´No Room for Small Dreams´

 ´In Israel, in order to be a realist, you should believe in miracles´.

No Room for Small Dreams - that I´ve had access to in audio format, read by the actor Mark Bramhall - is the book published in Peres last year of life. Half-memoir, half-inspirational book, this is just another testimony of a brave man who loved the people of Israel. A man who, together with other founding fathers like Ben Gurion, had the chutzpa to believe in their dream and set out of nothing a country. And not any country, but the country of the Jews.

A warrior, Peres also believed that peace is inevitable, and he personally worked toward it while concluding the agreement between the state of Israel and Egypt on one had, and Jordan, on the other hand. In his optimistic vein, he declares that peace is inevitable, and the current shift taking place within the Middle East is a proof that, again, he was right. 

People like Peres, or Rabin, or Ben Gurion, did have a humble dedication to the public office that unfortunatelly seems to be vanishing nowadays. Being part of the state project is a duty and they are grateful for the chance given to build The Dream. Which does not coincide with their and their family dreams of acquiring personal wealth and priviledges. Their families felt compelled to help them, from the shadows, without any expectation of public acknowledgement. They lived their religious upbringing through actions and good deeds, not by dangerously playing the card of the public piety for the sake of the cameras. Those were the days...

Peres prediction is that the future of Zionism is a two state solution, otherwise a one-state solution without Jews might happen. In an Israeli democracy, Jews and non-Jews should be equal, with the right to be different as a legacy of our own past of persecutions. Bridges would be made only through direct contact and dialogue, and this was the objective Peres had in mind when he created in 1996 Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. 

Shimon Peres had the moral courage to change from a hawk to a ´vocal dove´ ´on behalf of the Jewish people´. From the Hagana to the ´start-up nation´ and the creation of the nuclear resource facility in Dimona he had both the chutzpah and the vision. I am sure many of those reading him will see the difference and, as this writer, will be reminded that, indeed, miracles are such a reality of the Jewish life that one must work hard to achieve. 

Mutual Responsibility

Some days ago, on the second day of Rosh Hashana, happened to be with my family at a religious gathering. There were plenty of people on two sides of the mechiza but except us, there were hardly more than 10 people wearing masks. 

I felt the urgency to leave and forget about the mitzvah of hearing the shofar because my precious life was at stake. 

I am working hard to keep my heart far away from evil thoughts but once I was listening some drasha about how important is positive thinking to keep you safe and healthy, I just wanted to stay away of all this. Just a couple of months ago happened to be myself in a hospital surrounded by people - me included - that I bet they were not willing to die, but just sickness happened, no matter what was in their thoughts. 

What really annoyed me was the lack of responsibility and inappropriate leadership. Many, old and young, do consider their rabbis as persons with authority, whose example is worth following. When they don´t wear of mask assuming some special divine protection they risk their lives. There are old people and young people, sick people and people with a problematic health history. All those deserve to live and they deserve to be told how risky is to avoid wearing masks and social distance. No matter what other mitzvah you want to perform, saving lives is the most important one. Where is the wisdom of the leadership when they continue to encourage dissent and disregard basic medical knowledge? How they can go to sleep at night after they heard that someone who attended the mask-free religious gatherings died and spread the virus to their family members too?

Where is the mutual responsibility?

PS: A couple of days ago, I´ve watched some videos featuring the aggressive Police intervention against the religious anti-mask dissenters in Jerusalem. What´s wrong with humans lately? 

Normalization

It´s almost a month since the Abraham Accords were signed in the US, allowing the normalization of relations between UAE and Bahrain, on one side, and the State of Israel, on the other side, and so many things are in the making. At least, this may be the only best news in this strange year and, seriously, what a great normal news it is. 

On one hand, the Accords are the recognition of a reality in the making long before the Trump administration, who was offered, though, an elegant opportunity to show off. The trust of intelligences cannot be build in four years only, and the fact that for over five years discrete bar/bat mitzvah were celebrated in a private location in Dubai, tells a lot about how far everything started. 

On the other hand, it´s clear for everyone that four decades of hate and distasteful brainwashing and propaganda haven´t helped the so-called ´Palestinian´ cause. And it will never help. By creating communication chains and personal contacts there will be more likely a chance to have an answer to a painful situation. But well, do you know under what conditions the Palestinians in Lebanon are living - no citizenship, no rights...Or in other countries from the region that keep to condemn Israel when they are going through crisis of legitimacy, even no one serious in his/her mind do really believe this circus. Hopefully voices like that of Faeze Hashemi (hopefully she is wiser than her late father) who recently recommended a recognition towards Israel as a way to defend the Palestinians are not singular, although one may only dream and dream until things will really be able to move in a different direction between Jerusalem and Tehran. 

In the last weeks, there were a couple of moves of soft power diplomacy that took place either in the UAE or Israel, not all of them equal in weight, but nothwistanding news-worthy given the many decades of dissent and the religious propaganda in the Gulf: an Arab-Israeli soccer player who plays for the Israeli national team, Diaa Saba,  signed with Dubai Al-Nasr; there were some photo joint photoshooting for undergarments with the participation of Israeli and Dubai-based models, musical collaborations between artists from the two countries (Waleed al-Jasim and Elkana Marziano, de gustibus but still something). The Harvard graduate Nuseir Yassin, known as Nas Daily, started a tour in the region which angered the BDS movement supporters - because they will feel that soon they are becoming completely redundant...

The most important of all these, though, is the meeting hosted by the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, between the top diplomats from Israel and UAE, Gabi Askenazi and Abdullah bin Zayed. The two officials who inaugurated the first ever meeting at this level in the history of the region, visited the Memorial of the Murdered Jews, near the iconic Brandenburg Gate. 

There is such a huge window of opportunities right now in the region which is stronger than a political representative or another. It has to do with the everyday life of humans who deserve better and the hopes of a generation that hate should be left way behind in the history books.