I want to share my experience as an Israeli Aussie. While visiting Israel, my husband became very sick. We spent more than a half a year in hospital.
During that time, I was so surprised more than two-thirds of the doctors were Arab Israelis. The nurses were Jewish, Russian, or Ethiopian. Carers and maintenance workers were Russian, Arab, Ethiopian. They all worked together with respect. They cared for my husband with professionalism.
While there, I saw that in supermarkets, pharmacies, in schools, on transport, in cafes, mixed neighbourhoods, people of every ethnicity were living, eating and commuting in harmony as Israeli citizens, regardless of their role as owner, or worker. Jewish Israelis working for Arab Israelis, and vice versa. Whether Thai, or from South Sudan, there is mutual respect.
So, when I hear Israel described as ‘apartheid’, I think it is laughable.
So please, before spouting off quotes and memes you learn online, or hear chanted at rallies, bother to learn the facts. The truth of what the lived experience is in a tiny, amazing, multicultural, multi-religious country.
And to those who want to occupy Israel, ‘from the river to the sea’, realise, you’re taking over your own cousins, your brothers and sisters.
My husband received the best healthcare in the world. Caring and generous interactions, without discrimination.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
