As I sat waiting for the bank in town to open the other day, I was struck by the peacefulness, even serenity of Jews and Arabs walking along the streets going about their business as though we are not at war with each other.
A group of Jewish high school kids walked by laughing and enjoying their after-school freedoms and with their loud and boisterous couldn’t-care-lessness carried on wholly unawares of the many Arab men, woman and families passing along their way. There was no fear, no danger, not a hint of tension, as though we are all part of the same people, a community living in some kind of idyllic harmony.
How does this happen? Arabs don’t live in this town. This is a Jewish community – Pardes Hanna – one of the first agricultural settlements from the earliest days of modern Zionism. The Jews who settled here are the ones who held a plow in one hand and a rifle in the other to build this country from the ground up into the marvel of modern society...
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