Hope and Despair

By Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights

A week ago I was part of a delegation from the "Forum of Organizations Fighting Unemployment" which went down to the Bagir textile plant in Kiryat Gat. The Bagir workers were informed over 750 workers were going to be laid off. It seemed clear that the plant will soon be closed all together, putting over 1,000 workers out of their jobs.

This follows a string of plants that have relocated to Jordan, etc. (The New Middle East) However, Bagir was known for its advanced technology and it turns out that the salaries of the top 5 workers of "Polgot," the branch of CLAL Industries and Investments LTD which owns "Bagir," came to over $1,000,000. One half of this would cover the Bagir deficit. Over the last year Bagir workers naively trained Jordanians on their advanced machines, not realizing that they were training their replacements.

The visit to the Bagir plant was quite depressing. Workers barricaded themselves in the compound, but nobody seemed to care. I spoke with a woman in her early forties who had been with the plant all her working life. She was convinced that her life was over. She had no interest in retraining courses being offered her because, with over 250,000,000 unemployed Israelis, she believed that there would be no work afterwards. She believed that the offers were tricks to get her out of the plant. In our meeting with the worker's committee there seemed to be no real interest in different ideas for fighting the decree.

That night I went to meet with the local council of Um Tuba, a Palestinian village incorporated into Jerusalem and neighboring the controversial Har Homa building project [a large Israeli settlement southeast of Jerusalem overlooking Bethlehem].

A few days earlier I had spoken to the head of the village council with information that there were plans to move people into the homes in Har Homa by Passover, but that Jerusalem's police chief Miki Levi would not sign off until 4-5 Um Tuba homes were demolished. He had no interest in quick action and suggested that we come to the meeting a few days later.

When we came to the council meeting it turned out that two homes had been demolished the day before, and the council was convinced there was nothing they could do, because we and they were powerless and there was no justice to be had from the Israeli justice system. We were practically begging them to give us a chance to try to save homes, as we had in other locations.

Yesterday, as I spoke in front of Bagir workers who had traveled to demonstrate outside the offices of CLAL Concerns, I saw some of the same folks whom I had seen at the plant. However, at least temporarily, there was some fight in them, as they stood in front of the fancy Tel Aviv skyscraper where in an office high above executives assumed that they had the right to decide Bagir's fate.

Today some 30 activists from ICAHD, Bustan L'Shalom, and Rabbis for Human Rights brought a new pre-fab medical clinic to the Jahalin Bedouin as part of the fight to raise the public's awareness regarding the Jahalin before an important court case on March 12th. Thirty-five families received paltry, but precedent-setting compensation for being forcibly moved to a barren hilltop 500 meters from Jerusalem's garbage dump. A time bomb is ticking away, as 80 other families on the hilltop are not being included in this meager deal.

On Monday, as a part of ICAHD, we will conduct an orientation for tens of activists who are willing to stand in front of bulldozers or blockade themselves in buildings, if our legal and political efforts to save a house fail. We are working closely with Palestinians to build a Jerusalem wide network, insuring that we and they together know about every threatened house and do everything in our power to prevent the demolition. We will not passively accept Mayor Olmert's declared intention to demolish homes every week.

As I looked into the eyes of the Bagir workers, before and after Purim, I reflected on one of the central messages of the Book of Esther -  the fine line between hope and despair. Esther, who initially protests powerlessness to intervene on behalf of her people, is transformed and becomes the heroine of the story. We are taught to look upon life as a perfectly balanced set of scales. On personal, national and cosmic levels an act, which seems insignificant at the time, may be the one that tips the scales one way or the other. This both gives us hope and puts a great deal of responsibility on our shoulders. We are not expected to complete the task, but we CAN make a difference and are not free to desist.

May we all have a little Purim light and joy.

3 March 2002 (19 Adar 5762)

Available online at http://rhr.israel.net/pencraft/hopeanddespair.shtml.

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