On January 3, 2007, I waited at the gate of the Ayalon prisoncompound in Ramle along with a few dozen friends, to welcome Tali Fahimawho was released from jail after more than two years of imprisonment.

I could not help but remember a similar event, 16 years ago, whenmy friends and relatives welcomed me, here at the same gates of theAyalon prison, at the time of my own release.

The charges were not very different from the ones that were raisedagainst Tali: in a nutshell, crossing the border, which, according toIsraeli law and to Zionist ideology, must separate Israelis andPalestinians.

Yet here end the similarities.

While my arrest occurred following more than two decades of politicalactivity, Tali began having troubles with the Israeli authoritiesalready during her first political moves; while the forbidden relationsI had with Palestinian activists were the result of a long process ofpolitical maturation, Tali’s decision to go to Jenin and meet withPalestinian activist Zakariya Zbeideh, was, as she explained during hertrial, a natural thing to do as a free human being interested inunderstanding the roots of a conflict that is shaping our lives.

She wasunable to accept that in this conflict there are, on the one side,normal and peaceful human beings and, on the other side in the JeninRefugee Camp, in Gaza neighborhoods, in Palestinian universities onlymonsters.

And another difference: I was brought up in an educated middle-classfamily, naturally oriented to the Left, while Tali comes from a poorfamily in Kiryat Gat which has traditionally supported right-wing parties.

In this sense, my political moves were the outcome of a long progressionof politicization, supported by a cross-border political movement and anhistorical tradition; I deserve no merit for having committed the actsthat ultimately brought me to jail.

Tali Fahima, on the other hand, didit by herself, out of her own, solitary conscience and by a freedecision. Moreover, she did it without a Marxist education, without acommunist tradition, without party comrades and without historicalfigures to identify with.

This is why Tali Fahima, that young woman from Kiryat Gat, is mypersonal hero.

A final and important difference: outside the prison, in addition to thefew traditional old suspects of my political generation, were dozens ofyoung, some even very young, Israeli activists for whom Tali’spersonality and deeds are an example. Young men and women who refuse toaccept that building a Wall meant to separate Jews from Arabs, Israelisfrom Palestinians, is the natural thing to do.

These same young peopleconfront the Israeli military at the Wall in Bilin each week,protecting the dwellers of the southern West Bank from settler violenceand go to Ramallah despite the checkpoints and the laws which forbid it.

They have hardly heard about the first Intifada, don’t know anythingabout the PLO and definitely have not read Edward Said. Their politicalconscience has been shaped solely by their common sense, a fact whichdoes not make them less political than the previous generation ofactivists, but certainly makes them more determined and uncompromisingin their struggle for justice.

And this is why they identify fully with Tali Fahima, and why she istheir hero too.