“Yes, you commemorate the day, you get strength from the idea: Look at this! It’s 54 years and Israel is a fait acompli, whether the Europeans like it or not, whether the Arabs like it or not,” said the Lafayette resident, who was born in Israel and immigrated to the United States in 1970.
“We should be very proud of what Israel has achieved over the years, very proud that if, God forbid, something happens anywhere in the world, a Jew has a place to call home. You will always be welcome in Israel. Always.”
The rally, a departure from the usual Yom HaAtzmaut diversions such as music, Israeli food and children’s games, was a “last-minute” addition to the day’s agenda, according to Claudia Felson, the fair’s chairperson.
“We saw the Yom HaAtzmaut festival as a way to bring in the community in solidarity with Israel,” said Ivy Cohen, who arranged for the pro-Israel speeches. “I wanted to do it in a very personal way. To enable people in our community to express the personal relationships they have with Israel, what Israel means to them, why Israel is so important to the East Bay.”
Lubliner will also speak of another matter — the murder of his cousin, Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan earlier this year.
“Here is an example of a person being murdered because of who he is, not because of what he was doing,” said Lubliner in his rapid-fire, unmistakably Israeli accent.
“There is no question that his connectivity with being Jewish, being an American, was a major factor in the cause of his death. You cannot escape it. Whether [his captors] knew he was the son of Israelis, I do not know. For a while, his parents were never shown on TV, not allowed to say anything. And for good reason. If they had opened their mouths, they have the same accent I have.”
Felson expects several thousand people of all ages to show up at some point during the five-hour event.
“Festival Israel” — the first Yom HaAtzmaut celebration thrown by the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay since 1999 — will also feature a bevy of standard Independence Day activities, including a biblical petting zoo complete with the ubiquitous camel, children’s storytelling, Israeli cooking classes and several different musical acts.
After Sept. 11, the festival’s planners briefly bandied about the idea of holding off on a large-scale festival. However, they quickly decided that this was not the year to ignore Yom HaAtzmaut.
“Jewish history has always had two dynamics — one celebrating our past and [one celebrating] our future,” said Riva Gambert, director of the East Bay federation’s Israel task force.
“Both have to be part of what we do. And this is a time, with this festival, for us to celebrate the resiliency, the courage, the vision of the people of Israel, and to show support for Israel in its 54th year of being a democratic country.”
And while Lubliner isn’t quite willing to celebrate (“you could use a word like ‘demonstration of survival’ or ‘we are here and intend to stay'”), he knows others are.
“Obviously, kids will come,” he said. “Kids are kids. They will run around and have fun.”