I sent him as a mother sends her son...

...I raised my son with a love of his home, with the ideals of giving and trusting and believing. I taught him the meaning of a country, of a homeland.

Francine N. Robinson..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
31 July '14..




I am a mother. I am an Israeli mother.

I am an Israeli mother of an Israeli soldier.

I came to this country almost 19 years ago, filled with hope and optimism, carrying my son, my first Israeli- born child. I stood at his brit praying that he would grow up in a land filled with peace and hope. I held him in my arms that October as the first rain fell; I walked him through the strawberry fields as we watched the luscious red fruit bloom in the January sun. I showed him the waves of the sea folding the foam in and out of the Mediterranean, and we felt the caress of the sun on our faces as we lay on the Israeli sand. He would twine his small fingers around mine as I walked him to school, and he would lovingly kiss me goodbye as he went on his way.

I watched his blond curls turn brown and his lean, lank body fill out to a man’s. I held him tight when he cried, bemoaning the woes of a child, and I was filled with ecstasy when his chubby face broke into a smile. I covered him at night when he was cold and wiped his feverish brow when he became sick. I am a mother – filled with the love, the hope, the expectation of all mothers. I dreamed of his future, filled with eternal love, and I did everything to make his present fulfilling and rewarding. “This is my son,” I wanted to shout to the world, but the world already knew it.

I raised my son with a love of his home, with the ideals of giving and trusting and believing. I taught him the meaning of a country, of a homeland.

Achi - My Brother

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
08 June '10

I hear it said so often, that simple word, "Achi" - my brother, in Hebrew, and each time, it does something to me. It is a greeting Shmulik uses with his friends, his fellow soldiers...and more, it is a greeting they use with him. I heard it in several conversations this morning as Shmulik spoke with his friends. I can't explain what it does to me to hear it; the affection I hear in his voice and today, as he was speaking to his friend and he put his friend on the speaker so we could discuss where to meet the bus that would take him to his base.

As they closed the phone, his friend agreed to speak to the bus driver to make sure the bus would stop and pick Shmulik up on the side of the road, and there it was, "See you on the bus, my brother," his friend said to him.

It's just an expression. I've heard Elie say it to others; others say it to Elie and now to Shmulik. Just an expression and yet it says so much about the relationships people build here in Israel. It is there to see in how our soldiers greet each other. There in how they speak.

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Remembering with a smile

Marc Prowisor
Yesha Views
19 April '10

I entered the Central Bus station in Jerusalem to get on the bus to take me home to Shilo. It was the evening before Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day), a few hours before the sirens went off to signify the start of this most difficult of days.

I admit that I find this day very difficult, as the feelings start to set in before the sirens, before the torches, and before the start of the ceremonies. I suppose it is very hard for Jews outside to feel as we do here. This pain, this hurt, this contemplation takes everybody back in time. We go back to the stories we heard as children, then we reflect on our days of youth in the face of terrorism and wars, we remember our days in the Army, then reserves, we remember the not to distant past, the last decade, years, months and finally days. We reflect our own experiences, our own battles, and wonder.

We swell inside, sometimes smiling at the memories of our friends and families, and then fight to hold back tears because we miss them, and we know that this is not the end of the fighting.

It is a day of intense emotions, to say the least.

I looked around me in the crowded station, and as the thoughts started to cloud my feelings, I realized that I was living the dreams and prayers of so many before me.

I was looking at Israel, at who we are, and how we get there. No ceremony, no Ultra Zionist speech, no Flag waving. I was surrounded mostly in a sea of olive drab uniforms, with a rainbow of berets on their shoulders. The pins and unit ID’s on their uniforms shined proudly. They smiled, they laughed, they grabbed each other like they haven’t seen one another in years, but in reality it was only a few weeks. They are all so young.

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Sweden runs for cover as foreign ministry refuses to condemn anti-Semitic outrage

Robin Shepherd
Think Tank Blog
22 August 09

One suspects that there would have been a different reaction if this had been about racism against blacks. But Sweden has now made it clear that it will not condemn the country’s best selling newspaper for running a two-page spread earlier this week which alleged that Israeli soldiers kidnap Palestinian children to cut out their bodily organs for sale.

This website contacted the Swedish foreign ministry in Sweden asking for clarification. A ministry spokesman, Anders Jorle, said that the Swedish government had “no position on the allegations” and quoted from the blog of foreign minister Carl Bildt where he said that “freedom of expression and press freedom are very strong in our constitution by tradition.”

The story, which ran in the Aftonbladet newspaper, also sought to link the wholly unsubstantiated allegations with the recent arrest in the United States of an American Jew on suspicion of planning to trade a human kidney on the black market. A modernised form of the ancient blood libel against the Jewish people was thus compounded with the inference of collective guilt.

It is strange to say the least that Sweden should invoke freedom of expression as a reason for its silence. If free speech is given such a premium why does the foreign ministry not exercise its own right to free expression by stating a position?


Moreover, if free expression is so sacrosanct why was the Swedish ambassador to Israel forced by the foreign ministry to remove her initial remarks from the embassy’s website in which she said the article was “shocking and appalling”?

Sweden is not being asked to engage in political censorship. It is being asked to do what it does all the time, not least in its frequent criticisms of Israel. It is being asked to make a statement of its political values.

Consider how easy it would have been for the foreign ministry to do the following: to condemn anti-Semitic blood libels, to denounce collective guilt, and to say that it finds baseless allegations about organ theft in Israel deplorable. It would not even have had to make direct reference to the paper in question. But they could not even bring themselves to do that.

To invoke the free speech argument in this case looks more like hiding behind a principle than standing up for one. I think we all know what’s at work.

Postscript: On the basis of an alert reader of this site (see first comment below), I am updating this post to reveal the following.

The Swedish government has not in fact defended free speech with the vigour that is now claimed. On February 10, 2006 the BBC reported that the website of a far-Right political party’s newspaper had been closed down in relation to the Danish cartoon controversy during which cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad caused mass protests by Muslim groups in Europe and around the world.

The Swedish government had been instrumental, the BBC reported, in pushing the website’s host to pull the plug. The newspaper called Kuriren — the paper of the Swedish Democrats — had called on readers to submit their own cartoons of Mohammad in solidarity with the Danish originators of the controversy who were in hiding in fear for their lives.

Showing none of the high-minded support for the complete independence of the press now being claimed, then foreign minister Laila Freivalds called the paper’s move “a provocation”.

“I will defend freedom of the press no matter what the circumstances, but I strongly condemn the provocation by SD-Kuriren. It displays a complete lack of respect,” the BBC quoted her as saying.

It appears that the paper managed to get its site back up. But the difference between the reaction of the Swedish foreign ministry to the feelings of Muslims and the feelings of Jews is plain for all to see.

To read the BBC article, click here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4700414.stm

To read the latest on the current saga, click here:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418665710&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Also see Hypocrisy Buster Says:
August 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4700414.stm
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