How integrated schools are offering Israel an ‘Iron Dome against hatred’

2016/06/01 Leave a comment

An alternative positive example, albeit small-scale:

The news from Israel is often bad: attacks on Jews by young Palestinians and reprisals by Israeli forces. Expanding settlements in the West Bank. Escalating fear and hostility. Plummeting prospects for peace.

But a group of dedicated educators is working to bring the two sides together — not at the bargaining table, but in the school room.

“We’re giving hope where leaders have failed,” says Mohamad Marzouk, director of the community department for the bilingual and bicultural Hand in Hand schools.

“Fear and mistrust develops over years when people are separated,” he says. “A kindergarten child goes to an Arabic or Hebrew school and never experiences the existence of children on the other side. This ignorance of the other creates mistrust and fear.”

Marzouk and Rebecca Bardach, Hand in Hand’s director of resource development and strategy, are in Toronto on a speaking tour.

“Hand in Hand is my Iron Dome against hatred,” says Bardach, referring to Israel’s missile defence system. “I can’t change what is happening politically, or the minds of people who hate each other. But I believe we can overcome that sense of helplessness with understanding.”

Hand in Hand, boasting some 1,320 Jewish and Arab Israeli students, and a lengthy waiting list, was founded in 1998 with one school in Jerusalem. It has now expanded to six, from Jaffa to the Galilee. Arab Israelis make up 20 per cent of Israel’s 8.5 million population and many identify as Palestinian Israelis.

The security wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories — Israel’s “separation barrier” — is physically and psychologically divisive, says Bardach. But the two separate language streams of the Israeli school system are a “huge contributing factor” to mutual misunderstanding between Jews and Arab Israelis.

“Children aren’t growing up learning about differences, what we have in common and building common ground,” she says. Parents must make a choice that cuts their children off from one or the other group.

Not so in Hand in Hand schools, where children are taught by Hebrew and Arabic-speaking teachers.

They partner with children who speak the other language, and study together. They also learn the missing links in mainstream curriculums — the other’s religion, culture, food, daily life and history. Elements that allow them to see their counterparts as fellow humans rather than enemies.

Outside the classroom they play together at sports, picnic together and celebrate each other’s holidays.

They and their parents have weathered nearly two decades of anger, violence, war and political outbursts in the world around them, including a 2014 firebombing of the Jerusalem school by Jewish extremists.

That brought even more support for Hand in Hand, from the media, thousands of demonstrators, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

The traumatic event shook parents and children. But they were helped through it by the school’s tradition of unflinching dialogue on the events around them, however painful. It held true even in the past two years, when Jewish parents were afraid to drive on main roads for fear of being attacked, and Palestinian parents feared gangs of extremists who targeted Arabs for beatings.

The success of the Hand in Hand community has led to expansion, but on a shoestring. Its $9 million-a-year budget is financed by the Israeli government and private donations. Scholarships are available, but fees are $1,200 a year. “Not easy to afford” in Israel, Bardach admits.

Source: How integrated schools are offering Israel an ‘Iron Dome against hatred’ | Toronto Star

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Has Labour under Corbyn really gone soft on antisemitism? | Tony Klug 

2016/04/06 Leave a comment

One of the more thoughtful and balanced commentary on the UK Labour antisemitism issue:

For Britons on all sides, it means reflecting on the critical role Britain and Europe played in instigating the conflict in the first place. The tragic historical Arab-Jewish clash was the product of generations of virulent European antisemitism at home and rampant imperialism abroad. It was white Europe’s innate sense of superiority and its routine oppression that fostered Jewish nationalism, Arab nationalism and Palestinian nationalism. Europe’s present-day assumption of the moral high ground over a conflict it helped to shape is breathtakingly audacious. Those on the British left today who disdainfully dismiss Israel as merely a colonial-settler state conveniently forget that Jews were not sent to Palestine as agents of imperial Europe, but were fleeing the continent for their lives.

