from UN News Centre

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35473&Cr=&Cr1=

29 July 2010 –More than 6,200 children attending a summer camp in the Gaza Strip run by the United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees have broken their own world record for the number of kites flown at the same time.

The feat comes exactly one week after more than 7,200 children bounced basketballs simultaneously for five minutes, doubling a 2007 record set in the United States.

“We still have to await final confirmation from the Guinness Book of World Records, but according to our figures the kids have done it. What an amazing achievement – two world records in a week,” said John Ging, Director of Operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Both record-breaking events were part of the Summer Games programme organized by UNRWA in nearly 150 locations across Gaza over a period of six weeks, beginning on 12 June.   

Around a quarter of a million children participate in the Games, which include sports as well as recreational and cultural activities. This is the fourth year that UNRWA has organized the programme in Gaza, whose 1.5 million Palestinian residents have been languishing under a three-year-old Israeli blockade.

“Like children anywhere in the world, children here must have a sense of normality,” said Mr. Ging. “Despite the abnormality they face in their daily lives, today’s achievement has lifted the spirits of the entire population here in Gaza.”

Playing politics: summer camp for Gaza’s children

UN vies with Islamic Jihad and Hamas to keep hundreds of thousands entertained in summer

By Harriet Sherwood, Guardian UK, July 29, 2010

Palestinian girls at an UN Relief and Works Agency day camp on the beach in Gaza City. Boys have more options and many attend summer camps run by militant groups. Photograph: Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP The boys sitting in the shade of an awning erected on a Gaza beach are only half listening to the man addressing them through a megaphone.

After all, school’s out for the summer and there is football to be played and the sea to be swum in. Some of the 100 or so boys whisper among themselves, others are busy burying their own or a friend’s legs in the hot sand.

But when the man asks, “What is our slogan?” they snap to attention, responding in unison: “Resistance!”

This is summer in Gaza, Islamic Jihad-style. These boys are among 10,000 or so children that the militant organisation estimates attends its 50 camps. Hamas, the Islamic party which runs Gaza, claims another 100,000 children are attending 500 camps it organises; both are dwarfed by the 250,000 taking part in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s Summer Games across the Gaza Strip.    

Gaza’s summer camps are seen by militant organisations as an opportunity to influence a generation of children; to inculcate a duty to resist the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. UNRWA says it just wants the kids to have fun.

This year, the rivalry has taken an ugly turn with middle-of-the-night arson attacks on two UNRWA camps, one involving a death threat to the organisation’s head, John Ging. UNRWA says it doesn’t know who was responsible and has asked Hamas to investigate.

Down on the beach, Hasan Abdu, the Islamic Jihad official in charge of the summer camps programme, is telling the boys: “Anyone who makes concessions on Palestine is making concessions on the Qur’an. Palestine is our right. You are the men of the future – one of you might make history.”

When he asks who will join the resistance in the future, hands shoot up, showing the words are getting through despite the boys’ apparent inattentiveness.

The camp is named in honour of “the martyrs of the freedom flotilla”, in reference to the nine Turkish activists killed by Israeli forces while trying to break the blockade of Gaza. Many of the boys are wearing T-shirts adorned with a picture of the Mavi Marmara, the flotilla’s lead boat.

Zidan Obied, who is running this camp, explains the programme and philosophy. “We are expressing our principles as Islamic Jihad. We believe in the right of resistance and we are against peace negotiations.”

He runs through some of the daily activities: sessions on the history and geography of Palestine; readings from the Qur’an; arts and literature; drawing – “we teach them to draw maps of Palestine from the river to the sea”; lessons on the significance of Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque; sports; volunteering activities such as tree-planting and clearing cemeteries; military-style marching and exercises.

This, of course, is for the boys. There are separate camps for girls, with “very limited” sporting activities. Instead they are taught crafts, such as embroidery.

“We are a conservative community, we try to avoid bad behaviour between boys and girls,” says Obied. “Dealing with girls is different.”

Many families are reluctant to allow their daughters to attend even segregated camps, whoever is running them, and across the board there is a disproportionate number of boys taking part in organised summer activities.

A few miles to the north of the Islamic Jihad beach awning, separate Hamas-run boys’ and girls’ camps are sharing the same seaside facility. The girls here are studying the Qur’an for five hours a day; the boys have a wide range of activities on offer, including football, computer skills, marching and a “sniper’s corner” where they are taught shooting as a sport.

The children are also taught about the history of the Palestinian struggle. In a society where politics and conflict is part of daily life, the notion that children should be allowed to enjoy childhood free from such burdens is incomprehensible.

“Of course we have a political agenda,” says Ahmed Nabil, a Hamas official helping to run the camp. “We believe the older generation has a duty to tell the younger generation about these issues. We are letting them play but also giving them a message. We must not let them forget that we are an occupied people.”

Israel claims the Hamas and Islamic Jihad summer camps are breeding a new generation of extremists. UNRWA declines to comment on other camps, but emphasises its own, contrasting, philosophy.

“In the highly charged, pressurised environment of Gaza, it’s important to have a space where children can just be children,” says UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness. “We want to give the children a sense of fun and normality.”

UNRWA’s camps are better organised and equipped, not surprisingly given the organisation’s resources. Under brightly coloured streamers at camp number nine, there is a high-sided portable swimming pool, bouncy castle, trampoline and volleyball net.

The girls come in the morning, the boys in the afternoon – but both follow the same programme of activities, which sometimes involve a theme of teamwork and mutual respect.

Mohammed Zyara, running the boys’ activities at the camp, says: “Our main goal is to give them a good time, keep them away from troubles and politics.”

However, he says, UNRWA does not discourage children from attending rival camps. “I’m sure some of the boys go to one kind of camp in the morning, and another in the afternoon,” he says philosophically.

Back at the Islamic Jihad camp, the political lesson is over and the boys are playing in the waves despite the 80m litres of raw or partially treated sewage discharged into the sea off Gaza every day. Under the watchful eye of camp organisers, they chorus their support for Islamic Jihad, although many have also attended UNRWA camps this summer.

Hasan Sidan, a 13-year-old whose hair and clothes are caked in sand, reassuringly reflects the priorities of most boys his age. He likes the high jump best, and “the worst thing is when they are lecturing us”. Most of all, he says, he just wants to play on the beach and have a good time.

• Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Whether they are from Turkey, Ireland or Cyprus, those that participate reek of hypocrisy.

By DANNY AYALON, WSJ Europe, July 29, 2010

A couple of years ago, a Palestinian refugee camp was encircled and laid siege to by an army of tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers. Attacks initiated by Palestinian militants triggered an overwhelming response from the army that took the life of almost 500 people, including many civilians. International organizations struggled to send aid to the refugee camps, where the inhabitants were left without basic amenities like electricity and running water. During the conflict, six U.N. personnel were killed when their car was bombed.

Government ministers and spokesmen tried to explain to the international community that the Palestinian militants were backed by Syria and global jihadist elements. Al Qaeda condemned the government and the army, declaring that the attack was part of a “crusade” against their Palestinian brothers.

AFP/Getty ImagesA Palestinian refugee collects metal and plastic objects at a garbage dump in the Palestinian refugee camp of Beddawi near Tripoli.

While most will assume that the events described above took place in the West Bank or Gaza, they actually took place in Lebanon in the summer of 2007, when Palestinian terrorists attacked the Lebanese Army, which struck back with deadly force. The scene of most of the fighting was the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Northern Lebanon, which was home to the Islamist Fatah al-Islam, a group that has links with al Qaeda.

At the time, there was little international outcry. No world leader decried the “prison camps” in Lebanon. No demonstrations took place around the world; no U.N. investigation panels were created and little media attention was attracted. In fact, the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon garners very little attention internationally.   

Today, there are more than 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon who are deprived of their most basic rights. The Lebanese government has a list of tens of professions that a Palestinian is forbidden from being engaged in, including professions such as medicine, law and engineering. Palestinians are forbidden from owning property and need a special permit to leave their towns. Unlike all other foreign nationals in Lebanon, they are denied access to the health-care system. According to Amnesty international, the Palestinians in Lebanon suffer from “discrimination and marginalization” and are treated like “second class citizens” and “denied their full range of human rights.”

Amnesty also states that most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have little choice but to live in overcrowded and deteriorating camps and informal gatherings that lack basic infrastructure.

In view of the worsening plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon, it is the height of irony that a Lebanese flotilla is organizing to leave the port of Tripoli in the next few days to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza. According to one of the organizers, the participants are “united by a feeling of stark injustice.”

This attitude exposes the dishonesty of the whole flotilla exercise. Whether it is from Turkey, Ireland or Cyprus, those that participate in these flotillas reek of hypocrisy. There are currently 100 armed conflicts and dozens of territorial disputes around the world. There have been millions of people killed and hundreds of millions live in abject poverty without access to basic staples. And yet hundreds of high-minded “humanitarian activists” are spending millions of dollars to reach Gaza and hand money to Hamas that will never reach the innocent civilians of Gaza.

This is the same Gaza that just opened a sparkling new shopping mall that would not look out of place in any capital in Europe. Gaza, where a new Olympic-sized swimming pool was recently inaugurated and five-star hotels and restaurants offer luxurious fare.

Markets brimming with all manner of foods dot the landscape of Gaza, where Lauren Booth, journalist and “human rights activist,” was pictured buying chocolate and luxurious items from a well-stocked supermarket before stating with a straight face that the “situation in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur.”

No one claims that the situation in Gaza is perfect. Since the bloody coup and occupation by Hamas of Gaza in 2007, in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed, Israel has had no choice but to ensure that Hamas is not able to build up an Iranian port on the shores of the Mediterranean. Until Hamas meets the three standards laid out by the international community, namely renouncing violence, recognizing Israel’s right to exist and abiding by previously signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Hamas will continue to be shunned by the international community.

While Israel’s policy is to continue to see that all civilian needs are addressed, it can not allow Hamas to rearm and use Gaza as a base to attack Israel and beyond. For this reason, Israel initiated a blockade, fully legal under international law, to ensure that no items can be appropriated by Hamas to attack innocent civilians. Organizations that wish to join the U.N. and the Red Cross to deliver goods or aid to Gaza are welcome to do so through the Kerem Shalom crossing or even through Egyptian ports. Those that refuse and seek to break the legal blockade to boost Hamas are interested in provocation. If Israel allows these confrontational flotillas to successfully open up a shipping lane for arms smuggling for an Iranian proxy, then the region will suffer from continuous conflict. Actions that embolden the extremists will be at the cost of the moderates and this will pose a grave danger to moving the peace process forward.

The latest flotilla preparing to leave from Lebanon fully exposes not only the hypocrisy but the danger of these provocative vigilante flotillas. The Lebanese flotilla, whose organizers claim injustice while ignoring the dire human rights situation of the Palestinians in Lebanon, amply demonstrate that these flotillas have nothing to do with humanitarian concerns and everything to do with delegitimizing Israel.

Mr. Ayalon is Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This year, Tisha B’Av (the annual Jewish fast day commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem) once again reminded us of the dangers of “gratuitous hatred” without rhyme or reason for one’s fellow Jews; the kind of hatred for its own sake, which seems more recently to have become part of our everyday Israeli reality. Divisions between Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Jews or the bitter antagonism towards the settlers in the West Bank are of course not new, but they have lost nothing of their malevolent edge. No less distressing are the actions of those Israeli lecturers who defend the international anti-Israel boycott in the name of academic freedom and the much larger numbers of those who denounce any criticism or sanctions against these boycotters as “McCarthyism”.

Such harsh polemics are happening at a time of unprecedented hatred towards Israel as a nation within the international community. The hysteria surrounding the Gaza flotilla brought this trend to new heights of hypocrisy. It reflects the ongoing campaign of branding Israel as the “Jew” of nations – libeling it as a racist, bloodthirsty, pariah-state. At the same time, American Jewish support for Israel’s policies, especially among liberals, has also been increasingly eroded. This has potentially dangerous consequences for our relations with the Diaspora, already tense over the issue of non-Orthodox conversions.True, the majority of Americans still show remarkable empathy with Israel’s dilemmas and President Obama has more recently chosen to adopt a somewhat friendlier tone to Israel’s prime minister. Many European leaders, while less supportive than the United States, are by no means blind to Israel’s security needs, to the Iranian threat or to the disastrous implications of Hamas’s violent rule in Gaza. Nevertheless, the international weakening of Israel’s legitimacy as a state remains deeply troubling. It has been accompanied by an unprecedented explosion of global anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism during the past few years.    

