Reconciliation through Trauma – Peace will descend

from Lod

Emilya Kodish Dr. Uri Milstein

62 years of Israel's establishment

Iyyar Golden Age
April 2010
Contents:
A. Introduction

B. Reconciliation through trauma

C. Anthropology of a heterogeneous city

D. Peace lovers should study war

E. A Voice Calling
A.. Introduction
At the urging and endorsement of the Chief Executive of the Committee in
charge of the Municipality of Lod, IDF Commanding General (Res.) and former
Chief Education Officer, Mr. Ilan Harari, and director of the Education Division at
City Hall, Ms. Ziona Kasif, for the past six months Lod’s library has been leading
a cultural, educational and national revolution in the city. This revolution will not
only completely change the face of the city, in all fields and in all respects, but it
will also have immediate and long-term implications on the culture, education and
the relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel and abroad.

In the following pages we will present the objectives, tasks, implementation plans
and methods of making a collapsing city a cultural, educational and national
center, and we will relate what has happened in Lod in the past six months since
its start.

B. Reconciliation through trauma

In 2005, Dr. Uri Milstein accompanied a Jewish-Arab delegation on a tour of
death camps in Poland. The delegation included Jewish and Arab students from
Bar Ilan University and the colleges in Safed, Ariel and Western Galilee, and also
Jewish and Arab members of the Children of Abraham organization, including
Arabs from Lod. During the tour it turned out that not only were the Arabs
interested in the events of the Holocaust and excited by them to the point of
identifying with them, but they made analogies between the Jewish Holocaust
and the Palestinian Nakba in 1947-1949. A dialogue of mutual respect was held
on both these issues among all members of the delegation. It turned out that
educated people of two nations living in one state, who study and teach in the
same institutions of higher education know very little about the traumas of their
own and know almost nothing about the traumas of the other nation with which
they are condemned to live in one state. It also turned out that even the little
knowledge and insight which they digested in the short time they spent together
touring concentration camps aroused curiosity, a desire to know more and a
mutual understanding.

During the week we spent in Poland, through Dr. Milstein’s talks with members of
the delegation, he developed the idea of starting a dynamic of national
reconciliation through trauma, that is: to bring about the beginning of a
reconciliation process through discussions and tours of mixed groups to the
following places:
Poland
Germany
Gush Etzion
Deir Yassin
Lod
Hadassah convoy massacre Site in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in
Jerusalem
Kafr Qasim

Ms Emilya Kodish, director of the “Le-Dorot” [“Generations”] public library in Lod,

was a student of Dr. Uri Milstein in Undergraduate Studies at the University
Center of Samaria in Ariel in 2008-2007. She studied in his course on the military
history of the community and the state which Arab students also attended.
Contrary to what she had learned and read until then, the lecturer did not praise
or blame either side of the conflict, but described and analyzed in depth the roots
of the conflict and wars between them. Many myths were broken within her and
she attained many new insights. But what mainly struck her was the capacity of
Arab and Jewish students for intellectual curiosity to learn and understand the
enemy who was now a fellow-student.

When Ms Kodish took upon herself the job of public library executive, she turned
to Dr. Milstein take the first step in the thousand-mile journey of reconciliation
through the trauma at the Lod municipal library. The vision was presented to the
head of the committee in charge, Mr. Ilan Harari, and Education Department
head Ms. Kassif, who enthusiastically agreed. All library workers, Jews and
Arabs, joined the mission. The event to mark the end of the planning and
preparation phase and the early stages of implementation will be held on
Independence Day (20 April, 2010). At five o’clock in the afternoon Jews and
Arabs will gather in the library. Ms Emilya Kodish will present the vision of
reconciliation through trauma, Mr. Jacob Monaire, 84 years old, one of the Arab
residents of Lod before the War of Independence, will talk about the Arab trauma
and Dr. Uri Milstein will describe the conquest of Lod. It will be a small but very
symbolic first step, which should stir a process of reconciliation in the mixed city
and abroad.

C. Anthropology of heterogeneous city – Lod’s Heritage

Parallel to the "Reconciliation through trauma" program and in support of it, Ms
Kodish and Dr. Milstein initiated a plan to establish in the library a municipal,
national and world center for the anthropology of a heterogeneous city (Jewish-
Arab, religious-secular, Ashkenazi-Oriental, deep poverty-wealth)

Goals:
1. Transmit the heritage of the city of Lod, from its beginnings in antiquity to the
present, to all students of the city.
2. Transmit the heritage of Palestine and Israel through the perspective of the
city of Lod to all students of the city.

3. Transmit the heritage of the residents of the city of Lod beyond the city limits,
both in Israel and abroad.

4. Make the library an educational and cultural center in Lod city life.

5. To restore the prestige of the city of Lod in the eyes of its residents, of the
residents of Israel and the world.

Means:

1. Exploring the heritage of the city of Lod, as reflected until today, in

publications; digging through documents and interviews with central figures in
the city and experts on the history of the city and its surroundings. The study will
also reveal unknown data and integrate what has known so far only
fragmentarily. The interviews will be recorded and filmed with a video camera so
they will be available for films and presentations of students’ papers on the
theme of Lod.

