04-Oct-18: Entitlement, transparency and foreign aid: Responding to Parents Circle

From this week's Australian Jewish News

We were bothered by views that appear in a recent report ["Fears funding freeze is going too far", Nathan Jeffay, September 20, 2018] that looks at changes in the Trump administration's approach to US support for non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The parts that jumped out at us had to do with a group on which we have expressed ourselves at intervals over the years without getting much response: Parents Circle Families Forum.

They appear in the article's opening lines

Donald Trump is being accused of taking his squeeze on Palestinian funding too far, by stopping new grants to organisations that promote coexistence with Israelis. “It’s totally heartbreaking,” said Robi Damelin, an Israeli bereaved mother who runs a coexistence group with bereaved Palestinian parents. She was talking to The AJN shortly after hearing that the Trump administration is cutting its last major aid channel to Palestinians, namely $US10 million annual funding to projects like hers which bring together Israeli and Palestinian civilians... 

Then a few paragraphs later:

Damelin said that America is acting dangerously by undermining coexistence work as a strategy to achieve political results. “It can only achieve more violence,” she said. Her son David was killed when a terrorist opened fire at an IDF roadblock in the West Bank in 2002, and she became involved in The Parents Circle Families Forum, a grassroots organisation of Palestinian and Israeli families who have suffered a bereavement due to the conflict. She believes that groups like hers are building connections between populations which will prove vital if there is to be a political agreement. “Can they imagine that there could be peace without contact between Israelis and Palestinians? ” she asked rhetorically. “This will cause fear of the unknown, which leads to hatred and its natural partner, violence.”

Each of us (Frimet and Arnold) has criticized PCFF's work and methods via articles and posts over a period of 15 years. Other than a degree of vituperation, we haven't gotten meaningful responses from them in all that time which we assume is a strategy. 

Arnold wrote a brief comment for the Australian Jewish News which they published yesterday in their print edition. If an online version gets published, we will add the details in an update to this post. So far, there's none.

Reflections on the dark side of foreign aid 

Arnold Roth, Jerusalem | Published in the print edition of the Australian Jewish News, October 3, 2018

Nathan Jeffay’s review of US foreign aid cuts ["Fears funding freeze is going too far", September 20, 2018] touches on some of the undoubtedly thorny questions that arise when long-standing funding commitments are suddenly slashed.

I have no role in any organization that benefits from US (or any non-Israeli) government funding. And I surely don’t have the responsibility of either defending or attacking what the Trump Administration chooses to do.

But like many observers of Palestinian Arab and Israeli societies and their universe of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), I strongly favour transparency, along with critical, frequent and active reassessments of who gets funded by foreign governments. In other words, management that has goals and results in mind.

If programs are found to need changing, let the change come.

UNRWA, the startlingly unique “refugee” organization, has sought since the late 1940s to perpetuate – but not to solve – the powerlessness and misery of Palestinian Arabs. Anyone familiar with its operations, especially its schooling, understands how much harm flows from institutionalized hypocrisy, embedded ideology - and inertia.

Right at the outset, Jeffay’s article quotes one of the central figures in Parents Circle Families Forum (PCFF). Robi Damelin and I have spoken on the same platforms in the past. My wife and I have written critical opinion pieces about PCFF’s work. In Israel’s large circle of families bereaved by acts of Arab terror, it’s a small, marginal and noisy participant.

Ms Damelin, reacting to an announced change to US funding that will affect PCFF, tells Jeffay it’s “totally heartbreaking… undermining coexistence work as a strategy to achieve political results… It can only achieve more violence.”  

That’s an overblown, self-aggrandizing response. But more than that: as Frimet and I have written in several opinion columns over the years, it reflects an approach we know is offensive to many of Israel’s thousands of terror-affected families. We have been one of those since our daughter Malki was murdered in the 2001 Hamas attack on a Jerusalem pizzeria.

PCFF’s fund-raising emphasizes that it brings together the families of terror victims from among Palestinian Arabs and Israelis who “have chosen a path to reconciliation”. 

But its calls for change address just one side. Israelis are the aggressors. Palestinian Arabs are the victims and powerless to change much in their lives and society. The occupation is at the heart of the conflict. And terrorism – is simply missing from the narrative. 

They concede their line is unrepresentative of Israel’s bereaved families. Nonetheless it has stayed dismayingly consistent throughout the 15 years we have observed them. How is this offensive?

PCFF likes to say its work constitutes “an alternative to hatred and revenge”. The realization sank in some years ago that the hatred and revenge for which they have “an alternative” are what they tell the world the rest of us Israelis feel. It’s repugnant and it’s also untrue. Their messages adopt the language of bereavement. But their substance is skewed to the political. In my view, it’s calibrated to meet the political expectations of funders.

(Pointing out the sharp divergence between what claim to do and the reality is beyond the scope of this short comment. The blog Frimet and I write [meaning ThisOngoingWar, which you are probably reading now] has more: click here)

Everyone ought to be free to promote their own political view of the conflict. Though I find it offensive, PCFF are entitled to exploit bereavement to raise funds and to promote specific ideological positions.  

They don’t owe me or anyone else an accounting – except their funders. Funders can embrace or reject that approach. 

Let PCFF do whatever they feel needs to be done. But it’s absurd for them to argue that they are entitled to US government funding. If their work produces an acceptable return on investment, however that’s defined, funders will seek them out. The broader issue though is about how large bodies, often controlled by governments, use sometimes-vast aid funds to influence and even change the political landscape in other countries.

Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor is mentioned in Jeffay’s article. I play a tiny committee-member’s role there that gives me some insight into the distortions and the double standards that are often part of the funding industry. A notorious illustration: the Abbas regime’s rewards-for-terror stipends scheme has produced a devastating harvest of deaths and blighted lives on both sides since Arafat’s time.

