The Kibbutz and the Village: A lesson of hope

The Kibbutz and the Village: A Lesson of Hope
By Bill Plitt
On the final day of my recent trip to Israel and Palestine in November ‘08, in the old city of Jerusalem, where I was staying, a colleague suggested that I take a diversion on my way home and venture up just south of Galilee to the Israeli Kibbutz Metzer. So, along with my Quaker traveling companion and one other American, we hired a taxi and drove north for nearly two hours to the interior of the state of Israel, to a place I hadn’t been before.

As I sat down in one of the four, plain metal chairs around the small table in the trailer office of the Kibbutz Metzer, I stirred my coffee slowly and wondered about the appearance of the commune’s simplicity. I wondered also about the journey of its people and those in neighboring Israeli Arab villages. Dov Avital, the secretary general for the kibbutz, who had poured us each a cup of coffee, as is custom among the people of the Middle East, was as eager to tell his story as we were to listen. We knew little about this place that grew out of the idealism of the 50’s. We were not prepared for what he was about to tell us.

On Nov.10th, 2002, a lone Palestinian gunman entered the kibbutz and murdered three adults and two children. The mother had just finished reading her children a bedtime story. This violent act shook the kibbutz and neighboring villages, and the shock reverberated throughout Israel. What events could have led up to this?

Dov shared with us that in 1953, one hundred and twenty Argentinean émigrés formed the kibbutz in a barren area in central Israel, a practice that had been replicated many times since 1948 when Palestinian villages had been emptied and Arabs expelled during what was called ‘the war of Independence’ by the Jews or ‘the disaster’ by the Palestinians. In this case, the land was taken by the émigrés as granted by the “Armistice Treaty” of ‘48. From the very beginning, however, the founders chose to practice coexistence with the surrounding villages whose people were Arab and who today make up about 20% of the Israeli citizenry.

The cooperation was two-way from the very beginning. When the Kibbutz could not locate viable water, the nearby Israeli Arab village of Meiser connected Metzer to its own small well; that action would not be forgotten. Other acts of kindness would follow over the 50 years of working together: dousing a threatening brush fire together near the Kibbutz; sharing sports activities with neighboring villages, including the use of Metzer’s swimming pool; even forming a joint soccer team which competed in the regional league. In the words of Avital, the community ‘became a close knit, multi-generation tradition.’

In 2002, a few weeks before the murders in the kibbutz, the Metzer’s board protested against the building of the ‘security fence’ across the Green Line because it would cut through the olive groves belonging to the West Bank village of Kefin; it would deprive the farmers of 60% of their fields. Metzer’s leaders had scheduled a meeting with Israeli Defense Ministry for the 11th of Nov. to argue the case. The meeting never happened, for on the evening of the 10th, the terrorist committed his horrible acts. But the long history of coexistence between the Kibbutz and the neighboring villages endured the onslaught. The terrorist was not from those villages.

Despite the emotions that rocked Israel, the secretary general said at the time, “Although the thirst for revenge is natural, we need the strength to remember our message and remain firm believers in our desire to live in peace with our neighbors.” He then said, “Most Palestinians are not terrorists.” During Shiva, the Jewish period of mourning following death, many Palestinians from several villages visited the Kibbutz to express their sorrow.

Even after this tragedy, the members of the Kibbutz continued to extend invitations to maintain their long history of coexistence with Arabs across the Green Line. In 2004, when the ‘security fence’ or ‘separation wall’ was constructed, it prevented the villagers from tending and irrigating their olive trees that lay between the Green Line and the new “separation” fence. The Kibbutz offered to construct a tunnel under the wall to receive sewage, circulate the waste in their own holding ponds, and pump the water back to their neighbors for irrigation.

As we heard this story, I was truly amazed at the contrast between what I had seen over the previous two weeks of my visit in the occupied areas of the West Bank and at the Erez Crossing in Gaza, a walled prison containing more than a million people, and the Metzer-Meiser experience.

As we prepared to catch the train from Haifa to Tel Aviv, we couldn’t help but be captivated by the thought that in the darkest hours, human beings are capable of drawing from their common well of humanity, and as President Obama put it in his inauguration speech, “extending hands and unclenching fists”. We thanked Dov for his story. Our coffee remained cold and untouched. The lesson of hope warmed our hearts.