The assault from without is not unconnected with a growing sense of spiritual disorientation and deeply conflicted Jewish identities within Israeli society. This trend is, if anything, the most dangerous of all since social, economic and cultural alienation are centrifugal forces – accelerating the divisive schisms that already exist in Israeli society. Against such a background, the disaffectation of the Israeli academic elite from the Zionist ethos is bound to have particularly demoralizing consequences.

For some of the anti-Zionist or “post-Zionist” intellectuals the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948 is evidently the “original sin” that has caused all subsequent Middle Eastern wars. They have, in effect, uncritically adopted the Palestinian narrative, which is not only supported by almost all Muslim holy warriors and many radical leftists, but has also infiltrated an influential sector of mainstream Western opinion. If we are to move forward we will have to find more creative means to circumvent this destructive discourse and show the world that another path is possible – one which rejects Jihadi barbarism and terror but also excessive reliance on Israeli force alone. This will not be easy. We do need to be more sensitive to the suffering of our Arab and Palestinian neighbors. But they too must take responsibility for their own terrorist nihilism, self-deception, and historic guilt (such as the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands). They must once and for all end their tolerance of genocidal incitement to holy war against Israel.

This will necessitate a major effort of intellectual honesty, introspection and self-criticism on all sides. It also requires considerable political will, broad international support and an unequivocal recognition of the identity of “the other” and his legitimate rights. In order to come with clean hands to the table, we Israelis might begin by putting our own house in order. A good start would be to display greater empathy, tolerance and solidarity with the problems of the underprivileged – whether Jewish or Arab – in our own society. We also need to more positively internalize the tragic lessons of divisiveness and fragmentation in our own history, so that we can achieve a minimal consensus on what kind of Israel it is that we really want – both for ourselves, our neighbors, and the wider world.

Prof. Robert S. Wistrich is the director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/) and the author of A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, January 2010).

Av 16, 5770, July 27, 2010

by Rabbi Avi Shafran,  Am Echad Resources

The proposed Israeli conversion-reform legislation known as the Rotem Bill – now on hold for several months – became a sort of Rorschach test for many Jews’ fears.

The bill was introduced by Yisrael Beiteinu, a nationalistic and not infrequently anti-religious political party representing a largely secular immigrant constituency. The legislation’s essential aim is to ease the conversion process for non-Jewish Israelis – like thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union – allowing them greater choice of religious courts than they currently have.

To advance the bill, Yisrael Beiteinu garnered the support of Israel’s hareidi, or so-called “Ultra-Orthodox,” parties.  What allowed the religious parties to back the conversion reforms was the bill’s formalization of part of the decades-old religious status quo, placing conversion in Israel under the auspices of the country’s official Chief Rabbinate.  That, the religious parties reasoned, would ensure that the bill’s reforms would not result in a conversion free-for-all.

When the bill  passed its first procedural hurdle, a hue and cry rose up from Reform and Conservative leaders in America, who contended that it could potentially lead to a change in the definition of “Jewish” regarding qualification for automatic citizenship under the Law of Return.  (Currently, any convert to any Jewish religious movement is registered as Jewish for civil purposes.)  The bill’s sponsors vehemently deny that any such change could be effected by the legislation.   

The lion’s share of fear-mongering, as usual, has the hareidim themselves as the bogeymen. Rabbi David Stav, the head of a liberal Orthodox group in Israel, strongly supports the bill, and warns that non-Orthodox opposition to it, in the words of the Jerusalem Post, “plays directly into the hands of the hareidi political leadership.”  Even as he touts the legislation, he sees a hareidi plot: The dastardly hareidim crafted parts of the bill “as a means to incite the anger of the Reform and Conservative communities.”  Once again, it seems, the hareidim are the Jews’ Jews.  At least he doesn’t accuse us of poisoning the Knesset water supply.

And on July 16, the New York Times featured an op-ed that began with the baseless image of a “small group of ultra-Orthodox, or hareidi, rabbis” deciding that “almost no one” is Jewish; smeared hareidi religious authorities by associating them with a disgraced rabbi; called unnamed hareidi rabbis “demonstrably corrupt”; and fantasized how, should the Rotem bill become law, a Jewish Israeli walking down the street could be suddenly summoned to a court and have his Jewishness revoked.

