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Can Palestinian Despair Lead to an End of Conflict? | Jewish Journal

Mahmoud Abbas

The great English novelist George Eliot once wrote: “But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”

Recent days have seen the release of two very interesting polls on Palestinian attitudes regarding a myriad of issues regarding the conflict with Israel, especially relating to the anticipated application of Israeli sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria.

Both polls, one conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) and the other by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, paint a picture of Palestinian despair.

According to the PSR survey, a large plurality of Palestinian respondents do not think that Jordan, Egypt or Europe will take any meaningful steps against Israel in response to its application of sovereignty, while 78 percent do not expect Arab countries in the Gulf to end normalization measures with Israel.

Furthermore, very high percentages of Palestinians believe the consequences of the Israeli application of sovereignty beyond the Green Line, the armistice line created by Jordanian and Israeli negotiators in 1949, will be dire for them.

Seventy-three percent say they are worried that people will not be able to travel from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank or Israel for medical treatment, while 70 percent are worried that they will soon witness shortages or a complete cut-off of supplies of water and electricity from Israel. Sixty-five percent are worried that armed clashes will erupt with Israel. Another 65 percent are worried that the Palestinian Authority will collapse or fail to deliver services. Finally, 63 percent are worried that security chaos and anarchy will return to Palestinian life.

These results demonstrate a population in despair.

The Washington Institute’s surveys have been taking the pulse of Palestinian society for ten years now. In the past six years, Palestinian acceptance of the principle of “two states for two peoples—the Palestinian people and the Jewish people,” has massively eroded. In 2014 43 percent of the Palestinian population definitely or probably accepted this international standard for an end to the conflict, while today only nine percent do. A full 67 percent of the Palestinian population definitely reject this formula for a resolution to the long-standing conflict.

Taken together, these surveys actually might offer a glimmer of hope to those who wish to see the conflict finally ended.

Historically, wars and conflicts have ended when one side gives up and understands it will not be able to achieve its war aims.

HISTORICALLY, WARS AND CONFLICTS HAVE ENDED WHEN ONE SIDE GIVES UP AND UNDERSTANDS IT WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE ITS WAR AIMS.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict began in earnest over a century ago, before there was one Israeli foot in Judea and Samaria and even before the State of Israel was established in 1948.

The bloody conflict began in the early part of the 20th century when the Jewish people’s national liberation movement began to pick up momentum and achieve international legal, diplomatic and political successes. The Palestinian leadership reacted with a strategy of violent rejectionism and upheld a maximalist position that it would not countenance any reestablishment of sovereignty in the indigenous and ancestral land of the Jewish people.

The conflict was not about land because the Jews had none, and not about power and control because the Jews remained a largely subjugated and marginalized community, as opposed to the Arab community which had direct access to the colonial powers, whether Ottoman or British.

Unfortunately, violent Arab rejectionism to the Jewish people’s legal, historical and moral right to return as a state among the family of nations did not abate with time or reality. While a Palestinian state was offered on the vast majority of all of the territory of Mandatory Palestine in 1937 and by the international community in 1947, the reaction was more violence and rejection.

THE PALESTINIAN LEADERSHIP HAS CONTINUED TO REJECT ANY PEACEFUL RESOLUTION TO THE CONFLICT, AS LONG AS THEIR GOALS REMAIN INTACT.

In recent years, as opposed to the strongly held views of many in the West, the Palestinian leadership has continued to reject any peaceful resolution to the conflict, as long as their goals remain intact.

In 2001 and 2008, successive Israeli prime ministers offered a Palestinian state in all, or almost all, of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as a division of Jerusalem and control of the holy sites. These overly generous offers were rejected out of hand, even though they constituted full Israeli agreement to almost every ostensible Palestinian demand.

However, in 2008, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas gave an indication as to what the conflict was really about when he walked away from negotiations, even as the offer sat on the proverbial table, because he would have to sign end-of-claims and end-of-conflict clauses in any final status agreement.

In other words, this was never about territory, borders, settlements or Jerusalem. It was about recognizing the permanence of the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish People.

In 2014, Abbas said he would in “no way” ever recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

It is clear that this absolutist position has influenced a steadily increasing rejectionism among his population in the intervening years, as the poll by the Washington Institute indicates. Palestinians have demonstrated that they would rather not have a state than have to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state.

This obviously means that there is little hope for the “two states for two peoples” formula, used by every president, both Democrat and Republican, for decades, to end the conflict.

