Published: 30 October 2017
Last updated: 4 March 2024
When I was 22, 39 years ago, I went to live in Kafr Qara for two years. I joined a program called Interns for Peace which was founded by the late Rabbi Bruce Cohen. Bruce had been in Israel during March 1976 when the first “Land Day” took place.
Arab citizens of Israel, who were then one of every six Israelis (today one of every five) called a general strike in protest against government land expropriations in the area of Sakhnin. Most of the Arab villages that remained in Israel after the founding of the state and the War of Independence lost most of their land in the 1950s and ‘60s, which was mostly given to kibbutzim, moshavim, nearby towns and cities and the Jewish National Fund forests.
The expropriations of the mid-1970s were part of a larger plan of “Judaising the Galilee.” This sinister Israeli plan against the Arab citizens of Israel, written by Yisrael Koenig, director of the Interior Ministry’s Northern District, related to Israel’s Arab citizens as a threat to the State of Israel.
On Land Day, March 31, 1976, at the end of a day of protest and anger, six Israeli Arab citizens were killed by the Israel Police. The events of Land Day shocked Rabbi Cohen, who as a social activist then decided that something had to be done to create understanding and a better future for the relations between the Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel.
Bruce created Interns for Peace as a platform to train Jews and Arabs in cross-cultural, cross-communal bridge building. I was the first person to sign up and was among the first group of Jews and Arabs to graduate from the program.
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