We Jews have a duty, and an urgent one at that, to think through what religious freedom means.
“A revolution is not just the one carrying the rifle, it is the paintbrush of an artist, the scalpel of a surgeon, the axe of the farmer... Everyone struggles for their cause in the way they see fit. Today I represent Palestine.”
Natan Blanc's refusals to serve and repeated imprisonments come in the context of mass demonstrations against the inclusion of Orthodox Jews in the army alongside their less religious peers.
Two years ago, the rallying cry was "The people demand social justice", which was more open ended, proving its tenuousness in the question of Palestinian solidarity.
It's being painted in small, nervous brushstrokes now, but if the 3,000 or so people in attendance at the Combatants for Peace Memorial Day ceremony are any indication, it seems there is a new complicated narrative being written.
Whether or not the Women of the Wall will actually face arrest or detention on April 10 remains to be seen; that they have faced this in the past only to return in greater numbers is a testament to the righteous chutzpah necessary to transform the gendered discrimination at Judaism's holiest site.
The US President insists that he has come to listen. And in choosing to get around by helicopter and not on the roads, it seems he intended to avert his gaze. But the weather can be unexpected.
Today, walking down Shuhada Street, what was once Hebron's main market appears as nonviolent resistance against the street's new role as a space of separation.
It's not so different from those arguments in a Tel Aviv coffee shop: at the end of the day, everyone goes back home tired of talking but still buzzing with caffeinated irritation. If only they would get up and walk into the streets, so that the people who need to hear them might listen.
Occupation, strangely enough, is quickly becoming a tactic for Palestinian liberation. That's not to say much else has changed.
Perhaps someone forgot that Rothschild blvd used to be Rehov Ha'Am: The People's Street, before it was renamed after the tycoon, an irony that seemed to come full circle in that humid summer.
