A Trip From The Past To The Future

It had been 51 years since I last stepped foot in the cities of Lod/Lydd/Lydda and Ramla. I was 16, and along with 20+ other teens was living just down the road for the summer at Ben Shemen youth village. We were exchange students through what is now called Heller High/EIE and would walk to Lod, or if feeling lazy, take the bus to one of those towns for the afternoon. We studied Hebrew as a group, but worked in the fields with the residents of Ben Shemen as we prepared to spend the fall semester with our Israeli families.

Lod and Ramla were exotic. Arabs and Jews living together. We never even thought about whether the waiters in the cafes were Muslims, Christians, or Jews. We practiced our broken Hebrew on them and they smiled at our efforts (or maybe they were laughing at us.) I kept that idyllic 16-year-old’s vision of Lod and Ramla until about 9 years ago when I read Avi Shavit’s book  My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.

In his book, Shavit describes the 1948 massacre and expulsion of the Arabs in Lod, perpetrated in part by Israeli soldiers, some of whom were from Ben Shemen. He talks about the thousands of Palestinian residents of Lod who were forced into the main mosque and St. George's church. He places us in the mind of the scared teenage soldier, who fired a rocket into the mosque killing hundreds of men, women, and children. The idyllic vision was shattered. So, when I saw that one of the field trips included in my program at the Shalom Hartman Institute was going to Lod, I immediately signed up.

Physically, Lod had barely changed in 51 years, but the reality on the ground had. We met our guide Dror Rubin at the Lod Chicago Community Center in the Ramat Eshkol (the old city neighborhood of Lod.) Dror is the Director of Inter-Community Partnership for the Center and since 2016, he has been a senior facilitator for “Search for Common Ground”, one of the world’s largest organizations for peace building. After a brief introduction and history lesson, we walked to the newest public building and museum in Lod, The Mosaic Museum which embodied much of the reality of today’s Lod, even though it is not the mission of the museum.

When contractors were excavating to lay a new water line twenty-five years ago, they discovered a large, intricate mosaic from the period when Lod was the headquarters of the Roman Legion. Archeologists determined that it was from the house of a merchant who lived next door to the headquarters. You can see the damage the excavator did in the pictures, but fortunately, it was left largely intact. The mosaic was preserved and some American donors decided to build a home for the Mosaic in Lod, near where it was found. The museum was completed and ready to open when the riots of May 2021 began. Here in the city where St. George, who Christian tradition says slew the dragon is buried, the dragon fires burned again. Responsibility for the riots and the atrocities that were committed, lay with both Palestinians and Israelis and some tensions simmer to this day. Early in the riots, the windows of the Mosaic Museum were shattered and Molotov cocktails hurled inside. What was supposed to be a symbol of unity and a home for some economic growth, was shattered. Thankfully the damage was minimal but it took 14 months for the museum to finally open. We were among the first visitors from outside the city.

Standing outside the museum, we met Hilda Kadasa Bahalul,

who for the past twenty years, has been working as a consultant and facilitator of women's groups. For the past ten years, she has been working as a community coordinator for the Arab community in Lod. She is an amazing woman who creates activities for Arab women and works for civil rights for Palestinians that live in Israel but are not citizens. While she is an Israeli citizen, because she was born in Gaza, she has an understanding of the issues the non-citizens face. She told us uplifting stories about women whom she had helped leave abusive relationships, and about a program she created to teach young girls and women how to ride bicycles.

She also talked about the struggles she and other Palestinian women have faced. At age 52 she is about to complete her B.A. in Humanities at Ariel University3d and is helping others like her find advanced educational programs. Hilda also spoke to us about how her daughter has had to postpone her wedding because neither family could afford a venue large enough to hold the celebration. 

Spontaneously, twenty plus "wealthy" American rabbis were pulling 100 NIS notes to help her pay her tuition and for her daughter's wedding. She refused to take the money unless we told her it could be used to help pay for the programs she runs. We readily agreed to let this remarkable woman use the funds as she saw fit.

Back at the community center, we heard from three other speakers. Rami Younis, who is making a film entitled "Lydd in Exile" that describes the events of 1948 from a purely Palestinian perspective. He was forthright in telling us that his film was totally biased and one-sided.

Lod, and other small Israeli towns, are seeing the establishment of Zionist-Religious settlers (i.e. Hardi Jews) moving in. Their stated goal is to buy homes and property from Palestinians and make these cities 100% Jews. Lod is a major focus of these settlers and this, in part, contributed to the May, 2021 riots. Rabbi Yehuda Gilad, principal of the settlers’ high school came to talk to us and it felt like he came from a different reality. From his perspective, there was no conflict between Arabs and Jews in Lod, and there never had been. While he did not use the term "fake news", it was implicit in his words that any talk of conflict was just that, fake news. He claimed that they were moving into Lod because housing there was cheaper than the cities, especially nearby Tel Aviv, which is true, but he totally ignored the reality that they only bought property that belonged to Arabs, often at higher than normal prices to incentivize the Palestinians to sell their homes and leave town.

Our final speaker was Mine Abu Luban, a Palestinian member of the Ramla city council. He talked about Ramla as a different reality. years before the Zionist-Religious settlers began arriving in Ramla, the community had established a religious leadership council consisting of the local Muslim, Christian, and Jewish senior clergy. Thus, when the settlers began to arrive and advocate for free reign in moving out Arabs from their homes, the religious leadership council stepped forward as a united body to oppose them. This slowed, but did not stopped the takeover by the settlers, and, when the May, 2021 riots began, the council was able to promote dialog and minimize the rioting and its impact. We did not go to Ramlah, but our tour leaders reassured us that what he said was true.

We concluded our time in Lod with a walking tour back to our bus. Normally, St. George's Church (1260 C.E.) is closed to the public, but a group of Christian pilgrims were visiting so it was open and we were able to see the incredible beauty that was within. Unfortunately, we were not able to see St. George's tomb.

St. George's is next door to one of the main mosques in Lod and down the street from a row of synagogues representing the different ethnic Jewish communities of Lod, Ashkenazi to Sefaradi, Bene Menashe to Yemenite. Fifty-one years ago, one of the most moving times at Ben Shemen was when our leaders took us to Lod on Tisha B'Av and we went from synagogue to synagogue experiencing the rich diversity of the Jewish communities there.

Three-quarters of my life have passed since I was last in Lod. My memories of seeing it through the eyes of an idealistic, "innocent" 16-year-old will never leave me. In 1971, I learned to see Israel, not in black and white, but rather in grays. Through the years, I have learned to see Israel through a prism and take in the multitude of colors that is its reality; the glory and the tragedy, the incredible progress and how much work still needs to be done.

May Israel and her residents know shalom uv'racha - peace and blessings.