Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 15, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 14, 2005 Page: 2 of 28
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TJP V59-15 04-14-05 p01-04 6/30/05 10:43 AM Page 2
-e
Texas Jewish Post
In Our 59th Year
April 14,2005
Ambassadors in eans:
sraelis tour classrooms
By Steve Israel
Staff Writer
DALLAS — Three young Israelis
told their personal stories and
fielded tough questions in North
Texas classrooms last week to coun-
teract unfavorable television
coverage of their country.
Though they looked like Amer-
ican 20-somethings in jeans and
open-necked attire, the visitors took
on the role of ambassadors in front
of a combined 900 mostly non-Jews.
From most accounts, the Israelis
appeared to negotiate a better
understanding of their Mideast
challenges.
"I shop, and I go to college, and I
go to coffee shops, and I go to
movies, just like you guys do," Mor
Zukervaser, a 22-year-old former
Israeli Army officer, explained at
Southern Methodist University.
"But there is a difference. In the back
of my mind I always have to be
careful. When I'm in Israel, my bags
get checked about 15 to 20 times a
day. Because in Israel, terrorists put
bombs inside bags."
For nearly an hour on Thursday,
Zukervaser and her companions
captured the attention of 30 World
History students in SMU's Florence
Hall. The Israelis' remarks and
answers flowed easily as they fin-
ished the 18th of their 20
conversations in Dallas, Denton,
Richardson and University Park.
In six days, the three met with
groups of up to 300 (an assembly of
boys at St. Mark's School of Texas),
and smaller clusters at Richland
College, the Episcopal School of
Dallas, the University of North
Texas, SMU, Yavneh Academy,
Chabad young professional study
group and Bnai Zion, said Larry
Strauss. For the third consecutive
year, Strauss and his wife, Shirley,
hosted a visiting trio as part of the
Israel at Heart program, a world-
wide search for understanding
financed by New York businessman
Joey Low.
"How widespread is opposition
to Sharon's plan to evacuate many
settlements?" a student at SMU
inquired.
"My friends who live in settle-
ments say, 'If the government
decided that this is what's going to
be, then that's what will be,'"
responded Liat Damoza, 26, an
Ethiopian-born Israeli. "Some of
them will not give their homes so
easily, but they understand deep in
their heart that this is a sacrifice that
they must do. We can keep on
insisting on keeping all the land and
keep on fighting, but it doesn't
achieve anything. They might be
angry, but in the end it's going to
happen."
Earlier, in a TJP interview, she
noted that "now my friends have to
go out and sacrifice their home. I
don't know if that's the right way to
achieve peace."
Damoza, who was born in a
multi-generational Ethiopian village
of Jews, fled the then-Communist
country on foot with her family at
the age of 2. They spent a year and a
half in a Sudanese refugee camp
before Israeli agents, posing as Euro-
pean businessmen, secreted them
out of the country to the homeland
they had dreamed of. Damoza
recently earned a bachelors degree
from Bar Ilan University and does
financial work for a cell phone firm.
Zukervaser told students the con-
flict over settlements underscores
one of Israel's strengths: "It's an
amazing thing, that Israel is such a
strong democracy, that even though
we have to make such painful deci-
sions, like giving up the Gaza Strip,
the democracy is still strong. The
understanding that this was a deci-
sion by majority makes it possible to
happen, even if we don't agree with
it."
The male member of the trio,
Nadav Douani, 24, whose family
background is Kurdish, stressed how
closely young Israelis identify with
their American counterparts. "We
have Windows XP, ICQ (internet
chat), and flash memory," he noted.
But unlike Americans who simply
look forward to college and a feeling
of independence when they are 18,
most Israelis are focused largely on
their military obligation. "We have
to wait for college."
Douani said one of his lasting
impressions of army duty came while
looking for terrorists in a West Bank
Arab village, house by house. "I asked
[a resident], 'When is it going to
end?' He said, 'When you and I can
sit in each other's homes, and eat
something, and talk to each other."'
In answer to a question, Douani
said the United States has "a huge
role to play in bringing peace to the
Middle East." He sympathized with
Americans for "suffering many hun-
dreds of casualties" in Iraq. "The
State of Israel and the people of
Israel love the United States and
admire the job that she is doing in
the Middle East."
Zukervaser, challenged by a stu-
dent on Palestinian rights, declared,
"It's going to happen. They should
have their own state and live in
peace."
Israeli relations with Palestinians
were the center of much ques-
tioning, with one student asking,
"How does it make you feel when
you look at the Palestinian territo-
ries and you see so much suffering,
you see all these people enduring
poverty? Are you guys in this
[western] lifestyle affected at all, or
do you blow it off? You're so close to
it, but it's also off in the distance."
