Divisions run so deep in Israeli society these days that families are even being split apart. Yael Zuckerman takes comfort in the fact that hers is probably an exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur extended family holds an annual reunion, and when we met a few weeks ago I really didn\u2019t know what to expect,\u201d she recounts. \u201cSo, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that each and every one of us has been actively involved in the protest movement. We ended up sitting around the table sharing photographs of ourselves at different demonstrations,\u201d she says, referring to this year\u2019s pro-democracy rallies<\/a> against the Netanyahu government\u2019s efforts to eviscerate the judiciary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With a tad of irony, she adds: \u201cWe\u2019re a family of rebels, after all.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n A retired clinical psychologist, Zuckerman is the daughter of two legendary leaders of the\u00a0Warsaw Ghetto Uprising<\/a>: Yitzhak (\u201cAntek\u201d) Zuckerman and Zivia Lubetkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This week marks the 80th anniversary of the most famous act of Jewish resistance against the Nazis during\u00a0the Holocaust<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yael Zuckerman at her home on Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta\u2019ot, northern Israel. \u201cMy parents were people who took responsibility for their actions, who never thought about their own personal interests, and who felt guilty until their dying days about not having been able to save more Jews.\u201d<\/strong>Credit: Rami Shllush<\/p>\n\n\n\n On April 19, 1943, a few hundred young Jewish fighters ambushed German forces as they entered the Warsaw Ghetto to round up whichever Jews remained there and transport them to the Treblinka death camp. All the fighters had at their disposal was a tiny cache of guns, grenades and Molotov cocktails, but these desperate individuals, believing they had nothing left to lose, managed to hold out against the Nazis for nearly a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAntek\u201d Zuckerman served as second-in-command to Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the main Jewish resistance group. He was based at the time on the \u201cAryan\u201d side of Warsaw, where he helped procure weapons for his comrades in the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojow) behind the ghetto walls. Lubetkin, his girlfriend at the time, was the only woman to serve in the high command of the left-wing ZOB. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Street sweepers cleaning the pedestal of the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943, in the Polish capital earlier this month.<\/strong>Credit: WOJTEK RADWANSKI – AFP<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yael holds the distinction of being the first child born on Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta\u2019ot (the Ghetto Fighters\u2019 Kibbutz), which was founded in 1949 by a group of 180 Holocaust survivors. Many of them, like her parents, had been active in the Jewish resistance to the Nazis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mass protests in Israel are well into their fourth month now, the weekly Saturday night demonstrations drawing hundreds of thousands nationwide. A chant repeatedly heard at these rallies takes the form of an ultimatum to the government: \u201cDemocracy or uprising!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n For Yael Zuckerman and other second- and third-generation members of this kibbutz, this battle cry resonates in a very personal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zuckerman, who still lives on the kibbutz (as does her older brother Shimon), says she doesn\u2019t miss a demonstration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve protested in Haifa, in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv \u2013 wherever I can,\u201d she said in a recent interview at her plant-filled home surrounded by a lush garden. \u201cI do it out of fear. I have never felt before the dread I feel today. It\u2019s something tangible and terrifying. Unlike my parents, I wasn\u2019t blessed with leadership skills or particular charisma, so I\u2019m not the type of person who can rally the masses. But I do what I can, and often that means standing in the street holding a flag.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This soft-spoken woman considers it presumptuous to speak in the name of her deceased parents. However, if they were alive today, she believes they would be \u201cout there resisting with all their might, and probably, knowing them, assuming leadership roles in this fight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Moral obligation\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Located between the northern coastal cities of Acre and Nahariya, Lohamei Hageta\u2019ot is home to some 800 residents. It is also home to the Ghetto Fighters\u2019 House, established in 1949 as the world\u2019s first Holocaust museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early February, nearly 200 of its residents signed a public declaration against the judicial coup \u2013 a half-page ad, one of the first of its kind, published in the widely circulated Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. Like many Israelis, they had become convinced that this could spell the end of democracy in their homeland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Israelis waving flags during a protest against the judicial coup in Jerusalem earlier this year.