This was true when Israel made generous offers and when it made substantial concessions, like disengaging from Gaza, freezing the building of settlements and releasing Palestinian terrorists from its prisons.

However, perhaps despair will succeed where promise and compromise failed.

PERHAPS THE IDEA OF ISRAEL APPLYING ITS SOVEREIGNTY TO TERRITORY THAT THE PALESTINIANS HAVE LONG SEEN AS THEIRS WILL FINALLY BREAK THEIR WILL TO CONTINUE FIGHTING, TO VIOLENTLY RESIST A PEACEFUL RESOLUTION TO THE CONFLICT, AND FINALLY BRING THEM BACK TO NEGOTIATIONS.

Perhaps the idea of Israel applying its sovereignty to territory that the Palestinians have long seen as theirs will finally break their will to continue fighting, to violently resist a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and finally bring them back to negotiations.

As Eliot noted, despair can be the painful eagerness of unfed hope. It might be time to feed this hope through a prism of despair that finally convinces the Palestinians that the end of the conflict is in their best interests and that the longer they continue to resist it, the more painful the process will be.

Nave Dromi is an Israeli commentator and director of the Middle East Forum’s Israel office.

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→ 25 June 2020
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Progressive Jews hail NZ censure of Israeli annexation | J-Link

NZFOI: Hmmm….

PRESS RELEASE

THURSDAY, 25 JUNE 2020

J-LINK AOTEAROA, a group of New Zealand Jews, welcomed Aotearoa-New Zealand’s condemnation of Israel’s illegal plan to annex up to one third of the occupied West Bank in flagrant breach of international law.

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“The Aotearoa-New Zealand government has courageously followed its sponsorship of the 2016 UN Security Council resolution declaring Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal with a powerful statement condemning the planned annexation,” J-LINK spokeswoman Dr. Margalit Toledano.

“Israel is attempting to do this in breach of the Geneva Convention and United Nations international rights while the world’s attention is diverted by Covid19 and Black Lives Matter.

“Jews around the world know this is wrong, illegal and a prescription for bloodshed.”

“The world condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea and it should damn this equally aggressive action.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Hon Winston Peters today called on Israel to reconsider its illegal plan. He said annexation would gravely undermine the two-state solution, breach international law, and pose significant risks to regional security.

J-LINK, an international network of Jewish organisations committed to democracy and peace, says annexation plans would lead to permanent Israeli military control over millions of Palestinians while denying them basic civil and political rights. It would put an end to Israel’s democracy and kill any hope for a Two state solution and peace in the Middle East.

“This new land grab will intensify the undemocratic and inhumane reality of Israeli’s 53-year occupation of whatever is left of the Palestinian territory. It is prescription for a violent conflict and bloodshed.” Dr Toledano said

Fifty Jewish organisations from all over the world signed J-LINK’s appeal to the Israeli government to take the annexation plan off the Israeli government agenda.

J-Link Aotearoa calls on all democratic countries to follow Aotearoa-New Zealand’s lead against Israel’s illegal plan.

J-LINK Aotearoa is part of J-LINK, an international network of Jewish organisations committed to democracy and peace.

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→ 9 June 2020
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The Holy Six day War | Arutz Sheva

NZFOI: June 2020 marks the 53rd anniversary of the Six Day War when for the second time, Israel’s Arab neighbours illegally invaded the country in order to destroy it.

During the annual Yom HaAzmaut celebration at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem, some three weeks before the Six Day War, the Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, gave a powerful and prophetic speech to the students and gathered guests, describing his initial anguished reaction when he had heard the news, some twenty years previously, that the United Nations had voted to partition the Land of Israel in approving the creation of a truncating Jewish State. While joyous Israelis danced outside on the streets, he sat at home, stunned by the announcement that the Inheritance of Hashem and Jerusalem had been cut into pieces and divided. Raising his voice, he shouted, “THEY DIVIDED OUR LAND!” Everyone in the hall was silent. “AND WHERE IS OUR HEVRON? AND OUR SHECHEM? WHERE IS EVERY METER OF THE LAND WHICH HASHEM BEQUEATHED TO US ALONE?! HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THAT ALL OF THE LAND IS OURS?!”

One of the yeshiva’s students, the late HaRav Yehuda Hazani wrote down his teacher’s words. “Yehuda had a phenomenal memory,” his wife, Hannah, told the Jewish Press. “After he made a neat copy of his scribbled writing, he showed it to HaRav Tzvi Yehuda for final editing and then arranged for its publication in the HaTzofet newspaper. At the time, no one in the country spoke about our returning to Judea and Samaria, nor about capturing the Temple Mount. The idea was like science fiction. Then, three weeks later, it came true.”

