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InteGRATion into GRATeFULLness
Fine-tuning to my Presence

2007_07_09-Israel&Ismael today and 30 years-ago

Before joining the global effort of "Bringing Heaven to Earth", focused right now on July 17, 2007,
I feel a need to scatter some new and old info about the present "reality", which I call "Israel&Ismael"
thus also pointing to the archive of my "Israel&Ismael work", on which I worked between 2002&2003

I ask forgiveness from my Arab-Christian friends, like Nimr Ismair, a leader of the Bir'am-people
who does not want the biblical metaphor "Ismael" being applied to the Christian Arabs.
Still for me the metaphor for the common "destiny", better "lesson", of Israel&Ismael is crucial.

Two symbols which appeared in the newspapers in 1969 two years after the 1967-war, which the Israelis want to remember as the Six-Day-War.... and 4 years before the 1973-war, and before and before more and more wars, until there was and still is no difference between war and non-war.

(1)

A video-clip
about the uprooting of olive-trees around the village of Ertas near Bethlehem,
sent to me by my friend Na'ama Yaari from the Galilee - with the remark:
"It's impossible not to cry when you see this:"
In October 2006 the writer Debora Sylverstien [see also in the last "finetuning"] told me,
she would again join the group of Jews who every year help Arab villagers like those of Ertas
with the olive harvest, - as a sign of solidarity.
Though I have rarely taken part in acts of demonstrations or solidarity since 1974,
when it dawned on me, what has to be done
in order to turn a negative dependency into a positive dependency, a partnership,
based on the three conditions of common interest, mutual trust and equality of self-esteem,
I felt, I wanted to support my friend and for her sake I traveled to the border west of Nablous,
to take part in the olive harvest of villagers near Clil.

Picking olives from the trees

Rachel with Nawaal and Nimr picking up olives from the ground

(2)
The strange coincidence of meeting a man from the Bir'am-people, Nazih Zahaara,
while hitchhiking with him on July 5, 2007, from Lehavim to Tel-Shoqet in the South,
I, coming from my children in Shoham - on my way to Arad,
he, coming from Gush-Halav (in Arabic "Jish") in the Galilee,
- on his way to build a Mikveh in Shema, a Jewish settlement in Palestine.

The coincidence was, that half an hour earlier
- in the train from Ben-Gurion Airport to the new train-station "Lahavim" , some 30 km north of Beersheva.
I had read a letter from Naftali Raz, August 14, 1976 concerning a specific project within my Bir'am work.
In the letter Naftali Raz, my main partner on the Jewish side at that time,
informed me , what the newspaper said about Itzhak Rabin's decision to forbid the summer-camp,
which we had organized in the ruins of Bir'am
for the youth of Bir'am and the Jewish villages, which used the land of the Bir'am people.

I promised to send Nazih the link to my site concerning the Bir'am model,
but the letter returned - the e-mail address he gave me must have been wrong.

A postcard from Alice Zohar, Kibbuz Bar'am, our main partner in the three Jewish villages, who profit from the lands of the Bir'am people

My son Immanuel in 1972 near Bir'am, we was then nine years old just like Nazih Zahaara, whom I now met. Below: Working on the Bir'am model, also meant to identify sources of income for the returnees-to-be, since they could not recapture the lands of agricultural values. I was suggested to examine what was called "improved pasture" with Baruch Ron of Yokneam, and my family went with me.

Before 1974 I took part in many demonstrations, IN this case my family, which lived in the center of the country, at Hod-Hasharon, traveled all the way north to take part in a demonstration, organized by both the Right and the Left in favor of the "Return of the Uprooted people of Bir'am and Iqrit". The fact, that there was a consensus between the Right of the Left, let me use this issue and make it a model of how to create common interest, mutual trust and equality in self-respect. It was only after many "failures", including the final one with the Bedouin in the Zealots' Valley in 2004-2005, that I finally understood, what it will take ~~~~~~~~~ for "Equality in Self-Respect" to grow among people ~~~~~

(3)
A courageous documentary in the Israeli TV Channel 1, yesterday, July 8,2007
in the series "A true story"
about the diaries of Nachmias, the man who "acquired" lands from Arab effendis,
to create a basis for the envisioned Jewish homeland
and then was pained more and more,
when he saw, how after 1938 even in Tiberias, where he lived,
the chances of Jewish&Arab coexistence, were destroyed by atrocities
not only of fanatic individuals, but by "actions" of the Haganah.

January 19, 1968, Moshe Dayan - a promising statement , but....my children still grew up to become soldiers,
once - 1985 - they were in the army all at the same time, Immanuel in the air, Ronnit on land, Micha on the sea

My little daughter Ronnit's illustration to the famous "Peace-Song" of 1968, created and sung by the Army-Band !!!!.

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