Sirens always make me pause. I fall silent and count one off, praying that there won’t be another. Because two sirens, as we used to say, are not women in labour.
Somehow, the rise of conflict in Jerusalem always comes along with the rising temperatures. But after the meetings, the touring politicians, the dramatic headlines, there comes the first rain, and everything calms down. Then the countdown begins for next summer.
Some, though, aren’t content with just counting the days. Jeremy made aliyah from Washington D.C. six years ago. A reserve paratrooper, he rides his bike to work, each time reassuring his mother, thousands of miles away, that he wasn’t anywhere near the most recent attack. Recently, he joined a crowd of 5,000 to watch rapper Matisyahu perform beneath the Old City walls. “Jerusalem If I Forget You gets a whole new meaning these days,” he tweets.
Michal is a mother of four. After putting her children to bed, she goes downtown, where she volunteers for a group seeking out dialogue with angst-filled youths bent on revenge. To her ever-concerned sister, she vows never to leave Jerusalem, with its crisp, cool air and still-low crime rates. It’s her husband who drops off the kids at school the following morning, where they are taught about the complexities of living in a mixed city, where you have to defend yourself with one hand and reach out to your would-be enemies with the other.
Ibrahim is a Hebrew University law student, and a resident of Ras el-Amud, a Palestinian suburb shaken by recent events. Intimidating glares by Hamas supporters notwithstanding, he goes online every day, trying to convince people to stop the cycle of violence.
Then there’s Batia. She is an ultra-Orthodox woman. Every day she walks to work at City Hall. Despite having recently bought a canister of tear gas as a precaution, she prefers to put her faith in God, and in the ubiquitous policemen.
Jerusalem keeps going not through pompous statements, but through the hard work and devotion of its people. When things started getting really bad, I put out a call for an emergency meeting of Jerusalem civil society organizations. Within three hours, representatives from 33 organizations sat around a conference table at City Hall. It came as no surprise; even during “normal” times, the number of people willing to sign up for civilian “reserve duty” is astounding.
There are teenagers handing out Israeli flags. Elderly people handing out small gifts to security personnel. Psychologists supporting youths in distress and activists helping out local businesses. These ordinary citizens allow the city to keep on living its life: thousands of students going back to school, the basketball team fighting to retain its championship title, and Buzz Aldrin joining 2,000 people at the International Astronautical Congress.
This drive to take responsibility and think out of the box is precisely what is needed to resolve the complexity of current events. We have to crack down on violence, while empowering moderate leaders; fight incitement on both sides and defend the right of every person for freedom of worship; and make sure East and West Jerusalem get their share in infrastructure investments.
It’s time for this fresh perspective to rise from the bottom up. We are tired of instant solutions quickly denounced by this side or the other. We are tired of those who take turns making political gains out of our hardship. Jerusalem is a different place, and requires a different point of view: the one we, young people of Jerusalem, discovered 10 years ago, when everyone else said the city was lost.
And from this point of view, there is a lot of good to see. And even more to do.
Hanan Rubin is a Jerusalem city councilman and a co-founder of the solution-oriented political movement Wake Up Jerusalem which focuses on quality of life issues for all Jerusalem residents.