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→ 8 June 2020
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Black Lives Matter Must Rescind its Anti-Israel Declaration | Algemeiner

Protesters take to the streets to bring attention to the push for justice in the Trayvon Martin case as they take over Rodeo Drive on July 17, 2013 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Jose Lopez)

It is a real tragedy that Black Lives Matter — which has done so much good in raising awareness of police abuses — has now moved away from its central mission and has declared war against the nation state of the Jewish people.

In a recently issued “platform,” more than 60 groups that form the core of the Black Lives Matter movement went out of their way to single out one foreign nation to accuse of genocide and apartheid.

No, it wasn’t the Syrian government, which has killed tens of thousands of innocent people with barrel bombs, chemicals and gas.

Nor was it Saudi Arabia, which openly practices gender and religious apartheid.

It wasn’t Iran, which hangs gays and murders dissidents.

It wasn’t China, which has occupied Tibet for more than half a century.

And it wasn’t Turkey, which has imprisoned journalists, judges and academics.

Finally, it wasn’t any of the many countries, such as Venezuela or Mexico, where police abuses against innocent people run rampant and largely unchecked.

Nor was it the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where the police are a law unto themselves who act as judge, jury and executioner of those whose politics or religious practices they disapprove.

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→ 5 June 2020
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Justice for Some: A review

Justice for Some by Noura Erakat was published last year. It is a pro-Palestinian perspective on the Middle East Conflict and International Law.

Most reviews of the article have not been reviews at all but synopses of her material interspersed with the “reviewer’s” cheers and plaudits.

Spotted on the web, here is a pro-Israeli comment on her book that resonated with us:

In “Justice for Some,” Professor Noura Erakat delivers an anti-Israel tirade in the antiquated terms of Marxism.

The main target of Professor Erakat’s assault is the 1922 British Mandate for Palestine (the BMP), the League of Nations law that enabled the creation of the State of Israel. The professor declares that the BMP institutionalized a “racist,” “settler-colonial,” “Apartheid regime” of “oppression” dedicated to the “juridical erasure” of the Palestinian people.

Equally extreme is her view of the Oslo Accords, the set of agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990’s to resolve their longstanding feud. She condemns the Oslo peace process as a continuation of oppressive “colonial practices.”

To combat the alleged colonial oppression, Professor Erakat recommends worldwide “resistance,” described as a blend of economic and legal activism against Israel.

These “coercive pressures,” she contends, would reverse the legal injustices of the past, “dismantle” Israel’s “illegal … colonial infrastructure,” and “liberate” Palestine.

Erakat champions two related forms of resistance: the BDS movement, a boycott campaign “aimed at isolating and shaming Israel;” and “lawfare,” the use of legal tactics to damage a political enemy.

She agrees with BDS leaders that all Palestinians should be allowed to relocate to Israel under a supposed “right of return.”

Regrettably, she omits the fact that such a novel population shift would make Israel a majority-Arab state. Even more disturbing, she enjoys hinting at the prospect of “Palestinian sovereignty” over Israel.

Although the professor maintains that “armed struggle” is available to Palestinians “as a matter of legal right,” she considers BDS and lawfare more effective.

Professor Erakat is not the first Palestinian to assail Israel with the debunked Marxist rhetoric of oppression and resistance. The Palestine Liberation Organization has been spewing the same hate-filled jargon since its founding in 1964.

The only difference between the two manifestos is that one would annihilate Israel through terrorism while the other would do the job through the cynical weaponization of economics and law.

Mainstream scholarship on the BMP confirms the mandate reflected a valid recognition of Jewish self-determination, not an act of colonial oppression.

The law was approved unanimously by a vote of all League of Nations members, not just the “colonial powers.” The great powers did not even share a common political goal, let alone a scheme of oppression.

They competed shrewdly for influence over the territories subject to the League’s mandate system.

Great Britain, the empire that most actively prepared the Jews for statehood, soon became the movement’s most powerful opponent.

Moreover, the Jews could not participate in the League’s BMP vote because they lacked membership in the world body.

Far from serving as agents of any colonial hegemons, the early Zionists immigrated to Palestine to escape the persecution of those regimes.

Another 800,000 Jewish immigrants came to Palestine from the Arab world, including the Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem and West Bank, where they had suffered a brutal ethnic cleansing.

