View From Jerusalem

I received this email from a friend who is presently touring Israel. I am always trying to keep my ear to the ground about what is happening there, and especially from personal contacts. We hear nothing from the western media about the events and attitudes described in this email, except the botched Israeli attack. Let us always remember Israel in prayer, and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.


Greetings from Jerusalem!

I've just spent a week on an unusual tour of Israel with many thought-provoking speeches by major Israeli leaders and with many fascinating experiences. I could write a brief synopsis of the tour, but that wouldn't tell you much. Instead, I intend to write a series of emails, each with its own focus. Today I will tell you about the Arab Member of the Knesset who spoke to us. This gets to the root of the current Arab-Israeli war and why Israel has to defend herself.

Today (Wed. Nov. 15th) a 57-year-old woman was killed by a Kassam rocket in the Israeli town of Sderot. In addition, one of the rockets landed near the personal home of Defense Minister Amir Peretz where a 24-year-old security guard assigned to the Defense Minister's residence lost both his legs from the shrapnel. Parents rushed to schools, half of which are still insufficiently protected against Kassam rockets, and removed their children. The city announced the cancellation of classes. Last night three Kassams were fired from Gaza, and today there were eight. Various Israeli leaders were already calling for a major military operation in Gaza. Now the Defense Minister will be inclined to do something bigger.

A week ago, the Israeli army intended to knock out a Kassam missile launcher because the Arabs of Gaza were launching Kassam rockets at Israeli towns, as usual. Israel's aiming and firing mechanism malfunctioned and some civilians in Gaza were inadvertently killed. If you believe the Arabs and the media, those ruthless, bloodthirsty Israelis did it on purpose. But this was an Israeli response to hostile rocket-launching, and why were the Arabs launching rockets at Israel anyway? If you go back a year, you recall that some 9,000 Jews were driven from their homes in Gush Katif (Gaza) by the Israeli government and the Israeli army. That evacuation gave all of Gaza to the Arabs (i.e. the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, etc.). Are the Arabs happy with this? No. It's not enough. They want all of Israel, with all Jews "driven into the sea". So they continue to launch rockets at the Israeli towns of Sderot and Ashkelon day after day without pause. The Arabs launch Kassams, and the Israelis try to wipe out the launchers. When anybody dies, it's always Israel's fault.

The following tour-event was bizarre. Read on to see what happened in the Knesset (parliament) later. But first to the tour experience. The civilians in Gaza were accidentally killed on Wednesday. Two days later we heard a speech by an Arab Member of the Knesset who spoke directly, personally, to our tour group. [Yes, Arab-Israelis are Israeli citizens, and they have elected ten members to the 120-member Knesset.] Dr. Hana Swaid kept his voice soft and unemotional. He has been a professor of urban planning at the Israeli Technion in Haifa. He was the mayor of his village for ten years. He played the role of a civilized elected government official. He never once mentioned the civilian deaths in Gaza on Wednesday! That didn't fit his role, the image he was projecting to us at that time. His performance was all PR spin.

Dr. Swaid talked about urban planning, infrastructure, poverty, unemployment. See? These Arabs are rational and well-educated. Then he said that the majority of Arabs want to be fully integrated as Israeli citizens -- but with their own culture, of course. That sounds politically-correct. Yet I wondered whether the Muslim culture could be or should be "integrated" into the historical, ethnic, linguistic, religious mixture that makes the Jewish people unique. If Muslims are integrated as he suggested, does Israel cease to be a Jewish nation? A Jewish nation cannot be "multicultural" by definition -- unless you mean mixing non-observant Jews with the ultra-orthodox. Next he quietly, unemotionally complained about one political party in Israel's governing coalition. It wants a "mono-ethnic state", a Jewish nation. It's a "racist" party, and this concept is "apartheid", Dr. Swaid compared that party's leading MK to neo-Nazi Jorg Haider in Austria and right-wing politician Lapin in France. That sounded inflammatory, no matter how quietly he said it. When it was question time, his answer to one question focused on the 1967 borders as "the only possible solution". He was then speaking as a Palestinian, not as an Israeli MK. Palestinians want all of the Jordanian land Israel acquired when Jordan attacked Israel in the Six Day War. He meant the pre-war borders of May 1967, not the actual borders that have existed for nearly 40 years. These issues are at the heart of the current war. Israel is a Jewish nation, and it can never return to the indefensible 1949 (May 1967) borders.

Three days after that, in the Knesset, MK Hana Swaid touched off a verbal storm over the civilian deaths in Gaza which he didn't mention to us. This gives you the flavor of Israel's governing body with its democratically-elected ten Arab members. [English spellings of Hebrew and Arabic names are "flexible" and phonetic.] This account is from Arutz 7:

Deputy Defense Minister Sneh (Labor) evoked a storm of protest from Arab MKs by saying, "If we kill civilians, we accept blame, but when you kill civilians, you take credit; it's a cultural thing."
Yesterday's stormy Knesset session began when Arab MK Honeh Soueid (Hadash) (i.e. Hana Swaid) delivered a speech harshly condemning Israel for what he constantly called the "massacre and slaughter" of 20 Arabs in Beit Hanoun last week. The incident occurred when IDF artillery fire designed to thwart ongoing Kassam rocket firing in Gaza accidentally hit a residential building.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh then took the stand, beginning by thanking MK Soueid "for bringing up the issue so that I can straighten out the story accurately." Excerpts from the session:

Soueid: People were killed and you want to be accurate...?

