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Portrait of an occupier

Dafna Meir, a murder victim, bore that international stigmata, “settler.” Killed by a Palestinian teenager wielding his knife on January 17, Meir was a resident of the West Bank of the Jordan River. Much of the world has nothing nice to say about settlers these days. Do not count among their detractors Dr. Ahmed Nasser, an Arab who works in the Dept. of Neurosurgery at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.

Meir worked there too, as a nurse. Meir studied Russian in order to be able to take better care of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union. Meir recently began studying Arabic in order to be able to take better care of Arab patients. Dr. Nasser commented, after Meir’s murder, that it was a great privilege for him to have known her, and that she even served as a mother figure for him.

Such is the portrait drawn of a settler, an occupier, a person whom a sizable chunk of Palestinians think they have a right to murder.

Meir and her husband adopted two children, besides their four biological children. Meir was raised in institutions and later by an adoptive family. Meir overcame a lot. Her husband, the widower, in the aftermath of his wife’s cold-blooded murder, called for “unity,” not “hatred.”

Dafna Meir sacrificed a lot to be a Jew settling a small part of the Land of Israel, a parcel that had laid barren for nearly 2,000 years, empty of Jew and Arab alike. For this, she was condemned as an occupier. In fact, she was dedicated to healing people different from her, including Arabs. Even after she was murdered, the American ambassador to Israel implicitly demeaned her and her ideals. Thousands of settlers, rabbis, government ministers, Knesset members and friends who attended her funeral thought otherwise.

Somehow, too many of us have forgotten that it is not easy to return to the Land of Israel, to settle it, to rebuild the Jewish national home there, to live the words of the ancient Hebrew Prophets, who upheld the universalistic dream of honoring all people and the particularistic dream of a just Jewish society in G-d’s promised land. Dafna Meir lived both dreams. She gave her life for both dreams. She deserves our ultimate respect and grief.

Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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