He Walked Through the Fields paints a larger-than-life portrait of the new generation of Israelis, the heroic Sabras. Presented in partnership with the Al Green Theatre.

He Walked Through the Fields tells the story of a young man who upon returning to his kibbutz from his studies falls in love with a young Holocaust survivor.  He soon finds himself torn between remaining on kibbutz with his family and his love or going off to fight with the Palmach.

The play was written by the Israel Prize winning author Moshe Shamir. Mr. Shamir is hailed as the first author to frame the character of the modern Israeli in his works. He was also a respected member of the Israeli Knesset from 1977 to 1981.

“This year’s production has special meaning for our theatre group,” says Galya Sarner, one of the founders of The Mifgash Theatre Group. “Our resident director is also the author’s daughter Yael Shamir Feingold. This year would have been the anniversary of Mr. Shamir’s 90th birthday.”

The Mifgash Theatre started just 4 years ago with the hope of meeting some of the cultural needs of the Israeli community of the GTA.  ”By our second year we realized that we could bring together other communities for a chance to learn about and better understand Israel and its culture,” adds Sarner.  ”By adding surtitles we have created this opportunity through the theatre.”

“As every year for the last 4 years, we have a yearly production of the Mifgash Theatre. This year will run all together 5 productions on May 20-May 24 at 8:00pm at the Al Green Theatre.”

Additional Performances: Monday – Thursday, May 21 – 24 at 8:00 pm.

Tickets: $25     Location: Al Green Theatre

To purchase tickets, click here or call (647) 501-6485/(905) 731-6543
 

It stars none other than “Mrs. C” herself, Marion Ross. That’s Mrs. Cunningham for anyone too young to remember her famous role on the long running iconic TV sitcom “Happy Days”.

Alongside Ross in this production are Ari Cohen, Linda Kash and Sheila McCarthy.

As the promo material reads: The Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play is about an eccentric New York family in crisis during the summer of 1942. Old country rules clash with new world ideals as a strong-willed grandmother struggles to rule her children and grandchildren with an iron fist. This coming of age story is both humorous and touching as it follows a dysfunctional family learning to cope and evolve during incredibly stressful times.

The Toronto Star featured this:

By Rob Salem, Toronto Star, May 04, 2012 –

She was sure she had done something horribly wrong. Coming to Toronto to start rehearsals for Lost in Yonkers, Marion Ross was checking through Customs when the security officer suddenly got up out of his chair and left his booth.

“He was coming right toward me,” she says. “I was terrified. Then he reached out both arms and gave me a great big hug.”

This happens to Ross a lot — not until now in a line at Customs — but pretty much constantly when she’s on the street.

You can hardly blame people. Even the Fonz could never resist hugging “Mrs. C.”

“It’s a lovely, lovely thing to always be greeted with love,” she says.

Ross, proudly “83 and a half” and not looking anywhere close to that, took a break from rehearsals this week to sit and reminisce about her happy days on Happy Days, the long-running retro sitcom in which she played motherly Marion Cunningham.

And also, of course, what currently brings her to Toronto, a month’s run onstage in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, opposite “a wonderful cast” including Linda Kash (Waiting for Guffman) and Sheila McCarthy (Little Mosque on the Prairie), and opening May 12 at the St. Lawrence Centre.

“They asked me almost two years ago if I would be in this play,” Ross recalls. And it turned out to be exactly what she needed.

“What happened was, my husband was very ill — he has (since) passed away — and I thought, ‘Well, yeah, that’s a good idea . . . Where do you want me to go? Toronto? Where all those good actors are? Sure, I’ll go.”

Ross loves Toronto and Toronto seems to love her back — as all those hugs on the street will attest. “I have a pretty fun life,” she smiles.

Unlike many actors known for one early role, Ross is at peace with Marion Cunningham. She has nothing but the warmest memories of Happy Days, where she worked closely with two of the widely acknowledged nicest men in the business: actor/director Ron Howard and actor/producer Henry Winkler, as well as writer/producer Garry Marshall.

“I’m reading Garry’s (new) book,” she enthuses. “I have it on my Kindle. There’s not a lot in there about Happy Days; it’s more about his life. He’s worked so hard.”

She even has good things to say about the late Tom Bosley, a somewhat notorious curmudgeon who played her hardware-selling Happy Days husband, Howard.

“He was a very sweet man,” Ross insists. “A really good person, but crabby. Very grouchy (and) crabby on set.”

And, later, offset as well, particularly once his teenaged TV son grew up to become one of Hollywood’s premiere directors. “Tom was always furious that Ron never cast us in anything,” Ross reveals. “I mean, he always uses his (real) dad and his brother, Clint . . .

“But I told him it wasn’t going to happen.”

In fact, for Ross, it already had. “I did do one film for Ron, very early on, called Grand Theft Auto.”

Not to be confused with the ultraviolent videogame series, the film was Howard’s feature directing debut, made on the cheap for producer Roger Corman in 1977, three years into Happy Days’ 11-year run.

