Media

Haifa Mayor Stays Strong Despite Relentless Attacks | 2006/08/03
21st Annual "Toots" Schwartz Charity Golf Tournament | 2005/10/14
Haifa is a Model of Jewish-Arab Coexistence, Mayor Says | 2005/06/23
The Canadian Committee for the Haifa Foundation - Establishment | 2005/04/21

Haifa Mayor Stays Strong Despite Relentless Attacks
Sheri Shefa | The Canadian Jewish News
2006/08/03

TORONTO - As the residents of Haifa continue to suffer more casualties and destruction from rocket attacks launched by Hezbollah, Haifa mayor Yona Yahav is determined to stay strong to set an example for his community.

"The whole municipality is working in a very efficient way to serve the people and to provide all the services required," Yahav said from Haifa.

"We are working 24 hours a day and we are very prepared for this job because we have worked for the whole year in order to prepare ourselves, not for rocket shelling, but for earthquakes.

"We are confident, and this confidence is being conveyed to the people. This is helping the way people are behaving. We are a very strong community," said Yahav, who has been Haifa's mayor since 2003.

But despite the resolve of the 270,000-person community, there is no denying the negative impact that the war is having on every aspect of the city's well-being.

"Haifa is under attack, under fire. We have had up until now 60 rockets which caused destruction and we have had until now, 10 casualties," he said in an interview with The CJN last week after a man had been killed by the shrapnel of a rocket that landed next to his car.

"The economy is in a hole, most of the businesses are closed. And people are instructed to stay behind walls because the rockets that are being shot at us contain thousands of [ball bearings], which are being scattered around in a radius of kilometres," Yahav said.

"This morning I visited a funeral of one of my people, one of the inhabitants of this city. He drove innocently in his car along the road and a rocket exploded [near] his car," said the Mayor, who just days earlier spoke with the Israeli Consul General, Ya'acov Brosh, during a conference call at an emergency meeting arranged by the Toronto-based Canadian Committee for the Haifa Foundation.

During the meeting, Yahav said that with the help of Canadians, he hopes he'll be able to provide his community, during and after the Lebanese-Israeli war, with a summer day camp program for children in the shelters, aid for psychological treatments, and a capital loan fund for small businesses, which have virtually shut down since the fighting began July 12th.

"This city is usually full of life. During the summer, it is a very attractive place. You have very nice beaches, lots of cultural activities, festivals and carnivals, and these kinds of activities are being robbed from the city and from at least half a million people," said Yahav, in reference to the fact that the once-bustling city resembles more of a ghost town, which is causing Haifa's economy to suffer.

But tourism, which is Haifa's number one economic resource, is not the only part of the economy that is suffering.

Many Haifa residents, Yahav said, can't or won't go to work.

"If he has a shelter in his workplace, he is permitted to leave home and go to work. If in his workplace there is no shelter, he stays either in Haifa, at home, or he may have left Haifa to go down south and stay in a hotel, or with family."

He said that of the 270,000 Haifa residents, roughly 20 per cent have left Haifa to avoid the danger of the rockets that continue to claim lives and injure others.

The physical destruction, however, could be worse.

"The destruction is relatively low for big buildings. But we have suffered the highest number of casualties."

As part of the plan to rebuild Haifa, Yahav is appealing to the international community to play an active role in restoring Haifa's reputation as a safe tourist destination.

"Immediately after the war, [Jewish organizations] should send delegations to Haifa because we have to reconstruct the tourism industry and economy," he said, adding that the more people participate, the quicker they should recover.

Yahav also hopes that if Haifa does receive aid from the international community, he'll be able to put it toward making improvements to rescue organizations such as Magen David Adom.

"I'd like to see our forces get more aid to make them more efficient in carrying out their job," he said.

More importantly, he hopes people from around the world will continue to voice their opposition to Hezbollah.

"The international community can exert efforts to dismantle Hezbollah because as long as Hezbollah stays armed, within the near future, we will suffer again the bombings."

Yahav said that he is thankful for the support his city has received from the Canadian Jewish community. "The backing of the community shows that we are one people."

21st Annual "Toots" Schwartz Charity Golf Tournament
Rebecca Nadler | The Canadian Jewish News
2005/10/14

Proceeds from the 21st Annual "Toots" Schwartz Charity Golf Tournament, Give Peace A Chance, which brought together 120 golfers, will go to the Haifa Foundation to help build a playground in Haifa where kids of all religions can grow up as friends in peace. Pictured from left are Blanche Schwartz, Toots' widow; her son Mendle Schwartz; Pauline Schwartz, member of the Canadian Committee for the Haifa Foundation; Dani Neuman, Executive Director of the Haifa Foundation; Maya Goldenberg, Executive Director of the Canadian Committee for the Haifa Foundation; and Doron Goldenberg.

Haifa is a Model of Jewish-Arab Coexistence, Mayor Says
Sheldon Kirshner | The Canadian Jewish News
2005/06/23

The Mayor of Haifa - Israel's third largest city - was here recently to promote his hillside port city as a unique laboratory of Arab-Jewish coexistence.

"Haifa," claimed Yona Yanav in an interview, "is the only place on earth where there is full peace between Jews and Arabs."

