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Old City’s Damascus Gate — the scene
of massive protests just months ago. Yet
reporters outnumbered protesters, and
the day ended with little evidence of the
apocalypse so many seemed to expect.
Jews, similarly, were not cheering in the
streets, waving Israeli flags in the faces
of Arabs.
The world seems to want violence
in Jerusalem. It expects and awaits it.
And Jerusalemites are saying: Not us,
not now. We refuse to act out the script
that’s been written for us. Despite pres-
sure from national and international
leaders, what we are actually seeing on
the ground is daily life continuing as
usual. People are dropping their kids off
at school, going to work, shopping in
the market. Perhaps that is because we
Jerusalemites know a little secret: This
city does not belong to one religion or
nation. We, the Jerusalemites, belong
to it.
The Jerusalemite identity goes
beyond the national. Jews, Muslims
and Christians were born here and live
here. All of us have a deep connection to
Jerusalem. And while those unaware of
this continue to fight over it like a prize
to be won, we who breathe the air and
walk the streets are actively preserv-
ing the very love and spirituality that
have made Jerusalem so appealing to
so many people for so many thousands
of years. This is what those misleading
representations of Jerusalem don’t show
you: that the real Jerusalem, the every-
day streets of Jerusalem are filled with
multicultural richness and interactions
between people as eclectic as the spices

that fill the markets.
Walk a day in Jerusalem and you will
see Palestinian Christians, Muslims,
secular Jews, artists, members of the
LGBTQ community, Ethiopian Jews,
ultra-Orthodox Jews, African refugees
and the many other faces that color
Jerusalem’s cultural quilt.
Yes, of course, there are hateful people
here. Where in the world aren’t there
today? Yet if Jerusalem was so full of
hatred, there would be more opportu-
nity here than anywhere else for diverse
and supposedly opposing members
of society to express that hatred. Six
days a week, 18 hours a day, Jews and
Arabs travel on the Jerusalem light rail
together. Just once every few months,
we hear of a violent or racist incident
occurring on the light rail. That is, of
course, one too many; but think about
this: Thousands of Arabs and Jews meet
every day on the train and have the
opportunity to create hate. And they
don’t. They just don’t.
The extremist voices, which all of us
hear much more about, are, in reality,
marginal members of society. Far more
people are standing up and offering a
different answer. For example, when a
teenage girl was murdered at the 2015
gay pride parade in Jerusalem, activists
created a weekly dialogue circle that
still occurs every Thursday night in
Zion Square. When extremists torched
an Arab-Jewish school in 2014, seek-
ing to extinguish hope for coexistence,
thousands of Israelis and Palestinians
marched through the streets of
Jerusalem in support of coexistence.

Contributing Writers:
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Chessler, Annabel Cohen, Don Cohen, Shari
S. Cohen, Shelli Liebman Dorfman, Adam
Finkel, Stacy Gittleman, Stacy Goldberg, Judy
Greenwald, Ronelle Grier, Esther Allweiss
Ingber, Allison Jacobs, Barbara Lewis, Jennifer
Lovy, Rabbi Jason Miller, Alan Muskovitz,
David Sachs, Karen Schwartz, Robin Schwartz,
Steve Stein, Joyce Wiswell

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See, our city thrives despite the
extremist 1 percent, thanks to the 99
percent, who exemplify Jerusalem’s
spirit of love and peace. That majority is
rarely depicted because complexity isn’t
easy for an outsider to depict. Perhaps
nuance isn’t as sexy as hatred and vio-
lence. Yet if Jerusalem is going to see
true peace, with even less extremism,
then sticking it with labels that don’t fit
isn’t going to help. In fact, it fits right
into the hands of extremists on both
sides.
For us, life in Jerusalem provides
many more reasons to hope than to
despair. Yes, it is a city of tensions and
complexities. Yet we are conscious of
the fact that we live in a city of interna-
tional and historic import and so, rather
than letting those difficulties control
us, we create our own reality. And that
is the greatest lesson here. After all,
Jerusalem is a microcosm of the con-
flict itself, the epicenter of the most
difficult issues facing our people. Yet it
is also where the solution lies. Because
if we are able to create this reality in
Jerusalem, despite all we are up against,
it truly can be created anywhere. •

Michal Shilor is the founder and chairwoman of
Points of View from Jerusalem, which provides
unedited, unfiltered narratives from East, West and
Haredi Jerusalem to each other, in Hebrew, English
and Arabic. Riman Barakat, Racheli Ibenboim
and Michal Shilor are members of The Jerusalem
Model, a network of Israeli and Palestinian social
entrepreneurs working to build a more resilient,
active civil society in Jerusalem. This essay was
originally published in Times of Israel.

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Stand Up For
Israel’s Rights

I’m writing to comment on an arti-
cle by Rabbi Michael Lerner that
appeared recently in the Jewish
News (Dec. 14, page 9). I take issue
with several of his opinions. The
rabbi criticized President Trump
for taking Israel’s side on the
future status of Jerusalem. Excuse
me, but as a supporter of Israel,
I thought that was a good thing.
The rabbi went on to intimate that
settlers were extremists whose end
game was the “ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians.”
Sounds to me like the rabbi is
not looking out for Jewish inter-
ests but reading right out of the
playbook of PLO leader Mahmoud
Abbas. The rabbi seems to feel that
standing up for Israel’s God-given
rights is tantamount to rocking
the boat. He seems to be intimat-
ing that we should just play nice
and everything will be OK.
Well, if history has taught us
anything, it has taught us that
appeasement and ignoring the
facts can lead to catastrophic
results. The rabbi’s article blames
Trump for fueling the fire by tak-
ing sides. Believe me, Rabbi, for
the people who hate Israel and the
Jewish people, they need very little
prodding to keep that hatred alive.

Steve Cash
Novi

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