“There was a scene where I had to fight with this cop,” Ross remembers, “and I actually did, I wrestled him to the ground. And then I thought, ‘Oh wait, I was supposed to lose.’”

She is playing even further against type in Lost in Yonkers. “I am Grandma Kurnitz,” she says, affecting the accent. “I am German. And I am not so cute. Not cute at all. And I am hated. It’s a lot of fun to be hated.

“But as soon as I get out of here, I’m going out onto the street for a hug.”

:: Toronto Star

Moses is a bit confused. “What does that mean, Lord? We should not cook meat in milk?”

God repeats “Thou shalt not seethe the kid in it’s mother’s milk!”

Moses responds “But what do you mean, Lord? We should never serve meat and dairy in the same meal?”

Again, God repeats “Thou shalt not seethe the kid in it’s mother’s milk!”

Moses continues “Do you mean that we should have two completely separate sets of ovens and cookware? One for meat and one for milk?”

Finally God opines, “OK, Moses, have it your way.”

European attitudes over the past decades have become increasingly anti-Israel.  Those attitudes have been influenced by resurgent irrational anti-Semitism throughout the EU and the ever present anti-Semitic views of Russian influenced Eastern Europe.  The nations in that massive continental region thus are largely impervious to rational pro-Israel counter arguments advanced by Jewish organizations.

This wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment has not washed over Canada and the States.  The U.S. in particular, is still the most powerful voice to counter-balance anti-Israel and anti-Semitic world sentiment.  It is therefore in North America where pro-Israel Jewish organizations have the best chance to influentially advance Israel’s case.

This piece therefore deals only with Canadian and American mainstream and lesser Jewish organizations whose pro-Israel advocacy incorporates support for the 2 state solution.

Before answering the title question and to put it in context, it is important to note that there is a significant minority of Jews, without much, if any major mainstream Jewish organization representation, who reject the 2 state solution.

These 2 state solution contrarians advocate that Israel by virtue of biblical doctrine, historical, military precedent, international law and by every objective measure is entitled to exclusive dominion and sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.  They contend that if the Palestinians are entitled to their own independent state, that state Jordan, already exists.  Further, these contrarians argue that Israel over the years has been pressured by world powers and in particular the U.S., to make concessions to enable the 2 state solution to be realized, which concessions have only resulted in Israel’s short and long term security being prejudiced and that peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslim Middle East has only been pushed further away.   Put another way, the 2 state solution has been an exercise in futility for the reasons they cite and that there is nothing but wishful thinking behind further efforts to that end.

The anti 2 state peace solution arguments are that the 2 state peace solution is wrong, no matter which way you look at it.  Those arguments are loaded with objective facts spanning history to the present day, including  international law treatises that purport to justify their positions.  Those arguments are cogent, powerful and compelling.

The force of their arguments however, is undermined by the fact that Israel has since its year of rebirth, set herself on the path towards a 2 state peace solution.  PM Netanyahu in recent years, became the first Israeli PM to explicitly state Israel’s position that she would accept as the outcome of direct and successful 2 state solution peace negotiations, an independent Palestinian state on the lands of Judea and Samaria, albeit he only did so under tremendous pressure from President Obama.

Regardless of whether the anti-2 state solution advocates have the superior argument, the reality is that Israel for a number of well known reasons, some maybe good and some certainly bad, has taken a supportive position for the 2 state solution.

These arguments of the 2 state solution contrarians have been largely ignored by the majority of Jews and mainstream Jewish organizations or have been summarily dismissed as coming from the right wing, as if being right wing is some kind of mental disease.  Such denunciations of the anti-2 state solution advocates’ arguments are not serious and cogent counter arguments.

Further such denunciations are dishonest.  The fact is that supporters of the 2 state peace solution include many so called right wingers.

Mainstream and lesser Jewish organizations that support the 2 state solution are not only unfair to the 2 state solution contrarians, they are being unfair and doing themselves a great disservice by dismissing these contrarians out of hand.

There is much in the 2 state solution contrarians’ arguments that is valuable and which does not per se negate support for the 2 state solution.  Rather, many of the positions taken by these contrarians can be used to strengthen pro-Israel advocacy arguments advanced by mainstream Jewish leadership.

This leads to the title question:  Should our mainstream major Jewish organizations be advocating support for the 2 state solution?

Our reality is that all Western governments, politicians and power elites in all levels of society, support the 2 state solution for Israel and Palestinians.  Whether this support is a matter of conventional wisdom or collective delusion has been debated for years and that debate will continue.

One of the strategies of main stream Jewish organizations is to lobby government and the political power elite to establish, maintain and increase amongst them, positive attitudes and support for Jews and Israel, including awareness and empathy for Jews’ and Israel’s sensitivities, sensibilities, concerns and existential needs.

