A Conversation with Mayor Revivi
Congressman Lamborn sits down with the Representative of Judea and Samaria to talk settlements, peace, and human rights.
Congressman Lamborn: Thank you for coming to visit the United States, and I appreciate the work that you do in Israel. You represent many communities in Israel, especially in Judea and Samaria. These are areas that sometimes people in the rest of the world don’t understand. Could you explain the importance of the communities that you represent?
Oded Revivi: Some people accuse the settlements of being the obstacle for peace. My argument is completely to the contrary. We are the solution for peace. I’ve discussed in great depth, with your devoted and highly motivated team, different examples of how the neighborhood relationship brings coexistence. I know that might not be the final solution, but if we don’t start building a trusting and knowing relationship, there will be no definite future.
Speaking to someone today, I tried to explain it in a more theoretical way, I said to them “it’s a bit like marriage.” Those who come and say, “We expect you to have a peace agreement in three months, we want you to have a solution to all of the topics that have been open for the last 50 years, 60 years, 70 years, 120 years, 150 years — we expect you to resolve everything in the next year.” They don’t have patience; they don’t see it even as a relationship. If you think about it, if you see a girl that you want to get into a relationship, you will start dating her, you will decide you want to get engaged, and then you will decide you want to get married. Sometimes the world thinks that they can force us into this permanent relationship without forming trust and knowing one another. That’s what I’m trying to do now, trying to find ways that we can build that trust and that relationship.
Congressman Lamborn: Excellent. One thing that bothers me is that sometimes people in the United Nations or in other parts of the world have a double standard. They hold Israel to a certain standard that they say must be complied with, but they don’t apply that standard to any other country. They put Israel in a category by itself, so when it comes to settlements they put demands on Israel that they don’t put on other countries. Do you see that unfairness like I see it?
Oded Revivi: Definitely, but my exam is when I look in the mirror. When I look in the mirror and I know how the IDF acts, I know what my government is doing, and even human things, like I go and check out how many households were attached to running water in 1967, and how many households are attached to running water today. You will see how much improvement the so called occupation and the so-called illegal acts have brought to the Palestinian residents. So people say, “Oh, you’re not telling the truth,” or “Oh, you’re cherry picking the people you present.” I have no problem with that, you know why? Because we had two prime ministers in Israel, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, offering between 92% and 96% of the land for the illusion of a two state solution. They rejected it. Why did they reject it? Many of them want to remain a part of Israel. That doesn’t serve the purpose of those who advocate for a two-state solution. They don’t want to hear what the people tell them. That is a question of leadership. We need people who know how to listen, who know how to internalize what they’ve heard, and then go and say to the people, not necessarily what the people want to hear, but what the leader thinks is the best future for the people.
When you look left and right, sometimes it’s hard to identify the true leaders, and because of how you’re leading here in Washington, what we hear in Israel, I boarded a plane especially to come and meet you. I’ve met some of your staff in Israel, some of them I’m still waiting to see in Israel, and I’ve read about what you’ve done and what you’re doing. We hear, and we follow, and it warms our hearts that we have such good allies. That’s the main purpose why I’ve come here today.
Congressman Lamborn: You have many friends in Congress. You have many people in the House and Senate who support Israel, who support a strong US-Israel relationship, and we are distressed when we hear members of the international community, and even in our own administration, criticizing Israel and holding Israel to an unfairly, unrealistically double standard. That is not fair. That is not right.
For instance someone will complain about perceived human rights abuses and they ignore all the steps that Israel takes to provide water, food, jobs, medical care, and basic necessities of life to those living around them, to Palestinians and others. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Oded Revivi: I think it all can be summed up in a nutshell; people don’t want to hear the facts. And if we want to go under the saying that too many facts kill a good story, our challenge is to spread as many facts as possible.
We have endless examples on every front. We were accused of having a siege over Gaza for 7 or 8 years. We kept producing to the whole world pictures of convoys; trucks providing goods to Gaza under siege. We were accused of photo-shopping, and we were accused of producing the same pictures over and over again. We were accused that the convoy never goes into Gaza. We couldn’t have asked for better proof than when they started firing the rockets over Israel. All of a sudden we found under Gaza a whole new city that was built underground. There was no shortage of working equipment, there was no shortage of working supplies, there was no shortage of workers, there was no shortage of food to feed those workers, and there was no shortage of medical treatment for the people who were injured. Instead of taking all of that equipment that Israel actually took into Gaza to build factories, hotels, schools, they decided to prepare themselves for the next attack.
You want another example, go to the northern border. There’s a battle going on in Syria, we are completely uninvolved. Injured and wounded Syrians, who have no legal rights in Israel, don’t pay any tax money, come on a daily basis. We’ve now surpassed 10,000 wounded that the Israeli hospital is treating free of charge, with my tax money, because that’s what we believe. When we look in the mirror, we want to know that we are doing good.
