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Much ado about Gilad

The country is sort of going a little crazy right now amid the flurry of reports about the imminent release of Gilad Schalit, the IDF soldier who’s been held captive by a faction within Hamas since 2006.

Rumors and speculation abound that the release in exchange for 450 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails – some hardened terrorists with ‘blood on their hands’, a euphenism for being the masterminds or perpetrators of terror acts – is only days away.

While media reports along the same lines crop up every few weeks, this is the first time since the whole ordeal began that it seems like there’s a semblance of truth to what’s being reported. President Shimon Peres said in Cairo on Sunday that progress had been made, and on Monday, a Hamas delegation from Gaza arrived in Cairo to discuss and decide on whether to accept the latest prisoner list provided by Israel. At the same time, Schalit’s parents, Noam and Aviva went to the Knesset to lobby the support of ministers to approve the deal on the Israeli side.

While all Israelis want to see Schalit come home to his family, some are saying that the price of releasing terrorists is too high. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Monday to hold discussions in the Knesset and with the public on the terms of a deal for the release of Shalit.

Netanyahu told fellow Likud MKs that the difficulties in making the decision lay in the government’s different goals in the negotiations.

“On one hand, the desire to take care of our soldiers and bring them back, sometimes at the cost of endangering lives – a very big principle for our people and in the Jewish tradition,” he said. “And on the other hand: refraining from encouraging future abductions.”

Members of the National Union party held a press conference urging Netanyahu to reject the deal, warning that it would increase terrorist attacks on Israel.

While that could possibly be an outcome of the prisoner release, it will be difficult, if not impossible for the government to turn back the deal. Apropo to Brian’s touching post below, in a country in which most families have a daughter or son, father and mother who have served or are serving in the army, the national sentiment is top heavy toward bringing Schalit home at any price.

Most of us who may bear the brunt of freshly released terrorists within arms length are willing to take that chance for the opportunity to see Gilad Schalit hugging his parents.

Picture of the week: Finding friendship in the ruins of war

Israel is a country of contradictions. While the world outside sees the conflict in the clean crisp black and white of headlines, here in Israel we tend to see things in myriad shades of grey.

Take these two kids for example. Maria Aman (in the wheelchair) is a Palestinian girl from Gaza who was hit by an Israeli rocket during operation Cast Lead. Orel Ilizrov, is an Israeli child from Beersheva who was left with severe brain damage after he was hit by a grad missile fired from Gaza in the same conflict.

Against all the odds, they are best friends.

Maria was left paralyzed when her house suffered a direct hit. Four of her family were killed. Orel, an only child, is lucky to be alive. His mother threw herself on top of him in an attempt to protect him from the missile.

The children were hospitalized at the Alin Rehabilitative Center in Jerusalem and were given neighboring beds. Despite the traumas that both suffered, they ignored the conflict – as kids so rightly do – and formed a deep friendship based on everything they have in common, and not everything that keeps them apart.

Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90

Seeing stripes in Gaza

Here’s an example that shows that efforts at cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians come in quite different stripes.

Reports abounded last week about the goings on at Gaza’s Happy Land Zoo, where, with a little masking tape and women’s hair dye, two donkeys were transformed into striped zebras.
The reason? A genuine zebra would have been too expensive to bring into Gaza via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, said owner Mohammed Bargouthi. “It would have cost me $30,000 to get a real one,” who added that his zoo charges an entrance fee of only $15 for a busload of school kids.

Due to Hamas being still in a state of war with Israel, the Israeli government has kept an embargo imposed on Gaza, which has decimated the zoo that Bargouthi opened last year.
Other than the would-be zebras, lion and two ostriches, there’s only a camel and some birds.
According to an AFP report, the animals are often sick and the medicine they need is unavailable in Gaza.

“If there was an animal protection group here, they would have us all arrested for mistreating the animals,” said Bargouthi. “I tell myself that it’s a sin not to take care of them properly, but I try to do my best.”

“The zoo is meant for children. When they come here, they are happy, they run, they have fun. They want to see the lion and the zebra — they believe it’s real,” Bargouthi told AFP.

Nidal Bargouthi, whose father owns the zoo, told Ynet that the initial attempts at painting the donkeys didn’t turn out so well.

“The first time we used paint but it didn’t look good,” he said. “The children don’t know so they call them zebras and they are happy to see something new.”

When the mayor of Ramat Gan, Tzvi Bar, read about the zoo’s plight in the Ynet story, he said he was shocked. He called the director of the much more affluent Ramat Gan Safari and asked him to send two zebras to the Gaza zoo in hopes it will prevent similar occurrences in the future.