If mainstream Jewish organizations were to suddenly adopt the positions of the anti-2 state solution, even if such positions are unassailably proven, mainstream Jewish organizations would find themselves taking a position antithetical to government policy and majority attitudes.  They would in the result, quickly find the access to government and the power elite that they have successfully cultivated over the years, being denied  them.

The title question posed, it is submitted must therefore be answered in the affirmative.  This is not to denigrate in the least, the arguments advanced by the anti 2 state solution advocates.

Further and more importantly, answering the title question in the affirmative does not end the matter.

Mainstream and lesser Jewish leadership  voicing that mantra, is really akin to their using a key to open doors to the various institutional halls of power and society at large in order to have the opportunity to make Israel’s case and win over hearts and minds with words and ideas.

The more important question this leads to is, what specific pro-Israel messages do mainstream and lesser Jewish organizations deliver, once they have used the mantra of support for the 2 state solution to get them in the door?

Revealed by their public statements, it is clear that our major and lesser Jewish organizations that mouth the mantra of supporting the 2 state solution, are at times advocating differing views on what support for the 2 state solution means.  At times those views are so fundamentally different as to be antithetical in terms of what must be done to realize that solution, what is expected and demanded of Israel and Palestinians respectively in that regard and what are the rights and needs of Palestinians and Israelis respectively.

Such lack of even general uniformity of pro-Israel messaging, breeds confusion, not only in the minds of government and other political and institutional elites, but in the minds of the Jewish community at large.  The net result is that differing and conflicting pro-Israel messaging undermines the power and persuasiveness of all organizations engaged in pro-Israel advocacy.

The specific positions articulated as to what support for the 2 state solution means and how it is to be achieved, appears to be influenced by the political leanings, from right to left of the various advocacy organizations.

For instance, those on the right who support the 2 state solution, see Israel’s security needs as paramount.  They blame the Arabs-Palestinians in the main or exclusively for the failure to realize the 2 state solution, citing in particular their historically intractable Jew-Israel hatred and their stated dreams of ultimately destroying Israel and taking all the land of Israel for themselves, for Islam or both.  These advocates hold that unless and until Arab-Palestinian and Muslim Middle East culture can rid itself or at least substantially weaken the influence of Jew-Israel hatred, the 2 state solution cannot be achieved or that if achieved, such peace will be fleeting as ingrained Jew-Israel hatreds will quickly unravel any peace agreement reached.

Those on the more hard left, advocate that Israel is at fault for not having done enough to make the 2 state solution happen.  They cast the Palestinians as the underdog, hold that Israeli settlements are illegal, largely give the Palestinians/Arabs a pass for their wrongdoing and thus call on Israel to keep making concessions until a point is reached where the Palestinians will finally say yes to the 2 state solution.  What that point might be cannot be foreseen and will only be known if and when Palestinians actually say yes to a 2 state solution.

Exemplifying this hard left organization is J Street, which quickly rose to prominence as the go-to Jewish organization President Obama relied on for credibility on his claim that he was fully supportive of Israel, in spite of his words and deeds that caused Israel much grief to the consternation of even some of his staunch democratic supporters, most famously perhaps, former NYC mayor Ed Koch.   J Street’s so called support of Israel, brought to mind the expression, with friends like that, who needs enemies.

There are many more examples of disparate and conflicting pro-Israel messaging as between various mainstream and lesser Jewish organizations that claim to support the 2 state solution.

Whatever pro-Israel Jewish organizations advocate, they should at all times bear in mind that it is Israel that is at existential risk, not them.  They should recognize and accept that Israel best knows and understands her best interests, needs and what challenges she faces.  Thus pro-Israel advocates must appreciate that it is for Israel not them, to determine what positions, policies and actions are necessary in order to advance her best interests and to confront, deal with and overcome or at least ameliorate risks.

Respecting Israel accordingly, should guide pro-Israel advocates to be quick to strongly support of Israel’s policies and actions and to be slow and cautious in what criticism they feel compelled to express.

There are instances however, where the West or her best friend America have apparently, in order to serve their interests, forced Israel to take positions, policies or actions that appear to be against her interests.  Where such appears to be the case, pro-Israel Jewish organizations and advocates should not condemn Israel for such ill-advised positions and actions, but rather forcefully and unequivocally condemn those who forced Israel to take such policy or action to her prejudice.

Two important matters pro-Israel Jewish organizations and advocates, be they for or against the 2 state solution can and must come together on.

By using the access they have gained to people, government and institutions it is an opportunity for pro-Israel advocates to raise greater awareness of the two issues that Western governments, politicians and institutional leaders turn a willfully blind eye to.

The first issue is Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Middle East Jew-Israel hatred.  Whether Jews are for or against the 2 state solution, it is abundantly clear that Western powers are fearful to single that issue out as a major, if not the sole hurdle that must be addressed, dealt with and overcome, if there is to be any chance of bringing the 2 state solution to fruition.

The second issue relates to Hamas in Gaza, which Hamas factor is equally ignored by those Western powers pushing Israel and Palestinians to reach a 2 state solution.

