(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Ha'aretz - "Across Israel, Jews and Arabs Join Forces to Help War Victims and Prevent Riots" [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-14 October 12, 2023 by Netta Ahituv and Nadin Abou Laban In Haifa and Jaffa, joint Jewish and Arab patrols seek to prevent violence on both sides. In the south, Bedouin residents risk their lives to search for victims of Hamas terror. In the shadow of war, Arab-Jewish solidarity initiatives emerge I’ll blockquote within fair use and try to summarize the rest. I’ve added some links to help with general informativeness. Bedouin* resident of the northern Negev, who in a short time recruited some 600 volunteers, mostly from the “On Sunday, the second day of the war, we saw that there was enormous chaos and realized we must do something,” said Sleman Shlebe, a* resident of the northern Negev, who in a short time recruited some 600 volunteers, mostly from the Azazmeh tribe, who arrived with their ATVs and created emergency teams to search for missing Israelis. “We had heard about people missing from both the Arab and Jewish communities, and knew that thanks to our exceptional familiarity with the south we could help,” he said. “We divided ourselves up in the cars so that there would be people responsible for different things: gathering information, rescuing and administering first aid.” Within a short while, one of the teams confirmed that a person listed as missing up until that point had been killed. Following this tragic discovery the phone numbers of the members of the teams began to be distributed widely and the requests for assistance didn’t stop flowing in. “In no time,” said 48-year-old Shlebe in a phone interview conducted while he was in the field, “we received dozens of phone calls and messages from parents begging us to help them find out what had happened to their children, and from people who asked us to come rescue them from their homes or the fields. We tried to respond to everyone and to help anyone who made contact.”... *see also “Negev Bedouin (Not to be confused with Palestinian Bedouin.)” These are unarmed teams intimately familiar with the area. At one point one team responded to a call for help, just barely escaping ambush by a terrorist posing as a wounded Israeli Arab. “Fortunately, we got out alive. Our best weapon is God.” After official security forces learned of the overnight creation of this vital rescue apparatus, they provided armed escorts. The combined squads searched for, defended, rescued and helped evacuate hundreds of survivors in dozens of locations across the next days. Although Shlebe lives in an officially recognized agricultural Bedouin village, most of the volunteers come from non-recognized desert villages with no bomb shelters, no air-raid sirens within hearing distance, some even without schools. can be heard and there are no bomb shelters. Some of their villages don’t even have proper schools, reliable water supply, reliable electricity. Many feel that the state abandoned them, but they have not abandoned it. Besides the ad-hoc volunteer network, Shlebe’s village, Bir Hadaj, has a dozen volunteers trained by Ihud Hatzala and Magen David Adom, running an emergency rescue and medical service on routine basis in coordination with the IDF, police, firefighters and other services. The head of that group, Ahmed Abu Habak —additionally trained in first response by the Home Front Command and the National Fire and Rescue Academy— with others, were for a while pinned down by enemy fire but got a wounded man to hospital after the ambulance was trapped by road blockade, and they tracked, captured and disarmed a terrorist they turned over to the army, and alongside soldiers in the midst of a shoot-out with four terrorists at Shaqib al-Salam/Segev Shalom, extracted the family under attack there. Because they’re allowed no weapons, this group has a long history of working in tandem with Segev Shalom police officers, and close friendships grew. Abu Habak has lost two close friends from there in this war already, station commander Chief Superintendent Itzhak Bazuka-Shvili, and Kiryat Gat firefighter station captain Shalom Tzaban, killed battling Hamas in Sderot. After local Maariv daily news correspondent Arnold Nataev published an article Sunday about Bedouin residents of the south pleading to join the fight, he was deluged with messages from yet more saying they were prepared to volunteer for any mission the IDF would give them, that Israel is their country and in their hearts. Members of 30 families in the Bedouin city of Rahat had tried to phone the police to ask to be used, but no one answered. Veteran lecturer and social activist Amal Abo Alkom, whose decades of multitasking includes director of Segev Shalom’s Bedouin Women for Themselves, launched a round-the-clock command center to assist local Bedouin and Jews in distress, run between towns to distribute basic goods, medication, toys for children, asking what else is needed, and offering a listening ear to sufferers of personal and collective trauma. Internet connection is too poor here for remote volunteer Arab and Jewish psychologists and social workers to sustain contact. The losses are grievous. The extended Alkra’an family has lost four children – two brothers, Malek, 15, and Jawad, 14, and two cousins, Amin Akal, 11, and Mahmoud Diab, 12. They were killed Saturday when a rocket launched in Gaza hit the shack where they were staying at the time. There was no bomb shelter in the vicinity. Abo Alkom visited the family, which she is related to, the following day, and heard about the great trauma they had suffered. The father told visitors how he had searched for his children between the rubble, finding body parts and desperately trying to figure out what had happened to whom. “Many others from my community are missing or are wounded,” Abo Alkom added. “Moreover, many of my Jewish friends were taken hostage, injured or killed. The pain is total and