First came Hayuta, Nahshi, Arieh with his daughter from Nir-Itzhak and Ofek from Mabuim, met with a group of Rahat residents who settled around a fire in the middle of the building.
Then came Roni and Mary.
The coffee was immediately judged by Nahshi and he continued to serve in the best tradition hot tea and boiling coffee throughout the session.
The Rahat group did not connect. They seem to have avoided connecting to the invitation to join the circle. Listen to what was said from the side, perhaps out of doubt, shyness, suspicion, and I felt that the cloud of unrest in the Negev was thickening. But maybe these are just my thoughts … in any case it was noticeable that they did not feel comfortable.
When they saw that the “masses” gathering, they left a dim fire and went on their way.
We revived the fire that warmed us well.
Ofek promised that Yogev and Omer would arrive later and indeed it was.
Roni talked about the thought that acquaintance making the other close, accessible. Tells about meetings with young groups, including a group of the Preparatory School for Empowerment for Young Leadership, who came to her for the enrichment path. Jewish and Arab Israelis. At the end of the meeting with them, the group said goodbye to Roni and continued to gather at the Moshav club. Some time later, the group’s instructor sent a WhatsApp to Roni – a greeting from our Gazan friend. It turns out that during the activity at the club they had a conversation with him, during which the connection between him and Roni became clear.
Ofek says that the Gaza of the past, about which his parents and grandparents, one of the founders of Kibbutz Sa’ad, told him, is for him a distant memory that does not exist and is not understood and it causes a feeling of missing out.
Then a young man from the Yavneh came from Kibbutz Sa’ad with his 4 children. Hayuta introduced the theme of the circle. The guy told of a random encounter he had years ago with a Palestinian worker who was on his way back to his family in Khan Yunis and whom he took a ride to the border crossing and since then there has been a regular connection between them. And so he got to know the reality of life across the border in a continuous way to this day.
Malki has arrived.
We talked on the phone with our Gazan friend who told us about the continuation of the activity and the spread of the good news of the activity. He comforted us that we who are in the lighthouse are not alone!
And we talked to him again a few minutes later when Ramy arrived and the excitement was great.
Hanan arrived with the promised surprise: wine and spices that were soon cooked together and poured into trophies in honor of the lighthouse group’s 200th meeting. 200 weeks according to my account is close to 4 years…
Oded and Shmulik returned from planting olive trees in the West Bank. Excited and uplifted, they told about the empowering experience and honored those gathered at the knapsack.
Hayuta noted that the encounter is rioting. And we agreed that sometimes it’s not so bad.
Malki told about the inspiration she has from the meeting at the lighthouse.
Ramy returned the discourse on consciousness to the concept of love that he had been trying to define for some time. Love which he says is a concept not of the emotion but of some kind of combination of things.
Love is a way of life, it is a choice. His choice in Gaza consciously and the choice to come to the lighthouse and the choice to be conscious, it is out of love as a way of life and decision that there is the other’s existence and that there are people that reality is cruel to, in his thought of them in his love for them, in fact he makes love Of the other.
The discourse focused on the topic raised by Omer. He posed a question from the screenings for the pre-military preparatory school in which he participates: Will you agree or not to leave the Land of Israel on some utopian island in front of the State of California in order to resolve the conflict over the land?
We made a round of reasoned answers divided between the majority that ruled out leaving and the minority that owed.
Nahshi indicates his love and connection to his place of residence and that Shmulik reinforces the fact that man is a landscape model of his homeland. Oded mentions the statement that the land does not belong to us but we belong to the land And indicates A trending question.
Malki points to the unreality and realism of the question.
Hayuta indicates that apart from the sanctity of human life everything else is mundane. But she feels that she has a conscientious obligation to her pioneer father and her partner who fought in the Israeli wars.
Shmulik from Be’eri arrived with his grandson to check if the embers were kept in the “lighthouse”. Say hello and wish peace and keep going.
Ofek stated that he does not want to run away from the problems but wants to solve them.
Hanan explained that the question upset him because in essence it is whether it is possible to destroy and abandon what we did in order to allow and rebuild well. It is an idealization of destruction as a way of thinking about the world. Hanan also points to the trend of the question. And for a lack of understanding and internalization of important and significant historical processes and none of which answers the question.
Roni thinks she actually went through the process of moving from her place of residence when the “Yamit” setlements evacuated to a new place in the belief that it was the right thing to do for a better future.
It was argued that this question was a question of provocation / manipulation.
Rami said that during the peace talks with Egypt he was willing to leave Be’eri for another place but to be within the area in order to give the Palestinians more space. And he wants to learn to get along with the neighbors. And the question that has arisen sits on a utopian plane. For him the land should not be divided.
Shmulik notes that he has a deep sense of belonging to his homeland and the place where he lives.
Arieh said he does not expect his problems to be solved by changing geographical location.
Omer noted that the majority in the preparatory said they were ready to move to the utopian island. He himself answered similarly to Shmulik.
Rami returns Gaza for discussion. Claims that Gaza has never been in any country but has been “ping pong ball”.
Another question was whether the struggle for a foothold in the Land of Israel was worth all the casualties of the Israeli wars.
Oded talks about Wikipedia and the debate that developed in the Haaretz newspaper about the “dictatorship of Wikipedia”. According to him, a situation has arisen where there are values that have become taboo and should not be discussed and considered. And there are paving places in all sorts of places.
The meeting was very frenetic this time and took place most of the time with more and more people joining the circle and basically without any control or circular order.
We were: Shmulik, Rami, Rami, Nahshi, Roni, Hayuta, Oded, Ofek, Omer, Yogev, Malki, Hanan, Arie and Elia, the guy from Yavne and his children, Mary who also rote this time to the best of her ability.