01-Aug-16: At the crossings and road junctions: Scenes from a war

Vehicles line up for security inspection at Huwwara
(not yesterday) [Image Source]

Israel's internal security arrangements tend to get very bad press despite the fact that - or is it because? - they frequently prevent acts of terror from taking place.

We happen to believe strongly in security arrangements. When we say "human rights", we actually mean to be thinking, first and foremost, about the human right to stay alive. It's a right that was denied our daughter Malki, murdered in a Hamas attack when she was fifteen, and a right the breach of which aroused, in simple terms, terribly little outrage by the human rights industry.

Yesterday (Sunday), a balmy summer day when much of the country was vacationing, provided several insights into how security works and who benefits. This is true not because yesterday was a special day but because it actually was not. And what's striking is that for all the arguing that security barriers are pointless, worthless, useless, ineffective because terrorists can easily avoid them, and a torture for those forced to endure them, the uncomfortable fact remains: those are exactly where malevolent people with weapons of death on their bodies or in their bags or cars keep turning up and keep getting caught.

• At the IDF security checkpoint at Huwwara, south of Shechem (Nablus), an Arab male driving a vehicle stopped shortly before reaching the soldiers manning the barrier, got out of his car and came running at them with his knife brandished. The soldiers acting on orders opened fire in the face of a hostile action with clearly-articulated intentions, and the attack ended. The assailant, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, quoted by Israel National News, is a 31 year old resident of Shechem. Ma'an News Agency gives his name as Rami Muhammad Zaim Awartani. The circumstances suggest he was intent on launching the sort of interaction for which knives are needed, and not - as is frequently claimed - en route to some other peaceful purpose when assailed by hostile IDF personnel. The attacker is now dead - assassinated, in the words of parts of the English-language Palestinian Arab media [click].
• Also on Sunday, a little later in the day, Israeli police stopped a Palestinian Arab taxi cab at the busy Tapuah intersection in the Samaria district. Such searches are common and routine, and often triggered by suspicions stemming from indicators for which the security people are trained to identify. In this case, their search turned up parts of M16-type weapons in the cab. The driver is now helping the authorities with their enquiries. He is unharmed.
• Then last night (Sunday) at the Trans-Samaria Crossing, a vehicle driven by an Israeli Arab with Israeli citizenship papers was stopped and in the course of a search was found to have four pipe bombs on board. The driver was heading back across the Green Line from the communities of Judea and Samaria. A police sapper was called to the scene to neutralize the bombs. While that was underway, the very heavily-traveled east-west Route 5 highway was temporarily shut down to traffic in both directions. The driver turns out to be a resident of the Bedouin city of Rahat in the Negev. He is now arrested and he too is helping the authorities in their enquiries.

The Trans-Samaria Crossing on Israel's east-west Route 5 [Image Source]

Closely related to that last intercept - just the evening before (Saturday night) at the same Trans-Samaria Crossing - a different Palestinian Arab driver was was arrested when a security check turned up a stock of weapons, including two large knives, two axes and a cache of 25 nine-millimeter bullets, inside his vehicle. Times of Israel said his car had Israeli license plates.

It's safe to assume that in the absence of the security arrangements in each of the locations we just described, very different outcomes would have eventuated.

That's a reality that has played a central role in the posts we wrote over the years. Take a look at "5-Jul-06: Preventive Measures... Work" from more than a decade ago. We noted there that

There are many aspects of the news coverage of this war that infuriate us. One of them is the dishonest and cowardly way some reporters and photographers distort how the Israeli authorities carry out preventive security. Among the favorite cliches of agenda-driven reporters and photographers... is the Israeli security check. Nothing captures quite so well their perception of an asymmetrical war. You can count on words like "forced to stand in the heat", "treated rudely by Israeli troops", "seething anger", "humiliation" and "demeaning" sprouting from each sentence. But never the unbearable truth that this is the strategy of last resort and it saves lives on both sides...

For those of us not infected by the Fiskean approach to this war, the role of active, preventive security is probably better appreciated. A classic of the genre is Robert Fisk's memorable article with the unmemorable title "How Pointless Checkpoints Humiliate the Lions of Palestine, Sending Them on the Road to Vengeance" [reviewed here - we are still hunting for an online version of the Fisk piece]. If you click the link to read it, please keep in mind it was written several weeks before the murder by Hamas terrorists of our fifteen year-old daughter. Ponder also on the fact that Malki's killer hid his explosives inside a guitar case on his back. Under current Israeli security procedures (but not at that time), he would have been stopped and our daughter would be twenty and alive. (The death toll that day was 15, plus 130 injured, plus a young mother left unconscious and still unconscious today.) 

The appalling Fisk, and perhaps also his editors at Britain's Independent newspaper, would find it hard to see what that has to do with him and his writing. But for us the connection is clear. 

Eliyahu Asheri Hy"d: Murdered a decade ago

Not everyone sees things as we do. That's because not everyone sees security as a significant factor in keeping their own lives and those of their loved ones safe and intact. But those of us who do are very serious about it and very appreciative of those who make it happen.

Incidentally, if you visit Tapuah Junction (mentioned above), you will find a brand-new rest facility there for travelers. It was inaugurated very recently by the Asheri family in honor of their son, Eliyahu Hy"d, to mark ten years since he was abducted and murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists. 

We wrote about them at the time of their terrible loss: see "29-Jun-06: The face of the enemy" and "4-Jul-06: Saving Hostages". 

Though we felt drawn to the tragedy of their son's death and took part in his funeral in Jerusalem all those years ago, we don't know the Asheris and have never met them. Still, we're confident they have not spent the past decade plotting revenge, stewing in their anger or incubating hatred. We are confident of that because of our close familiarity with that powerful urge in Jewish tradition to connect really bad events - personal and communal tragedies - to positive responses: acts of charity or of chesed - acts that bring a little more goodness into a world that needs as much as we can possibly provide.

The Asheris understand that. Mr Fisk and his editors, we assume, surely do not. And nor will the families of the violence-minded individuals in yesterday's three jihadist near-misses.

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.

---

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.