Even if by some miracle, Israel could make a 2 state solution peace deal with the Palestinian Authority, it means nothing if Hamas in Gaza is not part of the deal.  So far and as far as they eye can see into the future, Hamas will never, ever abandon its intent to unseat Abbas’ Fatah and P.A. based out of Ramallah, take control of Palestinians there and then fueled by their intractable seething Jew-Israel hatred, act on their Jihadist beliefs and use every means at its disposal to destroy Israel and reclaim all of Israel’s land for Islam.

Convincing our Canadian and American leaders to open their eyes to the reality of these two issues and getting them to confront these issues head on, would be an historic critical accomplishment for our North American Jewish leadership.

Dealing with these issues and succeeding might be just what is needed to bring a real, stable and secure 2 state solution to fruition. Trying and failing, might open the door to a new and different peace solution paradigm that does give Israel the peace she wants and needs and which deal might even be better than the one now sought which calls for Israel to make very painful and risky compromises for the sake of peace.

In either case, not only would pro-Israel 2 state solution supporters, but also pro-Israel 2 state solution contrarians would win and Israel would be the big winner.

The second matter concerns the Iranian existential threat posed to Israel.   America must act now and lead the West to immediately impose crippling sanctions on Iran.  If those sanctions are not effective, America must lead the West in attacking and destroying Iran as a threat to Israel, the region and to the West.  If that does not happen and things keep going from bad to worse, Israel likely will be forced to attack Iran.

If Israel succeeded, Iran would be defanged and the political and power landscape of the Middle East would change.  Such change might well usher in a brand new and different peace paradigm opportunity that would bring Israel a real, stable and enduring peace.

Pro-Israel Jewish organizations and advocates of every stripe would be the winners and Israel the big winner.

If Israel lost…  game over.  Pro-Israel advocacy organizations would be out of a job.

Those are the stakes.

North American Jewish organizations, be they for or against the 2 state solution are joined at the hip on the Iranian threat to Israel.  Convincing American and Western leaders to act quickly to end the Iranian threat by whatever means necessary, would be a major historical accomplishment.

With such life and death stakes, it is an accomplishment mainstream and lesser Jewish organizations and indeed all Jews should be coming together on to do whatever they can to make that happen.

The bottom line is that declaring support for the 2 state solution is essential to get mainstream and lesser Jewish organizations through the doors of government, the power elites and society at large, in order to make Israel’s case.

It is however, just as important that once through those doors, that mainstream and lesser Jewish organizations must find ways to ensure that their pro Israel messaging is less conflicted, clearer and stronger in their support of Israel’s positions, policies and actions.  These Jewish organizations must make those powers more keenly aware of intractable Palestinian and Muslim Middle East Jew-Israel hatred and whatever other existential challenges Israel is up against.  Further pro-Israel advocates should be slow and cautious to criticize Israel, but not hesitate to forcefully condemn those powers when they are pressuring Israel to take certain positions or policies that better serve their interests than Israel’s.

In spite of some disagreements between the pro-Israel factions that will doubtless persist, they should be working together to better ensure that their pro-Israel messaging is coming from the same Siddur, if not the same page.

Not only does our Jewish community at large expect it of our mainstream leadership.  We demand it!

As Palestinians and their myriad supporters swarm the streets and universities with their flags and slogans marking the anniversary of their failure to deliver the Jews of Palestine into a more permanent exile, it is instructive to ponder what might have befallen the Yishuv and their future generations if they had followed the world’s advice and not finally defended themselves in the early spring of 1948 after some four months of attacks and the near starvation of Jerusalem. In doing so, it is no less useful to remember another momentous event that shares the Palestinians’ nakba anniversary: the fall of Etzion Bloc, where the consequences awaiting a defeated Yishuv were brought home to one and all.

Besieged since January, the Arabs correctly saw the Bloc as a danger to their supply lines between Hebron and Jerusalem. The Arab mayor of Hebron had earlier warned the Bloc that the local Arabs had resolved to “remove the Jews from the area in the event of the outbreak of hostilities” and had advised them “to leave voluntarily…as in any event you will be removed by force.” The Arab Legion commanders thus understood the Bloc’s strategic importance to the pending pan-Arab invasion, and they marked it down for capture and destruction.

On May 4 an Arab Legion armored column attacked the bloc, about 40 of the defenders being killed and wounded. On May 12, the Legion 6th Battalion and thousands of local militia surrounded the Bloc and attacked again, battering it with heavy artillery, and its armored cars slicing into the settlement of Kfar Etzion, the Legionaires and militiamen shouting “Deir Yassin!” as they poured into the settlement and overwhelmed the defenders. Seeing the hopelessness of their situation, the 133 defenders (men and women) sought to surrender.

