About two hours before The Chronicle called Motti Dotan on Monday, seven rockets fired by the Hezbollah Islamic terror organization in Lebanon smashed into Israel’s Lower Galilee region.
So when Dotan told a Chronicle reporter “I am glad to hear from you,” there was more in this than civility.
Dotan is mayor of the Lower Galilee Regional Council and chair of the steering committee for Israel’s Sovev Kinneret region of Partnership 2000, the program that links the Jewish communities of Milwaukee, Tulsa and St. Paul with that region.
About 70 rockets from Hezbollah have hit the Lower Galilee section of the region in the last 12 days, Dotan said.
Dotan reported that only two citizens were injured in Monday’s attack, neither seriously; that he had just visited them in the hospital and “I believe tomorrow they will go back home.”
Apparently, the rockets have not done much damage there so far. Dotan said that only one house in his area has been destroyed.
But it means a great deal for him to receive communications from members of the Milwaukee Jewish community. “It warms my heart. It is exciting to know we are really partners,” he said.
“It gives us a lot of power to know that we have partners in Milwaukee,” Dotan said. “We are strong and we will win this fight.”
‘ Part of one people’
Dotan is not the only Israeli to feel this way. Alon Galron, who last week concluded his three years as Israel emissary to Milwaukee, said that he has received many inquiries during his last days here about what people can do to help Israel and Israelis.
And this just reinforces “what I’ve been feeling about this community for the past three years,” he said, “that this is a warm and supportive community when it comes to Israel.”
A number of Milwaukeeans who are in contact with Israelis both within and outside Milwaukee’s P2K region report similar reactions and messages.
Milwaukee psychiatrist and activist Herzl Spiro, M.D., last week participated in an American Jewish Committee solidarity mission to Israel. He is vice president for international affairs of the Milwaukee AJC chapter.
During the mission, he visited a woman in Sderot near the Gaza Strip. She, her husband and three of her eight children had been asleep in the house on the morning of July 16 when a Kassam rocket fired by the Islamic-fascist terror group Hamas in Gaza crashed through the roof over the bathroom.
“It was a miracle that nobody was injured,” Spiro told The Chronicle in a telephone interview.
Yet the family would not consider moving, and the house was already being repaired when Spiro saw it. And when the Sderot woman learned that the visitors were from the United States, she said, “Please tell the people in America that we are so happy to be part of one people.”
“I was very struck; this was not a government spokesman,” said Spiro. “The was a regular woman who had gone through so much.”
Roslyn Roucher, director of Partnership 2000 at the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, said that she has “tried to be in touch with as many people [in Israel] as possible, both in the partnership and in an individual capacity.”
Roucher said that one of her friends lives in the Jordan Valley, in an area that is not in danger from the rocket attacks. Yet this friend has been receiving e-mails from the U.S. and told her how much he appreciates it.
“It really does help; they feel that somebody else cares” and “they get strength from it,” Roucher said.
Israelis could use help with some direct and material issues and problems, said Roucher and Moshe Katz, chair of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Israel and Overseas Committee.
Katz said that the bomb shelters in the region and in the northern communities nearest Lebanon are in poor repair. These shelters “were not used for years because the people believed they [Hezbollah] couldn’t reach the area or they wouldn’t be launching again,” Katz said.
With temperatures in the 90s, these shelters can become stifling; so air conditioners are needed for them, Katz said.
In addition, according to Roucher, funds are needed to enable Israeli children from the northern region to go to summer camps further south in the country, away from the Hezbollah rockets.
But the psychological and emotional support is vital as well, according to everyone interviewed for this article.
“I think now more than ever we should be supporting our friends and family in Israel financially and emotionally, through contributions to our Israel Crisis Fund” (see story, top of page) “and by e-mails and calls,” said Katz.
“This is a time when all Jews stand together,” said Spiro. “The people of Israel are utterly united. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
And when asked what he wanted from the Milwaukee Jewish community, “What I need is love and support from the heart,” said Dotan. “It’s very important to know I have a family in Milwaukee and that they think about us.”
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