incomprehensible.” In Tel Aviv-Jaffa,, a Saturday evening message to activist WhatsApp groups within hours generated a thousand volunteers for a joint Arab-Jewish civil patrol project determined to protect ALL local residents in case of inter-communal riots like those in many mixed cities, May 2021, during that Israel/Gaza clash. Nearly half the volunteers video-conferenced that evening – Jews and Arabs together, with Amir Badran, a city councilor running for mayor in the We Are The City party, Ramzi Abi Taleb, seven-year chairman of the Ajami and Jabaliya neighborhood council, Badran opened the conference as a Jaffa native, raising four children, like so many other families who all want peace in their city, and to be able to live together; all are too vulnerable otherwise. Abi Taleb spoke of the many crises and conflicts in which Arabs and Jews of the community joined forces for the common good, and prevailed. Badran emphasized being in communication with representatives of local Arab neighborhoods, the Islamic Council of Jaffa, the League for the Jaffa Arabs, the Orthodox Church Association, local sheikhs and imams, and various Jewish and Arab activists. He said all are devastated but committed to preventing violence, incitement or harassment by any community segment on any others, and calling upon to show restraint, also demanding that the municipality and police ensure everyone’s personal safety, especially the children’s, and places of worship.” One activisit during the video conference called the project “the antidote for all the hate we see around us.”. The conference was followied by an organizing session for participants to specify what help they can offer, collect needs for donation to soldiers or residents in the south with destroyed homes, man hotline shifts for local residents, contribute to social media solidarity activities, and so on. Unarmed patrol groups will try to calm the neighborhoods with bystander interventions when tensions rise, e.g.,by video-documenting incidents, communicating solidarity, and deploying in potentially explosive situations, such as during prayers at mosques, churches or synagogues. South of Haifa. the existing Neighbors At Peace Jewish-Arab communities of Carmel and Fureidis some time ago established a 300-member WhatsApp group for frequent events, conferences, outings, honest, open dialogue, and helping residents in fraught and potentially violent times. “If, for example, a violent [Jewish] gang approaches a garage in Or Akiva where Arabs work, someone will inform our group and we will get there as quickly as possible to try to calm down people’s nerves,” [said Boaz Peled, one of the founders]. “In 2021, we saw that in places where Jews and Arabs were trying to stop the violence together, the damage was less severe … we cannot prevent violence alone, only together...” Since Saturday in Haifa, some 600 Arabs and Jews WhatsApp group called The Shelter Cleaning Initiative —launched by Palestinian activist Sally Abed, a founder of Rov Ha’ir (Most of the City), a Jewish-Arab social movement running for the municipal council— together have been cleaning up bomb shelters, many neglected after the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Abed saw the community members aching with their individual losses and sent out a tweet that went viral, harnessing shared grief and anxiety over family, close friends, partners, activists. anti-occupation and social justice activists in and allies of the Palestinian cause now kidnapped, killed, or missing. She said it’s wrong that people are not allowed to hurt for both/all. “Let’s remember that it’s the most important thing we can do at this moment. To allow ourselves to hurt for both, to grief for all. Towards a place where we can also build for all.” Abed admitted she is drained, that this current emergency challenges everything she thought in the deepest personal and political way. But they already had a big organization of Haifa Arabs and Jews really just waiting to convert their dialogue, their talk, because now is the time for deeds, the greatest act of solidarity. They began with 40 volunteers; within 24 hours it was 600. The Initiative monitors which shelters are in usable shape, which need professional repairs, which are locked. Despite the tough manual labor, more and more volunteers keep signing on. Within days, the group’s digital map of the city’s shelters proudly showed the status of 50 public and private shelters clean and ready, “thanks to Arabs and Jews, all Haifa people,” said one volunteer. “This partnership is our hope.” In the Arab city of Taibeh, in the central part of the country, Member of Knesset Ahmad Tibi (Hadash-Ta’al) and his staff are coordinating a volunteer Jewish-Arab helpline to assist civilians, notably to learn of missing family members and try to help thousands of Arab students come home from university in the West Bank and Gaza. The hotline is flooded. But Tibi also spoke of dealing with those eager to place blame, such as Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal tweeting early in the week his view that Tibi and fellow MK Ayman Odeh did not fast enough condemn Hamas’ atrocities. To which Tibi tweeted back: “Amit, this is what’s most pressing for you to tweet about during these tough hours? A witch hunt? Since this morning I’ve been on the phone talking to families of missing people (Arabs and Jews), helping students come home, and making efforts to prevent friction and incitement in the mixed cities – incitement that is disseminated on social media.” A text in similar to Segal’s was posted by journalist Attila Somfalvi, And, encouraged by the rightwing government posture, death threats inundating Tibi are more explicit, urgent, and daring than ever. And these atrocities, and Christian and Muslim Arabs and foreign nationals not spared. And yet, the people come together, join hands, roll up their sleeves, and roll back the tide of trauma and chaos. h/t SandraLLAP . . . 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