The Arabs then told the prisoners to sit with their hands raised while a photographer snapped pictures. One of the Arabs pointed a machine gun at the prisoners, but was restrained from shooting by another. Then an armored car arrived at the scene, screeching to a halt. Out stepped a mix of either militiamen and/or Legion soldiers with Sten submachine guns and they blanketed the prisoners with gunfire shouting “Deir Yassin!” while they fired. After slaughtering all but four of the 133 prisoners, the militiamen and Legionaires looted and razed all of the houses and buildings of Kfar Etzion, as they were to do to the other three settlements of the Bloc, “leaving not one stone upon another,” so said a local commander, “to prevent the Jews’ return to the bloc.” When Aliza Fauktwanger (aka “Aliza R”), a Haganah radiowoman who escaped the gunfire was taken by two soldiers to be raped, a Legionaire officer heard her scream and rescued her, and protected her. Two more prisoners were saved by Legionaires from the others, and one prisoner escaped back to Jewish lines.

A similar fate might have befallen the other three settlements but for a truce negotiated by the Red Cross on May 14 that allowed the Bloc’s remaining 357 fighters to surrender and be transported toTransjordan, where they remained until after the war. Some militia and local villagers attempted to mob the prisoners and kill them, but the Legionaires protected them.

And this was just Etzion Bloc. Indeed, according to Benny Morris in his latest history of the conflict, after the pan-Arab invasion on May 15, Arab armies similarly looted and razed all of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, as well as Jewish settlements such as Beit Ha’arava, Neve ya’akov, ‘Atarot, Masada, Sha’ar Hagolan, Yad Mordechai, Nitzanum, and Kfar Darom when they fell into Arab hands, after the inhabitants had either fled, or had been expelled.

In the battle of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, for example, the Jordanian Arab Legion had blanketed the Quarter with an indiscriminate barrage of more than 10,000 artillery and mortar shells, reducing it to rubble. With only 36 of the original 300 defenders remaining, starving and out of ammunition, they surrendered on May 28. The inhabitants of the Quarter were then expelled, all buildings and dwellings were razed, the Hurva synagogue and 33 other houses of worship were destroyed, and the venerated cemetery on the Mount of Olives was desecrated. Colonel

Abdullah el-Tal, commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, in describing the destruction of the Jewish Quarter, wrote in his Memoirs (Cairo, 1959):

”… The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion…. I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty…. I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction…. Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it….”

“As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud – a cloud of death and agony…For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”

In 1968, the Israeli rep to the UN spoke of the conditions following the Quarter’s surrender in 1948:

“After the cease-fire had entered into force and normal civilian administration had been restored in Jerusalem last June (1967), a shocking picture was unfolded of the results of this policy of wanton vandalism, desecration and violation perpetrated during the period of Jordan occupation from 1948 onwards. In the Jewish Quarter all but one of the thirty-five Jewish houses of worship that graced the Old City of Jerusalem were found to have been wantonly destroyed. The synagogues had been razed or pillaged and stripped and their interiors used as hen-houses and stables.”

In the ancient historic Jewish graveyard on the Mount of Olives, tens of thousands of tombstones had been torn up, broken into pieces or used as flagstones, steps and building materials in Jordanian military installations and civilian constructions. Large areas of the cemetery had been leveled and converted into parking places and petrol-filling stations.”

The frankly expulsionist ambitions of the Arab forces during the war has received scant attention in the past; certainly today’s nakba-day protesters are unlikely to note them in their festivities. But Arab leaders made few bones about it at the time. Fawzi al-Qawuqji, commander of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA), told Al-Ahram on March 9, 1948 that the ALA was fighting for “the defeat of the partition and the annihilation of the Zionists.”

Among the catalogue of racist, expulsionist, and annihilationist sentiments expressed by the Mufti of Jerusalem, this was expressed on March 10, 1948 to the Jaffa daily Al Sarih, that preventing partition was not enough, and that they “would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated and the whole of Palestine became a purely Arab state.”

The truth is that the fate of every Jewish and Arab village or settlement during the war depended largely on the fortunes of war; the success of the Yishuv during this period thus saw the flight of more Arab refugees than Jewish ones because the Yishuv were now winning the war, and beating back the Arab and Palestinian militias. Had the Arab Legion, the Arab Liberation Army, and the other militias been successful in their attacks, the evidence of Etzion Bloc, the Jewish Quarter, and others make perfectly clear that it would have been the Jews of Kfar Szold, Yechiam, Magdiel, Ramot-Naftali, Mishmar Ha’emek, and Ramat Yohanon, along with those of Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem who would have been expelled and/or fleeing to safety, and seeing their cities, towns and kibbutzum razed to the ground—quite a nakba in itself.

Attacks by both sides in this period (early April to mid-May 1948) were launched with an eye toward the Arab invasion coming after the expiration of the British mandate on May 15—the Arab forces inside Palestine to secure strategic points to facilitate its success, the Yishuv to secure key areas to defend against it and thwart it. Each side saw the villages of the other as potential strongpoints and staging areas for hostile attacks in their rear, and against areas of strategic importance.

