way for a military base near Netzarim. Just as Palestinians
sacked the tomb of the patriarch Joseph when the IDF pulled out of Nablus,
Israeli mobs tore apart a mosque.

	News that only gets worse wears people down.

	"This one-two-punch of what happened at Joseph's Tomb and the conflict on
the Lebanon border (where three IDF soldier were taken hostage) has really
made Israelis feel under threat," said Gila Svirsky, an Isreali peace
activist who lives in Jerusalem and who was the inter-faith delegate this
summer to the Presbyterian Womens' Gathering here.

	"That has really entrenched those who are against peace inside Israel.
They're saying, ‘How can you expect us to give the Palestinians authority
over holy sites in Jerusalem?'" Svirsky noted that control of holy sites is
where the peace process has bogged down: Who will control the sacred areas
in Old Jerusalem that both Jews and Palestinians revere, the Temple Mount
and the Harm a-Sharif mosque?

	"You say ‘burned out' in English. In Hebrew, we say ‘eroded.' We get
eroded. And people (are) eroded by the ongoing violence, by the conflict,
the worry, the fear," Svirsky said. "People are afraid terrorism will strike
again inside Israel. Israelis are afraid to get on buses, to be in public
locations. They're afraid to go anywhere where people congregate.

	"My guess is, they're afraid to go to synagogue tomorrow night," she added,
sounding tired. "I know Palestinians have suffered a thousand times more. I
am aware of that. I am aware of the fact that Israel faces no existential
threat as a political state. We're not about to be blown off the map.  But
despite all this: there's a level of fear that gets to you.

	"That's the result of terrorism."

	That is why Rabbi Arik Acherman, an American Jew who lives in Israel, has
modified a traditional Yom Kippur prayer that he hopes will be used in some
synagogues this weekend — though he's not sure how many. It begins with
traditional confessional language, but adds a line to each ancient verse
that is painfully relevant to Israel's contemporary trauma.

	It asks for forgiveness "for the sin which we have sinned against You by
hardening our hearts"; "for the grinding poverty and despair of Palestinians
and Israeli Arabs"; "for allowing the Israeli government to continue
expropriating land, demolishing homes, building roads, uprooting trees and
denying water in our name, even while publically speaking words of peace";
for "the sin which we have sinned against you by causeless hatred" (and)
"demonizing the ‘other'"; and for "the sin which we have sinned against You
by the abuse of power (including) "excessive lethal force to kill and maim";
for "the sin ... of narrow-mindedness"; and for "feeling only our own pain,
closing our minds to the agony of bereaved Arab mothers and fathers."

	Acherman admits that it is a prayer that not every one in the synagogue
with be able to pray genuinely or to approve with the word "amen."

	"But part of our job right now is to help people to hear," he said. "Right
now we're in a situation where no one is listening to the other very well.
And there's no question in my mind that some rabbis have questions about how
to get their people to hear. And some will choose not to read it because of
the controversy it will create."

	Acherman, the director of a group called Rabbis for Human Rights, said it
was Cohen who came up with the idea of the prayer. She also asked that, when
the kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead) is recited, both Israeli and
Palestinian victims be included.

	Cohen said she hopes the prayer will be used in her own synagogue -- but
she's not counting on it.

	As for Svirsky, she has been soul-searching all week, as Jewish tradition
demands during the 10 days between Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Although she is not a practicing Jew, she
appreciates the irony that the violence is reaching its peak on Yom Kippur.

	"Never before in my 54 years have I experienced such a profound sense of
soul-searching as now," she said shortly after watching the press conference
in which Barak issued an ultimatum to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to
end the violence on the West Bank and Gaza Strip within 48 hours.
"Soul-searching about what we are as a nation, about what I believe as a
Jewish daughter, and as Israeli citizen."

	Svirsky read Barak's ultimatum as an attempt to buy time rather than
capitulating to right-wing demands to use even more force.

	Presbyterian mission worker Layne Hawley, who lives on the Mount of Olives
overlooking Jerusalem, said the force the IDF has used against largely
unarmed Palestinians is appalling. She told the Presbyterian News Service
that stone-throwing protesters were greeted with live ammunition.

	"The kind of force that is being used ... in front of my house is
uncalled-for," she said, "even if they are shooting over their heads."

	Hawley said some internationals, Hawley included and co-workers at a
Lutheran hospital, observed and filmed the violence.

	But tonight, devout activists are in synagogue, not in the streets,
including Cohen, who said she would be praying that her 2-year-old grandson
will never be drafted into the army.
	
Her Yom Kippur prayer is simple: "That we should be spared a full-blown war.
That somehow a miracle will be granted and we will have an additional chance
to make peace."

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