LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: IN ISRAEL EVERY DAY IS MOTHER’S DAY
By Arlynn Nellhaus

If Israel has such a thing as a bone fide Mother's Day, you can't tell by me. I'm not aware of it. The newspapers aren’t full of ads weeks in advance of gifts for the old gal. Florists aren't pushing their wares. You aren't made to feel guilty.

Anyway, Israel doesn't need one day a year in which offspring are forced to say thanks to their mothers whether they want to or not. In Israel, every day is Mother's Day. And no one feels guilty. Not even mothers.

Mothers in Israel not only are respected as mothers, even sung to, but they wield power. I don't mean over their offspring. I mean over the government. Real power.

The world (except for Hizballah, the Syrians and a few others not to be deterred by facts) knows that Israel withdrew from Lebanon to the international line approved by the United Nations.

Israeli Defense Forces were in Lebanon to protect Israelis living near the border, who, for years, endured death and destruction because of shells and infiltration from Lebanon-based terrorists.

So why did Israel pull out a year ago?

Israeli mothers.

Four Israeli mothers together demanded that the government protect their sons from having to serve in Lebanon by pulling the IDF out of that country. The mothers became a group called after themselves, Four Mothers, and pushed and pushed their cause.

Time and again Israeli lawmakers, no matter what outrageous act they take because of a request, are heard to explain themselves by saying, "You can't say no to a mother."

And then Prime Minister Ehud Barak didn't say no and pulled the troops out.

Did the terrorists disappear? No – they still harass and endanger Israelis living near the border. But Israeli boys no longer serve in Lebanon, and mothers are relieved.

I know of no American group with the word "mother" in its title that carries such weight.

In Israel, the attitude is far different.

I was astounded when I first arrived here to turn on the radio and hear macho-Israeli men singing songs about their mothers. I even saw them on television serenading their mothers and lavishing affection and honor on them while the mothers sat right there and beamed.

I know of grown men, married and with their own families, who call their mothers – and their fathers – at least once a day. Something is different here between the generations than in the United States. In Israel, parents aren't "the enemy." They are friends.

How this has been accomplished, I'm not adept enough at sociology to say. But this I know: It sure is nice.

In Israel, I, a mother several times over, am not looked on as the cause of my children's nail biting, bedwetting, anorexia, bulimia, alcoholism, drug use, homosexuality, autism, schizophrenia, kleptomania or anything else that could cause my American neighbors not to invite me over.

Here, suddenly, I am a person to be honored simply because I gave birth and raised these kids. No questions asked.

The attitude is as liberating as the fact that I can walk freely alone through Jerusalem at all hours of the night, even without the big black Lab that used to accompany me in Denver -- if I dared to leave my house at night.

I was so struck by Israeli men's penchant for singing to their mothers, that I went to the Israel Broadcast Authority for more information on these songs for an article I was writing.

There, Shlomi was enthusiastic about giving me the name of every such song he knew. In his gruff voice, he sang some. He pushed tapes into a slot and played some.

One I especially took to was craggy-voiced Arik Einstein singing a bouncy song with the cheerful refrain that starts, "Eema-eema" ("Mom-my, Mom-my"). This from a singer usually associated with smoke-filled, darkened Tel Aviv pubs at 3 a.m.

Before I left the radio station, Shlomi pulled the tapes he had gotten out for me together in a pile for their return to their slots and looked at me as if to ask, How could you be surprised by these songs? How could you not know?

With his big, brown eyes filled with pity that I could be so out of the loop, he assured me, "Every man loves his mother."

Here that goes for women, too.

As I said -- in Israel, every day is Mother's Day.

Arlynn Nellhaus is a former Denver Post reporter now based in Jerusalem, and the author of Into the Heart of Jerusalem, and a freqent contributor to The Idler.