The Arab forces understood, for example, that capturing Mishmar Ha’emek would allow them to block the Wadi Milleh valley, isolate Haifa, and cut off all Jewish communications between Haifa, the surrounding area, and Tel-Aviv, thus opening up all of western Galilee and the Coastal Plain to isolation and conquest. After being attacked, the Yishuv similarly understood that if the surrounding villages from which the Arab Liberation Army had been gathering forces and launching their attacks were not conquered and secured, that the area would continue to be a staging ground for further assaults by even larger forces that had been gathering in the Jenin-Tulkharm-Nablus triangle, thus putting not only Mishmar Ha’emek, but Haifa, western Galilee, and the entire Coastal Plain in danger. This was war, after all.

Some Arab refugees were indeed expelled in this period but most simply fled, mostly long before any Jewish forces arrived; according to Benny Morris, the collapse of one village often led to the flight of near-by or surrounding villages:

“Often, the fall of villages harmed morale in neighboring towns (vide Khirbet Nasir ad Din and Arab Tiberias). Similarly, the fall of the towns—Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, Beisan, Safed—and the flight of their population generated panic in the surrounding hinterlands: after Haifa, came flight from Balad al Sheikh, and Hawassa; after Jaffa, Salama, Kheiriya and Yazur; after Safed, Dhahiriya Tahta, Sammu’I and Meirun. For decades the villagers had looked to the towns for leadership; now they followed them into exile.” (“The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Revisited,” 2004, p. 591).

Only a small portion of Arab inhabitants of Jaffa, for example, had fled the attacks of the Irgun when the British arrived to eject the Irgun; most of the refugees there continued fleeing despite the pleas of local Arab leaders and the British for them to remain. In most cases there was no need for expulsions; rumor and panic put far more refugees to flight in this period than anything else.

******

The first Arab-Israeli war, whether it is called the “War of Independence” or “al-nakba” is of course the core event of the entire Israel/Palestinian conflict, and the events of Etzion Bloc and Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter in May, as well as Deir Yassin in April, and Lydda and Ramle in July 1948, all underscore an important truth: That this first Arab-Israeli war was no gentlemanly joust; that it was a brutal, uncompromising, sometimes savage war, fought in close quarters, sometimes hand to hand where regulars, irregulars, and civilians all confusingly intermingled. It was a high stakes, zero-sum game for both sides, and it is not surprising that in such circumstances atrocities, expulsions, and refugees fleeing did occur on both sides, as they do in all wars.

It is thus important to emphasize to the nakba day-commemorating legions here that the first Arab-Israeli War was indeed a war, and not just an assault by one side against a helpless victim. To portray it as such ignores entirely the military dimension of the conflict, and the role that the fighting played, among other things, in the flight of the refugees, and the subsequent collapse of Palestinian society. That the Palestinian people who became refugees were victims of the war is of course beyond doubt, but the truth is they were never consulted by their Arab brethren about the conflict that destroyed their livelihoods and dispossessed them from their homes; the decisions to resist the partition by force, and abort the nascent Jewish state was not made by them but by the Mufti and the rulers in the surrounding Arab states who took no heed of their wishes or aspirations, and even if the Arab states had defeated the Yishuv, they had no intention of allowing an independent Arab Palestine to emerge; all had their own designs on the area. In any event, what resulted from this was a bitterly fought war between two antagonists, and not just one long, extended, well planned ethnic cleansing operation that met negligible or meager resistance. The Palestinian people were caught in the crossfire, as, in many ways, they still are.

The cessation of hostilities produced a contentious and dispiriting epilogue to the conflict. Following the armistice and Israel’s admission to the UN, the Israelis, consistent with their obligations in gaining UN membership and Resolution 194, offered to resettle some 100,000 or so refugees in Israel at the Lausanne Conference; the Arabs rejected the offer without discussion. The Arabs, as with all previous discussions, refused direct dealings with the Israelis, and demanded acceptance of the refugees’ repatriation in full as a precondition to further talks. The Israelis insisted on discussions of the refugee problem in the context of a full regional peace; the Arabs refused, and the discussions broke down.

The state of Israel in its post-armistice configuration resulted from the war and the Israelis, understandably, I think, were not going to negate the results of the war in which they had just sacrificed 1% of their population and return to the vulnerable partition lines of 1947 which a) the Arabs had rejected anyway, and b) while the Arabs continued a state of hostilities and a policy of non-recognition.

The full return of the refugees to Israel in 1949 with the surrounding states still in the midst of a state of hostilities would have put some 750,000 (or more) Palestinians along with some 160,000 remaining Palestinians alongside some 650,000 Jews, thus making the Jews a (41%) minority in their own state. This would seem to have blunted the Jewish people’s right to self- determination, and negated the entire reason for the creation of the Jewish state in the first place.

