22 October 2014 20.00
LONDON
Ealing City Learning Centre
24 October 2014 19.30
LONDON
Learning Centre Greenwich
26 October 2014 20.00
LONDON
Enfield Central City Learning
28 October 2014 19.30
LONDON
Camden City Learning Centre
12 November 2014 20.00
LONDON
Wood City Learning Centre
More than two weeks into the campaign, Israelis feel the offensive is justified
Before rocket fire from the Gaza Strip on civilian populations in Israel escalated and three teenagers were abducted and murdered in an incident that Israel attributes to Hamas, the Jewish state was becoming increasingly fragmented.
Peace talks had broken down. Debates over divisive matters of religion and state were intensifying. And right-wing politicians like Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett were openly preparing for the possibility of early elections that could be held if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition fell apart.
Mr Netanyahu was being blamed for failing to prevent the international community from recognising a Palestinian unity deal with Hamas and Islamic Jihad – an endorsement that for Israelis looks grotesque in hindsight.
Then came Hamas and accomplished what had seemed impossible: it unified Israelis.
Dovish Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and the hawkish Bennett gave interviews on Israel’s top-rated nightly news show on successive nights. They sounded remarkably the same.
There have been anti-war demonstrations. In Israel, in times of war and peace, there tend to be demonstrations about something or other every day.
But so far, the demonstrations have been a dramatic failure. Only Israeli Arab citizens and Jews on the fringe far-Left have participated in them.
There have been funerals of soldiers that have attracted far more people – in one case more than 30,000 – indicating overwhelming support for the Israel Defense Forces.
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog from the Labour Party – who will face off against Mr Netanyahu whenever Israel will have its next election – has praised the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip as strongly as the prime minister’s closest supporters.
Unifying effect
The reason why Hamas has been so effective in unifying Israelis is that they attacked the Israeli consensus.
They didn’t attack the West Bank, whose fate divides Israelis. They attacked Tel Aviv and close to Ben-Gurion International Airport with rockets, targeted left-wing agricultural communities on Israel’s side of the border with Gaza from what Israel calls terror tunnels, and allegedly kidnapped boys on the way home from school in a society that is obsessed with children.
Many more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis, but Israelis put the blame on HamasBy doing so, Hamas built up the stamina of an Israeli population that was more impatient in previous standoffs in Gaza.
Polls have shown that support for the ground offensive is sky-high and that Mr Netanyahu’s backing of a proposed Egyptian cease fire was extremely unpopular.
A Panels poll taken on the eve of the invasion for the Knesset Channel, which broadcasts the Israeli parliament’s proceedings, found that 63% of respondents wanted to enter the Gaza Strip and only 27% did not. Ten per cent did not answer or had no opinion in the poll, which surveyed a representative sample of the Israeli population, including Arabs.
Israelis are just as empathetic to the tragic Palestinian death toll in Gaza as other people around the world. They just blame it on Hamas firing from among civilian populations, rather than on the Israeli army’s air strikes.
The death toll on the Israeli side is now rising after it was initially small. Some 2,000 rockets fired over the past three weeks have killed only one Israeli, who happened to be a Bedouin.
An Israeli volunteer who tried to deliver food in a dangerous location close to the Gaza border was killed by a mortar. And an Israeli Arab woman in Haifa died from a heart attack en route to a bomb shelter after being shocked by a siren.
But since the ground invasion last Thursday night, 29 soldiers have been killed and more than 100 wounded. For Israelis, such numbers are difficult to accept.
Israel is rare in that the deaths of its soldiers are often portrayed as more tragic than those of its civilians. The IDF is a symbol of the Jewish Israeli consensus, and its soldiers are seen as “everyone’s children”.
By contrast, civilians killed by rockets have been mocked for ignoring warning sirens and going out on their porches to film the Iron Dome missile defence system with their iPhones.