<\/strong>Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg\/AP<\/p>\n\n\n\n Citing their unique legacy, the kibbutzniks made clear in their declaration that the fighting spirit of their parents and grandparents still ran strongly in their veins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are committed to \u2018rebellion\u2019 against all form of evil, social injustice and oppression of other peoples,\u201d they warned. \u201cWe will resist any attempts to harm our legal system and the values of equality, rule of law and an independent judiciary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the signatories was Yehonatan Stein, a history teacher whose late grandmother, Dorka Sternberg, was among the founding members of Lohamei Hageta\u2019ot. \u201cAs descendants, I feel we have a special moral obligation to speak out against what this government is doing,\u201d says the 42-year-old father of two. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAfter all, we know better than most that democracy isn\u2019t only about the rule of the majority, and we know better than most what can happen when there are no checks and balance and too much power is concentrated in the hands of the regime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Holocaust, by the way, is not the only example,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yehonatan Stein. \u201cAs descendants, I feel we have a special moral obligation to speak out against what this government is doing,\u201d<\/strong>Credit: Rami Shllush<\/p>\n\n\n\n A driving force behind the declaration was Moshe (\u201cMoishele\u201d) Shner, a retired professor of history and education at Oranim Academic College whose parents were among the founders of Lohamei Hageta\u2019ot. His mother, Sarah Shner, was a partisan fighter in Belarus during the war and active afterward in smuggling Jews out of the Soviet Union into Poland and from there to Mandatory Palestine. An educator and prolific author, she wrote extensively about Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moshe\u2019s father, Zvi Shner, ran the Ghetto Fighters\u2019 House for many years and edited numerous volumes of survivor testimonies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy parents were the high priests of memory here,\u201d Shner, 68, reflects proudly over breakfast at his kibbutz home. He recalls that his mother had been recruited by Yitzhak Zuckerman after the war to help locate the secret Warsaw Ghetto archives<\/a> (known as the \u201cOyneg Shabbes\u201d or \u201cOneg Shabbat\u201d project) buried under the ruins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a tribute to the founders of the kibbutz, Shner recently staged an \u201cempty chairs\u201d protest against the government at the Lohamei Hageta\u2019ot cemetery. The chairs, he explains, were meant to symbolize the deceased founders who, after emerging from the darkest period in Jewish history, were determined to build a place where the values of democracy, freedom, egalitarianism and liberalism could thrive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey would have been in great despair were they alive today, seeing what is happening in this country,\u201d says Shner. \u201cBut what we learned from them is to rise up against injustice wherever it exists and fight for our values. For us, joining the protest movement is a moral imperative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
![\"52460\"](\"https:\/\/img.haarets.co.il\/bs\/00000187-8fac-dc6c-a5ff-effd73a90000\/c7\/17\/6cf213a845f6942e8055a4b39b38\/51526048.JPG?precrop=7163,4771,x0,y0&height=233&width=350\" "\\"Yael")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"POLAND-GERMANY-HISTORY-JEWS-WWII-GHETTO\"](\"https:\/\/img.haarets.co.il\/bs\/00000187-8fac-dc6c-a5ff-effd5f790000\/1f\/f7\/2ca29c0345c3b112a5ec886363f6\/51525383.JPG?precrop=5259,3507,x0,y0&height=233&width=350\" "\\"Street")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Israel](\"https:\/\/img.haarets.co.il\/bs\/00000187-8fac-dc6c-a5ff-effd68250000\/7f\/31\/0ab84969445b880e2f04101e079a\/51526211.JPG?precrop=3539,2359,x0,y0&height=233&width=350\" "\\"Israelis")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"52454\"](\"https:\/\/img.haarets.co.il\/bs\/00000187-8fac-dc6c-a5ff-effd3a540000\/61\/fb\/6e253e774a24a47ed249269f658e\/51525972.JPG?precrop=7566,5044,x0,y0&height=233&width=350\" "\\"Yehonatan")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
![\"\u05de\u05e9\u05d4](\"https:\/\/img.haarets.co.il\/bs\/00000187-8fac-dc6c-a5ff-effd49020000\/f3\/5e\/ebd6426740119ae6fa340dbdd2b4\/51526057.JPG?precrop=7980,5321,x0,y0&height=233&width=350\" "\\"Moshe")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\u05e7\u05d9\u05d1\u05d5\u05e5](\"https:\/\/img.haarets.co.il\/bs\/00000187-8fac-dc6c-a5ff-effd63ab0000\/2f\/01\/958473fa40299b3f702e5f2ec7de\/51525172.JPG?precrop=3706,2766,x0,y0&height=261&width=350\" "\\"Yael")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"52458\"](\"https:\/\/img.haarets.co.il\/bs\/00000187-8fac-dc6c-a5ff-effd59120000\/43\/5b\/8a1f48be43308f520e2dea520f91\/51526055.JPG?precrop=8256,5504,x0,y0&height=233&width=350\" "\\"Visitors")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n