AS WE ARRIVE IN NORTH AMERICA

Rawnak Natour                 Ron Gerlitz Co-Executive Directors, Sikkuy

Dear Friends,

As we land in Newark on Thursday (Nov. 5) we are looking forward to seeing so many of our friends and supporters in New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and Toronto.

For those of you in the New York area, you are invited to attend our speaking event at the New Israel Fund, New York on Monday, November 9 in Midtown Manhattan.  Please click on the link below to RSVP and get the address.

We bring with us concern about the deteriorating situation here that has raised tensions between the Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel and has challenged Sikkuy to work simultaneously to oppose the voices of incitement against Arab citizens including from members of the government while continuing our work advancing equality at all levels (continuing our very close work with government ministries, senior civil servants and in the Knesset).

What is also very important to tell you is that there were strong shared voices of Jewish and Arab citizens who spoke out by “standing together” to oppose the violence and the incitement. 

This week, the co-director of the Sikkuy initiative, Education for Shared Society (ESS), Samah Salaime Agbaria, was invited to speak at a meeting of the Knesset Education Committee where she was outspoken on the vital need to make Education for Shared Society a mandatory core curriculum in the entire school system with full ministry funding and support.

 Samah Salaime Agbaria (third from left) addresses the Knesset Education Committee

You can see the meeting on our Facebook (Hebrew and Arabic):  

The day before, Rawnak participated in a meeting with the President of Israel and civil society organizations on the issue of affordable housing in Israel.  She told the president:  “The housing crisis for all of the public demands serious attention but the housing shortage for the Arab citizens is the result of decades of discrimination and as of today, we have not seen any effective solutions.”

Rawnak Natour (first on right) at the meeting with President Reuven Rivlin

In addition, and this will require a little bit of homework on your part, we’d like to share the links to interviews with us that were published recently and relate very comprehensively to the current “situation”.

With Ron as published in “The Marker” on October 23, 2015:

With Rawnak as posted on the New Israel Fund website – “Israel’s Jews and Arabs must overcome mutual fears”

For those of you who’d like to continue to the advanced “course” here are links to additional articles recently published relevant to Sikkuy and our work:

• Rawnak and Ron: Op-Ed in Haaretz - Collective Punishment: Arabs in Israel Face the Sack Because They're Arabs
• Rawnak and Ron quoted in Haaretz: Israeli Towns Move to Ban Arab Workers From Schools
• Rawnak quoted in TIME magazine: Uneasy Arab-Israeli Coexistence Threatened By Violence
• Rawnak quoted in Bloomberg: Israeli Arabs Caught Between Their Pocketbooks and Their Hearts

We appreciate your commitment, concern and support and hope to see you in the coming days (Nov 5^th-13^th) on our North America tour.

Sincerely,
Rawnak Natour and Ron Gerlitz
Co-Executive Directors