But it’s a false paradigm. The
Barkan murders were, in fact, predictable. The larger the number of Arabs you
have working side by side with Jews, the more likely it is, statistically, that
one of them will decide to go berserk and murder a Jew or two. And that’s
exactly what happened.
Arab-Israeli coexistence as a
concept, is similar to describing Arab violence against Jews as the Arab-Israeli
“conflict.” The prefix “co” suggests that it takes two to tango, that this is
about two kids who either will or won’t play nicely in the sandbox. It suggests
a sameness of intent and purpose, a moral equivalency. But this is a lie, the fear and the violence is on one side, only.
Israel's dynamic has never been one in which Arabs fear proximity to Jews. Jews are not a threat or a
liability in the mixed Arab/Jewish environment. The Jews, rather, are at risk, the Arabs
the threat.
Arabs do not fear to walk along Jerusalem's main thoroughfare, Jaffa Road, but Jews do fear to walk on Salah A Din Street in "East" Jerusalem.
Some years ago in Efrat, where I live, a trusted Arab worker, an installer of drywall to whom all were friendly, strapped on a bomb and attempted to self-destruct in our supermarket (by miracle, a Jew intervened with a pistol). This supermarket terrorist never feared spending time with Jews. He felt perfectly safe and comfortable in Efrat, and welcome in any home. But the Arab a Jew knows and loves, may turn out to be a deadly foe.
What happened at the recycling plant in Barkan can unfortunately, on the other hand, happen on any day, at any time, to any Jew who spends time in close proximity to Arabs.
That’s just the way things are.
And there is no reason we need pretend otherwise. You can’t
change things if you can't see them as they are, and this is indeed, the
way it is: it’s Arabs against Jews. Not all Arabs are violent and out to kill
Jews, and there may be a small minority of violent Jews who attack Arabs, but
these are the exceptions that prove the rule. The danger is one-sided.
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| Ari Fuld, HY"D |
This made me wonder what it
would be like to go back to a mixed work environment after a terror attack.
Wouldn’t you wonder: “Who’s next? How do I know if I can trust my Arab coworkers?”
And the truth is, you can’t
trust them. Even if you have years and years of beautiful “coexistence,” all it
takes is one evil player one afternoon, and a gun or a knife to turn things on
their head.
I looked to speak with someone
from Barkan—someone who works there on a daily basis. I wanted to commiserate
and ask how they were going to bear it: how they will go back to work, knowing
it could happen again at any time. Because I know what it was like to go back to
the Gush Etzion shopping center to do my mundane grocery shopping after Ari Fuld
was murdered.
But my desire for commiseration
was frustrated by Moshe Lev Ran, export manager of Twitoplast, a plastics factory
that exports its products to 20 countries worldwide. Lev Ran isn’t angry or
despairing. He is “sorry about what happened,” but his commitment to the idea
of coexistence remains unshakable, even in the aftermath of the terror attack.
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| Moshe Lev Ran, at right |
Judean Rose: How does it feel to go back to work after what happened?
Moshe Lev Ran: Nothing changed.
Our workers at our factory, they’re like our family. We work together as if we’re
on our honeymoon all these years, and even such a bump in the road will not
change anything between us and the Palestinians.
Judean Rose: But surely you must be upset, nervous after the tragedy?
Moshe Lev Ran: We are very
sorry about what happened and we have a lot of sympathy for those who died [sic!!], but as I said, it’s only
a bump in a road. We’re back to working normally, the Palestinians are like our
friends and they feel very comfortable
to work here. (emphasis added)
Of course, I don’t work at the
recycling plant. Our factory is only close by. Barkan is a big place with 160
factories. I can’t tell you how the people at the Alon Group, where the attack
happened, are feeling.
I know that the owner is in a
very bad mood, refusing to speak. The plant is closed for now.
Judean Rose: Has anything changed for you since the attack?
Moshe Lev Ran: The only thing
that has changed is increased security. It takes another hour for the Palestinians
to cross the checkpoints and arrive at work. We explained. But they are
very angry. Because they know that this harms only the Palestinians, and not
us. (emphasis added)
Judean Rose: Do some Jewish workers feel resentment: “we give them work
and this is how they pay us back?”
Moshe Lev Ran: No, no, no. I
don’t know him, don’t know why he took a
gun and shot people. I don’t know what happened between him and management.
I’m not a psychologist. My duty, my only
responsibility, is to keep the good relations we have with the Palestinians.
When they come in the morning, they are happy to work. (emphasis added)
Lev Ran isn’t worried or scared
or feeling threatened, just as we were not worried about our drywall installer in Efrat. He sees the terrorist as mentally ill, an aberration.
Someone who had problems with management. And since Lev Ran is a great manager, he’s
never going to have this “problem.”
He’s only disturbed that the
Palestinians are angry about having to spend more time going through security
checkpoints.
Lev Ran says, “They feel very comfortable
to work here.”
Of course they do. They’re not
the ones in danger. They’re completely safe. Just as our drywall worker in Efrat, was safe until the day he walked into our supermarket with a bomb.
From my point of view, I wonder
why the onerous security checks had to be explained to the Arab workers of Barkan. Is it not
self-evident that if one of you attacks your coworkers, the rest of you will
now exist under a cloud of suspicion? And if you really valued your jobs, why
would you not work to prevent this from ever happening again? Why would you not
do everything possible to cooperate with security?
Arab workers at Barkan who are paid by
the hour will no doubt lose money by arriving late to work each morning. They choose to be angry about this. Instead, why not accept
it as the deterrent measure it is? Is this not a fair price to pay to keep the
people who pay you, safe?
The bigger problem at Barkan, perhaps, concerns Jewish workers: how will Jewish Barkan employees protect themselves going forward if their ideas about coexistence remain exactly the same? It's not just about not being able to change things if you can't recognize them for the way they are. There's also a high probability that if you can't see things they way they are, you won't be able to protect yourself from danger.
Fellow EOZ columnist Forest Rain told me about the normalcy bias, which according to Wikipedia, "is a belief people hold when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects, because people believe that things will always function the way things normally have functioned. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare themselves for disasters, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias in disasters."
This would appear to describe the situation at Barkan, both before the attack and in its aftermath.
The bigger problem at Barkan, perhaps, concerns Jewish workers: how will Jewish Barkan employees protect themselves going forward if their ideas about coexistence remain exactly the same? It's not just about not being able to change things if you can't recognize them for the way they are. There's also a high probability that if you can't see things they way they are, you won't be able to protect yourself from danger.
Fellow EOZ columnist Forest Rain told me about the normalcy bias, which according to Wikipedia, "is a belief people hold when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects, because people believe that things will always function the way things normally have functioned. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare themselves for disasters, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias in disasters."
This would appear to describe the situation at Barkan, both before the attack and in its aftermath.
The thing about Arab-Jewish coexistence is that there’s a prerequisite: in
order to have coexistence, the Jews must exist. Which is what stepped up security is
all about: preventing Arabs from killing more Jews. What we mustn't do is pretend that when
security measures function as they should, what we have is coexistence.