Vying a few days later for the Best Insult Award was a respected Jewish columnist for the Forward, who characterized Israeli religious courts as a “rabble of rabbis… a counterfeit product, pretenders to a piety they daily demean.”  And that’s before he even got to the “arrogant hypocrisy” part.

Both writers are personal friends of mine (something I know will be true even beyond this writing). But their harsh words made my recent Tisha B’Av – when Jews mourn the toll taken by intra-Jewish ill will – particularly, painfully poignant.

My friends, of course, would defend their hysterics by claiming that the heat emanates from a deep desire for Jewish unity, a concept they seem to understand as requiring the Orthodox to sit back and watch quietly as the Jewish People becomes a gaggle of “Jewish Peoples.”  They fail to perceive Jewish unity’s real mandate here.

What most violates the ultimate oneness of the Jewish People are multiple definitions of the word “Jew” – what results from a smorgasbord of conversion standards.

When the heterodox Jewish movements first appeared on the scene, Jews who remained stubbornly faithful to the entirety of the Jewish religious heritage decried the abandonment of the Jewish mission and warned of the dreadful toll that would result from “conversions” lacking halachic validity. The decrying was roundly condemned as impolite (or worse) and the warning dismissed as the death rattle of an expiring obsoleteness.

But commitment to Jewish religious law hasn’t gone away, and it won’t ever.  What is more, in Israel, polls have shown that the majority of G-d-believing Jews in Israel – hareidi, Modern Orthodox and merely “traditional” alike – consider halacha to be the arbiter of Jewish personal status issues like conversion. That is why, for all their prodigious efforts and funding, the heterodox movements have not really taken hold in the Holy Land.

Which fact fuels the frustration and even anger in parts of the non-Orthodox world. So apoplectic are some at the prospect of halacha continuing to govern conversion in Israel, they have apparently taken the disturbing step of asking members of Congress to interfere in another sovereign state’s internal consideration of a piece of legislation.

Thought Experiment: Imagine Israel embracing a multiplicity of standards regarding conversion. In a generation or two, the Jewishness of every convert and convert’s child in the country would be suspect to all halacha-respecting Jews. What is more, and more tragic, descendants of non-halachically converted women in Israel who became observant (it has happened, you know) would painfully come to discover that they are suddenly not Jewish by the measure of their own beliefs. They (and, if they are themselves women, any children they may have had in the interim) would have to undergo a halachically valid conversion.  Worse still, women among them engaged to cohanim would discover that they cannot halachically marry their fiancés. Even greater soul-wrenching challenges would result from multiple standards in other Jewish personal status issues.

All of that, sadly, is already happening here in the United States and elsewhere. Orthodox Jews can no longer assume the halachic Jewishness of those presenting themselves as non-Orthodox Jews. And newly Orthodox young people have discovered that their parents’ or grandparents’ choices have inadvertently left them in terrible straits.

Whatever one thinks of the Rotem Bill, it raises an important, if uncomfortable, question: Is exporting American Jewish chaos to Israel really a road to Jewish unity?

© 2010 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

All Am Echad Resources essays are offered without charge for personal use, sharing and publication, provided the above copyright notice is appended.

Systematically and methodically exposes the myths and lies about the Arab right to the land of Israel.

This is a phenomenal book.The research is impeccable and the narrative one of the most compelling I have ever read.This book dispels the untruths and reveals the real truth behind the creation of the State of Israel.This should be required reading for every college student studying the Middle East and for that matter for anyone who wants to be enlightened with the truth surrounding the State of Israel. I consider this one of the most important books ever written on the Middle East.

An exhaustively researched, refreshingly honest, and extraordinarily well-argued elaboration of the case for Israel. Dr. Grobman correctly observes that ‘one cannot reason with people who do not wish to be swayed by facts,’ but for those who are still open to rational discourse, this book proves from a variety of angles not only that Israel has a right to exist, but that all free people should stand with her.

Grobman’s well documented study traces the uninterrupted Jewish connection with the Holy Land from the biblical era to the present. It will undoubtedly become an important reference for scholars and laymen wishing to acquaint themselves with the truth about the Arab Israeli conflict. It is also provides readily accessible information to expose the lies and distortions promoted by those seeking to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state.

An excellent historical source for nearly 100 years of the Middle East Arab-Israeli conflict.