Sense of purpose
If soldiers continue to die, more doubts about the ground operation will undoubtedly be raised. If a soldier or civilian is proven to be kidnapped, that would also have a demoralising effect.
All Israelis identify with losses in the militaryHamas’ repeated attempts to kidnap soldiers and its celebration of unsubstantiated and highly doubted reports that a kidnapping had taken place show that its leaders understand the potential impact of a successful abduction.
It is clear to Hamas that all it takes to change Israeli public opinion dramatically is for one rocket to be missed by Iron Dome over a Tel Aviv skyscraper or for a group of gunmen to enter a kibbutz cafeteria through a tunnel and open fire.
But while such incidents would demoralise Israelis and harm their leaders’ popularity, they would not add opposition to the ground offensive.
Israelis know that had it not been for the ground offensive, the tunnels would have remained undiscovered and they would have been in great danger.
That explains why there is no overwhelming sense of urgency on the part of Israelis to end the operation before the achievement of its objectives of restoring quiet to southern Israel, destroying the tunnels, weakening Hamas significantly, and most importantly, avoiding future war.
Residents in Gaza are using a 12-hour humanitarian truce to return to their homes, gather essential supplies and search for those trapped in the rubble. At least 85 bodies have been pulled from the rubble during the truce, a Palestinian health official says, the spokesman said. Thirty-nine Israelis have died. International talks on a longer truce have resumed in Paris.
Israel said it would continue to “locate and neutralise” Hamas tunnels during the pause, which began at 08:00 local time (05:00 GMT).
So far 31 tunnels have been discovered, with about half destroyed, Israeli’s military says.
The Iron Dome defence system intercepted three rockets fired towards the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon overnight.
In the district of Shejaiya, residents started flooding back from 08:00, despite warnings not to do so.
The scene here is just astonishing – the most widespread destruction: buildings completely pulverised, cars thrown 50m (160ft) into the air on top of buildings, the facades of some block of flats completely ripped off.
The air is pretty thick with the stench of death as people try to recover bodies and belongings.
In the background I can hear a crackle of gunfire. Although a humanitarian ceasefire is in place, clearly people are still shooting. There is an Israeli drone flying overhead, and we’ve heard the sound of fighter jets.
‘Confident of ceasefire’
US Secretary of State John Kerry met the foreign ministers of Turkey, Qatar and some European countries in Paris on Saturday in the hopes of agreeing a longer ceasefire.
“We all call on parties to extend the humanitarian ceasefire,” France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters.
“We all want to obtain a lasting ceasefire as quickly as possible that addresses both Israeli requirements in terms of security and Palestinian requirements in terms of socio-economic development.”
Mr Kerry spent a week in the Middle East attempting to broker a deal before leaving Egypt on Friday.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has been leading efforts to secure a ceasefireGovernment spokesman Mark Regev said Israel was ultimately seeking “peace and quiet”
Hamas insists that any ceasefire should include a lifting of the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt since 2007.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel “appreciated” Mr Kerry’s continued efforts, and that Israel wanted “peace and quiet”.
“The people of Gaza are not our enemy, our enemy are the people shooting those rockets into Israeli cities,” Mr Regev told the BBC.
Israel is reported to want to continue operations against Hamas infiltration tunnels once direct conflict ends.
The 12-hour truce was agreed overnight, although the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) vowed to respond if attacked.
The truce came shortly after Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon warned that ground operations in Gaza could soon be broadened “significantly”.
Israel said it attacked nine Syrian targets and direct hits were confirmedIsrael says it has carried out air strikes on military targets in Syria.
The military said it had attacked nine targets in response to the killing of a 15-year-old boy in a strike in the occupied Golan Heights on the border between the two countries on Sunday.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said the Israeli air strikes had killed four people and wounded nine others.
Israel called the boy’s death the most substantial incident in the Golan since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.
Two others, including the boy’s father, an Israeli defence contractor, were injured in Sunday’s blast, which struck their vehicle.
It is unclear whether Syrian rebels or government forces were behind the incident.
