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information is tearing our world 
apart. Instead of making me 
angry, it makes me sad. 

I think of Shelly Shem Tov and 
Yarden Gonen, who both spoke 
to our group from the Missing 
Family & Hostage Forum. The 
Shem Tov family established the 
forum with other families on Oct. 
8 after their son, Omer Shem 
Tov, was kidnapped from the 
Nova Music Festival. Shelly will 
tell her story as many times as it 
takes to get her Omer home. We 
must never stop. We must keep 
talking about all the kidnapped 
until they are all home and safe 
and all our soldiers are home safe. 

The Shem Tov family gives us 
all a Good Name for sure, and 
we can help them by continuing 
to spread the word that they all 
must come home. To bear wit-
ness to this extraordinary display 
is to assert to the world that this 
massacre happened, and we are 
waiting for our hostages to come 
home. We will not forget. That is 
my why.

When we decide to have a 
family, we wish for many things 
and hope — we get what we wish 
for — and if we are lucky, we 
get exactly what we never knew 

that we always wanted and never 
thought was possible. My daugh-
ter, Maya, continues to give me 
gifts that I never thought were 
possible. 

In fall 2021, Maya’s junior year 
at Washington University in St. 
Louis, she decided to apply to 
Birthright Excel for summer 2022. 
Thousands of applicants express 
interest every year, but there are 
only 64 spots in the fellowship 
program. Fortunately, Maya was 
one of those selected and thus 
began her meaningful connec-
tion to Birthright Excel, Israel 
and Zionism. 
Before Maya’s Birthright Israel 
Excel experience, I had been to 
Israel on two occasions — a five-
week summer trip in 1981 as a 
teenager with Temple Israel of 
West Bloomfield and, in 2016, as 
a mom with Momentum. Prior 
to being selected as an Excel 
Fellow, Maya had only been 
to Israel once and just for five 
days. While we craved to spend 
more time there, other vacation 
spots closer to home were more 
intriguing during those years.
While Maya was living in Israel 
as an Excel Fellow in summer 
2022, I made sure to go spend 

time in Tel Aviv visiting her and 
her new friends, seeing old friends 
and exploring the city. One of 
the highlights of my trip was 
dining with Maya and her cohort 
listening to the recap of their 
experience, getting caught up in 
their excitement and learning 
about their internship experienc-
es, opportunities, and culture that 
I never realized existed in our 
homeland. Seeing Israel through 
the eyes of college students was 
joyful and meaningful. 
When Oct. 7 happened, the 
news affected us to our core. 
Our hearts broke for fear of 
our friends and family, yet our 
immediate visceral reaction was 
to get to Israel as soon as possible. 
Knowing the battlefield was in 
Gaza, an area off limits to Israelis 
and tourists, I felt just about as 
comfortable going to Israel as I do 
when traveling to other locations 
outside of the U.S. 

When Maya and I, as an inter-
generational Excel family, were 
presented with the opportunity 
by Excel leadership to participate 
in the Birthright Excel Mission 
to Israel, we did not hesitate. 
Our people are there, and Israel 
needs us just like we need Israel. 

Without Israel, our existence as a 
people is in danger.

I truly believe that the 
Birthright Excel experience was 
and continues to be a central 
element of my daughter’s life. 
Maya and her cohort of Excel 
Fellows are contemplating what 
they can do with this special gift 
to enhance their relationship 
with Israel and to develop leader-
ship roles for their future. These 
amazing Birthright Excel Fellows 
are proud to be Jewish Zionists 
and step into leadership roles to 
support Israel’s next chapter. 
I’m so happy that my daughter 
is part of this amazing group, and 
I encourage all those who are eli-
gible to take the opportunity of a 
lifetime with a 10-day Birthright 
Israel trip this summer. Without 
question, the time has actually 
never been better. I encourage 
each of you to find your why.

Am Yisrael Chai. 

Karen Simon grew up in West 

Bloomfield. Her parents were founding 

members of Temple Israel. She and her 

daughter, Maya, returned recently from a 

special, first-of-its-kind intergenerational 

mission to Israel which took place in 

early February and was organized by 

Birthright Israel. 

Israel, the dark forces outside the 
university, and the unidentified 
“donors.” It doesn’t take a genius 
to figure out who are meant by 
the outside dark forces and the 
meddling donors. There was no 
mention of the well-documented 
harassment of Jews, the physical 
disruption of Jewish meetings, 
lectures, classes, vandalism of 
posters and extremist rhetoric 
calling for the extermination of 
Israel. 

WE ARE NOT ALONE
I left the AEN zoom Town Hall 
feeling energized despite all the 
bad news because I felt that we 
are not alone, and we are not 

powerless. We can organize, 
educate and engage in civil dis-
cussions against the historical 
ignorance and demagogic manip-
ulation. Apartheid, white settler 
colonialism and genocide all have 
objective meanings and historical 
contexts that simplistic slogans 
that cannot lead to precise under-
standing. BDS, Justice for Peace 
in Palestine and similar groups 
use the understandable compas-
sion for the suffering civilians 
in Gaza — used by Hamas as 
human shields — to relitigate the 
establishment of Israel in 1947-
50. 
 Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran do 
not hide their goal of destroying 

Jewish Israel, but other advocates 
for the Palestinians conceal what 
they want with seemingly rea-
sonable calls for an immediate 
ceasefire and an end to the war 
without Hamas being defeated. 
 The slogan about “from the 
river to the sea” illustrates that 
proposals for a one-state solution 
with the right of return are not 
innocent positions but constitute 
a path to violent conflict. 
One anecdote to conclude. At 
a Jewish Studies conference in 
Southampton, England, in 2005, 
only a few weeks after the “7/7” 
terrorist bombings in London 
that killed 56 and injured 784, a 
colleague and I tried to persuade 

a graduate student that Israel was 
not an apartheid state. 
Not a conference participant, 
he refused to believe that the 
Knesset had Arab and Muslim 
members. We urged him to look 
it up on his own, but he was 
unyielding in his conviction. As 
an intelligent graduate student, he 
had to know we were not making 
up these facts, but his worldview 
depended on a demonic Israel. I 
thought he was an outlier in 2005, 
but now I am not so sure. 

Dr. Michael Scrivener is Wayne State 

Distinguished Professor of English, 

Emeritus. He now lives in Matawan, 

New Jersey.

PURELY COMMENTARY

FINDING HOPE continued from page 7

HAMAS AND ACADEMIA continued from page 7