Available At Balfour Store

Gazans still awaiting world’s promises.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, Jerusalem Post, July 23, 2010

Five years after Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians living there are still waiting for the housing projects and factories the international community promised them.

The areas where most of the settlements once stood have yet to be transformed into apartments and working places for thousands of unemployed Palestinians who used to work in the Jewish communities.

Promises that the Gaza Strip would be turned into the Middle East’s Hong Kong or Singapore sound today like a joke to many Palestinians.

These promises were made on the eve of the disengagement by many governments and leaders all around the world, including Israel.

It’s hard today to find one Palestinian who would point to anything positive that has come out of the pullout. In fact, Palestinians across the political spectrum agree that the situation inside the Gaza Strip is not much better than it was before the disengagement.

The Palestinian Authority continues to argue that the unilateral disengagement was one of the reasons why Hamas is in power today. Not that the PA didn’t want Israel to leave the Gaza Strip.  

“The idea of an Israeli withdrawal [from the Gaza Strip] was good,” said a PA official in Ramallah.

“But the way it was carried out – unilaterally – was a mistake because it strengthened Hamas.” Indeed, Hamas continues to take credit for “driving” Israel out. Leaders and spokesmen of the Islamist movement insist that the suicide bombing campaign and the Kassam rockets were the main reason behind Israel’s decision to “run away” from Gaza.

Many Palestinians and Arabs seem to share the view that Israel fled because of the suicide and rocket attacks. This is perhaps one of the reasons why a majority of them voted for Hamas a few months later.

The January 2006 parliamentary election which brought Hamas to power was not only about internal reforms and financial corruption, but also about the conflict with Israel. Taking credit for the Israeli pullout, Hamas argued that violence was the only language it understood. The peace talks, Hamas explained to the Palestinians, did not bring them as much as the suicide bombings and rockets have.

“Unilateral disengagement sent a message to Palestinians that if you negotiate with Israel, you don’t get as much as you do as when you kill Jews,” said another PA official. “Ariel Sharon made a huge mistake when he refused to coordinate the withdrawal with the Palestinian Authority or any other party.” The PA official, who served as a close adviser to Mahmoud Abbas at the time, says that many Palestinians are still convinced that Sharon’s real intention was to undermine the PA.

“Sharon did not want the Palestinian Authority to succeed in the Gaza Strip and that’s why he refused to deal with us before the withdrawal,” the official claimed. “Sharon wanted to see Hamas in power so that he could tell the world that the Palestinians are not interested in a state and that their only intention is to destroy Israel.”

ACCORDING TO the PA and various sources in the Gaza Strip, Hamas is today much stronger than it was five years ago. If disengagement was regarded a moral victory for the movement, Israel’s departure from the Philadelphi Corridor along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt has enabled Hamas to smuggle in large amounts of weapons of various types.

Hamas became so strong that in the summer of 2007, exactly three years ago, its militias and gangs managed to kick the PA out of the Gaza Strip. PA and Fatah officials say that were it not for Israel’s hasty and unilateral withdrawal, Hamas would have never been able to build such a huge military force.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s new plan for a further disengagement, where Israel would stop supplying the Gaza Strip with water and electricity, has left both Hamas and the PA wondering about Israel’s true intentions.

The Palestinians’ biggest fear is that “disengagement 2” would solidify the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip and make it permanent. They see the new plan as an Israeli attempt to create a separate Palestinian entity in the Gaza Strip that would be completely cut off from the West Bank.

“Israel wants to turn the Gaza Strip into a small Palestinian state,” charged Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel. “This is a dangerous plan because it’s also designed to absolve Israel of its responsibilities as an occupation force.”

As far as the PA is concerned, the first disengagement was a disaster because it boosted Hamas’s popularity and paved the way for the movement’s victory in the 2006 election and its subsequent violent takeover of the Gaza Strip.

For Hamas, “disengagement 2” is bad because it would further isolate the Islamist regime. Hamas is worried that a complete disengagement would prompt the international community to stop holding Israel responsible for the miseries of the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. It’s as if Hamas is saying, “Please Israel, stay here in one form or another because we need to hold you responsible; otherwise, the people will start asking us difficult questions.”