“The zebras will be transferred to Gaza under the official commitment of the Gazans, to take good care of the animals,” Bar told Ynet.

This week the Safari will begin the many arrangements involved in transporting the animals to Gaza, including permits from the Defense Ministry, IDF, Nature and Park Authority and the Palestinian Authority.

Whether the neighborly move will prompt Gazans to change their stripes in their attitude toward Israel remains to be seen.

Shake your Gazan lulav

The upcoming holiday of Succot is providing an offbeat oppportunity for some actual mutual benefits between Israelis and Gazans.

During the Succot celebration, three species are wrapped together in a waving ritual: the ‘hadas’ (myrtle), the ‘aravah’ (willow) and the ‘lulav’ (date palm frond), which are held together with the ‘etrog’ (citron).

Because Israel doesn’t grown enough of the lulavim, they’ve regularly imported them from Egypt. However, due to a cartel there, the prices have skyrocketed, and Israel has found an unlikely source of affordable lulavs – Gaza.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has signed orders lifting the Gaza blockade to enable the lulav to be imported for the holiday which begins on Friday. The request to import the branches came from the religious affairs ministry, which fears a local shortage as well as the high Egyptian prices could lead to people being unable to afford them.

However, Nehemia Rappel, head of the religious kibbutz movement, called this week for Israelis to buy only Israeli-made lulavs. According to reports, Israelis are expected to purchase approximately 600,000 lulavs in advance of the holiday; with prices will range from seven to 67 shekels.

The next test is whether we begin importing sufganiyot (jelly donuts) from Gaza on Hannuka.

Sderot solidarity on display

Thank the good Lord, the rockets haven’t been falling much in the southern part of the country lately. Sure, not all the news coming out of the Gaza border area is positive, but at least the rate of Qassam fire into Israel has slowed dramatically in recent months.

Several grassroots, cultural initiatives have aimed at making the situation on Israel’s southern front as comfortable as possible, and at expressing or fostering solidarity with those effected (on these pages, we’ve written in the past about a lot of them, including one initiated by musicians looking to bring aid into Gaza, a community of local young bloggers sharing their experiences under fire with the world, and even one rock and rocket-themed film project).

A year ago, the Connections Israel non-profit, which has been in operation for 11 years and aims to strengthen ties between Jewish communities in the Diaspora and those here, raised the question, “To what extent do Jews around the world feel responsible to one another in the context of the situation in Sderot?” The organization mobilized its network of young people the world over to submit answers to this question that were expressed via original works of art. The solidarity-themed exhibit that resulted from the campaign opened in a Sderot community center last month (a slide show from the opening can be seen here), with plans for the exhibit to travel the world in the works.

Mordechai David Cohen, Connections Israel’s director, is proud of the work the organization had done. From his statement in the exhibit’s catalogue:

“We believe in the power of energy conservation. The energy that a young artist expends, even in a place as far away as the United States, is transferred to the person viewing his creation here in Israel!”

Connections Israel received hundreds of submissions from Europe, the former Soviet Union, South and North America, with works including sculptures, photos, paintings, poems, multimedia and even large installations. 25 of the best submissions were included in the exhibit, curated by Noa Lea Cohen, with the top three receiving prizes.

Pictured is Jerusalemite Yedidyah Ish Shalom’s “From You to You I Shall Flee,” its title taken from a poem by Rabbi Yehuda Helevi as an expression of the duality of our interconnectedness, its subject matter taken from a newspaper photograph depicting a Qassam landing area.

Overdue kudos for winged communicators

After reports surfaced that Hezbollah had succeeded in eavesdropping on IDF soldiers talking on their cell phones during the Second Lebanon War, the army began investing heavily in creating its own proprietary, super-secure cellular network, dubbed Afik Rahav (“Wide Channel”).

But even in the “resounding success” of the latest round of military action against our enemies, this past winter’s Gaza operation against Hamas, was marked by some cellular communication backfirings, as both the IDF and Hamas attempted to rile up the general public on the opposite side by placing calls to random numbers.

But back in the day, communications among and with forces in the field were even trickier. Pre-state Zionist military forces used the low-tech method of carrier pigeons to get messages around the land, and recent Ha’aretz coverage of the aviary units has succeeded in prompting the IDF to honor its communications-minded predecessors.

In December, the newspaper reported that the Haganah’s dovecote at Kibbutz Givat Brenner was in danger of being destroyed and petitioned to preserve it, following Shaul Sapir, 81, who delivered the Haganah’s pigeons, and Aharon Landsman, 73, who trained them, as they visited the dovecote. This would have been a shame, since the Tzrifin base’s “monument to the unknown pigeon” (for real) was retired long ago, with few testaments remaining to remind us of the once-crucial section, which was incorporated into the IDF in the Fifties.