Damoza rose to her feet quickly
to reply: "As a person who lived in a
refugee camp [in Sudan], it's a hor-
rible condition. Life in the refugee
camp makes me feel very bad. I
mean I'm going to school, I am
going to work. I have a normal life.
But these people don't have a
normal life. It hurts me that they
don't have hope. But now it's
changing because of the death of
Yasser Arafat. Now that there is a
new negotiation, I believe we are
willing to give and sacrifice a lot of
what we believe and give land in
order to not maintain this life they
have."
Nadav Douani (left), Mor Zukervaser and Liat Damoza relax before meeting with
students at Southern Methodist University last Thursday. They're accompanied
by their North Texas hosts, Shirley and Larry Strauss (background).
Photo: Steve Israel
to that provided to Palestinians and
the "right of return."
"But everyone shook hands when
it was over," Strauss said. "They
[Israelis] changed a lot of minds.
We've seen a tremendous lack of
understanding, but now they
[Americans] can put a face on
Israel."
Concluded Zukervaser: "The
normal [Palestinian] people on the
street want peace as much as we do.
People are fed up with what's going
on, on the Israeli side, on the Pales-
tinian side."
The three attended weekend ser-
vices at Congregation Beth Torah
and Anshai Torah. On Sunday, they
headed for three-day visits in Austin
and Houston before returning to
their jobs and classes in Israel.
The same student followed-up:
"Is the land all that the Israelis have
to give to these people?"
Damoza argued that medical
help, electricity and water assistance
have also been given to Palestinians,
which is notable in light of long-
standing hostilities.
Zukervaser mentioned that that
large sums of money intended to
help Palestinians over the years
ended up in Yasser Arafat's bank
account, leading Forbes magazine to
name the late leader one of the 500
richest people in the world.
Strauss, who drove the students to
all their North Texas stops, said Arab
students on one of the campuses
wanted answers on Israeli's security
fence, the United States' sizable
financial aid to Israel in proportion
C00K-0FF
continued from page 1
Tiferet Israel's chili nearly pleased
judges' palates as much, and forced
repeated tastings to break a tie,
cook-off Chair Joram Wolanowtold
the afternoon crowd. The third-
place trophy went to the JCC
Maccabi Games crew, taking a break
in their preparations for the July 31-
Aug. 5 ingathering of 1,500 or so
young Jewish athletes.
As much as the cook-off owes its
name to chili - and there were 44
varieties to choose from this year -
even the vegetarians were catered to.
BBYO served up an exotic mix of
mango and jalapenos in their meat-
less recipe - not what you would
normally find "home on the range,"
but drawing lots of curious taste
testers.
There were activities appealing to
other tastes:
•Inflated slides, air bounces and a
climbing mountain
• More than 200 silent auction items,
from Dallas Desperados and Texas
Rangers tickets to jewelry, beautiful
Judaica and lasik eye surgery
• An American Red Cross blood drive
in which 17 made donations
• Aregistration drive sponsored by the
National Marrow Donor Founda-
tion, attracting five participants.
Announcing the drive was Cliff Ack-
erman, who survived
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after
receiving a marrow transplant in
June 2000.
• High-energy music by the Mazik
Brothers, Jim Schwartz and Rusty
Cooper, emceed by Joey B.
The "nice overcast day" meant no
sunburn problems, said Dr. Shelley
Weiss, the pediatrician who staffed
the first aid booth. "We had a few cuts
and burns among the chili preparers,
and there were some aching ankles
and elbows." He handed out samples
of Zantac and Maalox to a few acid-
reflux sufferers.
For the second year in a row,
Michal Marcus won the 2005 Challah
Bake-off, saying, "It's all the in the
special cr umb topping I do." A judge
said her challah had an appealing
sweetness.
Chili judges were Albert
Turgeman, owner of Falafel Express;
Joey Ohayon, owner of Cafe Fino;
Roberto Cardenas, executive chef of
Simcha Catering; Yossi Ohayon,
owner of Culinary Art Catering; and
John Lee, professor, chili connoisseur
and author.
Proceeds this year will be shared
with the JCC Maccabi Games and
Taglit Preschool at the J, both of
which provided volunteer help at the
cook-off, along with all the teams and
their synagogues and organizations,
as well as the host Congregation
Tiferet Israel members and staffers
Isabel Molina and Gloria Lewis.
First-timer Jeff Rose, the new
director at Camp Sabra in St. Louis,
had this to say: "It's absolutely
amazing...we do a lot of open
houses, but there's a lot more energy
here. It's very unique.. .very Texas."
Although he said he's had his fill of
chili until the next cook-off.
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Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 15, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 14, 2005, newspaper, April 14, 2005; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth188075/m1/2/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .