An alternative Nobel for Israel

October 1, 2010 - 4:44 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, health, Politics, Social Justice 

A PHRI doctor treats a Palestinian patient in a classroom.

It may not be the real Nobel Prize, but Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has been selected for a 2010 Alternative Nobel Prize for its work, including its helping of Palestinians in mobile health clinics and migrant workers in Tel Aviv.

The prize will be awarded in the Swedish parliament on December 6, four days before the Nobel Prize ceremony. Also known as the “Right Livelihood Awards,” the prize was established in 1980 to “honor and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today.”

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel – honored for its “indomitable spirit in working for the right to health for all people in Israel and Palestine,” will join the existing 141 laureates from 59 countries. Other winners of the 2010 awards include Nigerian and Brazilian environmentalists, as well as Nepalese community activists.

PHR-Israel was initiated by Israeli physician Dr. Ruhama Marton. Members say they aim to prevent serious abuses of human rights, including by saving lives in cases where the Israeli bureaucracy blocked Palestinians patients from getting essential treatment, especially Palestinians in Gaza.

“[The award] strengthens us in our ongoing struggle against all sources of oppression and for justice and equality,” Marton said upon receiving news of the award.

While the organization is seen by some as being ‘anti-Israel’ in its agenda, there’s no doubt that it has achieved some worthy accomplishments during its existence, and deserving of the recognition the Alternative Nobel will provide it with.

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Do Israelis care about peace?

September 12, 2010 - 2:22 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics 

The photo accompanying the TIME cover story (Uriel Sinai/Getty)

Do Israelis really want peace – and if someone writes that we don’t really care one way or another, does that constitute being anti-Israel, anti-Semitic or just demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge?

Those are some of the questions raised by the current TIME magazine cover story on our little strip of land – entitled “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.”

The author of the story – the magazine’s new bureau chief, Karl Vick, bases his thesis on talking to a bunch of us and on a March poll that showed that only 8% of the population considered the conflict with the Palestinians to be “the most urgent problem” facing the country, placing below education, crime, national security and poverty.

I’m pretty sure Vick is relatively new to the country, since TIME’s most recent bureau chief Tim McGirk, left this year, and wasn’t replaced for a while. That shouldn’t have any bearing on the validity of the story though, if Vick was thorough in his research.

The article actually is much more reasonable than the headline, which probably resorted to sensationalism to boost flagging newstand sales. Vick was primarily stating that Israelis are obsessed about reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians, an assessment that as much as any generalization can be, largely accurate. Then again, neither are the Palestinians. Wasn’t it PA President Mahmoud Abbas who was quoted last year as saying that the Palestinians have it pretty good right now and can continue in this manner indefinitely until they achieve statehood?

I think that what Vick was trying to say, and what his editors distorted with the title and the photo of young Israelis smoking something out of a nargilla on the beach, is that Israelis are realistic about the chances of achieving peace. And if the Palestinians aren’t serious about being partners, then yes, we can focus on the other aspects of our society that need fixing, and on our own well being and the pursuit of happiness, which is part of of our const… oops, forgot which country I was talking about.

However, the backlash against the story in chats and blogs has been over the top – even the Anti Defamation League came out with a press release calling on TIME to apologize for the article which it said was “predicated on the “insidious subtext” of Jews being obsessed with money.

“The outcry from the Jewish community and others over Time’s Israel cover story has been overwhelming,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “We have received calls and e-mails from around the country expressing outrage at the implication that Israelis care more about money than a future of peace and security. After reading the story, we understand why so many people were offended.”

“The insidious subtext of Israeli Jews being obsessed with
money echoes the age-old anti-Semitic falsehood that Jews care about
money above any other interest, in this case achieving piece with the
Palestinians,” wrote Mr. Foxman. “At the same time, Time ignores the
very real sacrifices made by Israel and its people in the pursuit of
peace and the efforts by successive Israeli governments of
reconciliation.”

Vick and his editors at TIME are wrong – Israelis care very deeply about peace. But while we’re waiting for the peace train to leave the station from Ramallah, from Damascus and from Arab capitals around the Middle East, there’s plenty of time to smoke some nargillas and make some money. And if that’s perceived as callous by the liberal establishment, then so be it.

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Peace talks or target practice?

September 2, 2010 - 11:22 AM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, War 

Security personnel inspect the car containing four Israelis which was bombarded with bullets on Tuesday night near Kiryat Arba. (AP)

A morbid comment by a friend after the last two consecutive days of drive-by shootings of Israelis by Palestinians, which have left four Israelis dead – ‘you can always tell when peace talks are starting because Israelis start dying.’

It’s horrible, but unfortunately true. I think everyone is starting to remember how previous waves of terror began – a shooting here, a bus bomb there, and before you know it, it’s an everyday thing.

I’m getting on a bus in a few hours, and for the first time in years, I may be looking around and checking out the passengers getting on, doing my own personal profile checking.

I guess the big difference this time, though, is the fact that we have a security barrier which is supposedly preventing potential suicide bombers from arriving at their destination, and the facts that the cooperation we’re getting from the Palestinian security forces are helping to prevent and catch terror acts before they happen. But not always, as the last two nights have tragically shown.

