Mission of solidarity offers comfort in crisis

by Gil Hoffman
NJJN Israel Correspondent

JERUSALEM — On Sunday, 21-year-old Jared Shulman was at his home in Hillside watching coverage of the Israel-Lebanon war on television.

On Monday, Shulman was on Al-Hariri Street in Haifa, outside the headquarters of the Al-Ittihad Arabic newspaper that was destroyed the night before by Hizbullah, watching NBC correspondent Martin Fletcher interview Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokeswoman, Miri Eisen, inside the wreckage.

Shulman’s shift from the comfort of his couch in central New Jersey to the frontlines of the conflict in northern Israel was made possible by an emergency five-day solidarity mission to Israel of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey.

“It was unbelievable,” Shulman said after seeing the ruins in Haifa. “For the last three weeks, I have been watching news nonstop and now, there I was, where a bomb had just hit. I think it is important for someone my age to come here and say that I am part of the Jewish people and that this war is part of reality.”

Organized by the federation on short notice, this was no ordinary solidarity mission. The participants knew they were taking a risk coming to Israel at a time of war, and they were not afraid to visit areas where thousands of Israelis had fled due to Hizbullah rocket attacks.

Each mission member signed a release form absolving federation of “liability for death, personal injury, and property damage.” None of the mission participants, who included veterans of many missions, had ever had to sign such a form in the past, because visiting Israel is normally extremely safe.

“Friends my age told me I was crazy for coming,” acknowledged Shulman, who is a Rutgers University biology student. “But we are under attack whether we are in Israel or America. People are getting attacked everywhere for being Jewish. If I could get attacked in America, I might as well be here, fighting on the frontlines with my brothers and sisters in Israel.”

The group bought snacks at Israeli stores to deliver to hospitalized Israeli soldiers and distributed candy to children in bomb shelters. They also learned the complex reality of a war in which many of the Israelis who have been harmed were Arabs who live in northern Israel.

The victims included two Christians killed in the strike on the Al-Ittihad building, a newspaper that editorialized against Israel’s going to war. Its headquarters is located in Haifa’s Wadi Nisnas neighborhood, which takes pride in its record of Jewish-Arab coexistence.

On a visit to the Nahariya Hospital six miles from the Israeli-Lebanese border on Monday, mission participants were surprised to see that there were no Israeli soldiers being treated at the time and that the majority of the patients spoke Arabic. A hospital spokeswoman said 171 soldiers had been treated there since the war began on July 12.

The hospital was relocated into a massive bomb shelter when the war began, which turned out to be a wise move after its ophthalmology department was significantly damaged by a rocket on July 28. While the group was underground in the shelter, air raid sirens went off and six rockets hit Nahariya, but no one was hurt. Mission participants had to enter bomb shelters when rockets went off on two other occasions in Haifa and in the northern community of Ma’alot.

From cows to Katyushas

The group visited the Matei Asher Command Center, which serves residents of 30 northern Israeli communities. The command center was founded at a more peaceful time, when the biggest threat to area residents was from cow thieves, but now it is open 24 hours a day, fielding reports of rocket attacks and combating the looting of homes abandoned by fleeing Israelis.

On a visit to a Netanya hotel, the mission met with elderly residents of the North who had been brought southward for a respite sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The organization has distributed five-day “vacations” to some 4,000 elderly Israelis, an effort funded by American donors, the Israeli government, and hotels.

The seniors in Netanya complained about their bomb shelters’ lack of showers and air conditioning and said they worried that their grandchildren would suffer psychological problems as a result of the war. They said they were touched by the visit from the New Jerseyans.

“I am not surprised that American Jews are raising money, but I am surprised that they are coming here,” an elderly woman named Leah told the group.

The mission included participants from across New Jersey, including nine from Central: federation executive director Stanley Stone, Saul Cooperman of Warren, Gerald and Marilyn Flanzbaum of Warren, Paul Gruber of Hillside, Leonard Posnock of Monroe Township, and Herbert Maltz of Elizabeth.

Gruber quoted his rabbi, Elazar Teitz of the Jewish Educational Center community in Elizabeth, saying that just as rockets do not choose their targets, so it is important to give to federation, which does not differentiate between Conservative, Reform, and Orthodox Jews.

“That’s why it’s special being on this trip,” Gruber said, “because we are of different ilks and we are on one mission together, just like the war brought all Jews together.”

Stone said that the weeks after Tisha B’Av are considered a time for nehama — consolation and comfort — so the federation wanted to do everything possible to give people suffering from rocket attacks a softer landing. He said the people-to-people connection between Israeli and American Jews was critical.

“We wanted to give hizuk [strength] to the people in the North,” Stone said. “As a community that had a presence in Israel during the security situation caused by the Palestinian violence a few years ago, we know that Israelis miss personal contact with [American Jews.] You have to be here in the good times and the bad.”

For the Flanzbaums, who keep a home in Israel, the mission was their first return trip since the war began last month. Last Friday, a Katyusha rocket landed less than a kilometer away from their home in the northern Israeli town of Givat Olga. Marilyn Flanzbaum said she never thought she would go to Haifa on a solidarity mission.

“I think you worry less when you are here and you see and know what is happening than when you wake up with knots in your stomach and turn on CNN,” she said.