What you are reading now was written in pain, my heart bleeding, and if only there were no need for it. But the truth must be told, even when it goes against everything that is politically correct.
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For 25 years I have covered Acre as part of my beat as a local reporter and correspondent on Arab affairs and Arab society in Israel.
For years, I have built ties with many residents of the Old City of Acre. We celebrated events together, wept at funerals, and supported each other in hard times.
No one talked about victory or loss, and what guided each and every one of us was the understanding that we had to preserve the wonderful but fragile coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Acre, Haifa, and the Galilee.
These were my feelings as I arrived to cover the violent events in Acre that began Monday evening with a few low-level, isolated incidents in some neighborhoods of the Old City.
It never occurred to me that our lives would be in danger merely because we were Jewish journalists who wanted to show the Israeli public, Jewish and Arab, images of the reality in the streets of the city as it really was.
Overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday we tried to cover the vandalism that was taking place on the pedestrian mall in the city, the fire set at a restaurant and the looting of Jewish-owned businesses in the Turkish bazaar in the Old City. The police squads that met us en route into the city told us plainly: if you go into the Old City, you are on your own – the entire area is full of masked people and looters. But I and the colleagues who were with me decided to go into the Old City, despite the warnings, to do our work as journalists.
And how surprised we were to discover that we'd been wrong. Despite the destruction everywhere, we met friends who live in the Old City who welcomed us warmly and with a smile. But the deeper we went into the alleyways of the Old City, the scarier it became. Youths in masks started gathering around us. Luckily, there were a few of them who identified us as press, and after we were asked to show our press passes, we were kicked out.
The next evening, I went back to Acre. Furious people, their faces masked and armed with sticks, knives, rocks, metal rods, and Molotov cocktails were looking for Jews to attack after rumors had spread about a lynch that Jews had perpetrated against an Arab man, even though the opposite was true and it was a Jew who had been beaten nearly to death by an Arab mob.
The atmosphere was one of incitement and hostility. Our friends, Arab resident of Acre who were in the center of town, had told us there was no reason for concern because no one would harm Jewish or Arab journalists. Still, just to be on the safe side, we went inside a local shop until it blew over. A few minutes later, the owner said frankly that we needed to leave as quickly as possible: "Go now, because in a few minutes the masked people will be back and we won't be able to protect you."
In a moment, we made a decision that turned out to be the right one and decided to leave for our car, which was parked nearby, and travel out of the city in a convoy. If we'd stayed five minutes longer, we would have been the victims of a lynch, and this wasn't even in the alleyways of the Old City, but in central Acre.
Sad as it is to say, there are some people who are trying to paint a twisted picture that it's only extremists on both sides. But while in Haifa and Acre it was a few dozen Jewish sleazebags who don't even live there but took the last train into town to participate in the unrest, when we're talking about the Arab rioters we are seeing a well-organized effort by hundreds of locals who received encouragement, support, and backing for their despicable actions – mostly from the Arab leadership, nearly none of which condemned the violence.
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