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Published: March 8th 2011
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Jack had meetings all day, so I headed back to Tel Aviv by train to go the the Art Museum and the Port. Traveling by train in Israel is easy and cheap. A round trip ticket from Haifa to Tel Aviv is 53 schekels or $15 and only takes an hour. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is wonderful. There was a huge exhibit (159 photos) of Yossi Breger - "And there was evening And there was morning, One Day". It was terrific and I was sorry that Jack wasn't with me. They also have a small, but very high quality collection of paintings from the Impressionist period through today. There were some wonderful paintings by artists I had never heard of, Alexander Archipenko, Max Pechstien and Keevan Dongen. There was a pen and ink collection done by Yosl Bergner. The artist was a good friend of Franz Kafka and these were illustration for Kafka's books. Finally, 3 exhibits that were contestant for a current art prize. In the spirit of Israel where any and all political positions are openly advocated and argued, there was a installation piece that focused on the unfairness to the Arabs of the forestation of northern Israel.
I had to fix some slides for Jack and the evening program began at 5:30 so I had to pass on the port. There are about 50 people here from Boston from CJP supporting a variety of projects, support for Ethiopian Jews, education, jobs, Jewish continuity, etc. In other words, more than a busload. We had dinner at a terrible fish restaurant, I had thrice cooked something and Jack had thrice cooked salmon. After dinner we visited an interment camp that was used by the British to house illegal immigrants, Holocaust survivors trying to come to Israel after the war. I can imagine that having come from a concentration camp to be held in a camp surrounded by barb wire must have been psychologically devastating. About 150,000 Jews came fleeing Europe to join the more than 450,000 Jews who were already here.
The evening finished with a video documenting the visit of 15 IDF officers to Boston last Spring. They came to participate in Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. The objective of the program is to give Israelis a better understanding of the Jewish community in Diaspora, outside of Israel, and visa versa. The film really drove home an important point for me. At one point in the film the young soldiers (18 -20) come out of the service for Yom Hashoah and are confronted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators shouting that they murder babies and women. The soldiers, did not repond to the taunts, but went inside, got an Israeli flag and held it high. It made me realize that inside or outside Oxfam, I don't need to always couch my support for Israel with a comment acknowledging that there are problems in Israel and I don't agree with all the policies of the Israeli governement. Every country in the world has problems and Israel is no different. Just as it takes two to tango it takes two to make peace and the Palestinians bear as much responsiblity for the current situation as do the Israelis. Since I'm writing this in Isreal, anyone reading it is free to disagree and make their opinions known. That is the Israeli way.
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