Jews from all hemispheres migrated to the “Land of Israel” because that was their ancestral home. There, they supplemented indigenous Jewish communities much older than the region’s first Arab dwellings.

Middle East Arabs won the greatest share of mandatory bequests. They gained four large new states: Lebanon; Syria; Iraq; and Transjordan (present day Jordan).

By contrast, their Jewish neighbors had to settle for a much smaller tract because Great Britain reallocated 77% of their League-designated territory to create Transjordan.

The Arabs could have celebrated their vast, newfound sovereignty. But instead, in 1948 they waged a five-state military jihad against Israel and grabbed portions of the Jewish foothold for themselves. That illegal offensive was the real “oppression” that turned the BMP border-drawing exercise into perpetual ethnic strife.

As an international lawyer, Professor Erakat must realize that expunging Israel through terrorism or any other manner would violate the animating principle of the United Nations.

Article 2 of the UN Charter requires nations to settle their differences “by peaceful means” without harming the “sovereign equality,” “security,” “territorial integrity,” or “political independence” of any state.

As a human rights lawyer, Erakat should know better than to portray the existence of Israel as a racist endeavor. That unfounded charge constitutes antisemitism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and officially recognized by the US, Canada, 24 EU member states, and five other state signatories.

She compounds the human rights affront by endorsing the BDS movement. A September 23, 2019 UN report titled “Elimination of all Forms of Religious Intolerance” determined that BDS is a form of antisemitism.

A less biased study of legal claims in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have considered both sides of the debate.

The author would have acknowledged Israel’s indigenous rights, self-determination rights, and sovereign rights to the territories in dispute.

She would have weighed possible remedies for the Jewish refugees from East Jerusalem and the West Bank. And she would have backed at least one legal measure to curb terrorism. Sadly, “Justice for Some” demands justice only for Palestinians.

— Anonymous

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→ 1 June 2020
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EU having second thoughts over hostility towards Israel and annexation? | Melanie Phillips

Netanyahu explains Annexation Plan

Has the European Union reached a tipping point over Israel? Or to be more precise, is the Europeans’ bluff finally to be called over Israel’s proposal to extend its sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria?

The E.U. has been mulling over punitive measures against Israel if it goes ahead with what its western critics call “annexation of the occupied territories of the West Bank.”

A number of member states, headed by France along with Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Belgium and Luxembourg are calling for a hard line.

Measures being considered include supporting any U.N. moves against “annexation”; public support of proceedings against Israel currently underway in the International Criminal Court at The Hague; and increasing the boycott of settlements in various ways, along with increased financial support for the Palestinians.

The E.U. and Britain maintain that Israel is illegally occupying the disputed territories, and that its settlements there amount to a transfer of population into those lands in contravention of the Geneva Convention.

This is a serious misreading of international law. Israel is not “occupying” these territories. In law, occupation can only occur if the land belongs to a sovereign power, which was never the case here; and a state can also hold onto land which continues to be used for belligerent purposes against it.

It is also a gross misreading of the Geneva Convention, as the Israelis living in these territories were not transferred but moved there entirely of their own volition.

The animus against Israel by both the E.U. and Britain is of long standing. Let’s rephrase that: the animus against Israel by the European and British political class and intelligentsia is of long standing.

For although the E.U. and Britain condemn Israel for “illegal occupation,” fail to defend it against the malice of the United Nations and endorse the meretricious rulings against it at the European Court of Justice, they are nevertheless trading with Israel at ever-increasing levels as well as depending heavily upon it for crucial military and intelligence support.

So while defaming Israel in the court of world opinion, they have been simultaneously milking its genius for their own benefit. They want to hurt it — but not enough to hurt themselves.

Their hostility is the product of three factors: historic and ineradicable anti-Jewish prejudice; the pathological inability to deal with collective guilt over the Holocaust; and the perception that their interests have for decades lain with the Arab world.

Now, though, something more interesting has been occurring to undermine this collective animus.

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→ 8 May 2020
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Incitement amidst cooperation | AIR

Abdul Azim Salhab

By all accounts, cooperation between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government and military to deal with the coronavirus crisis has been very good. Amos Harel, the veteran military correspondent and defence analyst for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper recently wrote that “Cooperation with the Palestinians is at its tightest ever.”