Shepherd on a Mission

By David Suissa

If ever there were an Israeli who could lead Israel to peace with its Arab neighbors, it might be the Israeli diplomat I met the other day in the lobby of the Century Plaza Hotel. This is your classic Zionist. He stands tall and proud of his country, doesn’t ignore its faults, has a deep understanding of the issues from all sides and craves peace.

Of course, it helps that he’s a Muslim. Not just a Muslim, but a Bedouin Muslim.

Ishmael Khaldi’s official position is policy advisor to the Israeli foreign minister, but he’s a lot more than that. He has become a one-man hasbara machine for the Jewish state, traveling around the world to make the case for the country he loves. When he encounters anti-Israel hecklers who spout slanderous words like “apartheid state,” he has an easy answer:

“If Israel was a racist state, a Muslim like me would never have made it this far.”

This notion of going far came early for Khaldi. Until he was 8, he walked four miles to school from his tiny Bedouin village of Khawalid in the western Galilee, then the same distance to get home again. He has fond memories of the family tent, where he lived with his parents and 10 siblings. He calls the tent an “extraordinary thing,” because it was made of goat hair, which he says keeps you “warm and dry in the winters, and cool in the hot summers.”   

It wasn’t just the memories of the goat-hair tents that marked him. It was also the ancient Bedouin lifestyle and the stories he heard from his grandmother, Jidda, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 96.

Khaldi recalls an early life that revolved around caring for animals, usually goats, sheep and cows. Because the condition of the land changed with the seasons, Bedouins were always on the move, looking for somewhere to nourish their flock. Their nomadic lifestyle lasted for thousands of years. Today, Khaldi says, many Bedouins have settled in more permanent dwellings in villages.

The turning point in Khaldi’s life came when he decided, at 17, to visit America. He spent three months in New York City getting by on “one miracle after another,” including one episode when he jumped onto subway tracks to get to the other side. “Bedouins always look for the shortest route,” he says.

He met religious Jews in Brooklyn and Queens who gave him room and board. He learned what it was to be a “Shabbos goy,” but he also remembers the joys of Shabbat and listening to the Torah portion of the week.

When he returned to Israel, higher education beckoned. Bedouins today do everything in their power to send their children to university, “even if I need to sell my clothes,” his father once told him. So he enrolled at the University of Haifa, where he got a degree in political science and arranged cultural tours for overseas students, mostly Americans, to his Bedouin village.

After completing his college degree, he followed his brothers’ footsteps in the national service and rose to second sergeant in the Israeli police force. He recalls his emotion when, after completing basic training, he was handed a Quran on which to swear his oath to his country, Israel.

He says that throughout history, Bedouins lived a life of tension with governing regimes, whether Ottoman, British or Arab. His own tribe developed a good relationship with the early Jewish pioneers in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. Bedouins and kibbutzniks always had a deep affinity for one another. His grandmother even learned a little Yiddish. So it was natural, he says, to want to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces and develop a loyalty to the Jewish state.

What I found fascinating about Khaldi is that at 38, with a graduate degree from Tel Aviv University and an important position in the Foreign Ministry, he’s still a nomad at heart. He’s always on the move, going from one country and city to another, telling Israel’s side of the story. He’s even found time to write a book about his story (“A Shepherd’s Journey”).

Israel’s story is his own, he says. No one stopped him from moving up. It was his choice to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to work to make enough money to buy a plane ticket to America. It was his choice to get an education and apply to work in public service. Israel is far from perfect, he says, but it gave him the freedom and opportunity to get where he is today.

Maybe his nomadic background has been a blessing. Nomads get attached to values, not to land or ideologies. They don’t build permanent structures; they don’t get bogged down if the land doesn’t produce. They’re used to being fluid, to moving on and looking for more fertile areas. And they never abandon their flock, or each other.

What better values for a diplomat? Loyal, practical, resourceful and travels light. Oh, and one more – respectful of his elders. This one, though, has landed him in hot water.

“My father keeps asking me when I will settle down, get married and start a family,” he says.

The only good excuse I can think of is that he’ll first need to take care of another matter – making peace between Muslims and Jews.
David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine, OLAM.org and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He can be reached at Suissa@olam.org

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 21 Jul 2010

The cooperation agreement between the ITF and the ODIHR gives an enormous boost to Holocaust remembrance and the fight against antisemitism.