The Arabs, in effect, were demanding that prior to any negotiations, the Israelis must take into their state over three quarter of a million refugees, created by the war of aggression waged by them, thus making the Jews a 41% minority in their own state. Then they would negotiate, and without any assurance that even this would impel them to make peace with Israel. The Israelis, in effect, would thus flood their war-ravaged state with hostile Arab refugees in order to obtain a seat at the table with the Arabs, and then hope for the best in the negotiations to follow. Really incredible.

Jewish self-determination did not need to come at the price of the Palestinians’ exodus. The Palestinians, who also had a right to self determination that the Jews never denied, certainly would have had it if they and the surrounding Arab states had accepted the partition. Rejecting the partition and opting for war had consequences.

After the Arabs opted for war, the refugee problem caused by the war was probably never realistically going to be settled inside Israel except on a limited basis. The notion that the Israelis would have negated the results of the war of annihilation waged on them and rendered themselves a minority by those who had just attempted their annihilation was always absurd. Most of all, since when do the losers of a war dictate terms to the victors?

What the evidence really shows is that the nakba was sired from the war, and the war from the Arabs’ rejectionism, lack of realism, and still-persisting allergy to compromise that made it inevitable. The war resulted from the Arabs’ rejection of the partition, and the refugee crisis resulted from the war. Again, the chain of causation here is simply undeniable: there would have been no refugee crisis if there had been no war.

Having rejected diplomacy and compromise, the Arabs sought the arbitration of force; it was to be a war of annihilation. Ever since the announcement of the partition in November 1947, they sought to destroy the nascent Jewish state, failed, suffered catastrophe and defeat in the process, and, as usual, blamed everyone but themselves, and still do. The nakba was indeed needlessly self-inflicted by them, and the refugees and their descendants have paid a horrific price for their unpardonable folly and intransigence. They still do.

:: 2012 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

(Photo: “Jewish people attempting to leave portion of city surrendered to Arab forces. Jerusalem, Israel. June 1948.” John Phillips, LIFE Magazine)

The Azrieli Series Short Films are intimate, personal profiles of the five most recently published authors of the Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs. In the films, the authors reflect on their histories from childhood through to their experiences during the war to their present lives in Canada. Each profile is introduced with a reading by the author from his/her memoir intercut with professional animation that reflects the feel and tone of the author’s excerpt.

The aim of the Films is to arouse people’s interest in reading the memoirs by celebrating the lives and achievements of the authors in the program on film. These short films are invaluable resources for events and classrooms, as well as for use on the Internet and social media. The films will enable us to reach more people and keep history current for new generations.

The JMA is the umbrella group for 47 Jewish motorcycle clubs located throughout Canada, the US, Australia, Israel, the UK and South Africa. The annual R2R is the JMA’s signature event in which we ride to remember those that were murdered in the Holocaust.

The JMA raises funds for Holocaust education in an effort to teach tolerance and ensure that future generations will not allow genocides to occur anywhere in the world. The 2012 R2R will raise funds for the Holocaust Educators Study Tour under the auspices of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre.

On May 31, 2012 hundreds of riders will ride from New York City, South Florida, Montreal, Milwaukee, Israel, Australia and many other cities and towns to the nation’s capital, Ottawa. For the 1st time in R2R history, the M25 Riders, Christian Evangelical Motorcyclists based in Amarillo, TX will join the JMA along with the Heroes Highway Riders, the National Memorial Riders and prominent Members of the Canadian Parliament to jointly declare “Never Again” on Parliament Hill. After the ceremony JMA participants will ride to the R2R host hotel, the Holiday Inn Hotel and Suites in Markham, ON.

On June 1st the JMA Holocaust Memorial Ride in Toronto will take place to remember the victims of the Holocaust and endeavor to ensure that the words NEVER AGAIN becomes a defining reality that will relegate genocide to history.

The previous R2Rs were held in

2005 Washington, DC

2006 Whitwell, TN

2007 New York City

2008 Omaha, NE and Lincoln, NE

2009 Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC

2010 Chicago

2011 Virginia Beach, VA

The Toronto based Yidden on Wheels (YOW) and the JMA are the proud organizers and hosts of the 2012 R2R.

For further information contact:

Gila Yefet   416-843-6248  travelwithgila@rogers.com

Steve Stein 905-731-9734  yowmaven@rogers.com

http://www.yowmtc.com/R2R

When: Wednesday, May 30^, 2012, at 7:30 pm

Where: Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, Flora McRae Auditorium, 230 Saint Clair Avenue West

The event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Penslar will discuss the impact of the new book, A CONVENIENT HATRED: The History of Anti-Semitism by Phyllis Goldstein (Facing History and Ourselves) and how it will help us explore the roots of this ancient hatred, better understand the present, and help change the future. For more information about the book, visit  http://convenienthatred.facinghistory.org/.

Timothy Eaton Memorial Church: http://www.temc.ca/

The first quarter of 2012 also set a new record with the arrival of 20,580 travelers, a 12% increase compared to the same period in 2011, the best year ever for travel to Israel. International tourism to Israel also saw an increase last month with the arrival of 296,000 travelers, a 13% increase compared to April 2011.