This is all the more notable because as recently as February, Israeli-Palestinian relations seemed to be unprecedently precarious. In the wake of the release of the Trump Administration’s peace plan in late January, PA President Mahmoud Abbas promised to withdraw all cooperation with Israel, including the vital security cooperation. While similar threats had been made before, this time Palestinian anger seemed more palpable and serious. Israeli government plans to annex the Jordan valley or other parts of the West Bank, as the peace plan allowed, looked set to deepen the crisis in relations. 

Now, that is all gone. No one is talking about the Trump plan or annexations. Coronavirus has swept all such issues aside, as the two sides seek to manage the pandemic which threatens both Israelis and Palestinians who live intermixed with each other. There is even reportedly an Israeli-Palestinian “joint operations room” to oversee the shared response to the pandemic threat. 

Amid the pandemic doom and gloom, this at least is good news, right?

Yes. However… why is it that even in this shared medical emergency the PA cannot stop its official media from engaging in ongoing incitement against Israel?

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→ 5 May 2020
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Mayor de Blasio and ‘the Jewish community’ | RNS

Hundreds of mourners gather in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, April 28, 2020, to observe a funeral for Rabbi Chaim Mertz, a Hasidic Orthodox leader whose death was reportedly tied to the coronavirus. The stress of the coronavirus’ toll on New York City’s Orthodox Jews was brought to the fore on Wednesday after Mayor Bill de Blasio chastised “the Jewish community” following the breakup of the large funeral that flouted public health orders.(Peter Gerber via AP)

Jews went a little bit nuts this week.

Not because two and a half thousand of us turned out for a funeral at the epicenter of this country’s coronavirus pandemic but because after the cops broke things up New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted:

“My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.”

Whereupon the Twitterverse exploded.

“Hey @NYCMayor,” tweeted ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt, “there are 1mil+ Jewish people in #NYC. The few who don’t social distance should be called out — but generalizing against the whole population is outrageous especially when so many are scapegoating Jews. This erodes the very unity our city needs now more than ever.”

“This has to be a joke,” tweeted New York City Councilman Chaim Deutsch, a Brooklyn Democrat who is an Orthodox Jew. He added, “Every neighborhood has people who are being non-compliant. To speak to an entire ethnic group as though we are all flagrantly violating precautions is offensive, it’s stereotyping, and it’s inviting anti-Semitism. I’m truly stunned.”

“So, as has been true with moral ciphers from time immemorial, you decided to seek your jollies by attacking Jews,” wrote John Podhoretz in the “New York Post.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

Really?

An old (Jewish) friend of mine likes to say that Jews consider any statement by a non-Jew that begins with the words “Jews are” to be anti-Semitic if it’s not followed by something like “a community that puts a high value on learning and supporting the arts.” In other words, just about whenever a gentile lumps us all together it’s (for historically understandable reasons) a trigger — one that de Blasio certainly pulled.

But there’s more to it than that.

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→ 21 April 2020
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How COVID-19 Is Changing Israel’s Business Culture | Forbes

Eyal Younian

NZFOI: Under COVID-19, new norms are forming everywhere…

[IAI is Israel’s largest aerospace company. IAI’s Deputy CEO, Eyal] Younian said that while it may be possible to manage COVID-19 in the future, Israel must change its culture because a more serious virus could emerge in the future.

For Israel’s businesses, this will mean less face-to-face interaction. “There will be more video conferences, we will have fewer people in meeting rooms, and there will be less business travel. Israel is a country based on exporting and 80% of IAI’s sales come from outside Israel. We are a defense company and negotiations must be done in person. We must find a creative solution,” he said.

Israel’s non-business social life will also change. There will be “less hugging and kissing [which will be difficult because] we are a warm people,” he said.

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→ 8 April 2020
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A very different kind of Passover, in lockdown New Zealand | Spinoff

Juliet Moses

This Passover, we won’t be attending synagogue, we won’t be participating in large raucous dinners and sharing our food with our extended family and friends, we won’t be welcoming strangers into our homes, as Jewish people are instructed to do, writes Juliet Moses.

Tonight, on what is hopefully the halfway point of our lockdown period, Jewish people in New Zealand will sit down at their Seder dinner tables and mark the start of the festival of Passover. As we do every year, we will ask “why is this night different from all other nights?” and recite the reasons.

Many of us will also be thinking about why this Passover is different from all other Passovers. This Passover, we won’t be attending synagogue, we won’t be participating in large raucous dinners and sharing our food with our extended family and friends, we won’t be welcoming strangers into our homes, as we are commanded to do; we will be sheltering in our homes, with the people we are self-isolating with. It’s just one of many sacrifices, of varying degrees of magnitude, we must all make at this time.

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