Hearing Israel’s case
Less than a mile from the border with Gaza, the ugly, sprawling town of Sderot is one of Israel’s poorest. At the beginning of last month, in the week leading up to the Israeli elections, I found myself exploring its tiny market. The stalls were owned by Russian Jews; immigrants from the former Soviet Union who had arrived in the 1990s with little money and few possessions.
Mingled in the crowd of shoppers were even poorer Ethiopian Jews, searching the worthless bric-a-brac for a decent bargain. I approached one of them, an old man in his late sixties. What, I asked, was the greatest worry for him as a resident of Sderot? He responded through my Hebrew interpreter. “He says the roof of the synagogue needs repairing,” the interpreter said dryly. For a moment, I supposed that it had been hit by a Hamas rocket. But the old man shook his head and said, “When it rains the roof leaks”.
It struck me as odd that the main concern for this Sderot resident was not the fear of terrorist attack, but that his place of worship had fallen into disrepair. I walked further, and found a young mother with a little boy in a pushchair. We chatted, and I explained that I was British student. “I feel very sorry for the people of Gaza,” she told me, “families like mine are suffering”. During the bombing campaign she had moved out of Sderot to stay with a relative, but she recognised that for the people of Gaza there was nowhere to go. I asked her who she would be voting for. “Avigdor Lieberman, ”she responded emphatically. “I want my family to feel safe, and he is the only one who gives me confidence.”
The rise of Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu, was the leading story of the elections. A former nightclub bouncer, Lieberman is an avowed right-winger whose election manifesto called for Arab Israelis to swear loyalty to the Jewish state. If the Arabs refused to declare their loyalty, they would be refused citizenship and consequently a right to vote in Israeli elections. This has caused him to be compared to Vladimir Putin and, by his more enthusiastic detractors, to Jean-Marie Le Pen the French ultra-nationalist.
Since my arrival in Israel three days earlier, I had been immersed in the complex world of Israeli politics. Back in York, two weeks previously, an email had arrived in my inbox from the Union of Jewish Students. Would I like to go on an all-expenses paid trip to Israel – “a young leaders post war special” – to witness the elections? I was immediately suspicious. Did the UJS know I wasn’t Jewish?
It turned out that the group was made up of seven student journalists and a Vice President of the Oxford University Student Union – we were the so-called “young leaders” and Israel wanted us to hear its case. It’s hardly surprising that Israel wants to improve its image. In January, a sustained bombing campaign in Gaza was met with condemnation from the international community and the worldwide media. UK students sympathetic to the Palestinian cause expressed their outrage in loud protests, particularly after the death toll in Gaza reportedly reached 1,300, including 500 women and children.
One of the first things I learned after arriving in Jerusalem was that most Israelis do not accept these figures as accurate. Although they were quoted by the United Nations and the Red Cross, many Israelis claim that the world has been outrageously duped by Palestinian propaganda.
On February 15, a 200 page report conducted by the Israeli Defence Force’s ‘Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration’ was published. It identified more than 1,200 Palestinian deaths and listed casualties by name. The report claimed that around 820 of the Palestinians killed were combatants, and that most been ‘incriminated’ as members of Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Regardless of these varying statistics most Israelis were in favour of the bombing campaign, which for the most part they refer to as “the war”. Despite its apparent one-sidedness (just 13 Israelis were killed), even our guide, a long-term supporter of a left-wing political party asked, “what should Israel have done after being hit by 6,000 Qassam rockets in eight years?”
For Israelis, security is not simply a political issue. It penetrates daily life, and compulsory military service starts at the age of 18. As a result of forced conscription, the lives of Israeli soldiers are considered priceless, almost sacred, as the kidnap of Gilad Shalit by Hamas in 2006 has shown.
Recently, talks mediated by Egyptian authorities have suggested that up to 1,000 Palestinian prisoners could be released by Israel in exchange for his safe return. Could this protectiveness have affected the death toll of civilians during the Gaza conflict?
That afternoon in Sderot we were introduced to Captain Ron Edelheit – an IDF spokesman who had agreed to meet with us. He arrived on a large motorbike, wearing a bandana and quickly earning the nickname “Buzz Lightyear” because of his loud American accent. He took us straight to a storage facility where the remains of Qassam rockets fired at Southern Israel were put on display, and told us that Hamas militants would use all available materials to build these rockets – including metal piping, fertiliser, and an inflammable substance specially distilled from a certain type of washing powder. The rockets looked rudimentary, to say the least, each with scrappily welded fins supposed to guide the rocket towards its civilian targets.
