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.
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.