2.Putting the findings of the study in writing. The findings will be divided into three
periods:

i. From ancient times to the beginning of Zionist settlement in 1882.

ii. From the beginning of Zionism to the founding of the State of Israel.

iii. From the founding of the State of Israel to the beginning of the second decade
of the 21st century

3. Presenting the program at the Education Week planned for education leaders
and school principals in Lod in June 2010.

4. Holding a training course for teachers in Lod in the summer of 2010 (July -
August) about the heritage of the city. After the first course in which about fifty
teachers will participate who will have been specially chosen to impart the
heritage of Lod in the future, all teachers will be given training courses about the
heritage of Lod.

5. The salaries of teachers who take the course will be adjusted. Their job
description will subsequently include the teaching of the three historical periods
of Lod’s heritage in classes and tours, for which they will receive extra income.

6. Teachers who will take the course will give guided tours on Lod’s heritage to
residents of the city, Israelis, tourists from abroad and to donors.
7. Courses on the heritage of Lod will be given to employees of the Lod
municipality, government employees working in Lod and members of the security
forces in the city after the first course for teachers.

8. During the coming school year (2010-2011), outstanding students in the higher
grades of secondary schools who write papers on topics related to the history of
Lod will be released from one matriculation test. Training of students will be done
in a focused study group which will meet once a week for three hours in the
library.

9. A special room will be dedicated in the Town library where all publications,
documents and interviews related to the heritage of Lod will be housed. This
material will be available as research materials for excelling students.

10. The best research papers will be published in a book about Lod’s heritage.

Execution:

1. The documents of Lod’s municipality, from its inception until today, were
classified.

2. Books, articles and studies on Lod were concentrated in Lod’s municipal

library.

3. Thirty-seven Jewish and Arab veteran citizens of the city gave testimonies
which were recorded, photographed and transcribed. The testimonies contain
details about the lives of Arabs in the 1920s, the history of Jews in the Holocaust,
illegal immigration and absorption, the occupation in the War of Independence
and the process of the evacuation of the Arabs from the city, the administration of
the city and city life in the realms of business, culture, education and sports.

4. Information technology materials were collected.

IV. Those who want peace should study war

The Problem

Although there are in Israel a number of archives in which non-citizens

who do not serve in the defense establishment can review documents on
Israel’s wars (the IDF Archives, the State Archives and the archives of the
Haganah, the Jabotinsky Institute, Beit Yair, etc.), there is no archive that
provides researchers and students from secondary schools and
universities with organized sources on Israel's wars: files of documents,
interviews and newspaper clippings about wars, battles, operations,
security people etc. This is especially true of documents relating to
security incidents that occurred less than fifty years ago (e.g. the Six-Day
War). Those documents are still kept secret by law. This lacuna makes it
difficult to prepare papers, dissertations, theses and seminars on these
issues, and thus prevents the development of an advanced security culture
which is so vital to Israel's continued existence.

Objective:

To establish in Lod an archive for studies and research on all the wars that
have taken place in Israel from the time of the Patriarch Abraham (Genesis
chapter XIV) to the present. The archive will include material on security
incidents that occurred in Israel and on all security problems in the broad
sense of the word. This archive will allow students and researchers to have
easy access to primary documents, interviews, periodicals and other
publications, and to receive training on how to prepare and carry out the
research work.

Source

The proposed archive will be based on Dr. Uri Milstein’s archive of Israeli
wars, based on fifty years of research, which contains thousands of
recorded and transcribed testimony related to all of Israel's wars since the
beginning of Zionism, Jewish settlement in Palestine until the Second
Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead; tens of thousands of documents,
tens of thousands of summaries of documents by topic, and a large
quantity of publications.

Method of operation

All sources will be scanned and digitalized in Lod’s library. They will be
available for use in terminals placed in the library, and also on the Internet.
Lod residents will receive the service free, and people from outside Lod will
pay for the service. Dr. Milstein will be the scientific director of the archive.
Dr. Milstein will give funded courses for library staff and teachers in Lod on
the wars in Palestine and Israel, on the critical evaluation of sources and
on the use of research assistance.

The Archive’s Expansion

After Dr. Milstein’s archive has been processed and digitalized, ongoing
activities will be held to gather documents and testimony from the wars. In
the more distant future a specially-crafted archive or an entire floor will be
assigned (if additional floors are built on the library), and it will be named
by a donor who will fund the construction of the building. The Institute will
also will be designated an independent unit by means of a resolution by
the Lod Municipal Council, so that the project can receive funding from
other sources for its maintenance and development, such as the Ministry
of Education, the Ministry of Defense, the Jewish Agency, Jewish
communities abroad and national and international research institutes and
universities.

Anticipated result

the Realization of this vision will turn the city of Lod to a world center for
the Study of Israel's wars, which will increase the population’s
understanding of the problems and traumas of residents of this country for
the past four thousand years; it will foster a process of reconciliation
through trauma, increase the prestige of the city and events held there,
and will make an important contribution to Israel's culture of defense. Thus
this project will become an engine for the development of the city.