DFM Ayalon and ODIHR Director Lenarcic sign agreement (Photo: MFA)

(Communicated by the Deputy Foreign Minister’s Bureau)

This morning (21 July 2010), a cooperation agreement between the ITF (Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research) and the ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) was signed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem, in the presence of Deputy FM Daniel Ayalon. The ODIHR is an operative branch of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe)

This year, Israel was chosen for the first time to head the ITF. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an agreement was signed today that boosts the strength of the forces in the global arena fighting against antisemitism and Holocaust denial. The agreement will bring about cooperation among 87 countries.

ITF Chairman Dan Tichon and ODIHR Director Janez Lenarcic signed the memorandum of understanding. DFM Ayalon welcomed the signing of the agreement and said that it gives an enormous boost to the fight against the delegitimization of Israel and antisemitism in the world, bringing 87 states for the first time into cooperation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has acted, and will continue to act, against these manifestations of hate and will promote any initiative whose purpose is to eliminate them. Ayalon added that there are elements that deny the Holocaust and are preparing the next one. We must preserve the memory of the Holocaust so that similar horrors and hatred will never be repeated and the world will become a safer place.

The ITF was founded about ten years ago at the initiative of the Swedish government. Israel is heading the task force this year, with Mr. Dan Tichon, past Speaker of the Knesset, serving as the chairman and Ambassador Yakov Rozen as the political coordinator. The ITF, which has as its purpose the preservation of Holocaust remembrance through education, research and memorial sites, currently has 27 members, mostly European, and sees the cooperation agreement as very important.

The ODIHR, which has 57 members, deals with educational programs and follows up on instances of xenophobic, primarily antisemitic, hatred. For this reason, the cooperation agreement is likely to help promote Holocaust remembrance, including the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and the fight against antisemitism.

Ambassador Janez Lenarcic is a senior diplomat who in the past was advisor to the prime minister of Slovenia. The ODIHR joins six other organizations belonging to the Task Force whose representatives serve as observers: the UN, DPI, UNESCO, the EU, FRA, and the European Council.

Project aiming to preserve remnants of Jewish life around globe under threat due to budget cuts

By Tzofia Hirschfeld, YNet News, July 21, 2010

The Jewish people’s personal belongings are scattered all over the world: It has synagogues, prayer books, tombstones and cemeteries in various countries. Jews no longer reside in some of these places, and all they left behind is slowly disintegrating.

The “Journey to Jewish Heritage” project, initiated by Beit Avi Chai and the Zalman Shazar Center, aims to locate and document the remnants of Jewish life. Budgetary constraints now threaten the project’s existence, and if it is shut down, an entire world will be lost with it.

“We may be losing out last chance to document important evidence of Jewish existence in the Diaspora,” said Hannah Holland, the project’s director. “We are talking about disappearing communities – some of them diminished because of the Holocaust, some of them because of emigration. When we visit these places, we are met with remains of a splendid past and try to salvage last pieces of evidence of what once was, but now is gone.  

Wall painting uncovered in Chernivtsi synagogue (Photo: Avital Vibran)

“Beyond that, the program also gives students from Israel the opportunity to take part in a very moving encounter with people and places that are part of their people’s history. Students of all different backgrounds take part in this project – religious, secular, new immigrants, old immigrants, Israel-born. They come from a variety of academic fields: Architecture, painting, photography, history, and more.

Uncovering ancient tombstone in Greece (Photo: Tomer Appelbaum)

“After the training they receive with us, they go to document the disappearing communities and this gives them the rare opportunity to create a very strong connection to their people. They are given the chance to feel rare books with their own hands, to touch tombstones, to enter ancient synagogues – and this chance will be lost.”

Time is an important factor in the journey that Holland takes with the students. Time is not kind to the memories, and it eats away at them and breaks them to pieces. Each year, less is left.

“What we find today is not what could be found 10 years ago,” Holland said. “Last summer we uncovered a beautiful wall painting in a synagogue in Chernivtsi, which is now in the hands of the Evangelical Church. This painting is no longer there. Our documentation is the only documentation of it.

“The same applies to tombstones. In one of the places we found a tombstone from the 15th century, and in another place a student uncovered his grandmother’s tombstone by chance. In Georgia, we documented an ancient synagogue that may not still be standing. This project, in many cases, is the last chance.”