But I was more interested in how Captain Edelheit might justify the recent bombing campaign in Gaza, especially as his official position meant he would be able to shed light on the Israeli military mindset. Another student got there first, asking outright: “Would you call Israel’s response to the rockets fired by Hamas proportionate?” He avoided answering the question at first, saying loudly that Hamas were asking for 1,000 militants before they would release Galid Shalit. “Is that proportionate?” he asked, irritated.
The question of proportionality was pressed further, and Edelheit finally made an attempt to define Israel’s view of its actions in Gaza: “Proportion is that we will open fire to make sure the source of fire will not fire again. And we’ll do it fast – quick! – with the necessary force, to close that source of fire, in order not to have any casualties on our side.” His replies, although lacking in the diplomacy you might expect of a spokesman, showed that for the IDF, the ultimate objective of “the war” was to stop Hamas rockets being fired at Israel, no matter what the cost.
He did say, however, that to target civilians was “unacceptable”. So I asked him how the IDF dealt with situations involving militants in a civilian environment, perhaps one of the most complex moral dilemmas facing many Israeli soldiers. To him, the answer was simple – he interrupted, shouting over me with a few loud “whoahs” and said that he would answer my unfinished question with an analogy.
“A bank robber with a gun runs into a bank, and takes a person as a hostage. That person is definitely a hostage. A policeman comes in. He’s got a gun, the robber has got a gun and the policeman knows that in two seconds the robber will start shooting, so he takes out his gun and he tries to shoot the robber. The hostage gets killed. Who gets charged in the court case? The robber, right? With murder.”
Despite our protests that the analogy didn’t work – Hamas are, for starters, an elected government, and they certainly didn’t have anti-aircraft guns during the bombing campaign – it seemed that Captain Edelheit was going to continue wasting our time. As we walked back to the bus, I heard another student mutter, “what a cunt”.
Later on in the trip, we were fortunate enough to meet more reasonable Israeli politicians and journalists. There was a stronger case for Israel’s response to Hamas rockets than a weak bank robbery analogy, and one example came from the Editor of The Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz, who grew up in North London. It is important to remember, he said, that despite its military might, Israel is demographically and territorially tiny. Like many Israelis, he believes that Israel is increasingly under threat from a militantly Islamist Iran – and even suggests that because of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, Israel is essentially bordered on two sides by Iran, whose government support the terrorist wings of both organisations with training and military supplies.
Horovitz was openly critical of the media’s coverage of the war in Gaza: “There are terrible failures in the media, both in terms of covering Israel, and internalising the Islamist threat, and I think it’s surprising that a lot of British journalism – and consequently a lot of Britain – fails to realise the extent of the Islamist threat. It’s surprising because Britain has been attacked by extremists in the past.”
Analysing the Islamist mindset, he denies that foreign policy is a key factor, citing that particular argument as “foolish and short-sighted”. He argued: “A dominant theme in Islam is the radical idea that – as inhumane and as counterintuitive as it sounds – the finest thing one can do for one’s God, is to kill oneself with as many Jews, Christians and other non-believers as possible.” Given the evidence and the testimonies on hand – in particular Ed Hussein’s The Islamist – Horovitz claimed, “It’s not hard to understand the Islamist mindset, just more convenient not to. It is much easier not to believe that a sizeable population in Britain is becoming radicalised and could pose a threat. So you ignore it.”
Horovitz also claimed that the media’s outrage against – and the international condemnation of – Israel’s campaign in Gaza was indicative not only of the Free World’s unwillingness to recognise that a resort to force could be justified, but also of the Free World’s total failure to admit that Islamic extremism is a real danger – “When Israel acts against Islamic extremism it does so in a profoundly unsympathetic context. We are grappling with a mindset that is saying let’s kill and be killed for the reward in the next life.”
David Horovitz’s views sound right-wing to a British audience; in Israel, they are considered mainstream. The reasons for this are undeniably complex, but the second intifada – which saw Palestinian extremists target civilians in suicide bombings, mostly in Jerusalem – is a major factor.
We travelled to the separation barrier which divides Israel from parts of the West Bank. The concrete construction is eight metres high and controversial mostly for its position which, it is largely accepted, has some of the Palestinian territories inside Israel’s makeshift border. It was erected partly to stop suicide bombers from entering Israel, but critics call it “the apartheid wall” claiming that it forms a major part of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people. When we saw the wall, it was shut to all Palestinians, because of the upcoming elections – the Israeli authorities control all movement, allowing free passage to most Israelis. These same authorities were involved in two scheduled Palestinian speakers being unable to meet us.