The PA has for all practical purposes been insolvent through all those years. Those stipends and that hideous scheme are made possible only by foreign funding. Let it be critically reviewed widely, often, transparently and with vigour.

If you care to review (and of course to respond to) the critiques we have offered of PCFF and its approach, here are some:

• 27-Nov-02: The sin of forgivenness fervor, Frimet Roth in Jerusalem Post [archived]
• 12-Jul-13: Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families
• 17-Oct-13: Naive in Seattle (but not only there, of course): notes from the battlefield
• 27-Jun-14: First, understand the war and the grief | A response to Parents Circle
• 23-Oct-16: Vengeance is ours, say these Israeli Jews

08-Aug-17: Symmetry, dialogue, loss and bridging the divides

From a Parents Circle website [Image Source]

In a well-argued opinion piece that appeared in Haaretz a few days ago, Jonathan S. Tobin (opinion editor of JNS.org, a Contributing Writer at National Review, an editor at Commentary Magazine, and for a decade up to 2008 executive editor of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia) tackles the way America's Jewish left

is deeply invested in a form of asymmetric dialogue that too often requires co-opting Jewish kids to denounce the sins of Zionism

In doing so, his essay, "It's not about flags: The real problem with Jewish-Palestinian dialogue" [Haaretz, August 3, 2017] addresses issues that we have touched on when expressing the deep disquiet we feel about one particular left-oriented group called Parents Circle Families Forum. Readers not familiar with that exceedingly well-funded organization or our criticisms of it might start here: “Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families”.

Tobin's essay gets started with a glance at events recently reported from Washington State’s Camp Solomon Schechter. What he describes as a bitter debate erupted "across the Jewish world" as a result of a Palestinian Authority flag being raised over their grounds in July. The Schechter people came in for some praise and some criticism arising from the "sadness and anger" this provoked but the issue itself was and is marginal to something of greater moment. In Tobin's words, the larger question worth exploring is 

whether most of what passes for interfaith or Jewish-Arab dialogue is something that can produce progress toward peace or is, instead, merely another proof of author Cynthia Ozick’s axiom, that "universalism is the parochialism of the Jews."

In more straight-forward terms,

the real point of interest here is not the undoubted good intentions of those responsible or how tremendous the power that symbols like flags still have to engender passion. Rather, it is the blind faith that so many Jews have in the value of dialogue programs... Getting people from warring groups to know each other as individuals rather than symbols of fear and loathing can only help undermine stereotypes that fuel conflict... Since the impetus for dialogue between Arabs and Jews almost always comes from the latter, they tend to follow a familiar pattern: Arabs denounce Israeli oppression and the Jews nod in sympathetic agreement or fail to answer in kind about the actions of the Palestinians.

On this, Tobin, drawing on experiences as "a journalist who has covered dialogue programs for decades", says that 

what has always been clear - though usually not to the organizers - is the lack of symmetry between the two sides. Few if any Palestinian participants ever express doubt about the justice of their cause or feel obligated to temper their anger at what they consider to be the sins of Zionism. But even supporters of Israel who engage in these programs generally feel compelled to express criticisms of Israel or to show respect if not sympathy for the Palestinian Nakba narrative.

And there's a clear take-away:

That isn’t the sort of dialogue that can help bridge the divide between the two peoples, let alone promote peace. True dialogue involves airing disagreement and promoting respect for differing narratives, not one side affirming the stance of the other... [T]he problem is that there is no comparable force in Palestinian politics to Peace Now, or J Street.

We had similar sentiments in mind when we wrote ["12-Jul-13: Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families"] this:

We believe Parents Circle leverages our collective bereavement to secure funding for advancing a very specific and particular political line - a line even they concede is unrepresentative of Israel’s bereaved families. Reviewing the public statements of Parents Circle’s key figures over the past decade, a consistent and depressingly familiar political agenda emerges. The Israelis are the aggressors. The Palestinians are the victims. The occupation is at the heart of the conflict. And as for the role of the terrorists, their ideologies and decades of Arab rejectionist politics – that is simply absent. We sincerely support the right of individuals or groups promoting a political view of the conflict to express it in whatever manner they deem fit, and however much it may differ from ours. But exploiting bereavement to raise funds and to promote specific ideological positions is a different matter. The Parents Circle does just that...
Their message adopts the language of bereavement. But in reality it is highly political, and it is perceived that way by their audiences. We feel that, to a great extent, their message is calibrated to meet the expectations of funders.

[Click here for our previous blog posts on Parents Circle.]

A final comment about dialogue: we have written several (in our opinion) polite and temperate public critiques of the Parents Circle message and activities over the past 15 years. As far as we can now recall, the only response we ever received was when one of its spokespeople, writing in the Jerusalem Post, wrote

"the discourse that prevails in this country is extremely monologic, racist and aggressive, as evidenced by Frimet Roth's article". 

The article by Frimet ["The sin of forgiveness fervor"] that produced that offensive reaction is archived here.

It's possible dialogue means something distinctive - and perhaps surprising - when they use the word.

23-Oct-16: Vengeance is ours, say these Israeli Jews

A new cafe opens on Jerusalem's Hagai Street [Image Source]

A year ago, a murderous Arab-on-Israeli terrorist attack in Jerusalem's Old City took the lives of two young Jewish men:

The two died of their wounds shortly after being stabbed in Jerusalem’s Old City by a Palestinian terrorist. Banita’s wife was in serious condition and their two-year-old baby was lightly wounded. She was taken to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and was undergoing surgery. The toddler was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment where he remained in stable condition. Lavi, a Jerusalem resident, leaves behind a wife and seven children. A rabbi at the Old City’s Ateret Cohanim yeshiva who lived nearby, he had rushed to the scene when he heard screaming in the street. ["2 killed in Jerusalem attack named as Nehemia Lavi, Aharon Banita", Times of Israel, October 3, 2015]

A year has gone by - twelve months filled with who-knows-what weighty challenges, unthinkable difficulties and corrosive, unfathomable, endless pain for the parents and families the two murdered Jews left behind.

In the conventional way of thinking about such matters, the minds of those irretrievably damaged family members are undoubtedly filled with thoughts of vengeance, of bloodshed and of evening the score.

That, at least, is how some ostensibly well-informed people view those of us who have been at the receiving end of Arab-on-Israeli savagery. As one prominent Jewish leader in the United States wrote publicly just a few weeks ago, in supporting a local fund-raising activity of Parents Circle Families Forum, a terror victim group about whose activities we have written critically several times, Israeli victims of Arab terror are entitled to

their natural right to revenge, after losing the most precious thing...

We wrote to that leader and told her that her comment was sharply at odds with what we have experienced:

We know many other Israelis who are bereaved through acts of hideous Arab-on-Israeli terror [and] don't believe we have met even one of whom we could say they are pursuing "their natural right to revenge"

The widow and orphaned children of Rabbi Nehemia Lavi Z"L
celebrated Purim earlier this year [Image Source: Ynet]

Is it possible to identify a pattern in the way Israeli victims - those who themselves survived acts of Arab-on-Israeli savagery and the families and loved ones of whose lives they were part - react? 

We think it is. And we have plenty of anecdotal evidence to back that up. 

Here, from today's Israel National News, is an instance that describes how an informal group of Israeli Jewish youngsters, living in Jerusalem's Old City -

have dedicated a coffee kiosk for guards and security forces on duty in the location where, one year ago, an Arab terrorist murdered Rabbi Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Benita. The dedication was held last night... Every week, the youths held birthday celebrations for Border Police, and would pass out coffee, cakes, and other snacks to the security forces stationed around the Old City. Recently, the youths decided to intensify the initiative, and raised 50,000 shekels to renovate a store, located right at the scene of last year’s murders, that would become a coffee kiosk for the benefit of security forces. Michael Benita, the father of murder victim Aharon, came to the dedication event for the coffee kiosk, and expressed his excitement at the initiative: “The efforts of the youth are not something to be taken for granted, the establishment of this corner is not to be taken for granted. I am happy that, in this fashion, they are memorializing Rabbi Nehemia and Aharon.” Hadar Katzover, one of the youths of the Old City who contributed to the effort, shared her impressions: “We worked very hard on this. This is our way of continuing [the legacy of] Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, and this is our way of dealing with what happened. Where they cut life short, we will add goodness!". She invited "the entire public" to come to celebrations following the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah on Monday night at 9:00 PM on Hagai Street, adding: "Come and strengthen residents of the Old City.” The daughter of Rabbi Lavi cut the ceremonial initiation ribbon, while the brother of Aharon Benita fixed a mezuzah to the doorpost.["Where they cut life short, we will add goodness", Israel National News, October 23, 2016]

The sister of murdered Aaron Banita Z"L farewells him prior to the funeral
[Image Source]

Being really blunt about this, and speaking as parents of a child whose murder at the hands of Hamas terrorists led to the creation of a charity that does highly effective work, reading and writing about this Old City cafe and the acts of chesed on the part of those who created it makes us just about burst with pride and admiration.

Is this the only way to deal with life after everything is turned upside down by barbarism, bigotry and hatred?

No, there are certainly other ways. 

This way, for instance:

As the Jerusalem Post reports, the Palestinian Authority controlled by Mahmoud Abbas has just decided to honor Muhannad Halabi by naming a street after him. Halabi is the 19-year-old murderer of two Jews killed close to the Old City's Lion's Gate on October 3, 2015 in a stabbing and shooting "operation" that took the lives of Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Benita and seriously injured Benita’s wife, Adele, and their two-year-old son. The assailant was shot dead by police at the scene. Palestinian Media Watch reported several days ago that the Palestinian Bar Association has already grotesquely bestowed an honorary law degree on the deceased stabber/shooter/attacker. Now the municipality of Surda/Abu Qash, in the suburbs of Ramallah, will name a street for him "to emphasize the national role played by Palestinian municipalities." Can a society ever be rehabilitated from pathologies as deep and all-pervasive as theirs? ["28-Oct-15: The Pal Arab passion for knife attacks isn't just for social media: they sincerely mean to kill"]

The barbarians (and those who stand with them) have their ways and their values. And we have ours.

18-May-16: Does Pal Arab hate-culture education leave room for messages of tolerance and kindness? Let's see.

Honored guests: Family members of jihadist murderers take part in
a Jerusalem elementary school ceremony a month ago 
[From the Facebook page of the Jabel Mukaber school - but 
taken down once people started talking about it; background here. ]

We wrote here a few weeks ago ["24-Apr-16: Weaponizing children: Here's one way it's done in Jerusalem"] about the barely-reported, intense and sickening process fostered by the Palestinian Authority to inject hatred and a passion for murder into the minds and lives of the children whose welfare they are charged with protecting. 

We see catastrophic Arab education and the Palestinian Arab lust for weaponizing their children as critical factors in the generations-long struggle to establish and protect a Jewish homeland.

There are lots of bad people in the story. They include no shortage of square-headed Israeli bureaucrats whose passivity (which we describe in that post) in the face of this outrageous dimension of Palestinian Arab life helps, perhaps in a small way but surely in a real way, to keep it going. That's unforgivable.

