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Now is Your Chance to Support Hebron

Hebron raffle coincidental coincides with Open Shuhada Street week.

26.1.17, 12:45
The last day of the Hebron Fund raffle is Wednesday afternoon February 15th with proceeds going to help the Jewish Community of Hebron. The fundraising drive helps provide assistance for the residents of the historic city with funds going toward parks and playgrounds, ambulances, and upgraded facilities that benefit families, tourist groups and soldiers stationed in the city.
 
The raffle coincidental coincides with Open Shuhada Street week, sponsored by the Youth Against Settlements movement. For the past eight years, the group has organized protests, sometimes violent, demanding that the main thoroughfare for the Jewish neighborhoods in Hebron be open to traffic from Palestinian Authority residents. Officially recognized as King David Street, it is known in Arabic as Shuhada, or Martyrs Street.
 
It has been mostly shut to PA traffic intermittently since the mid 1990s by the Israel Defense Force and government for fear of terrorist attacks. Numerous attacks occurred on or near the street, including the murder of Gadi Levy and his pregnant wife Dina who were killed in an explosion in 2003. After years of court wrangling, the Supreme Court finally ruled that the closure was necessary to prevent loss of human life in 2011.
 
Ironically, while internationally funded agitators use King David Street as an example of "Israeli apartheid," it is the Jewish community that is restricted from accessing most of the city. Hebron is divided into H1, under PA jurisdiction, and H2 under Israeli jurisdiction, and Israelis are forbidden from crossing over. In contrast, PA residents, though they must pass through checkpoints, can move back and forth from either side. Ein Sarah street, where the Sarah's Spring archaeological site is located is off limits for Jews, as is the Elonei Mamre excavation, and other historic locations. Even holy sites within H2 Hebron are open only on special occasion, such as the Tomb of Avner Ben Ner, and the bustling Casbah area where Jewish people once lived prior to the 1929 massacre.
 
The Jewish community of Hebron is located in what is termed the Old City by PA residents. But the majority of Hebron is a bustling metropolis which accounts for nearly 40% of the AP economic. H2 Hebron has two multi-story shopping centers, a 4,000-seat sports area, and numerous large factories that employ thousands. There is even an official outlet of the US Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, located on Ein Sarah Street.
 
Despite the inequalities and the slander in the media, the Jewish Community of Hebron is thriving. There is a high rate of volunteerism and community involvement, and a low to zero rate of crime and unemployment. People find Hebron to be a quaint place to raise families and report a higher quality of life and a sense of living for a purpose.
 
But the community still needs help with many facilities needing upkeep, educational programs and to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people making pilgrimage.
 
For more information on the Hebron Fund raffle, click here: https://hebronfund.org/support/hebron-fund-raffle
 
For more information click here  or call the office at 718-677-6886.
 
Click here for article on last year's raffle.
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