I, like most Israelis who want the peace talks beginning today in Washington to succeed, want to believe Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas when he said that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other Palestinian terror rejectionist groups are Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s common enemy.

But if all Israelis, and not just settlers (who for some, incomprehensibly, don’t count as they are bringing it on themselves by living in the West Bank) are now going to be open targets for the guns and bombs of terrorists, it’s clear that the peace attempts in Washington are going to fail miserably. And our Palestinian neighbors will only have themselves to blame when their statehood once again moves beyond their reach.

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Israel takes over Toronto

May 29, 2010 - 4:11 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Politics, Travel 

Anti-Israel demonstrators outside the Israeli Consulate in Toronto on Thursday.

You can take the Israeli out of Israel, but Israel still follows you no matter where you go.

Only a couple hours after landing in Toronto this week, I was on my way to meet an Israeli official at the Israeli Consulate in downtown Toronto. Originally, the official was supposed to meet me at a nice hotel restaurant as his guest, and I was looking forward to the country finally paying for my lunch out of the taxes I’ve dutifully contributed every year. But it was not to be.

I received a call from the office saying that the top Israeli officials were not being let out of the building temporarily because there was a demonstration against Israel being held outside the building. Could I come to their office instead?

Goodbye free lunch, and enter a combat zone, I thought, envisioning having to fight through a picket line and angry anti-Zionists spitting on me as I bulldozed my way into the building.

But arriving a few minutes later, I saw a small group of maybe a dozen peaceful demonstrators holding Palestinian flags and handing out leaflets protesting the likelihood that the Israel was going to turn back the aid flotilla heading toward Gaza.

I approached one of the leaders, it seemed, named Basem, and asked him what was going on? Well spoken and passionate, he explained how Israel wasn’t allowing humanitarian aid to reach Gaza and was threatening to attack the flotilla if it approached shore.

“So you’re appealing to Israel, as a humanitarian gesture to allow the aid to enter Gaza,”?

“No, we don’t talk to Israel – we’re trying to make people aware of the awful things Israel is doing,” he answered.

So, rather than a direct appeal to Israel, as a future peace partner and neighbor to a Palestinian state, the protesters were instead seemingly more interested in making Israel look bad than in achieving their goals of getting aid to needy Gazans.

When I made my way -without opposition – into the consulate and met with the official, he said that the protesters consisted of “the usual suspects” and that his ‘imprisonment’ was just a precaution.

I’m not sure if the protesters knew that a day later, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara were going to be staying right around the corner in the swanky Four Seasons Hotel.

My hotel is directly across the street from it, and this morning, when I opened my blinds, I could have sworn I saw Sara out on the balcony looking down at the beautiful sunny Toronto morning. I wanted to shout out “Shabbat Shalom, Sara!” but I couldn’t figure out how to open the window.
And I doubt the security guards, a couple floors up on another balcony, would have been very pleased.

Protesters, prime ministerial delegations, security guards – for a couple days anyway, quiet, placid Toronto has turned into a Middle East hotbed.

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Elvis has left the building before even entering

May 18, 2010 - 9:20 AM by · 6 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, coexistence, General, Life, Music, Politics, Pop Culture 

Say it ain’t so Elvis.

Only two weeks after one of the greats of rock & roll, Elvis Costello told me that the only answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is through “dialogue and reconciliation,” he decided to take himself out of the equation by cancelling his two shows scheduled for June 30 and July 1 at the Caesaerea Amphitheater.

Formerly great hip hop poet pioneer Gil Scott-Heron also recently cancelled a Tel Aviv show soon after it was announced saying that he and his band “didn’t like wars.” And Santana, due to pro-Palestinian pressure or some other reason, also nixed a show here in the early stages. But Costello’s blow is the mightiest, because it’s the most- thought out.

Costello posted an announcement over the weekend explaining his decision to join the boycott of Israel. “There are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent,” he wrote.

Saying he couldn’t imagine receiving another invitation to perform in Israel, Costello wrote, that since the complex subjects involving the conflict “are actually too grave and complex to be addressed in a concert, then it is also quite impossible to simply look the other way… sometimes a silence in music is better than adding to the static and so an end to it.”

Costello was set to make his Israeli debut with his new folk/bluegrass band The Sugarcanes, and in his engaging phone conversation with me two weeks ago, he eloquently explained that he had given much thought to playing in the country, but decided that he was against efforts to boycott performances.

“I know from the experience of a friend who is from Israel and from people who have worked there that there is a difference of opinion there among Israelis regarding their government’s policies. It seems to me that dialogue is essential. I don’t presume to think that my performance is going to be part of the process,” Costello said.

“The people who call for a boycott of Israel own the narrow view that think performing there must be about profit and endorsing the hawkish policy of the government. It’s like never appearing in the US because you didn’t like Bush’s policies or boycotting England because of Margaret Thatcher.”

It’s unclear whether the announced show by Costello’s wife, vocalist and pianist Diana Krall, will go on as planned on August 9 at the Ra’anana Amphitheater. But for the thousands of Costello fans who sold out the first Caesearea show neccessitating the addition of a second show, listening to “What’s So Funny ’bout Peace, Love and Understanding” will never again sound the same.

***

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