It's important to focus on the good people too, and there are plenty of those. (But we will not be tempted into the silly practice of pretending that good and bad are found in roughly equal proportions on both sides of the Arab/Israel divide. They simply are not; wishing for a different reality won't change that. For a sense of our position on this, see "03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?" and "6-May-14: In search of appalled, sickened Palestinian Arabs".)

We want to share a moving and meaningful opinion piece published last night and written by the very articulate son of Richard Lakin, a passionate and good man whose life was forfeited to the practitioners of this Arab education process we call catastrophic.

The Anti-Israel Poisoning Starts Young | Palestinian schools honor the killers of my father, a teacher. This would break his heart | Micah Lakin Avni | Wall Street Journal - May 17, 2016 

My father, Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old retired elementary-school principal from Connecticut, was on a bus in Jerusalem last October when two young Palestinian men boarded and began shooting and stabbing passengers indiscriminately. Two passengers were killed that awful day and 16 injured, including my father. Despite the efforts of first responders and the nurses and doctors at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, my father died two weeks later. He had been shot in the head and stabbed multiple times in the head, face, chest and stomach. 

Over the past seven months I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand what would cause two educated Palestinian men in their early 20s to board a public bus and butcher a group of innocent civilians, many of them senior citizens. I’m sorry to report that the Palestinian reaction to the attack has led me to believe that the “peace process” is more one-sided than ever. 

My father grew up a fighter for civil rights in America. He took those values with him in 1984 when he emigrated to Jerusalem, where he taught English to Arabs and Jews. He was a kind, gentle-hearted man who dedicated his life to education and promoting peaceful coexistence. 

Yet Palestinian newspapers praised Baha Alyan, one of the terrorists who murdered my father, as a “martyr and intellectual.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has met with the families of the attackers and praised them as “martyrs.” A Palestinian scout leader said Baha Alyan, who was shot and killed by a security guard before he could kill more innocent passengers, was “an example for every scout.” 

Muhammad Alyan, the father of Baha Alyan, has been invited to speak at Palestinian schools and universities about his son the “martyr.” He recently spoke to children at Jabel Mukaber Elementary School in East Jerusalem, about a half a mile from where my father lived. Tragically, many Palestinian children, perhaps most, are still taught to honor terrorists and fight for the destruction of Israel. 

All of this would break my father’s heart. In 2007 he published a book called “Teaching as an Act of Love” summarizing his life’s work and educational philosophy. The message of his book is that every child is a miracle that should be nurtured with love. After Baha Alyan’s father visited Jabel Mukaber Elementary School, I asked school officials if I could come and share my father’s message of peace and coexistence. My offer was rejected. 

As long as Palestinian leaders nurture a culture of hate, encouraging school children to go out and kill, more violence is inevitable. By encouraging hatred, they distance all of us from the love and belief in peaceful coexistence for which my father stood. 

My father’s book begins with a quote from William Penn: “I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.” 

My father lived by those words. If only his murderers had as well.

There are many NGOs active in Israel who loudly declaim co-existence and peace but too-often turn out to be ordinary political activists arguing that it's Israel, only Israel, that needs to be blamed. How constructive it might be if they got behind Micah Avni's cry against the poison being injected daily into the Palestinian Arab bloodstream.

We're thinking of one particular such group, based in Israel but funded (lavishly) mainly by churches, NGOs, governments and other non-Israeli sources, and which has claimed for fifteen years to be making thousands of peace-building presentations annually to Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab school groups. We make no secret of our feelings of deep disdain (as we explain here) for their fanciful and politically-spun claims.

Still, it's appropriate to call on them now and insist they shine a critical light on the people at Jabel Mukaber Elementary School who rejected Mr Avni's offer to go there and speak of his murdered father's legacy.

While they're considering this, they might also tell us about their experiences talking peace to the Jabel Mukaber children and how that has gone for them - and for the rest of us. Perhaps there is even a teachable moment here.

27-Jun-14: First, understand the war and the grief | A response to Parents Circle

Crowds mass at Jerusalem's Western Wall on June 15, 2014, to pray for the safe return of three teenage boys
abducted by a presumed Palestinian Arab terrorist group

The following article, by Arnold Roth, was originally published by Times of Israel on June 26, 2014, and cross-posted by the editors of The Algemeiner and The Jewish Press, June 27, 2014.

First, understand the war and the grief

Robi Damelin of Parents Circle, a terror victim organization, cries out for sanity and the curbing of what she refers to as “the repeated call for vengeance” (“Break the cycle, we beg of you”, Times of Israel, June 24, 2014). She asks for more reconciliation, more dignity, more respect, less hatred and greater understanding of what prisoners mean to the Palestinians. She calls for human rights, a life of dignity and safety for all, and freedom from violence.

Her passion is tangible as she begs for support of an organization bringing together the families of terror victims from among Palestinians and Israelis who “have chosen a path to reconciliation”.

Can you be a caring person and still oppose what Parents Circle represents?

Yes. And a year ago we expressed our sense of the divergence between their rhetoric and reality in “Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families”.

We noted than, and repeat now, that Damelin’s call appears to be addressed to Israelis alone. Her “cycle” is a singularly Israeli responsibility – the Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jewish members of Parents Circle are united in endorsing Palestinian victimhood and telling Israelis that the conflict is our fault. The Palestinians were left out when Robi Damelin wrote: “Israel is fast becoming the pariah of the world… we are losing our moral fiber”. 

In her worldview, the moral burden is entirely on one side.

No Israeli needs to be reminded of where our collective concerns are right now: three boys, snatched by unknown people pursuing a malevolent strategy.

For decades, Palestinians have turned hostage-takers and the murderers of Israeli civilians into heroes and legends. The demand of the Palestinian political leadership, echoed in Robi Damelin’s cry, is that the terrorists now in prison ought to be walking free. 

