A New Jewish-Arab Partnership Is Building in Israel
By Netta Ahituv
Haaretz
January 5, 2024
"Standing Together is an Arab-Jewish social movement that seeks to advance a beneficent, egalitarian society in Israel through joint grassroots activity...
"In the city of Ramle Arabs and Jews were working side by side to prepare food packages for Jewish, Muslim and Christian families whose source of livelihood had been truncated because of the war...
"Demand for Standing Together's message of solidarity and vision of a shared
future has been on a constant rise since the war started. Those who thought
that the uptick in mutual suspicion between Arabs and Jews is causing the fragile fabric of Israeli society to unravel, is invited to take part in the movement's activity...
"Standing Together, which was founded in 2015 and espouses values of equality, peace, social justice and socialism (and in normal times, is involved in environmental, educational and social issues, in a number of different campaigns), is currently gathering momentum. Its membership is growing daily.
“The purple color associated with the movement, and its newly minted slogan, 'Together we will get through this,' can be seen in more and more places in both the real and online worlds.
“Most of the new joiners are young people, Arabs and Jews, the movement's directors note. Since October 7, a dozen joint Arab-Jewish groups, dubbed 'solidarity guards,' have been established across the country, joining the eight already active branches. Eleven student chapters have also been created, besides the nine that previously existed.
"'In the social media,' she continues, 'all the posts were dark and frightening, and suddenly I saw a purple-colored post, which said something about partnership, in both Hebrew and Arabic. I felt like someone had thrown me a lifebelt of grace...'
"The movement has conducted more than a hundred activities, including joint
conferences for Arabs and Jews in Hebrew and Arabic in Tamra, Nazareth, Abu Ghosh, Lod, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva, Tel Aviv and other venues...
"'One of our slogans is, "There is no movement without friction.” If we want to get things moving, obviously there will be differences of opinion about us. Standing Together is a stream of thoughts, from which we derive our actions. We have brought a new idea to Israeli society, namely politics that sees people.'
"'Our friends in the United States are in a hashtag crisis. They feel they have only one of two options: either an "I'm with Israel" hashtag, or a "My heart is with Gaza" hashtag. We told them that if we, who are in the heart of the storm, are able to maintain the understanding that both peoples are suffering at this time and also work together for humanity, then certainly they are capable of it.
“All they need, really, is plenty of desire and a little effort.'"
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Heart of a Nation is working to empower emerging American, Israeli and Palestinian changemakers to improve their political cultures.
אנחנו מכנסים הוגים מובילים, פעילים חברתיים, ומחוללי שינוי לעתיד, אמריקאים, ישראלים ופלסטינאים, המחויבים לשיפור החברות שלהם.
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