He added, "It's important to make this known because it proves it's possible for Jews and Arabs to live together." Yahav, here at the invitation of the Canadian Committee for the Haifa Foundation, held up Haifa as a model of pluralism and harmony in a region torn by ethnic and religious discord. "They get along very well," said Yahav, speaking of the Jewish majority of 240,000 inhabitants and the Arab minority of 30,000 residents. "It's something normal in Haifa."

Nor has the second Palestinian uprising sullied Haifa's status and image as a tolerant metropolis where Jews and Arabs mingle easily, he observed.

During the earliest phase of the current intifada, in October 2000, Israeli Arabs, in solidarity with their cousins in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, went on a one day rampage throughout Israel. Israeli police fired at the Arab demonstrators and rioters, killing 12.

Although the situation was emotionally charged in Haifa, Yahav said, the demonstrators dispersed after a few hours, and since then, calm has prevailed.

In the past four and a half years, Palestinian suicide bombers have killed 85 Jews and Arabs in four separate attacks in Haifa. The attackers targeted restaurants and buses jointly owned and frequented by Arabs and Jews.

"The aim of the bombers was to jeopardize Arab-Jewish relations," said Yahav, a 60-year old Labor Party politician who has been mayor since June 2003. "But they have not succeeded."

Of all of Israel's ethnically mixed cities, Haifa has the largest concentration of Arabs after Nazareth, whose Arab population is listed as 60,000.

Yahav said Arab-Jewish relations in Haifa are better than in Ramle and Lod, where Jews and Arabs live virtually side by side.

"Arabs feel wanted in Haifa," said Yahav, a lawyer by profession and a member of the Knesset from 1996 to 1999. "They feel equal, like partners."

Joseph Khoury, an Israeli Christian Arab on Yahav's delegation, cited yet another factor for the positive state of Arab-Jewish ties in Haifa.

The Christian and Muslim communities are not led by extremists," said Khoury, a 65-year old Greek Orthodox businessman in the building trade who is active in the Haifa Foundation.

Although Haifa's Jews and Arabs mix freely, they lead largely separate lives, said Yahav, whose deputy is an Arab.

In keeping with previous Ottoman and British Mandate tradition, more than 90 per cent of Arabs reside in their own neighbourhoods and all but a handful of Muslim and Christian students attend public or private schools.

Jews, however, generally enjoy a higher standard of living than Arabs in Haifa. The reason is that most Haifa Arabs are originally from nearby villages and need time to close the gap, Yahav said.

Though the relationship between Arabs and Jews in the rest of Israel is "not bad," there is considerable room for improvement, Khoury noted.

"We're struggling for equality," he said, referring to Israel's one million plus Arab citizens. "Arabs want to live in coexistence, but with their rights. I want to feel I belong. I want to feel it's my state, too."

He urged the Israeli government to take three major steps: to allocate equal municipal funding to Arab towns and villages, to upgrade the standard of the Arab education system and to open up all jobs, in the private and public sector, on the basis of merit. In the meantime, the Haifa Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the quality of life in the city, is working on two projects to achieve that broad objective.

A coexistence park with a soccer field and a community centre is being built where Jews and Arabs can meet on mutual ground. "Then the walls can fall down," said Dani Neuman, the Executive Director of the Haifa Foundation. The first section of the park is scheduled to be opened later this year. Plans are also afoot to expand an existing Jewish-Arab community centre. A fund raising campaign has been launched, and if all goes according to plan the enlarged centre will be inaugurated in 2006.

Yahav, who was born in Haifa, called on overseas Jewish travellers to visit his city.

"We feel a bit neglected as far as world Jewry is concerned. Diaspora Jews usually visit Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but skip Haifa."

The mayor, who was here with his wife Rivka, also visited Hamilton, where he appeared at a reception hosted by two former Israeli Arabs from Nazareth, Joe and Elham Farah, the owners of the Hasty market chain of stores.

The event was attended by Jews and Arabs and attracted, among others, Israel's Consul General in Toronto, Ya'acov Brosh, and the mayor of Hamilton, Larry DiIanni.

The Canadian Committee for the Haifa Foundation - Establishment
Carolyn Blackman | The Canadian Jewish News
2005/04/21

The Canadian Committee for the Haifa Foundation recently gathered for its first meeting in Toronto. The foundation is dedicated to the promotion of Haifa as a visionary city of pluralism and harmony and a model for the future peace in Israel. Haifa's outstanding record of coexistence has been achieved by nurturing mutual respect among its Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Bahá'i, Druze and Ahmedian citizens over the last 100 years. The city actively supports immigrant absorption, culture and sport, urban beautification and environmental responsibility. The Mayor of Haifa, Yona Yahav, is expected to visit Toronto and Hamilton in May. Seen from left are Maya Goldenberg, Executive Director of the Canadian Committee for the Haifa Foundation; Elham Farah; Anne Banani, Bahá'i Community Representative; Ivan Elkan; Maly Friedel; Toby Feldberg; Pauline Schwartz; Mary Laufer; and Ayoob Mossanen. Missing from the picture are Rabbi Sheldon Schwartz and Carol Slatt.