She and they improbably suggest this is how peace is made.

Then there’s the fact that the Parents Circle piece fails to mention terror even once. It is simply not on their agenda. But since terrorism is central to the bereavement of so many Israeli families, its absence is worth noting.

In stark contrast, the Israeli reality, hammered home by the empty beds in three ordinary Israeli homes, is that terrorists are very much the problem. We fully realize that stopping them by force will not in itself bring the reconciliation which Parents Circle says it seeks. But not stopping terrorists means we may not be around when reconciliation comes — if it comes. 

Nor will our children.

Israelis talk about peace a great deal, and mean it when they say they are ready for painful compromise if it brings peace. Yet at Parents Circle they say something quite different about us when they address non-Israelis.

It’s a core Parents Circle message, as we noted last July, that the good work of Parents Circle constitutes “an alternative to hatred and revenge”. That phrase occurs repeatedly in their documents. We now understand that the hatred and revenge, for which Parents Circle offer “an alternative”, are what they tell the world the rest of us Israelis feel.

Parents Circle’s very generous financial supporters, including the US and a number of European governments, are told they are funding an alternative to ‘hateful’, ‘vengeful’ viewpoints of bereaved families like mine.

It’s a portrayal we find deeply repugnant. It is also quite untrue.

We wonder whether the Parents Circle people hold any views about the moral fiber of any party other than Israel in the blood-soaked Middle East.

And when Damelin describes Israel as “fast becoming the pariah of the world”, does she have an opinion about what the Gazans are fast becoming when they spend their scarce resources to train their own pre-teen children in the art of throwing hand-grenades and carrying out knifings?

Parents Circle has claimed consistently over the years to hold “a thousand” presentations annually at some unspecified mix of Israeli and Palestinian Arab schools, addressing a fairly constant “25,000” students. If this is accurate, it means twenty assemblies a week, 52 weeks per year and no time off for religious holidays or summer break. 

Might it be that this is oversold in the organization’s marketing?

Parents Circle activists do speak in Israeli schools. When they do, from the reports we have seen, their message is heavily political, made more powerful and palatable because the speakers are a seemingly-balanced Israeli and Arab pair. (That factor also helps them get past Israeli Ministry of Education guidelines.) That these pairs are given essentially unfettered access to rooms filled with Israeli pre-army high schoolers, and thus able to convey a message that undermines the case for Israel, is a concern for those Israelis who know about it.

And if in fact they are speaking regularly in front of Arab school groups, as their marketing materials strongly imply, then we have two questions. (a) Why is there little to no evidence of this on their website and in their materials. And (b): What message do they deliver to those audiences? Does it advance peace, reconciliation and (especially) tolerance? How well does that work inside PA-controlled schools? About Hamas schools we won’t ask, for reasons every reader understands.

If we could reach the audiences whom Parents Circle addresses, we would tell people about our daughter Malki and her beautiful life. We would tell them that Malki did not die because of the “occupation” or a disagreement on narratives. She was murdered for being Jewish by unrepentant Palestinian terrorists who declare proudly that they meant it and are glad they did it.

We can and should discuss real peace options based on mutual understanding and eventual reconciliation with the Palestinian Arabs along with the rest of the Arab world. But first we must secure our families and our communities. To this, bitter experience teaches, there is no alternative.

21-Oct-13: Back to Seattle

We reflected here a few days ago ["17-Oct-13: Naive in Seattle (but not only there, of course): notes from the battlefield"] on Parents Circle, about an event that its representatives addressed in a Seattle church last weekend, and about a Seattle-area blog that expressed what we thought were some constructively critical points about what was said there and about how it was covered by the local Jewish newspaper.

It was not the first time we had written about this group of bereaved individuals from both the Israeli and the Palestinian Arab sides of the conflict. An earlier post about the same group ["12-Jul-13: Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families"] attracted (by the standards of this blog) considerable attention.

We mention this now because the Seattle-area blog through which our attention was originally directed at the St Mark's Episcopal Cathedral event, co-hosted by a local synagogue, has revisited the subject today. Its editor interviewed us via email and posted our comments along with insights of his own. See it at "Terror victim's father shares perspective on controversial group" on the Mike Report site.

17-Oct-13: Naive in Seattle (but not only there, of course): notes from the battlefield

The same two speakers on a January 2013 visit to Washington DC
[Image Source]

This is about the gross naivete (that's a quote) of certain people and the recourse to dishonest and false equivalences of certain organized groups.

We see both on display in the report below about a very recent event that took place in Seattle. The speakers come from an organization that sends pairs of representatives - one Arab, one Jewish - to speak in Europe, the US and certain selected other places, constantly. They have a message that resonates well with many audiences. We have listened to them closely. Theirs is a message that does not resonate with us, nor with many of the terror victims whom we know well.

What we see happening far too often is an ongoing effort to downplay the dangers and befuddle audiences about who the terrorists are and what they plan to do. We don't view this as a small thing but see it as part of a cognitive war. Cognitive warfare, to be clear. has real victims, real casualties, real combatants, real battlefields. It is war in the same way that the physical war going on in the skies over our homelands, in our pizza restaurants and on our buses is real.

But first, the article. It comes from the October 16, 2013 edition of The Mike Report, and is republished here with the author's permission.

Shas compared to Hamas at synagogue-sponsored event in Seattle 

Temple De-Hirsch sponsors controversial Israel event. Group claims to promote dialogue but only tells only one side of the story. 

Seattle, WA: October 16, 2013 – Parents Circle is an organization founded by a group of parents of victims of Palestinian violence and parents of Palestinians killed while either attacking Israelis or caught in the crossfire. The group describes itself as founded to “Support Peace, Reconciliation and Tolerance” and sponsors multiple outreach and educational programs to further their message. 

The program on Sunday, October 13th at St. Mark’s featured Parents Circle publicist Robi Damelin, an Israeli of South African origin whose son David was killed by a Palestinian sniper at a checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Robi is an articulate and passionate advocate for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. During her talk she frequently compared the South African Apartheid experience to the situation in Israel. Ms. Damelin promoted her vision of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Israel based on the post Apartheid South African model. 

St Marks Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle [Image Source]

Bassam Aramin’s eleven year old daughter Abir was tragically killed in 2007 when caught in IDF crossfire during a Palestinian riot in Anata near Jerusalem. While the exact cause of death is disputed, it appears likely that Abir was struck in the head by an errant IDF Rubber bullet. Aramin similarly spoke of the need to humanize the “other” as a means towards achieving trust between the two peoples. He condemned both violence and revenge as a means towards achieving the goal of a Palestinian state. 

One could not help but be moved by these two sympathetic figures who appear to be genuinely trying to turn their personal tragedy into something positive. Throughout the program the focus was less on fault and more on moving forward. But whenever blame was assigned it was assigned to Israel. 

Whenever blame was assigned it was assigned to Israel.  

At no point the in the nearly two hour program was a mainstream Israeli perspective on the causes of the conflict or its lack of resolution presented. There was reference made by Ms. Damelin for the need to remove the security barrier as a prerequisite to peace. She did not mention that Palestinian terrorism was the precipitant for the construction of the barrier or that terror attacks have been dramatically reduced since the barrier’s installation. 

Both presenters identified “the occupation” as the progenitor of the conflict. There was no context offered as to how the occupation came about or acknowledgement that Israel has ever made any concessions for peace. One could have easily left the lecture under the impression that hostilities between Israel and her Arab neighbors commenced only with the acquisition of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

An unrelated support organization for bereaved Israeli parents released a statement in July of 2013 expressing their discomfort with Parents Circle, questioning their motives and agenda. “Reviewing the public statements of Parents Circle’s key figures over the past decade, a consistent and depressingly familiar political agenda emerges. The Israelis are the aggressors. The Palestinians are the victims. The occupation is at the heart of the conflict. And as for the role of the terrorists, their ideologies and decades of Arab rejectionist politics – that is simply absent.” 

Towards the end of the program the audience was invited to ask questions. One woman queried the presenters on how one could combat the appeal of Hamas to young Palestinians, asking “With Hamas so into the Jew’s destruction, how are you able to counter that among the young people who look up to them? How do you even begin?” 

Mr. Aramin responded. “It is exactly how the Israelis do with Shas. Shas and Hamas. We are talking to everyone, Hamas. One of the founders of combatants for peace was from Islamic Jihad, which is the same mentality that you see with Hamas. We are talking to the people and I believe it starts and ends with education. Education on both sides, it is not less worse in Israel.” 

There was no objection or gasps of shock when Mr. Aramin placed an Israeli Sephardic-ethnic political party on the same moral plane as the Hamas terror organization. Hamas has indisputably murdered hundreds of innocent civilians in the most gruesome fashion, including many of their fellow Palestinians. While Shas politicians may have at times engaged in offensive rhetoric, they are a political party and have never blown up a pizza parlor or a bus, or murdered anybody for that matter. 

The effectiveness of events like these lie in the emotional stories of the presenters and the decency that they project. Both presenters appealed for non violence from all parties, including Palestinians. They pleaded with their audience not to dehumanize either side. But their message, while sympathetically packaged is singular, the fault of and solution for the conflict lies entirely in Israel’s hands. 

Frimet and Arnold Roth, whose daughter Malki was murdered by Hamas terrorists in the Sbarro massacre of August 9, 2001 expressed their displeasure with Parents Circle in a July 2013 article. ”We believe Parents Circle leverages our collective bereavement to secure funding for advancing a very specific and particular political line - a line even they concede is unrepresentative of Israel’s bereaved families.” 

This one-sided perspective served up gently has garnered support from extremist groups advocating for the boycott and international ostricization of Israel. An unaffiliated Israeli bereaved parents group notes that “it is not so surprising that groups promoting BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions of Israel) including EAPPI and Sabeel acknowledge a close relationship with, and support for, Parents Circle.” 

This event was co-sponsored by St. Mark’s Cathedral and Temple De Hirsch Sinai. Rabbi Aron Meyer of Temple De-Hirsch offered the opening invocation. The Stroum Jewish Community Center hosted a similar forum with Parents Circle that same afternoon. 

In a region where animus towards Israel is rampant [some in the audience expressed feverish hostility towards not just Israel but also to Jews. One man verbally accosted a pro-Israel woman in the audience.] one cannot help but be alarmed at the gross naïveté at best of Jewish organizations that promote sleekly produced, agenda driven programs that are not fair to Israel and may ultimately place the Jewish state in greater danger from her very real enemies. 

Our sense is this report shows once again how the jihadists are too often given an easy pass, whether wittingly or unwittingly, by people with a political viewpoint to push. This can certainly happen when those who find it expedient to do so make bogus comparisons with non-terrorist groups whom they happen not to like. In this case, an irresponsible parallel was proposed between the actions of the child-killers of Hamas on one hand, and the views of a religiously-oriented, thoroughly-mainstream Mizrachi/Sephardi political party in Israel, on the other. Insane is the word that comes to mind.

We get cross-eyed just thinking about the mental gymnastics a rational person would have to go through to validate that idiotic and dangerously wrong comparison. We don't believe the speaker whose words are being reported made that effort. To us, it’s fairly obvious he said something a smarter and more responsible representative of the group that flies him around the world would never have said. If you like, a slip of the tongue. But it was said, and as far as we can tell was not taken back – not by the speaker, not by the hosts.

There are audiences, like the one in Seattle, for whom a statement as inane as the one made by the Palestinian Arab speaker works. It can and it does happen in other places too. 

For our recent critique of Parents Circle Families Forum, see “12-Jul-13: Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families”. Our comments, taken from that article, are mentioned in the report above.

Finally, here's a reminder of one of the things we said when we wrote previously about the activities of Parents Circle:

We sincerely support the right of individuals or groups promoting a political view of the conflict to express it in whatever manner they deem fit, and however much it may differ from ours. But exploiting bereavement to raise funds and to promote specific ideological positions is a different matter. The Parents Circle does just that.

12-Jul-13: Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families

The conflict between Israel, on one hand, and the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states, on the other, has exacted a terrible price from ordinary people on both sides of the divide. 

Since the signing of the 1993 Oslo peace declaration until today, some 1,650 Israelis were killed in terror attacks by Palestinian Arab groups; several times that number have been injured. Add to this the 22,000 soldiers killed in all the wars and the circle grows exponentially. Tiny Israel, with its population of 7 million, carries an extraordinary burden of pain.

We, the writers of this blog, became a part of the circle of tragedy and grieving when, on August 9, 2001, the life of our fifteen year-old daughter Malki was stolen from her and us by Hamas terrorists in a devastating attack on a restaurant filled with children in the heart of Jerusalem on a hot school-vacation afternoon. As we later learned, children were explicitly the target. Jewish children.

Some, among Israel’s victims of terror, mourn privately and keep their distance from public controversy. Others speak up or join advocacy groups that reflect wide ranging views. In Israel’s robust democracy, we have both the expectation and the inalienable right to do this.

Against that background, we have viewed the activities of Parents Circle from a distance for more than a decade. It arouses deep disquiet within us. What follows here is our expression of that disquiet. We speak only for ourselves, and claim no right of representation. Some others feel differently. But from conversations with many families like our own, we know the sense we reflect here is widely held.

Parents Circle was created in the nineties and claims to speak for five or six hundred bereaved Israeli or Palestinian members. It’s an unverified number that – curiously – has remained constant throughout the past decade. We think this is odd: thousands of acts of terrorism have produced thousands more terror victims on the Israel side alone. Yet the membership number they claim has remained constant in all that time.

The Parents Circle mantra is moving, universal and non-partisan: “Supporting Peace, Reconciliation and Tolerance”. How can anyone be opposed? Who doesn't yearn to see the fulfillment of these precious and elusive objectives? 

But do the words and actions of Parent’s Circle match the aspiration?

We believe Parents Circle leverages our collective bereavement to secure funding for advancing a very specific and particular political line - a line even they concede is unrepresentative of Israel’s bereaved families.

Reviewing the public statements of Parents Circle’s key figures over the past decade, a consistent and depressingly familiar political agenda emerges. The Israelis are the aggressors. The Palestinians are the victims. The occupation is at the heart of the conflict. And as for the role of the terrorists, their ideologies and decades of Arab rejectionist politics – that is simply absent.

We sincerely support the right of individuals or groups promoting a political view of the conflict to express it in whatever manner they deem fit, and however much it may differ from ours. But exploiting bereavement to raise funds and to promote specific ideological positions is a different matter. The Parents Circle does just that.

The bulk of their money comes from non-Israeli sources, mainly political bodies and governments, according to the data they publish to satisfy their legal obligations. That the problematic nature of what they do is made possible by mainly foreign funding, and much of it from foreign governments and foreign government agencies, is disturbing.

Their message adopts the language of bereavement. But in reality it is highly political, and it is perceived that way by their audiences. We feel that, to a great extent, their message is calibrated to meet the expectations of funders.

To illustrate: In 2006, Parents Circle released a documentary film, “Encounter Point” that prominently features its public relations director. Her son, an IDF serviceman fulfilling his national service and on duty, was killed by a Palestinian Arab sniper at a roadblock. The film shows the mother being asked how it felt when the son’s killer became a Palestinian folk hero.  She responds:

“I’m not focusing on this, what I’m focusing on is: Why was David in the occupied territories? Why was David guarding settlers who said their safety was more important than David’s life?”

She then compares Israel to apartheid-era South Africa where she was raised and lived.

This bereaved mother/publicist is a Parents Circle insider who speaks and travels very frequently on Parents Circle’s behalf. For her, the process that has turned the killer of our fifteen year old daughter into an international heroine throughout the Arab world is not worth talking about. We think it’s a strange, even offensive, outlook. But in a robust democracy like ours, it’s a legitimate one; people like us are left to suffer it and to speak out whenever the opportunities and audiences present themselves.

However in the broader circle of bereaved Israeli families, let's be clear that the Parents Circle perspective is very far from representative. The majority of us have little difficulty in differentiating between the terrorists who bring bombs into Israeli restaurants or have them strapped to their chests as they get on a bus, on one hand, and the Israeli soldiers who seek out the killers and protect our schools.

To say this more bluntly: when your child is murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists, and the killers are elevated to heroes in Palestinian and other Arab societies as has happened again and again and again and again and again, most of us experience utter revulsion. We see the Arab attitude as a problem, even an impediment to eventual peace. This says nothing about our outlook on politics. Rather it indicates that the indiscriminate killing of civilians is repugnant in our eyes and very different from what the IDF does.

The reaction of the Parents Circle spokesperson in the film suggests that her views are different from what we just wrote. For us, it smacks of a politicized position that happens to align closely with the Palestinian nationalist narrative, and that is arguably the engine that drives the deadly conflict.  

From the perspective of bringing peace and reconciliation, in what possible way is this beneficial? 

Parents Circle asserts over and again in its marketing that the good they seek to do is “an alternative to hatred and revenge”. It’s a phrase that occurs repeatedly in their documents. We realize now that the hatred and revenge to which they offer “an alternative” is what they want you to believe the rest of us feel. Parents Circle’s financial supporters are being asked to fund an alternative to the ‘hateful’, ‘vengeful’ viewpoints of families like ours. This claim, to us, is deeply repugnant.  

Careful management of its public messaging has won Parents’ Circle some influence on the global stage. A sister organization in the United Kingdom, Friends of the Bereaved Families Forum, had garnered top-tier patrons, from both the Jewish and general communities and including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi, when we looked closely at their published materials a year ago. Around the same time, we were shown a memo in which the leader of a major European Jewish representative body described Parents Circle as “a wonderful organisation which has our wholehearted backing…  I was delighted last Monday to meet two mothers here who are promoting their work.”

Then there’s the money. It provides the handful of people who regularly represent Parents Circle with the ability to appear and speak frequently in Europe and the United States. The organization’s 2008 filing (the most recent available when we last checked a year ago) with the Israeli registrar of non-profits reveals more than $2 million in funding from US government and European Union sources, plus additional grants from the governments of Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and others. On top of this, there is the funding they get from the activities of their UK, German and American support arms. In all, this substantial budget allows messages to be delivered with great effect.

From its published reports, one sees that much of the budget goes to fund speaking tours by Parents Circle insiders. This almost always means a pair of individuals in which one is an Israeli, frequently the same publicist/mother mentioned above, and the other a Palestinian Arab. The combination implies a kind of balance of views, and embodies the idea of dialogue between erstwhile enemies. 

We have listened to a sample of their radio programs and recorded speeches; it is made up of large doses of political ideology with an emphasis on (a) the Palestinian narrative where Israel is invariably the party at fault, and (b) on the offensive and wrong South African comparison. The messages of the Israeli and of the Palestinian Arab speakers are, politically, almost indistinguishable from each other.

Detail from our last photo:
Malki with friends
at a birthday party on
August 8, 2011,
the evening before she was
murdered in a Hamas terrorist attack
on a Jerusalem restaurant 

Under the banners of “peace-building” and “reconciliation” (their choice of labels), Parents’ Circle’s message is that peace will come from pressuring one side to the conflict, and one side only: Israel - of course. Consequently it is not so surprising that groups promoting BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions of Israel) including EAPPI, Sabeel and (until we personally intervened recently) rememberthesechildren.org acknowledge a close relationship with, and support for, Parents Circle.

Note also that the endless acts of terrorism, incitement to terrorism, the widespread adoption of terrorist terminology and the terrorism-friendly agenda in several countries seem not to be on Parents Circle’s agenda at all, to judge from the speeches of the activists and their website. When you take into account the central role of the terrorists in the bereavement of the Israeli families, this is an absence worth noting.

In contrast to Parents Circle’s message, most of the bereaved Israelis we know (unfortunately we know many) passionately reject the immoral equivalence the group’s activists imply between the victims and the terrorists. 

If we could reach the audiences whom Parents Circle addresses, we would tell people about our daughter Malki and her beautiful life. We would tell them that Malki did not die because of the “occupation” or a disagreement on narratives. She was murdered by unrepentant Palestinian terrorists who declare openly that they meant it and are proud of their deed.

We can discuss real peace options based on mutual understanding with Palestinian Arabs. But first we must secure our families and our communities. To this, we know from bitter experience, there is no alternative.

In its published materials, Parents Circle has claimed consistently and repeatedly over the years to hold “a thousand” presentations annually at some unspecified mix of Israeli and Palestinian Arab schools, addressing “25,000” students. If true, that would mean twenty assemblies every week throughout the year and with no time off for school holidays. From enquiries we have made, we think this is fanciful, and greatly oversold in the group’s marketing.

We believe the organization’s real focus is in addressing audiences in North America and Europe, most of them churches, liberal radio stations and university campus groups. Observing from a distance, it appears these interactions represent the bulk of Family Circle’s activity.

Though it is difficult to say how often, activists of Parents Circle do speak in Israeli schools. Reports we have seen from these events describe a heavily political message – made all the more powerful by the speakers being a seemingly balanced Israeli and Arab pair; this purports to satisfy Israeli Ministry of Education guidelines. That these pairs are given essentially unfettered access to rooms filled with Israeli pre-army high schoolers, and are thus able to convey a message that undermines the case for Israel, is deeply worrying.

But here's the thing. If indeed they speak regularly in front of equivalent Palestinian Arab school groups, a claim strongly implied in their marketing materials, then at least two questions arise. One: why is there so little evidence of this on their website and in their materials? And two: What message do they deliver to such audiences? Does it advance peace, reconciliation and (especially) tolerance?

The character of official Palestinian Authority and Hamas education policies in respect to understanding the Israeli side is well-known and, in our view, utterly hostile to the message Parents Circle claims to advance. If Parents Circle are indeed doing what they say and succeeding, that is not something about which to be modest.

The flow of substantial foreign grants to this small, unrepresentative group of activists ought to be critically reviewed. We, the bereaved on both sides, deserve to be respected, heard and helped. But if the true nature of Parents Circle’s activity and support is, as we see it, narrowly political, then good people ought to acknowledge this and reach appropriate conclusions. 

Real change towards peace, reconciliation and tolerance is less, rather than more, likely to flow from their work.

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UPDATE Yom Hazikaron (Israel's Memorial Day) 2015: Out of a sense of deep pain and genuine puzzlement, we have found it important to write several more clarifications of what troubles us so much about the work of the organization described in this post. Click on Parents Circle for more.