Josie in Karmiel

Our tiyul (trip) last week-end to the Galilee was a wonderful break from the intensity of city life. The hills were green, dotted with beautiful wildflowers and flowering trees, a sight I had never seen since I had only been to this area in the summer when the landscape is less lush and more brown. On the drive up to Korazim, where we stayed at the Frenkel’s bed and breakfast (no relation!), we stopped in Karmiel to visit with our friend Howard Weinberg”s mother, Josie (that’s she in the photo on the balcony, behind which you can she her frum (religious) neighbors setting up their challah distribution for Shabbat). Josie, originally from England, made aliyah shortly after Howard came to Israel to study at Technion University some 25 years ago. Her daughter Linda lives nearby with her husband and two sons. Josie is a delightful, spunky woman in her 70’s who teaches English to new immigrants. She shared with us her perspective about the development and social dynamics of Karmiel which has grown tremendously from a small community of 15,000 to a substantial town of 60-70,000, and is home to Russian speakers, Ethiopians, English-speakers from England, the U.S. and South Africa, and many others. Two new groups have recently been added to the mix, stirring some controversy. In her neighborhood, many religious families have been directed (and financially supported) to settle here by their religious leaders, changing the complexion of the area. She misses the friendly camaraderie among neighbors that she used to enjoy. Her new neighbors barely acknowledge her and, in contradiction to Jewish ethical teachings, don’t even bother to check on the needs of an older woman living alone. With a twinkle in her eye, Josie described her way of dealing with the yeshiva buchers (the religious school boys) who barrel six abreast down the sidewalk, never looking her in the eye. She refuses to defer to them or step off the curb and simply plows straight ahead, forcing them to part like the Red Sea. In this she displays the true Israeli spirit, NEVER DEFER!

The other group whose residence in Karmiel has engendered some controversy is the Arab population. Some Arabic-speaking professionals and business people have chosen to live in Karmiel rather than the Arab towns nearby. Recently, there was a campaign to prevent them from doing so, with some residents arguing that Jewish Israelis would not be allowed to move into or buy property in Arab communities should they desire to do so. She was quite critical of this view and pointed out that the shops in the mall are filled with Arab customers on Shabbat, supporting Karmiel’s economy. Arab-speaking workers do much of the back-of-the-store work in the market, unloading and preparing food. On Hanukkah, however, her teenage grandson (who had a part-time job as a cashier in the supermarket) was called in at 4 a.m. to make the sufganiyot (jelly donuts) that are popular during the holiday. They needed a Jewish person to do this so that they wouldn’t lose their kosher certifiation. In any case, the three nearby Arab towns differ among themselves—one Muslim, one Christian, and one mixed—and don’t get along with each other. She explained that the Arab towns lack some adequate infrastructure because they don’t pay taxes or maybe it’s vice versa, they don’t pay taxes because they don’t receive services. She participated in a women’s group that visited one of these towns and her synagogue has a long-standing relationship with a Greek Orthodox church in a Arab town on the way to Naharia. She is extremely fond of the people in this church, especially the priest and his family, and explained that they are very well-educated and send their children to Haifa University. The two congregations have visited each other’s services and taken field trips together.

These efforts at coexistence and mutual learning are, unfortunately, offset by other examples of conflict, as we learned a few days later. Our route to and from the Gali had taken us through Umm-Al-Fahm a large Arab-Israeli city of 50,000, bisected by highway 65, with many impressive looking homes built up on the sides of the hills. A few days after our trip, this community was the scene of a confrontation provoked by radical right-wing Israeli Jews from the National Union Party against the local Arab residents joined by Jewish supporters from the leftist parties Meretz and Hadash and members of Peace Now. The anti-Arab group had gotten permission to stage a march in the city but the police, 3,000 of whom were brought in to prevent clashes, restricted them to a short 30 minute route in an outlying, unpopulated area away from the center of town. However, in the three hour brouhaha that ensued after the march was dispersed, 28 people (including 15 policemen) were injured from stone-throwing and a dozen or so youths were arrested. Thankfully, nothing worse occured. The Umm-Al-Fahm municipality put out a statement that said that the entire Arab public had "with the support of the Jewish forces for peace and democracy had stood together to stop this provocation and managed to curb racism and facism." A local resident who had taken the day off from work to protest the march said, "We want to live in peace and coexistence and say we are citizens of Israel, and they are trying to present the opposite picture." (HaAretz, Mar25)