“We are ecstatic about the remarkable increase in Canadian tourism to Israel thus far in 2012,” said Oded Grofman, Consul for Tourism, Israel Government Tourist Office – Canada. “We are grateful to see a large percentage of Canadian travelers choosing to visit Israel’s unique historical sites and modern attractions, and hope to see this momentum carry on through the summer and make 2012 the best year ever for travel to Israel.”

(top photo: Alrov Mamilla Outdoor Shopping Mall in Jerusalem)

For information on travel to Israel, visit www.goisrael.ca

Somewhere there’s a place for her. She’s Alexandra Frohlinger and that somewhere is the Toronto Centre for the Arts, where she’s currently playing the role of Anybodys in the national touring production of West Side Story, brought to town by the Dancap organization.

Alexandra Frohlinger

“This is a dream come true for me, to be really honest,” proclaims Frohlinger, who has been playing the role on national tour for the past two years.

She has a few claims to fame: the only Canadian in the cast, the first Anybodys who has gotten to sing the song “Somewhere” in the show, and (this is just a wild guess) the first cast member in West Side Story to have gone to a Hebrew speaking summer camp in Winnipeg. (Just a guess.)

First the role. Anybodys, if you remember, is the petite tomboy, who tags along desperately trying to be accepted into the Jets gang, but is constantly rebuffed and ridiculed because she’s a girl. The petite part fits; the tomboy not so much, but the 20-something year old actress feels she was made for the role.

“I like her sparkiness, her fire.” Frohlinger says, “I feel people are cast in roles for a reason and I think that my personality is very similar to Anybodys and that’s part of why I have this part.”

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Frohlinger knew from age seven that she was destined to sing, dance and act. She fell in love with dance as a student at The Royal Winnipeg Ballet School.

“I got my musical theatre debut playing in the Rady JCC production of Oliver,” says the graduate of Winnipeg’s Gray Academy of Jewish Education (equivalent of Toronto’s CHAT). She also performed in Fame and Bye Bye Birdy. Her summers were spent at Machane Massad, a Hebrew speaking overnight camp in Winnipeg Beach.

Her career took off with performances in The Charlottetown Festival (Young Company) Production of Les Feux Follets; The Drowsy Chaperone at the Manitoba Theatre Centre; productions with Winnipeg Jewish Theater and Rainbow Stage in Winnipeg; and as Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden produced and staged by Dry Cold Productions.

She was also one of ten top finalists on Triple Sensation, CBC-TV’s talent scout show that has discovered some of the country’s most talented young actor-singer-dancers.

“It’s always been a passion of mine and I feel that for people who pursue this career, it’s almost like a calling,” she says. “You need to do this, to the exclusion of everything else.”

Other credits on Frohlinger’s resume:  soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra in the Baseball Night Concert; the Boston Conservatory, playing the role of Nickie in Sweet Charity.

All of that preceded her national touring role in West Side Story, which Frohlinger considers the quintessential musical. “I feel like every musical since then has been influenced by it.  So there’re lots of American and Canadian musicals that were influenced by it.”

She first saw it in Winnipeg. “Even at a young age and having not grown up with it as much as people of a different generation, the passion of the show and the music and the show spoke to me,” she says.

“The passion evades the time period it was written in and I think that the reason the show has existed and has been relevant even to this day is because of the passion and sort of because of the over-arching themes that appeal to everybody else.”

After two years, she acknowledges that fellow actors speak of the challenge of keeping a long running show fresh. “For me, the challenge is in the work itself,” she says. “The show is so rich, and the choreography is so well put together that its always a challenge no matter how many times I do the number “Cool”, for example, there’s always going to be something that trips me up that I have to focus and work hard on.”

“Also, Anybodys is her own entity; there’s nothing like her in the musical theatre canon. Peter Pan is comparable, but not the same. It’s just such a delight to really make this role my own. I’m the first Anybody’s that’s gotten to sing “Somewhere”.

This production was the last to be able to work with Arthur Laurents. The author, who wrote the script and directed the original Broadway production of West Side Story in 1957, actually participated as advisor to the revival and national touring production. Laurents died a year ago, in May 2011.

“I feel really special to be part of this production,” says Frohlinger. “Any questions we had about the script, like why is Anybodys named Anybodys, I could actually ask the writer, which never happens. In a show like West Side Story that has been around forever, usually the actor has to make their own choice and make that their answer. But I could actually ask Arthur Laurents.”

And she did. “He said she’s called Anybodys, because she wants love from anybody. She is the only one who doesn’t belong to a gang or to so somebody. Tony and Maria have each other, the Jets have each other, the Sharks have each other. But not her.”

With Frohlinger in the role, Anybodys finally finds love where it counts the most, from the audience.

The Dancap production of  West Side Story continues at the Toronto Centre for the Arts until June 3.

(Top photo: Alexandra Frohlinger as Anybodys with the Jets, in scene from West Side Story.)