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April 12, 2002
Between Zionism and safety
British Columbia Jews reflect and worry about family and friends
in Israel.
KYLE BERGER REPORTER AND BAILA LAZARUS EDITOR
Linda Gavsie and her husband, Ed, have had many sleepless nights
since last August. Ever since they agreed to send their son Orin
to Israel, the Gavsies have prayed for his safety and fought with
their own conscience over whether sending him to a potential war
zone was the right decision.
Orin, a recent high school graduate, is in Israel for nine months
on the United Synagogue Youth’s Nativ program.
“To know that you consciously sent your child to what is such
a flammable situation and put them where a bomb could land on their
head is such a big responsibility for any parent,” Linda Gavsie
said.
But, she explained, it was Orin’s decision to attend the program
that has the students divide their time between studies at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and a kibbutz located just seven kilometres
from Gaza City.
“He chose the program but I paid for it and if I thought it
wasn’t the best thing in the world for him then I wouldn’t
have given him the right to make that choice,” she said.
Linda and Ed decided to make a trip to Israel themselves this past
December, the first time in the Holy Land for either of them. They
wanted to see for themselves what life in Israel was like and determine
whether or not they should allow their son to remain until the program
was scheduled to end May 20.
“Only after being there did I realize the value of the program,
the value of the experience and the value of the historical significance
and connectedness to us as a people and we chose to leave him there,”
said Linda Gavsie.
However, the Gavsies continued to worry about the safety of their
son as the ongoing violence was highlighted in February when two
stray missiles landed on the Nativ kibbutz’s proper-ty, though
the missiles never exploded.
As well, just a few days after the Israeli army moved into the Palestinian-controlled
territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the leaders of Nativ
made the decision for the Gavsies by announcing that all of the
participants would return home a month early.
“I’m so much more at ease because I know the organization
cares,” said Gavsie. “I know that they aren’t afraid
to make an unpopular decision and that means my kid is well cared
for.”
Unfortunately, Gavsie said, her son, and the rest of the group working
at Kibbutz Saad disagree with the decision that will force them
to leave their friends in Israel behind.
“They are unhappy to be coming home because they are contributing,”
she said. “Orin’s kibbutz father is a paratrooper and
was called up so [Orin] took over the chores of the father for his
family. He takes the kids to the park, he helps with the dishes
and he goes for dinner every night so that they are not alone.
“The kids have been told by their leaders that this is not
a symbolic abandonment of Israel,” she continued. “It
is a symbol of the reality of war on the doorstep and these kids
are not equipped to handle war.”
Gavsie said she is confident that her son has benefited greatly
by attending the program in Israel, both from an educational and
experiential standpoint. However, she won’t feel 100 per cent
comfortable with the decision to send him until the day he arrives
home safely.
“When he makes it home safely then I’ll say it was the
finest education he could have had and the greatest gift I could
have given him.”
Shifting attitudes
Local artist Anat Basanta spent most of her life in Tel-Aviv. She
has been able to return to Israel often and, most recently, visited
in December.
“People in Tel-Aviv basically continued with their life routine,”
she said. “I noticed that each of my friends has a little thing
that they don’t do anymore. I decided not to take buses. So
either I walked or I took taxis.”
Basanta also noticed a big difference in her feeling of worry when
she was in Canada versus when she arrived in Israel. In fact, she
said, her apprehension seemed to be greater watching the news from
her home in Vancouver.
“Twenty four hours after I arrived in Israel, I sort of relaxed,
though there were three big attacks just prior to that,” Basanta
explained. “When you see it from here, you see only the [violence].
When you see it there, you see so many different things.
“People get on with their life somehow, work, school, culture,
social life, family life and so on. The only time I felt a little
bit ill at ease was when I went to the market [in Tel-Aviv] because
it was so crowded. That was the only time I thought, What was I
doing there?”
Commenting on the political movements in Israel, Basanta said she
has definitely noticed more hard-line attitudes, both in the left
and right camps. In Tel-Aviv, where people have been mostly “centre-left,”
she said, there have been noticeable shifts.
“Some think that the settlers in the territories, who make
up about four per cent of the Israeli population, are putting at
risk the lives of soldiers who guard them, and that they are a great
part of the reason for the escalation of the conflict,” said
Basanta. “Many other people have shifted to the right. They
don’t believe the Palestinians and their leader any longer,
and feel that the only way to deal with the situation is by force.”
A normal life?
Shoshana Burton, a Hebrew teacher at Vancouver Talmud Torah elementary
school spent all of last year in Haifa, where her parents and almost
all of her siblings, nieces and nephews live.