‘Everyone loved him’
Israeli military spokesman, Lt Col Peter Lerner, told the Associated Press news agency the attack from Syria was “clearly intentional” but it was unclear whether the blast in the area of Tel Hazeka near the Quneitra crossing was the result of mortar fire, a roadside bomb or shelling.
He described it as “an unprovoked act of aggression against Israel and a direct continuation to recent attacks that occurred in the area”.
The Israeli military said its air strikes targeted Syrian army positions, including a military headquarters, in response and that “direct hits were confirmed”.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry has condemned the Israeli air strikes, calling them a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.
In a statement, it said the strikes were a sign of the “direct and continuous support” that Israel is giving to rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and urged the UN to condemn the attacks.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had earlier said that at least 10 Syrian soldiers were killed during the Israeli raids.
The teenager killed in Sunday’s attack, an Arab Israeli, has been named as Mohammed Qaraqara.
“He was an excellent student; everyone loved him,” his cousin Salah Qaraqara told Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Our enemies don’t differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, adults and children.”
The Golan Heights, a rocky plateau in south-western Syria, was seized by Israel from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Middle East War.
The two countries remain technically in a state of war, and UN observers are deployed to monitor a 70km-long (45-mile) demilitarised zone.
Firing linked to the Syrian conflict occasionally reaches the Israeli side of the border fence – some unintentional, some said to be deliberate.
The Golan Heights were taken by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Middle East WarIn March, Israel conducted air strikes against several Syrian military targets after a bombing that injured four of its soldiers in the Golan Heights.
Israel had accused the Syrian army of “aiding and abetting” the attack on a patrol near the ceasefire line.
Syria said one of its soldiers was killed in the Israeli military response.
Some of Israeli’s recent air strikes are believed to have prevented the transfer of stockpiles of rockets from the Syrian government to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Islamist movement that supports President Bashar al-Assad.
Wikipedia: Mahmoud Abbas
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has declared that the Holocaust was the most ‘heinous’ crime committed in modern times.
He made the statement in English, Spanish and Arabic on the website of Wafa, Palestine’s official news agency, as Israel began its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day.
He said: “The Holocaust is a reflection of the concept of ethnic discrimination and racism which the Palestinians strongly reject and act against.
He described Nazi atrocities as “the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era.”
And added: “The world must do its utmost to fight racism and injustice in order to bring justice and equality to oppressed people wherever they are.” Continue reading
By Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent
The goal of a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israelis within nine months has been met with scepticism by manyDoes the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians matter to anyone but themselves?
Is this, as the Quartet representative to the Middle East, Tony Blair, and British government spokesmen would have it, the central problem in the Middle East which, if solved, will help to change the broader climate in the region?
Or, given the turmoil in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and beyond, has Israeli-Palestinian peace become an issue apart; less a barometer for regional tensions and more an intractable struggle that shows no sign of ending?
With US-brokered talks between the two sides due to begin again this week there is an all-encompassing sense of diplomatic deja-vu.
We have been here many times before.
There are the almost ritual concessions to get talks going – the release of Palestinian prisoners by Israel; a cloudy understanding either to freeze or restrict new construction in Israeli settlements; and the equally public announcement of new building anyway as a conservative Israeli government seeks to placate domestic opponents of the peace talks to its right.
It ought to feel like a moment of optimism in the long and tortured history of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but somehow it does not.
It is always easier to see the problems than the opportunities in this part of the Middle East of course – but this time around it is hard to find anyone who thinks a dramatic breakthrough is within reach.
The talk all along has been more of avoiding a breakdown than hoping for a breakthrough.
And that was before Israel’s Construction Minister Uri Ariel announced the final go-ahead for new building in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank.
Palestinians were outraged. These are precisely the kind of projects on the land which Israel captured in the war of 1967 which they regard as a deliberate attempt to choke off the chance for them to build their own state. Most countries view such building as a clear breach of international law, although Israel does not.
