JPost/Opinion..
03 August '20..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israelis-have-more-in-common-than-not-with-one-another-opinion-637234
On Thursday evening, the night after Tisha Be’av, a group of about 20 reservists gathered in an apartment rented for one night in a moshav in the Beit Shemesh area to celebrate the upcoming weddings of two of their comrades.
This tight-knit group served together for three years in an elite army unit and fought together in one of the campaigns in Gaza. They include right-wingers and those on the Left, religious and secular, the wealthy and the struggling, Jews and non-Jews. They met at the same time a protest was taking place near the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem.
They met after the media throughout Tisha Be’av was full of comments about how close Israel is to repeating the mistakes of the past and letting baseless hatred tear the country apart.
They met as commentators were bewailing the seemingly irreparable split in the country and talking about the possibility of political violence, if not civil war.
They met as Facebook, Twitter, the radio, television and newspapers were describing – and creating – an atmosphere of deep enmity and hatred everywhere.
And they felt none of it.
Some of those gathered agreed with the protests; some did not. Some abhor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; some do not. Some were suffering financially from the coronavirus; others had better luck. But there was no hatred in that group.
They all came from different places; they all had a different ideal of a perfect Israel. But there was no hatred. On the contrary, there was genuine respect and affection one for the other because of the path they traveled together. They told war stories, they joked, they drank, they caught up with each other.
They put into practice what Abraham Lincoln preached in his first inaugural address in 1861: “We are not enemies, but friends… Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
That, too, is Israel in the summer of 2020.