As someone who was born and raised in Nazareth herself, she finds
it very difficult to lead a normal life in Vancouver when her homeland
is fighting for its survival.
“I have a very high level of anxiety,” she said. “Every
time the phone rings I’m hoping everything is OK.
“I find myself waking up at four o’clock in the morning
because I can’t sleep so I turn on the TV or look on the Internet,”
she continued. “It becomes totally obsessive.”
Burton said her family felt somewhat safe for a long time because
Haifa was less of a target for terrorists than Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv.
However, since recent attacks in Israel’s biggest port city,
Burton said her family is really torn between being good Zionists
and being safe.
“They want to live their normal lives but they love their kids
too much and they don’t want them to get hurt,” she said.
“So something we take for granted like going out of the house
to buy groceries becomes a big decision.”
Burton also has a huge responsibility in her Talmud Torah classroom
where the students often express violent feelings toward Palestinians
and Arabs in the Middle East.
“The students are very militant and it kind of worries me so
I think it’s important that they know that there is more to
it than who is right or whose land it is.”
Burton, who has not historically been a supporter of Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, said she feels that Israel has no other choice
than to fight the suicide bombers at all costs.
“Last week I heard [Israeli President Shimon] Peres say, ‘We’re
not worried about our image, we’re worried about our lives,’
” she said. “They have to do whatever is necessary to
protect the civilians’ lives and basic freedom.”
Fifty years of war
Ran Bagg, emissary from Israel with the Jewish National Fund, also
agrees that negotiations have gotten Israel nowhere.
“Arafat, until now, has had five different opportunities to
sign and to agree and to promise but he never [kept his word] after
he signed,” said Bagg, whose mother lives in Israel, along
with his son, sister, brother-in-law and nephew. “So, the feeling
is that he will sign again but that nothing will change afterwards.”
But if Arafat is willing to sit down at a table to talk, Israel
will have to consider negotiating with him again, said Bagg.
“We believe that all the time that the other side is ready
to sit and talk with us ... we are ready to do it,” said Bagg.
“We don’t want sometime in the future to say that maybe
we had some kind of opportunity that we missed.”
Considering the overall picture of Israel’s history and the
number of times it’s had to fight for its survival, Bagg was
philosophical.
“It’s very sad after 54 years, but what the people realize
now is maybe we did not yet finish the War of Independence,”
he said. “Some people say we are still in the same war that
began in 1948. This is the 50-years war. During this war, we’ve
had some battles. We had the battle of ’48, the battle of ’56,
the battle of ’67, the battle of ’73, the battle of ’82,
but all of them together is the 50-years-war. The British and the
French had the 30-years war so we broke their record.”
Show Israel support
While all of the Jews in the Diaspora watch the events in Israel
with concern for the people who live there, Dvori Balshine has more
personal connections there to worry about than most.
Not only does Balshine have several family members living in Israel
to think about, but, as the executive director of the Canadian Friends
of Hebrew University, Pacific Region, she concerns herself with
all of the students studying at the school in Jerusalem as well.
However, Balshine said she feels that the students are all safe
there.
“The university is open and everything is going as usual,”
she said. “I hear from parents and students all the time and
nobody is planning on rushing home anytime soon.”
On the flip side, Balshine has decided that now is not the best
time to promote the Hebrew University’s programs for the next
school year.
“Our policy is that if people want to go then that is their
decision,” she said, “but we are not promoting it because
I find it very difficult to ask parents to allow their children
to go right now.
“We still had our recruitment evening and did our promotion
at Hillel House but I am not going to speak at high schools like
I normally do,” she continued. “I’m hoping that by
the time the school year starts again there will be peace in the
region.”
Balshine’s parents, Joseph and Sylvia Moshinsky, still live
in Rehovot, where she grew up. Her sister, Ronit, lives near Jerusalem
and her brother, Avi, is in Tel-Aviv.
She said the current state of affairs in Israel is most difficult
on her parents because they have dedicated their lives to building
the Jewish state, where they have lived since the early 1930s.
“My parents are very worried about the future of the state
of Israel,” Balshine said. “They know [the people of Israel]
will be strong and overcome it but they feel that the mood in the
country is very down and it’s very hard to take.”
As for her own opinions on the events in her homeland, Balshine
said the Jews in the Diaspora should support whatever the people
of Israel have chosen to do.
“Israel is a democratic country and they chose a leader and
a government to do whatever they are doing,” she said. “So
to sit in the Diaspora and tell them what to do I don’t think
is right. We have to trust our leaders and have faith in them and
show solidarity in whatever they decide to do.”
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