Comments by "June VanDerMark" (@junevandermark952) on "Free Palestine? No thanks! (The Israeli perspective) Français / Español / русский / Deutsch / عربي" video.

  1. The following was written by a Jewish woman ... Jean Naggar … author … Sipping from the Nile … My exodus from Egypt. While I thought of my aunt as a fascinating person, I had no concept of the seismic shift that her activities were helping to produce in the internal psychological geography of the Arab countries, which were never again to accept their Jewish neighbors as brothers. With the creation of the State of Israel, militant Islam was granted a voice and a cause. Certainly, the formation of the State of Israel changed the dynamic between Arab and Jew in the Middle East. It became a polarizing magnet, leading to huge rifts in the standing social structure, cutting through generations of tradition and peaceable interaction. While most Jews world-wide rejoiced that Jews would at last have a homeland, those in Arab countries cast a wary eye at the chasm that was opening beside them, threatening irrevocably their safety and their way of life. For years, as a child, I puzzled over how the Saturday minyan could be Jewish, as they muttered and prayed in an Arab-accented Hebrew, bowed, swayed, and shouted responses, some in flowing white robes and red tarbushes, the harsh sound of the guttural Arabic linking them to the outside world as they left after services in a flutter of white cloth and clamor. I considered my own life perfectly usual and ordinary, since it was usual and ordinary to me, but I did notice with some surprise that not everyone we knew had their own synagogue in the garden. Following a tradition begun by his father, my grandfather Joseph had built a small synagogue into the far corner of our garden. My mother, father, aunt, grandmother, brother, sister, and I attended Sabbath services there every Saturday, walking through a vine-covered walkway at the back of the house. Up a narrow flight of stairs there was a tiny ladies’ balcony where I sat with the women of the family and the occasional neighbor who dropped by for services and later joined us at the house for the Sabbath meal. There was never a shortage of men from the less affluent Jewish quarters to assemble weekly in our little synagogue for minyan.
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