Many Palestinians saw the timing of the announcement as a cynical attempt to scupper the talks, but even before then it looked as though the resumption of negotiations came about mainly – if not entirely – as the result of pressure from the United States and not through any strong impetus towards talks on either side.
This was not always the way.
Controversial concession
It is almost exactly 20 years since the then US President Bill Clinton brought the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin together with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to sign an agreement based on extraordinary secret negotiations in the Norwegian capital Oslo.
The president called it “the dawn of a new era for the Middle East and the entire world” and issued a stirring call for their achievement to act as a catalyst for the rest of the peace process.
The truth is that today’s negotiators are taking a few steps down a road along which their predecessors travelled rather further.
Back then, the prisoner releases were larger too.
In the heady days of the mid-1990s Israel released, in stages, 4,000 Palestinian prisoners.
This time around it proposes to release 104 over a nine-month period with the first 26 set free in the middle of this week.
Palestinians see the gesture as inadequate, arguing that it relates only to a small group of men, some of whom were anyway nearing the end of their sentences. And they feel they should have been consulted about who was released.
But many Israelis see the release as far too big a concession.
One cabinet minister has warned it could be interpreted as a sign of weakness in the Middle East but the strongest opposition has come from families of Israeli victims of political violence.
Oded Karamani’s brother Ronen, for example, was murdered in 1990.
He was abducted by a Palestinian gang and was missing for three agonising days. When his body was found his hands had been tied behind his back. He had been repeatedly stabbed while he was helpless until he died.
Oded showed us the family albums that record every detail of the smiling Ronen’s short life.
“My parents,” he told me, “from the outside you can see that they’re alive – they have children and grandchildren – but inside from the second it happened they’ve been dead.”
His message is simple: “Don’t let [the Palestinian prisoners] out to educate another generation of terrorists,” he said. “I’m begging our government… please don’t let them out.”
The prisoner issue is a central one for both sides and all the core issues of justice and identity and history and morality are bound up in it.
To many Palestinians, the prisoners are heroes – fighters in a just cause.
I went to Ramallah to meet one of the men freed during the Oslo prisoner releases.
Abdel al-Anani works for Palestinian prisoners’ rights these days – he was convicted of ordering the death of someone accused of being an Israeli informer.
He wants peace, he told me. As he put it: “In the end it’s the Israelis and the Palestinians who are going to live side by side. If they don’t realise this, the whole conflict will keep going and the peace process will fail.”
And he argued that making peace required difficult decisions: “Just as there is a price for war, when there is bloodshed and people, there is a price for peace too.”
It does not feel in the Middle East as though the moment has come when either of the two sides is preparing to make the full payment for a final peace. Anyone who knows the region can rattle off the familiar list of issues from the status of Jerusalem and Israel’s right to live in security to settlement construction and the rights of Palestinian refugees.
There are still plenty of issues that divide the two sides – but they are at least now talking about them.
