One among many moving sites at the Holocaust Museum was the Garden of the Righteous, honoring (mostly) individuals who took the risk of helping Jews escape the Nazis or who opposed Nazi policies. On the same day that we visited the Holocaust Museum, our delegation met a person in Israel who reminds us of those individual resisters who helped the Jews, only she is an Israeli resisting the policies of her government towards Palestinians.
Nomika Zion lives in Sderot, the nearest town to the Gaza Strip. The border with Gaza has been closed since the second intifada began in 2000. Prior to the intifadas and the closing Nomika said that there was plenty of interchange between Gazans and the people of Severot. As tensions escalated, Sderot became a target for random rocket fire from Hamas militants in Gaza. This attractive little town would remind you of Gilroy or Bakersfield, CA, until you look more carefully and notice that every bus stop has a concrete shelter that people can easily get to if the sirens go off. Each house has had to be equipped with a reinforced "safe room" . The political tensions that have resulted in these attacks have made the people of Sderot more right wing in their politics and more violent in their attitudes towards Palestinians.
In the midst of these tensions and the mental stress they create, Nomika tried to sustain human to human connections with Palestinians in Gaza, and spoke out against the war and the blockade against Gaza. Her article gained world wide attention because of her unique situation as a resident of Sderot. Nomika is a kibbutz founder and a person deeply committed to living in community. A price she has had to pay for her outspoken voice has been a social isolation in her own community.
Unlike Nazi Germany, no one threatens to kill or imprison Nomika for her opinions or actions. The situation of those who helped the Jews in Nazi Germany was much more dangerous. The greatest danger she faces is continuing to live Sderot.
We were reminded of this when Nomika was having second thoughts about whether we should come down this week to visit her. The news reports about whether the military is planning a strike against Iraqi nuclear facilities has everyone in Sderot wondering if they will be a target again, and last week the sirens went off and a small number of rockets were fired. On the day we visited Nomika, she took us to a hillside observation point where we could look across a no-man's land into the northern Gaza Strip. Gaza is so narrow we could see the Mediterranean in the distance. From a few miles away, it looked like any small population center in Ohio. Ten miles from our viewpoint, earlier that afternoon, we heard that Israeli helicopters had successfully targeted and killed two Palestinians inside Gaza. The reasons why are not clear to us. We took our photographs and left.
Nomika stays. She says that she can live with the social isolation of her public stands, but that she has take them because she cannot live with the fear that her town feels for the rest of her life. The only way she knows to end that fear is resisting.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment