Palestinians Firing Mortar Shells from a Courtyard of an Elementary School in Gaza

1 Year On - Gilad, Eldad and Ehud, WHERE ARE THEY??

Today marks exactly one year since Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were kidnapped by Hezbollah while doing a routine patrol of Israel's northern border with Lebanon. Their families have still not been given any sign of life.

Please go to http://www.szcsolidarityrally.blogspot.com to leave a message of support for the families of Ehud and Eldad, as well as the family of Gilad Shalit.

Gilad Shalit - Audio of him talking 1 Year On

June 1967 / June 2007

3 January 2006 - Palmach Museum

My aunty, uncle and 13-year-old cousin came to Israel from Australia the other day. I took the opportunity to meet them in Tel Aviv (I am staying about a twenty minute drive out of Tel Aviv – 1 hour on the bus – so I don’t get to spend as much time there as I would like). Apart from simply enjoying spending time with some very familiar faces, it gave me the unique opportunity of being able to do a few things I probably would not have gotten around to doing on this trip.

The most important of all was a visit to the Palmach Museum.

I can honestly say without a doubt, it was the most fascinating museum I have ever been to and one of the most moving experiences of my life.

I think the most interesting element of the museum is that it does not chronicle the stories of the great heroes of the Palmach Movement, like Yitzhak Rabin or Moshe Dayan. Instead, it tells the story of a lesser-known hero - the everyday person.

These are the people who wanted to change their lives and did all that they could to secure their homeland and to achieve a Jewish State. They worked on the Kibbutz in the day to make money, and at night they convened, trained, and armed themselves to fight and to defend themselves.

The museum, through archived footage and re-enactments follows the lives of about eight young people, who banded together to fight for statehood. It moves through different rooms, chronicling each year that the Palmach was in existence. I will not go into the full story of the Palmach or the narrative of these eight people, but I will point out the most significant part of the museum for me.

In one of the rooms, the story is told of a young Palmach member, who had made his way to Palestine before the outbreak of World War II. When the war was over, the Palmach had the opportunity to take Holocaust survivors by boat to Palestine. The young man telling the story, by chance, was reunited with his sister, who had survived the horrors of the Holocaust but had seen her entire family be taken away to the camps never to return.

As the boat approached the harbour, a British Naval patrol spotted them and asked for their authorisation.

The Palmach, raising the Israeli flag high above the ship declared, ‘we do not need authorisation to entire our own country.’

The boat was captured, and the survivors were taken off at the port in Haifa where they were put onto another boat to take them to jail in Cyprus. This was a crushing blow to these people who had just endured years trapped inside walls. The young man said that his sister had taking only twenty steps on Israeli soil but this was enough for her to know she was at home. The sentiment was so touchingly expressed that I’m sure I will never forget what was said.

As I left the museum, I passed a group of soldiers coming to the museum on some sort of army excursion. The tour for them had just begun and most of them seemed restless and disinterested. Mobile phones were ringing, and people were calling out to their friends across the room. I only hope that the museum had even half of the effect on them as it had on me. Perhaps by the end of the tour they would truly understand how different life was back in the time of the Palmach, and that nothing they have should be taken for granted.

Finally, I hope they understand that the members of the Palmach fought for the very State that they are defending today.

18 December 2006 - Factional Fighting and Key Messages

The scary element of Middle Eastern conflicts is that no matter how divided certain factions may be, they are always united on one point – their hatred for the State of Israel. We see this daily in Lebanon – as I mentioned the other day, despite the fact that the country is in the brink of civil war, the regular anti-Israel chanting is still there.

At the moment, we are also seeing this very strongly in Gaza, where Fatah and Hamas are fighting against each other. Last night, while watching the news, they were interviewing a man, he could have been from either faction – its not important.

What’s important, is that the first thing he said, in English was, ‘we are an occupied people in an occupied place. We are fighting with each other about nothing.’ And yet, the guy wasn’t just anyone – he was Sufian Abu Zaydeh of Fatah, whom Hamas had kidnapped. Kidnappings, exchanging of gunfire – this is all nothing in comparison to the ‘occupation’.

This is why the Palestinian propaganda machine works so well. They have one catchphrase and they use it over and over again. It is their key message, and it is so simple that there is absolutely nothing that could possibly more effective. Former Ambassador to the United States Dore Gold put it best when he said something to the effect of: you could ask Saeb Erekat what he ate for breakfast and he would answer you with “the occupation”.

The Pro-Israel voices are never so united. You ask ten Israelis a question and you get twenty answers. It is the beauty of this country, but it the media it is her biggest downfall.

What scares me/interests me/ignites my interest is the fact that all of this Palestinian infighting is going on so close to me, and yet, had I not turned on the television the other day and seen the news, I would never have known.

Watching the images on the television frightens me, not only because of the magnitude of people who riot in the streets, but because this is all happening an hour or so away from me. It is the equivalent of the drive from Beth Weizmann to Tullamarine airport. Of course I do not need to explain Middle Eastern geography to the advocates, it’s just that when I sit in front of my computer or television back at home in Melbourne, I forget just how unique the situation is here. How ‘on top’ of each other everyone here is.

Meanwhile, I am surrounded by people who form one of two views.

The first is that there is nothing to worry about. Yes there is violence in Gaza, but this is the way it always has been and for the meantime, will continue to be. The country is dealing with the aftermath of the war, with the ceasefire with the Palestinians in Gaza, in their own way, and slowly, slowly, things will return to normal. Or even still, things are never or are always normal, whichever way you look at it.

The second view is that another war that will be fought on many fronts is imminent. Gaza and the West Bank will erupt out of control, and Israel will go to war against Lebanon, Syria and more frighteningly, Iran. Israel needs to prepare herself in order to be better equipped to handle herself during and afterwards.

11.12.06 - Israel as a "normal country"

Yesterday I sat down to watch my first day's worth of news in Israel.

When I was here in July, I remember writing a Blog about David Ben Gurion, and his statements that 'we will know we have become a normal country when Jewish thieves and Jewish prostitutes conduct their business in Hebrew.'

This thought resonated with me as the evening headlines flashed across the screen:
'Rapist Benny Sela has been caught.'

'Thirteen-year-old girl murdered at school.'

and in better news - 'Disabled swimmer wins five medals.'

What struck me was how for the first two minutes, Israel seemed, as horrible as it sounds, like a 'normal' country with 'normal problems' (as I sit typing this out now, I know just how farfetched that sounds, and I wonder what the world is coming to when crimes like rape and murder barely merit the blink of an eye).

However, on reflection, these news items came more a shock for someone like me; someone who has become accustomed to reading the homepages of Haaretz, Jerusalem Post and Ynet and only giving my attention to stories about the political and security situation in Israel. 'Normal' issues, at least from my desk back at work, have always seemed to take a backseat.

Suddenly, another headline flashed across the screen - 'thousands rally in Lebanon.' The country may be on the brink of civil war, but they are all united in one thought, 'death to America. Death to Israel.' All of a sudden, we were morphed back to what is regular.

But back to earlier news. My two biggest insights on these came from my friend’s mother. When talks surrounded the death of a thirteen year-old girl in a school, of the death she lamented, 'this kind of thing doesn't happen in Israel. Drugs, knives, murder in schools.... And at such a young age. Thirteen - they are only small children. This kind of thing only happens in America.'

I thought about that for a long time. Is this really true? Or are we usually so caught up in the largest issue on the agenda - security - that we fail to see that on top of the Katyushas, on top of Kassams and Hamas, sixty-year-old suicide bombers and shaky ceasefires, Israel still deals with regular problems, just like any country.

In Herzl's novel, Altneuland Old New Land (1902), he envisioned the Jewish State as being "a light unto nations." Even though we would like to think that Israel is such a light, she still deals with vicious rapists and horrific schoolyard murders. Of course, Israel has its own good news stories too – about triumph over adversity.

On the one hand, Israelis want to live a normal life. Israeli mothers wait for the day when they are old enough to have no more sons serving in the army. They dread the day when war breaks out and apart from having to worry about their own wellbeing, they have to worry about the possibility that their son will be called up for Reserve Duty and be put into active combat.

On the other hand, the outside world puts Israel up on a pedestal – they don’t accept that she should have problems, regular problems.

As always, I hope for the day when there is an end to incitement and decades long hostilities, so that the regular news is always on the top of the news agenda.

Ron Arad - Le'Hofesh Nolad (born to be free)

October 16 marked twenty years since the capture of Israeli Air Force Navigator Ron Arad by members of an Iranian-backed Shiite group, Amal, in Lebanon. Despite the Israeli government's efforts, to this day the fate of Ron Arad in still unknown.

I first became aware of Ron Arad's plight in 1998, as a year 10 student at Mount Scopus College. I had taken an elective called 'Israel Studies', and during the course we had been shown a video about the amount of time that Ron had been in captivity - 12 years. I was fifteen, 12 years was 4/5 of my life.

My class decided that we wanted to take action. We had no idea just how big this issue was, and I guess at the time it didn’t matter. We were told that Arad was believed to be held captive in Iran, and we decided we would petition to the Australian Government to stop trade with Iran in order to put pressure on them to release information about Arad’s whereabouts.

At the same time, we also learnt about three other Missing in Action Israeli soldiers Zvi Feldman, Zachary Baumel and Yehuda Katz.

As I type this now, eight years later, I realise how crazy the whole idea seemed. Imagine a year 10 student approached you now and asked you to sign a similar petition calling for Iran to stop its nuclear activity.

Nevertheless, we took the petition around the school and to the streets and got thousands and thousands of signatures. We decided we would present copies of the petition to top politicians in Canberra including Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby, among others.

While we were there, we also decided to hold a candlelight vigil outside the Iranian Embassy. Armed with posters, candles and Israeli flags, we took turns reading about the lives and narratives of Israel’s Missing in Action Soldiers, in the hope that someone might be listening.

As we stood in the pouring rain, finally a sign came. The light that had been on outside the Embassy was turned off, leaving us to stand in complete darkness.

We came home from Canberra and everyone I guess moved on with their lives. When I went on Ulpan six months later, we were given the option to do volunteer work at various places around Jerusalem. My choice was easy – I went to hand out pamphlets for the International Coalition for Missing in Action Soldiers. What struck me about the coalition was actually the number of missing in action soldiers they were advocating for. Four men.

The proposals for the returned included thousands and thousands of Arab prisoners.

It was then I realised the value that the Israeli Army/Government places on each individual human being. As many Israeli friends have told me, one of the first principles in the IDF is to never leave a solider behind in the field. For the next eight years, my only reminder of Ron Arad was a fading sticker stuck on my door that read ‘Ron Arad – Le’Hofesh Nolad’, which loosely translated means, ‘Ron Arad – Born to Be Free’.

When Gilad Shalit was kidnapped on June 25, and then Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser on July 12, I was reminded again of this idea of never leaving a soldier in the field.

When I think about the importance that Israel places on each and every life, my heart is filled with pride. These men remain in my thoughts everyday and I pray that they are returned home safely to their families. And if not, then at least their fate be made known so that their families can feel some level of closure.

Please keep Gilad, Ehud, Eldad, Ron, Tzvi, Zachary, Yehuda and Guy in your thoughts and prayers, and remember just how important every life is - we were all born to be free.