RepORTs from the teens
A network of high schools across Israel that emphasizes high-tech vocational training, ORT is an educational powerhouse, its 100,000-strong student body representing about one tenth of all Israeli high school students.
With six branches within rocket range in southern Israel, ORT estimates that 7000 of its pupils are currently under high risk of Hamas attacks.
ORT’s Ronson School in Ashkelon, which educates some 1800 students, has temporarily closed its doors due to this situation, necessitating special tutoring and commuting arrangements so that the 12th graders don’t fall too far behind.
In the meantime, the school’s Eye 2 Israel / Yama and student blogging (informational site in Hebrew only) projects have encouraged students to use their tech bent to help foment a positive image of Israelis in the blogosphere – a motivation close to Israelity’s heart.
One of their bloggers, 14-year-old Rebeca Mayer, is an immigrant from Cuba. Although her English isn’t the most polished, Mayer’s accounts of her day-to-day life are a poignant reminder that there are real people behind every headline. As she puts it in her blog, “I decided to open this blog so all of you out there will understand what we’re going threw here in Ashkelon.”
Writing from inside a bomb shelter, where she and her family have been spending lots of time lately, Mayer wrote on December 28:
I’m really board here cause there’s nothing to do, my little bro is playing with my grandma with a train.
….I wanted to go out today and buy some shoes, but I guess this plan would have to wait, it really sucks to live in this kind of reality I just hope everything will be ok.
More recently, this past Tuesday, she wrote about her feelings of personal connection to the IDF soldiers who had recently been killed in combat in Gaza:
I feel so responsible for there death, cause I know they died to defend me.
They were supposed to come home as heroes but they come back in a coffin.
Now nothing could change, I just hope they will be happy up there in heaven.
As of yesterday, Mayer was planning on going to Eilat for the weekend for some escape and fun. We hope she finds what she’s looking for.
Image Ashkelon courtesy Jason Turner from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Finding hope in the Gaza conflict
Filed under: coexistence, General, Life, Politics, War
One of the gifts of working for an organization like ISRAEL21c is that even in the midst of conflict and crisis, we get the rare privilege of seeing another side of the story.
In the last difficult week, when the images on TV and in the newspapers were so negative and heart wrenching, we still heard stories about ordinary Israeli Jews and Palestinians working together in an effort to bring reason, peace and humanity to the Middle East.
One of the most touching stories to emerge during this current terrible war was the tale of a tiny baby boy from Gaza called Jafar.
Born a few weeks ago with serious heart defects, his Palestinian doctors knew that he couldn’t survive without surgery. They phoned Dr. Akiva Tamir, an Israeli doctor they knew from the Israeli charity Save a Child’s Heart, and together the Israeli and Palestinian doctors raced to bring Jafar to Israel.
On Monday of last week, while missiles rained down on Gaza and southern Israel, Israeli doctors from Wolfson Medical Center near Tel Aviv volunteered their time, and performed surgery on the small boy. His grandmother was there waiting for him when he was transferred to intensive care.
Jafar is still at the hospital. He is recovering well. His heart surgery was a success. He joins a growing number of Palestinian children – 1,000 so far – who owe their lives to the volunteers at the wonderful charity Save a Child’s Heart.
Sometimes, like so many people here, I worry that this battle between Israel and Hamas will never end, but it’s stories like these, of individual Israelis and Palestinians working together and thinking far beyond the conflict that give me hope that one day things will be better.
Coexistence Exists
Filed under: Blogging, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Religion
It’s no surprise that main stream news is focusing on the current situation in Gaza and southern Israel. Watching CNN’s coverage Israel looks like a battlefield right out of any epic war movie. The images are constantly played over and over again—which means I get worried phone calls from America, over and over again.
But there is more to life than the images on the news. In Jerusalem, all is pretty much quiet. Yes, tensions are high and I feel the added stress, but life is still not the media’s picture of Israel. In fact there is more coexistence happening on a daily basis than most people are aware of.
Here is Jerusalem Jews and Arabs work together building fancy new high rises or the new light rail train across the city. Today I spoke with an Arab-Israeli who was taking a five-minute-break from his moving job. He sat drinking coffee with his co-workers, both Arabs and Jews, and spoke about the weather (the very cold Jerusalem winter) and my dog’s funny looking sweater (I though he might be cold, but the dog clothing thing is just not for me). The point is that small talk still exists—talking still exists and not all forms of communication are from one rocket to another.
On a larger scale, I think back to the recent coexistence projects I filmed in the Israeli mixed cities of Acre and Lod. Again, the news’s projection is all about violence and crime in these areas, rather than focusing on the positive stories taking place.
Most people now think of Acre as that city that had riots this past Yom Kippur. But Acre quickly recovered from the fighting and both sides remain relatively calm during the current military operations. When I was there in November, I didn’t feel tensions, but rather found the coexistence projects’ efforts really taking effect. The Israel21c video below shows some of the projects, sponsored by the Jewish Agency, that are taking place in Acre.
Last month, I filmed a story about a new coexistence project in Lod. Aviv Wasserman, a native Israeli, founded The Lod Community Foundation about six months ago with the goal of getting this poverty-stricken city back on its feet. Aviv is hardcore, and now lives in Lod where he has set up shop in his apartment. From his office-apartment to monthly meetings, he has built a network of concerned citizens that want to rebuild the city together. Lod is a very diverse city (Jews, Arabs, Russians, Ethiopians, Bedouins, Christians, etc.), but Aviv has managed to have representatives from each community take part in the committees and meetings. Again, you can watch the video below to learn more about his incredible project.
So, there you have it, the other side of conflict. It does exist, even if it doesn’t make the news.
Another Front
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, General, Technology, War
Besides the action in the air and on the ground, Hamas and its supporters are fighting Israel on another front – in cyberspace. And that’s a war Israel’s enemies are doing very well in. Hundreds of Israeli websites have been compromised in the past week, with groups of Arab and Muslim hackers leaving “calling cards” on sites they manage to infiltrate with bad code. The mechanics of defacing a website are not too complicated – there are many well-known flaws in web servers, and if a programmer isn’t careful (as many seem not to be), a hacker can easily subvert web pages, replacing the main index page with one of their own.
According to a professional spoke to this week (he’s a former “black hat” – i.e. bad guy – hacker, who saw the light and now uses his powers for good), today’s hackers are well-organized, and are highly skilled. Unlike the “script kiddies” of just a few years ago, who were more interested in showing off their skills, the 2008 brand of hacker is often politically motivated – hence the attraction of defacing Israeli web sites.
The hackers work in teams, with names like Moroccan Hackers, Islamic Crew, and Iran Black Hats, and many of them leave political messages – condemning Israeli raids in Gaza, or promising revenge. One team even uses Hebrew in its messages, describing in Hebrew how “when it’s our turn, we’ll be more humanitarian than you are.” They hack not only Israeli sites (that end in co.il or org.il), but apparently .com and .net sites that have Jewish or Israeli content, based on their names (www.kaitana.info, http://www.benhur-ltd.com) You can see examples of these hackers’ work at http://www.arabic-m.com/. There are solutions (an upcoming 21C article will highlight some), but often website owners don’t realize their sites are weak until it’s too late – and the anti-Israel hackers get to chalk up another “victory.”
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