There is a letter circulating around Towna. It does not make me happy. It is a reaction to yesterday's shooting in Har Nof, in which one of the terrorists was an Arab who worked at the bodega next door. Therefore, says the letter, we need to be proactive and vigilant, and immediately fire all Arabs who work in Towna, replacing them with Jews (or Druzim, presumably). Barring that, the letter continues, if someone brings in Arab construction workers, for example, that person should also be obligated to hire an armed guard. I do not like this. It is the panicked reaction of a mob. It is flat-out racism. It is not economically sustainable. It is not right.
I had an hour-and-a-half conversation with my friend Mrs. Orna today, and we spent most of the time working this back and forth. She was very glad to hear I was also upset by the letter: she and her husband just signed a contract to have an Arab contractor build them a house here, and she calculates that it would cost her at least 10,000 ILS per week to hire an armed guard. She thought her financial situation was clouding her judgement, so we talked. And talked and talked and talked. About war, and responsibility, and trust, and tragedy, and honesty, and where oh where is the solution? And why can't people just be good?
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