Sneh: You think that if you interrupt me, I won't say what I want to say? ... I can promise you one thing: You won't like 90% of what I have to say... Why did we start the military offensive in Beit Hanoun? To protect the citizens of Israel, to attack those who fire Kassams and who store up war material to use it against us. This was the objective; there is nothing more legitimate than that.

Arab MK Muhammed Barakeh: Little children [who were killed] are terrorists?! [screaming wildly] It's a shame and a disgrace! [continues to scream out at Sneh]

MK Moshe Sharoni [Pensioners Party]: You just want to get your picture in Al Jazeera.

Barakeh: Shut your mouth, stupid!

[more screaming, Barakeh is finally ordered to leave by Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik]

Barakeh to Sharoni: Shut your mouth!

Sharoni [in Arabic, apparently a bit taken aback by Barakeh's furious hostility]: Out! Out!

[This exchange is repeated several times, until finally Barakeh is taken out, while continuing to yell]

Speaker Itzik [with a sigh]: Then they talk about the 'image of the Knesset' and that we 'have to come towards...' You heard [that exchange], MK Gal'on [of the radical left-wing Meretz party]?

MK Gal'on: I didn't see you 'come towards' when Barakeh was talking...

Itzik: Oh, really? OK, OK... Deputy Minister Sneh, please continue.

[Arab MK Ahmed Tibi starts screaming...]

Deputy Minister Sneh resumes speaking: "On Nov. 7, from an orchard on the outskirts of Beit Hanoun, rockets were fired towards Ashkelon. On the next morning, we received warning that it would happen again, and therefore two artillery volleys were fired [by the IDF] to that spot. As a result of a technical fault in the second volley, tens of innocent people were hit. We see this as a grave issue, a catastrophe, and a failure. I assume that those who fired the rocket on Ashkelon, if they would have hit dozens of innocent people, they would have seen it as a success.

MK Tibi screams: You're just clearing yourself! [unintelligible]

Sneh: No, no, Tibi - that's the difference of our cultures; that's the whole thing; that's the difference in our values.

[Tibi and other Arab MKs start yelling wildly]

Sneh: I promised you that you wouldn't like what I had to say. ... You cannot evade the point that when we hit civilians, we see it as a failure, but those who shoot at us see it as a success; that's the difference, you cannot evade that! [more screaming] I came to speak here in order to respond [to the charges of slaughter] and there is a limit to what we are willing to hear. [Tibi and others keep screaming]

Sneh: ...After the extent of the catastrophe became known, we enacted a series of urgent humanitarian measures. The worst of the injured were taken to hospitals in Israel, and even though it was a battle zone, we allowed in trucks of medical supplies, we opened the Rafah crossing, and we did whatever possible to alleviate the unjustified suffering of these people.

Tibi: And then these Palestinians didn't even say thank you, what nerve of them!

Sneh: We didn't expect a thank you; we did what we thought we had to do.

[more interruptions]

Sneh: We didn't expect a thank you, I don't think we even deserved it. I think that we were responsible militarily, and we did what we had to do.

[Tibi continues screaming, Speaker Itzik threatens to remove him]

Sneh: Now that I have said what I wanted to say regarding military responsibility, I will discuss the moral responsibility. [raising his voice] Those who turned Gaza into a launching ground of Kassam rockets against a civilian populace are responsible for those who were killed. Last September, we left Gaza, and we didn't leave a single thing - not a house or even a guard booth. What justification is there for what you are doing?! [Quiet] Why are the Rafah and Karni crossings half-closed?! Because the people sent by the terror organizations always want to blow up these places, the arteries that provide life to Gaza! They build a 600-meter tunnel - what are they thinking when they dig them?! Who will benefit if they blow up the Karni Crossing and Israelis and Palestinians are killed? And then later they'll complain that there's no milk or flour... What are they thinking? [quiet] Who destroyed Erez [Industrial Zone], where 5,000 Palestinians worked and made a living? Who destroyed it? The terrorists!

Tibi: And that's why you fire at Beit Hanoun?

Sneh: We fire at Beit Hanoun, Tibi, because they turned it into a base of rockets and missiles against Ashkelon and Sderot. There is no country in the world that would tolerate such a thing! Take this account to Islamic Jihad and to Hamas, and tell them this - give your ethical speeches to them, not to us.

When the debate finally ended, though the Arab MKs favored a formal Knesset debate on the Beit Hanoun incident at a future date, the Knesset voted to accept Sneh's proposal to remove it from the agenda.

Israel always has to defend herself against all of the surrounding Muslim nations. She has to defend herself against the UN and the EU, and sometimes against the American government. Then some days she has to defend herself against her own governing Knesset. Most of the tour experiences focus on "how" Israel defends herself, but this presents a little taste of "why" such defense is necessary. Shalom!
JM