A chance for real reconciliation?

The video clip was touching. Two nurses in white protective suits were caught on video carefully placing tefillin on the arm of a quarantined patient in a Tel Aviv hospital. What made a touching image downright soul-stirring was that the two male nurses were Israeli Arabs.

A few days later, another heartwarming image emerged, this time of an Arab doctor, Abded Zahalka, cradling a tallit-draped Torah scroll to be taken to worshippers at Ma’aynei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak for their daily prayers. Every crisis, the old adage goes, carries within it the seeds of opportunity. And one of the biggest opportunities coronavirus has presented Israeli society is the chance to repair relations between the Jewish and Arab populations.

Nobody has any illusions this plague will wipe out the ideological differences that exist between Jews and Arabs. But what it can do is nurture sympathy and empathy – two ingredients critical in getting disparate communities to view one another positively.

The agreement on Monday between Likud and Blue and White to establish an emergency unity government calls in its first paragraph for a ‘‘reconciliation cabinet to work toward mending the rifts in Israeli society’’. This cabinet should immediately send a message to the Arab minority that its concerns will be addressed. And the Arab community should encourage and take an active part in this undertaking. Both sides separately, and the country as a whole, can only benefit from a genuine process of reconciliation.