Then, a few weeks ago, the paper reported with glee that amid great fanfare and top-brass attendance,

Pigeon trainers who dispatched carrier pigeons for the Palmach and Haganah, the Yishuv’s military forces, were invited to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Israel Defense Forces Teleprocessing Branch at Tel Aviv University….

Senior Field Commander Major General Ami Shafran spoke glowingly of the pigeon corps, giving respect where it was finally due:

“The pigeon trainers from kibbutzim Ramat Rachel, Beit Hashita, Mishmar Hashiva and Negba, and from the dovecote at Givat Brenner, are some of those who laid down the [nation's] infrastructure, and they are a part of the strong foundation on which our present capabilities were built.”

Image courtesy Copper Kettle from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Waiting to see if Bashir wins

Anticipation is already building in Israel today, as people across the country wait to discover if the Israeli movie Waltz with Bashir will win an Oscar at tonight’s ceremony in Los Angeles.

Certainly things look pretty good for the critically acclaimed movie by Ari Folman. It’s already won a string of prestigious awards – from a Golden Globe to an award for the best documentary from the Writers Guild of America, and gambling Web sites are predicting that the Israeli contender for the best foreign film is the most likely of all the entries to win the award.

Critics have also indicated that the movie, which deals with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, is their favorite for the prize as – aside from its moving and powerful story – it also breaks new cinematic ground. Critic David Carr, from The New York Times, urged readers to “Put a nickel on Bashir, and keep it there.”
We all love it here when an Israeli film (musician, artist, model etc. etc.) makes good. Last year hopes were high for Beaufort, another moving anti-war film also set in Lebanon, but it was pipped at the post.
For all the success of Folman’s movie, however, there are rumblings of discontent amongst certain sectors of society who feel this, the eighth Israeli Oscar contender, but the one most likely to win, is an anti-Israeli movie.
Folman’s effort to piece together his memories as a combat soldier of the Lebanon War, and particularly the massacre at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp in Beirut, are regarded as unjustly demonizing Israel.
Stung by the criticism, one of the film’s backers, the US Foundation for Jewish Culture and Makom, has put out a study guide explaining why the film isn’t unfair. The guide is based on Israel’s own investigation into Sabra and Shatilla, gives the history of the battle, and charts its aftermath.
But why does criticism of Israel’s actions or behavior in a war have to be anti-Israeli? Folman’s film, like Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort before it, is a profound attempt by a soldier to examine a very painful part of his own history and that of his country. It’s soul-searching at its deepest level. And what it reveals about Israel is that this soul searching, doubt and regret is a fundamental part of who we are.
In the media, particularly during the Gaza war, but in many wars and conflicts, Israel is often portrayed as a militaristic nation that doesn’t really give a damn about who gets hurt. Films like Beaufort, and Waltz with Bashir, may not be easy viewing, but they show a completely different truth.

Golden Globe for Waltz with Bashir
Bashir still dancing

The gloves are on for Israeli boxers

The Philadephia Daily News recently ran a compelling profile of international Israeli boxers Ran Nakash (pictured) and Elad Shmouel.

The main thrust of the piece is that being raised in the Middle East makes one a particularly hard brand of badass, making Israel an emerging source for fighting talent:

“Israel is becoming what Russia was 10 years ago when the Klitschkos [current heavyweight titlists Vitali and Wladimir] were starting out,” said [matchmaker Don] Elbaum, who believes Nakash will fight for some version of a world championship before too long. “In the next couple of years, I think you’ll see an exodus of incredible boxing talent coming out of Israel.”

Some of the piece’s hyped-out tone is grounded in hyperbole (calling Israel “an area where to end any day alive qualifies as a small triumph” might be a bit of a stretch), but overall, these two guys do come off as seriously dangerous. Shmouel speaks about how his experiences witnessing a suicide bomb attack in a shopping mall when he was in his teens have made him tough. Nakash maintains a successful career as a Krav Maga instructor for the IDF.

And they discuss their impressions of the recent Gaza war and assess the prospects for real regional peace. But politics and punching prowess aside, what’s life in Israel really like?

Shmouel, who recently concluded his mandatory 3-year military service obligation as a first sergeant, said many Americans can’t begin to fathom the reality of the Middle East situation from what they see on television.

“You have to experience it to understand,” Shmouel said. “You have to be there. It would change people’s perspective, that’s for sure.”

