Metro

Canary from page 20

resident of Moshav Nahalal, in the
Washtenaw Federation's Jezreel Valley
partnership region, spoke to the
crowd via the Internet. The mother
of two shared stories of her sadness
and worry for the future of Israel.
"Here is the incident I most want
to forget',' she said quietly "I was
shopping with a good friend whose
husband flies helicopters in the army
Hersister called her to say that the
news had just reported that two heli-
copters has just gone down. It took
10 minutes of phone calling to find
out that her husband had not been
on one of those helicopters; and dur-
ing that time, we were both crying,
terrified and shaking."
Yael Rothfeld, came to hear
Shabtai, knows that fear. She was
volunteering with a group helping
children with severe emotional diffi-
culties when the conflict broke out.
"We were hiking in the Golan,
when we heard the sound of rockets','
she said. "We just assumed the IDF
were practicing. It wasn't until we got
back to the bus that the driver told
us what was really going on.
"I feel like I got a different per-
spective. Because I was there, I know
that Israelis were defending them-
selves. That aspect wasn't portrayed
at all in the news back here."
Shabtai expressed his frustration
with this conflict. "This is the most
difficult, most complex, most frus-
trating war we have fought',' he said.
"At least with other wars, there was a
beginning and an end."
He reiterated his main theme:
Israel is the canary in the coal mine.
World events start in Israel, but they
don't end there. But, he maintained
that neither he, nor anyone else,
could foresee the future. He stressed
that these are uncertain times.
"Today, we're fighting an enemy
that is more interested in destroying
us than staying alive,' he said. "For
the first time, we're fighting a geno-
cidal terrorist movement.
"Never in history have so few peo-
ple been able to destroy a city. It used
to take an entire army for that."
Jeff Levin, Federation executive
director, shares his frustration."Ann
Arbor's Jewish community has a
sense that the fig leaf of territo-
rial dispute has evaporated, and left
behind the same 2,000-year-old story
of the Jewish people, trying to simply
settle down, plant a tree and relax."

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Pamela Waxman interns at the Jewish

Federation of Washtenaw County.

1152060

22

September 7 - 2006