Like the Gaza bombing campaign, the separation barrier is seen by most Israelis as a justified measure against violent extremism. But if there has really been a shift to the right in Israeli politics, what does the left think of it? Dr Gideon Rahat from Jerusalem’s Hebrew university gave us one answer. He rejects the nationalist politics of Avigdor Lieberman, saying that the right-winger is “a threat to Israeli society” for turning Arab Israelis against the Jewish state.
In reality, however, the right – in the form of a Bibi Netanyahu-led coalition – will be in power for the foreseeable future. On election night, I attended Bibi’s Likud Party celebrations and saw a confident, popular man promising to lead a strong, uncompromising government. Whether he can work with Barack Obama, or keep Avigdor Lieberman under control, remains to be seen. It is the fears and worries of the Israeli people that govern the peace process in the middle east. From the election results, and judging by the mood of the Israelis I was privileged to meet, that process is firmly on hold.
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typical british. “bombing campaign”… ur an idiot. when the british were thrown out in 1948, they left a disaster here. wherever u go, u leave disaster and destruction in ur wake. stay out of israel, and the lives of jews. u have no right to interfere. take ur anti-israel sentiment and stick it where the sun don’t shine. u won’t have much more to say about israel soon, as ur precious england will be overrun by islam. don’t look to the jews to save ur sorry ass.
Does this person not remember who liberated the concentration camps? I’m actually pretty glad we went there and “made a mess of them”. I’m sure you are as well…
I think you completely misunderstood the article. Obviously this is a sensitive issue for everyone affected by events in the middle east, but you shouldn’t jump on Mr. Heaven for saying ‘bombing campaign’. This university has previously been accused of being ‘anti-semetic’ in the Jewish chronicle and you too seem to be jumping on the bandwagon.
I don’t blame them for making such accusations either, at the last UGM there was a very one-sided motion in favour of palestine that was passed, much to my disgust. If you had taken the time to actually read this article, you would have been sympathetic to the fact that the writer had taken the time to visit Israel and interacted with people living through these problems.
The mass media seems to have forgotten about the previous centuries of war and hatred that have gone on, however this article conveys how Israel is not guilty of anything other than defending itself and it remains a nation under threat from foreign forces.
The bottom line is that this is an english university with a very small proportion of students connected to either side through religion, family or otherwise. As such, they should not attempt to interfere with significant political issues like this one.
But seriously though, take a chill pill.
Im so sick of this anti- israeli bullshit. The article is clearly not this. Yes Britain has made mistakes in the middle east and yes we do have a responsibility for it. But zahava – yerushalayim, if Britain had stuck by its word there would be no state of Israel, just look at the previous agreements made pre ww2. You seriously cannot deny this.
No doubt my comments will be deemed as ‘anti semitic’ but Im not and I do know what I am talking about. The images of Gaza being overrrun and the lack of the West doing anything merely enhances the threat to us. What would a young Muslim think of the situation if he was watching it on Sky news or the BBC? It merely fuels extremism and the threat of another 7/7 or 9/11.
And saying ‘saving your sorry ass’ is so petty. I dont think our ‘precious England’ will be overrun by Islam. It really pisses me off you have to say stuff like this, and no we will never look to the Jews to save our ‘ass’ as the world doesnt work like that.
Dave, I don’t think the first poster on this comment thread has any understanding of the Balfour Declaration or the course of events that saw the creation of the state of Israel.
I am one of Israel’s biggest supporters (so it seems) on campus, yet I do at times, find Israelis being very defensive in nature and attacking Britain. I’d urge them to remember who liberated many Jews from the concentration campus; what government first stated that Israel should have a homeland in the Middle-East inspite of oppositon from Wilson and the USA; and that many Jews were involved in terror activity against British interests in the Mandate of Palestine.
I strongly support the right of Israel to exist and defend herself. I supported her actions in Lebanon and didn’t think those in Gaza went far enough (in terms of damaging Hamas’ capablity to launch rockets into Israeli territory). However that doesn’t mean you can go shouting of shpiel like you are in post 1.
Incidentally, judging by the rocket attacks on your territory, the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and suicide bombings in Israel, I think you should worry far more about your own country being “over-run by Islam” than ours.