Victims donating to victims

Throughout the recent Gaza war and its ongoing aftermath, Israelis and Palestinians have been trying to paint themselves as “the real victims” and the other side as “the real perpetrators.” But if we’re all victims, then how can we possibly take responsibility for war spearheaded by our leaders? And if we’re all perpetrators, then why would we care?

The fact is, Operation Cast Lead has meant horrible levels of destruction for the infrastructure and people of the Gaza Strip, destruction which could have been avoided if Hamas hadn’t hidden behind the human shield of one of the most densely populated areas in the world. And as we’ve seen on ISRAELITY before, just because Israelis support our government’s recent war against a terrorist regime that’s been shooting rockets at us for years doesn’t mean that we’re numb to the damage done.

Two grassroots activists are trying to organize Israeli sympathy into material support for Gazan families whose lives and homes were recently under severe fire by the region’s military superpower. 27-year-old peacenik Lee Ziv and Sapir Academic College 25-year-old student Hadas Balas (pictured, doubling as a not-so-shabby singer-songwriter) decided to collect clothing, bedding, nourishment and other essentials from donors to bring them in to Gaza.

Ziv spoke with the Jerusalem Post this week:

“There is no connection to politics,” said Ziv. “We don’t represent a side, we just see an immediate need for blankets for people who have nothing to cover them at night and milk for infants who have nothing to eat.”

Since a short radio interview on Sunday morning, Ziv said her phone had been ringing off the hook. “Within two minutes of the interview, I had 40 voice messages. The response has been overwhelming. Schools have called asking how they can help. A father called who had three sons serving in the IDF in Gaza. A woman called who had a mortar fall on her house.”

The duo thought they’d be bringing one or two truckloads of supplies in today, but thanks to the viral snowball of their email campaign, media interest like the radio interview last week, and the bandwagoning on their efforts by some key human rights organizations, the donations have been so numerous that they’re spearheading a fleet of 10 full trucks.

According to coverage in Haaretz, the duo has accomplished this feat thanks to key help from organizations like Hashomer Hatzair in Jerusalem, Beit Hachesed in Haifa and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the Qassam-battered community which has offered up its warehouses as a depot for the donations.

More information on donating to the operation can be found here.

Obama’s inauguration enraptures Israelis

With the Gaza ceasefire apparently taking hold, Israelis have been happy to have something new upon which to fixate our attentions in the news. Something hopeful. US President Barack Obama’s inauguration yesterday and the festivities surrounding it this whole week have kept Israelis enraptured.

The one exception to this trend might be American immigrants to Israel, who tend to be a Republican-leaning crowd, often because of the popular perception that the American Right is more friendly to Israel than the Left. This perception might or might not be true, but Americans living in Israel are certainly wary of Obama’s alleged lack of Zionism.

So despite citing nightlife-themed parties surrounding the inauguration which took place in Tel Aviv as well as Jerusalem, a Haaretz piece from earlier this week points out that mainstream American organizations were shying away from the event:

Neither the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel nor the American Israeli Action Coalition – two non-partisan groups – have planned any special activities to mark the swearing-in of the new president. A spokesman for Israelis for Obama, a small group that was formed before the elections and operated mainly online, told Haaretz the group had dissolved after completing it’s only goal of seeing Obama elected.

But even though George Bush is considered by the people here to have been a great friend to the country, most Israelis are optimistic about new blood inhabiting the White House. The Associated Press even hints at some more literal connections between the Israeli appetite for inauguration news coverage and the Gaza ceasefire:

Obama’s inauguration became the lead story in Israeli media, which had been dominated by coverage of the Gaza offensive that began with a massive air bombardment on Dec. 27.

The front page of Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s biggest daily newspaper, featured the smiling Obama and his wife over an English headline: “Good luck.”

Seemingly timing its withdrawal to Tuesday’s inauguration, Israel had already pulled most of its troops out of the ravaged Gaza Strip after a deadly three-week offensive aimed at halting years of militant rocket fire. But the crisis is not over, with reports of shooting along the Israel-Gaza border, and with Israeli soldiers poised to resume the assault if Gaza militants break a fragile cease-fire.

Maybe it’s simply a matter of the incoming president’s rock star-like status, but Obama buzz is not relegated to Democrats – even when it comes to Americans living here. Summing up the feelings at last night’s parties, today Haaretz quotes a young reveler named Guy Simen:

“Even people who did not support Obama are excited, because they know the whole world is watching this event – and they feel close to home. They know that now we’ve elected a man who is supposed to change the world and many people are proud to be Americans.”

Image courtesy lostintransitzine from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

 

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