| PROFILE Commando Elon fights Israel’s new PR battle | |
WHEN I spoke to Israeli-born journalist and ex-commando Elon Perry this week, he had just been to Downing Street, where he had been fighting Israel’s case. But Elon has not always been so pro-Israel. When he was a student, he blamed his grandfather David Ifrah for taking his family away from a wealthy life in Morocco to Netivot, where – a mile from the Gaza border – Elon’s childhood was constantly traumatised by terror attacks. Ifrah, who was the mayor and judge of the Moroccan town of Azilal, was one of King Mohammed V’s closest advisers. When in 1955, for Zionist reasons, Ifrah decided to take his family to Israel, the king voiced his displeasure. Elon, who was born two years later in Netivot, recalled the story. “The king was offended,” he said. “He called my grandfather to come to him immediately. “My grandfather left everything on Shabbat and walked six miles to the king. But my grandfather still took his daughter, my mother, Zohara, who was only about 20, her new husband and their baby to Israel. “My father was very upset because he had leather factories in Morocco. They had a good life there with maids and big houses. They lived in a villa on the beach, a very successful life.” All that was in sharp contrast to life in Netivot, where, from the age of three, Elon spent all his childhood and youth under fire. He said: “We always experienced terrorist attacks from tanks and bombs. My father, who was a border guard on the dangerous Gaza border, tackled a terrorist with his bare hands at the back of our house. He was a very brave man.” But young Elon was not so brave. “I remember all the time bombs, terror attacks and shelters,” he said. “That was my childhood. I was traumatised as a child. I used to wet my bed and cry a lot. The same happened to all our generation. Some of our class didn’t make it. They became crazy or sick. One committed suicide. “We couldn’t even go out to play football. We were always attacked.” To escape from the trauma, Elon drummed in a rock band from the age of 12 to 18. After excelling in high school, he decided to take his revenge on the terrorists, who had traumatised his childhood, by joining the elite Golani commando unit, which played a crucial role in squashing the First Intifada and during the war in Lebanon of 1982. Elon said: “I joined the commando elite to take revenge. During my army service I became a man. “We never said no to any operation. We did the most dangerous things in Lebanon and Gaza, really dangerous stuff that you see in movies. We always volunteered for really crazy stuff. “The motivation was so high. I got wounded twice. My respiratory system was damaged by explosives in Lebanon.” Working as an Israeli journalist and running his own TV production company, Elon continued to serve for 25 years in the IDF reserves. It was during his reserve duty in Gaza that Elon became aware of Israel’s extremely poor public relations. He recalled: “When I was a soldier serving in Gaza, we had been ordered to take shelter in the back of a hospital. “We saw Palestinian kids covered in blood rushing into the hospital from an ambulance. At the back of the hospital the children took off their T-shirts which had been covered in ketchup.” Elon reported the incident to his government’s public relations department, but they did nothing about it. However Italian journalists took up the story as did Elon, who broadcast and wrote about it. Later at a press conference, Elon asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu why Israel did not invest in better public relations. The PM’s answer was: “It won’t help. They will hate us anyway.” Elon calls this attitude “arrogant”. He said: “The Palestinians are winning the war because of the lack of Israeli propaganda which stems from arrogance. “The Palestinians are stubborn. I don’t think they want peace. It’s better for them to keep their jobs and to be seen as victims. The Palestinians look good in the eyes of the world who like to embrace victims. “They know how to do it very well. They can win more that way.” He predicted: “This conflict will continue for another generation. I see that the conflict is going to increase with a lot of rockets and the continuance of bloodshed and conflict. “Maybe the next generation will think differently.” Five years ago Elon moved to London when he married Gillian Walnes, founder and director of the Anne Frank Trust. In London, Elon devotes himself on a voluntary basis to improving Israel’s image, giving lectures on the situation all around the UK and meeting top politicians behind the scenes to improve Israel’s image. He said: “I am now meeting people in Downing Street. To me it is an achievement to have come here anonymously, not knowing anybody and now meeting and working with these people, like Education Secretary Michael Gove.” Elon is now planning an official visit to his ancestral home of Morocco courtesy of the Moroccan consul, whom he met at the Downing Street Chanucah party. Elon also runs tours of Israel all Israel’s crucial battlefields for teenagers. He said: “It is a good way for young Jews to get to know Israel. They love to hear a story from a soldier who was on the battlefield.” Elon will talk at Liverpool Limmud on Sunday on ‘Jerusalem Burning: 100 Years of Arab-Israel Conflict’.
