Objectivity is elusive. No matter how hard we try to be “objective”, we always view the world through the prism of our experience. And sometimes our experiences shape our objectivity in ways unexpected. That happened today.

I am now running the first ever course at Yad Vashem for South African educators. At the request of the South African organizers, we spent a day in the center of the country – near Hadera – visiting Givat Haviva Educational Foundation

Founded in 1949, its goals are the promotion of peace, democracy, and co-existence. You understand this is a Jewish organization in a Jewish country and our guide was a Jewish woman? This particular Jewish woman is originally from Wales. She came to Israel to escape antisemitism in the land of her birth.

She spent the entire day enthralling these people of color with her stories. And she was a great storyteller. The problem – for me – was that the only story she seems to know is the one about the plight of the Arabs/Palestinians.

Two of the South Africans participants left the introductory session believing that we – the Jewish people – started the 1948 War of Independence and the 1967 Six Day War. We never got any farther chronologically or I am sure the Yom Kippur War would have been our fault as well. So much for historical accuracy, let alone “objectivity”!

In a full day of anecdotes centering on the infamous Green Line and the plight of Arab citizens of Israel and Palestine, only one terror attack committed against Jews was mentioned.

November 10, 2002, Kibbutz Metzer, a young mother is murdered attempting to protect her two young children. Our guide did not mention that the 34 year old mother was literally riddled with bullets, attempting to shield her four and five year old sons, or that she was reading a bedtime story to her two little boys as the time of the attack. She didn’t tell us that these little ones had names or that Matan was five and Noam was four. Nor was there any mention of the two other Israelis killed in this attack.

One might innocently believe – for instance if you were from a far away place like South Africa – that this was an isolated incident. Yet there have been 6 incidents just in 2008, the last taking the lives of 8 teenagers studying in a Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Our guide, you should know, identified herself as a freelance journalist. Maybe that is where her objectivity went.

I am tired of hearing about the lack of schools and services in these Arab places. No one asked our guide why there were no services or if it wasn’t possible for Hamas to build hospitals instead of rockets. No one was told that suicide bombers – the unsuccessful ones - have been treated in Israeli hospitals so that they would not die in their attempt to kill us.

Doesn’t anyone wonder why any Arabs would stay in Israel, avail themselves of the schools and medical care if it is so bad or if they feel such Palestinian pride? No one has forced them to stay in Israel. They are free to move to Gaza or Jordan.

Maybe in the days to come, as we present the history, maybe that one day in Givat Haviva will be viewed less enthusiastically and more objectively.

I’ll try to keep you informed, but I am not always very objective.

For an up-to-date list of terror attacks, you can check this site:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/victims.html