Can the coronavirus help repair ties between Israel's Jews and Arabs?
Every crisis, the old adage goes, carries within it the seeds of opportunity.
By JPOST EDITORIALTwo paramedics, a Jew wearing a prayer shawl and a Muslim using a prayer mat, pray beside each other near a Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulance in Beersheba, southern Israel, March 24, 2020(photo credit: MOHAMD ALNBARE/MDA SPOKESPERSON)
The video clip broadcast last week on Channel 13 was touching.Two nurses in white protective suits worn by those who care for coronavirus patients were caught on video carefully placing tefillin on the arm of a quarantined patient in a Tel Aviv hospital.What made a touching image downright soul-stirring was that the two male nurses were Israeli Arabs. “B’ezrat Hashem [with God’s help],” replied Khalil Ghazawi, one of the nurses, when told by the interviewer it looks like he knows his way around tefillin pretty well.A few days later, another heartwarming image emerged, this time of an Arab doctor, Abded Zahalka, also dressed in the space-suit-like protective gear, cradling a tallit-draped Torah scroll to be taken to worshipers at Ma’aynei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak for their daily prayers. This photo competed for space in the media with pictures of soldiers in uniform and masks distributing food packages to residents of the Arab villages Kafr Yasif and Deir el-Asad.Every crisis, the old adage goes, carries within it the seeds of opportunity. And one of the biggest opportunities coronavirus has presented Israeli society is the chance to repair relations between the country’s Jewish and Arab populations, so badly strained over the last two years by the Nation-State Law and divisive rhetoric by Jewish and Arab politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Nobody has any illusions that this plague will wipe out the deep ideological differences that exists between the country’s Jews and Arabs. But what it can do is nurture sympathy and empathy – two ingredients critical in getting disparate communities to view one another positively.Sympathy is having compassion for the plight of another and showing concern, evident in the IDF distribution of those food packages. Empathy is being able to put yourself in another’s shoes, identify their predicament and, where possible, try to alleviate it, something Ghazawi did. Both emotions are essential in seeing the other not as a terrifying “Other,” but as someone with whom there is much humanity in common.Finding those commonalities has always been a huge challenge in building bridges between Israeli Jews and Arabs. It has always been much easier highlighting the differences.But then along comes the coronavirus, and suddenly both Jews and Arabs are fighting the same enemy. As Netanyahu said a month ago when announcing more stringent measures to combat the virus, coronavirus does not differentiate between those bareheaded, those with kippot and those wearing keffiyehs.And people in each of those categories are working tirelessly to protect the entire nation from the plague. Arab and Jewish doctors and nurses – religious and secular – are working at great risk to save Jewish and Arab patients, secular and religious.One picture from this crisis that will endure long after the coronavirus is gone is that of two Arab and Jewish paramedics praying outside their Magen David Adom ambulance, the Jew in a tallit praying toward Jerusalem and the Arab kneeling on a prayer rug facing Mecca.Life, of course, is much more complicated than a single image of harmony captured in a photograph, and real, deep problems and misunderstandings exist. But the virus – which has created a degree of goodwill between the communities as each appreciates what the other is doing for it – provides a good opportunity upon which to build.The agreement reached on Monday between Likud and Blue and White for the establishment of an emergency unity government calls in its first paragraph for the establishment – alongside a coronavirus cabinet – of a “reconciliation cabinet to work toward mending the rifts in Israeli society.”This cabinet should be given high priority and not relegated to one well-photographed meeting. The government should take real action immediately to send a message to the country’s Arab minority that its concerns are being taken seriously and will be addressed. And the Arab community – probably through local council heads rather than Joint List MKs who, as part of the opposition, will reflexively downplay or denigrate anything the government proposes – should encourage and take an active part in this undertaking.Both sides separately, and the country as a whole, can only benefit from a genuine process of reconciliation.
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