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| PROFILE Commando Elon fights Israel’s new PR battle | |
WHEN I spoke to Israeli-born journalist and ex-commando Elon Perry this week, he had just been fighting Israel’s case. But Elon has not always been so pro-Israel. When he was a student, he blamed his grandfather David Ifrah for taking his family away from a wealthy life in Morocco to Netivot, where – a mile from the Gaza border – Elon’s childhood was constantly traumatised by terror attacks. Ifrah, who was the mayor and judge of the Moroccan town of Azilal, was one of King Mohammed V’s closest advisers. When in 1955, for Zionist reasons, Ifrah decided to take his family to Israel, the king voiced his displeasure. Elon, who was born two years later in Netivot, recalled the story. “The king was offended,” he said. “He called my grandfather to come to him immediately. “My grandfather left everything on Shabbat and walked six miles to the king. But my grandfather still took his daughter, my mother, Zohara, who was only about 20, her new husband and their baby to Israel. “My father was very upset because he had leather factories in Morocco. They had a good life there with maids and big houses. They lived in a villa on the beach, a very successful life.” All that was in sharp contrast to life in Netivot, where, from the age of three, Elon spent all his childhood and youth under fire. He said: “We always experienced terrorist attacks from tanks and bombs. My father, who was a border guard on the dangerous Gaza border, tackled a terrorist with his bare hands at the back of our house. He was a very brave man.” But young Elon was not so brave. “I remember all the time bombs, terror attacks and shelters,” he said. “That was my childhood. I was traumatised as a child. I used to wet my bed and cry a lot. The same happened to all our generation. Some of our class didn’t make it. They became crazy or sick. One committed suicide. “We couldn’t even go out to play football. We were always attacked.” To escape from the trauma, Elon drummed in a rock band from the age of 12 to 18. After excelling in high school, he decided to take his revenge on the terrorists, who had traumatised his childhood, by joining the elite Golani commando unit, which played a crucial role in squashing the First Intifada and during the war in Lebanon of 1982. Elon said: “I joined the commando elite to take revenge. During my army service I became a man. “We never said no to any operation. We did the most dangerous things in Lebanon and Gaza, really dangerous stuff that you see in movies. We always volunteered for really crazy stuff. “The motivation was so high. I got wounded twice. My respiratory system was damaged by explosives in Lebanon.” Working as an Israeli journalist and running his own TV production company, Elon continued to serve for 25 years in the IDF reserves. It was during his reserve duty in Gaza that Elon became aware of Israel’s extremely poor public relations. He recalled: “When I was a soldier serving in Gaza, we had been ordered to take shelter in the back of a hospital. “We saw Palestinian kids covered in blood rushing into the hospital from an ambulance. At the back of the hospital the children took off their T-shirts which had been covered in ketchup.” Elon reported the incident to his government’s public relations department, but they did nothing about it. However Italian journalists took up the story as did Elon, who broadcast and wrote about it. Later at a press conference, Elon asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu why Israel did not invest in better public relations. The PM’s answer was: “It won’t help. They will hate us anyway.” Elon calls this attitude “arrogant”. He said: “The Palestinians are winning the war because of the lack of Israeli propaganda which stems from arrogance. “The Palestinians are stubborn. I don’t think they want peace. It’s better for them to keep their jobs and to be seen as victims. The Palestinians look good in the eyes of the world who like to embrace victims. “They know how to do it very well. They can win more that way.” He predicted: “This conflict will continue for another generation. I see that the conflict is going to increase with a lot of rockets and the continuance of bloodshed and conflict. “Maybe the next generation will think differently.” Five years ago Elon moved to London when he married Gillian Walnes, founder and director of the Anne Frank Trust. In London, Elon devotes himself on a voluntary basis to improving Israel’s image, giving lectures on the situation all around the UK and meeting people of opposite views to improve Israel’s image. Elon is now planning an official visit to his ancestral home of Morocco courtesy of the Moroccan consul, whom he met at a Chanucah party. Elon also runs tours of Israel all Israel’s crucial battlefields for adults and teenagers. He said: “It is a good way for young Jews to get to know Israel. They love to hear a story from a soldier who was on the battlefield.” Elon will talk at Liverpool Limmud on Sunday on ‘Jerusalem Burning: 100 Years of Arab-Israel Conflict’. |