For its victims, the systematic annihilation of two-thirds of European Jews was not just a shocking historical statistic. A cataclysm of that magnitude has inevitably left an indelible mark on the psyche of a people made to feel not just powerless, but also utterly degraded and worthless. Probably most Jews, including strong critics of successive Israeli governments, hold on to Israel as the phoenix that arose from the ashes. Many lament that the Jewish state did not come into existence 10 years earlier, for that might have saved up to 6 million Jewish lives.

It is these sentiments that are generally uppermost in the minds of Jews who passionately parade their support for Israel. Their myopia regarding the increasingly desperate Palestinian plight is shadowed by the insensitivity of others who dismiss them as simply bigots or oppressors. This is felt particularly keenly when their accusers seem much less exercised by the gross human rights abuses of a host of despotic regimes or the brutal antics of armed militant groups, and in some cases even make excuses for them.

Historically, Jews and Arabs have mostly had cordial relations. The Jewish and Muslim belief systems and customs have much in common. The contemporary conflict has severely undermined these ties and has fostered in their place the parallel phenomena of anti-Jewish sentiment in the Arab and Muslim worlds and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment in the Jewish world. Ultimately, only a resolution of the conflict will settle these matters. Here, Europe could be appropriately and energetically engaged. Meanwhile, it should not be forgotten that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are fated to live alongside each other one way or another. Thus they both have an intrinsic interest in spurning the sometimes dubious support of fair-weather third parties whose antipathy to one side or the other can be so odious that it could poison relations indefinitely.

By promptly excluding Downing and Kirby, and investigating recent allegations of endemic antisemitism in the Oxford University Labour Club, the Labour party is showing itself to be alert to this insidious menace. But these steps might be tinkering at the edges. Without prejudging them, a comprehensive open inquiry into antisemitism on the British left, including the Labour party, would help clarify the underlying issues and draw out the important distinctions. As proudly proclaimed opponents of racist bigotry in all its forms, Jeremy Corbyn and the party he leads could provide an important service to the fabric of community relations by taking on this challenge.

Source: Has Labour under Corbyn really gone soft on antisemitism? | Tony Klug | Opinion | The Guardian

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Israeli novel Borderlife is cut from school curriculum, becomes bestseller

2016/01/30 Leave a comment

Seems like these are the kinds of novels that should be read by high school students to help them see the humanity in the other (as should comparable readings be part of Palestinian and Arab curricula):

A novel by an Israeli author about a love affair between an Israeli Jewish woman and a Palestinian Muslim man from the West Bank who meet in New York has been excluded from Israel’s regular high school curriculum, out of concern it might threaten the Jewish identity of students reading it.

The book, written by Dorit Rabinyan and known in English as Borderlife, was recommended for inclusion in the curriculum of upper high school grades by a committee advising the education ministry, which nevertheless decided against it. “Young people of adolescent age tend to romanticize and don’t, in many cases, have the systemic vision that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation,” a senior ministry official said, according to Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper. (The Hebrew word translated by Ha’aretz as “miscegenation” can also mean “assimilation.”) The official, in other words, feared that reading the book might lead students to accept as normal romance between Jews and Muslims.

The education ministry later backtracked to some degree and said the book could be taught in advanced literature classes, but would not be part of the regular curriculum, according to Ha’aretz.

In an interview, Rabinyan describes the novel’s central romance as one in which the protagonists for the first time discover a member of their homeland’s opposite community as an individual. Hilmi, the Palestinian, is simply Hilmi, a man. And Liat “is no longer her Israeli people, her Israeli country, army, government. She’s herself.”

At the same time, Rabinyan says, every individual is shaped by the soil on which they grow, and she wanted to explore the resulting tensions when the two characters connect. “What I was looking into was the power of love to drift us into each other’s identity, and to have our mutual third identity that is born be a threat, be the one that can colour us with the loved one’s colours, and take over and maybe swallow ourselves and our original identity,” she says.

Rabinyan drew on her own past when writing the book. “I did live a year in New York. I did meet a group of young Palestinians who impressed me and really made me tick in a way that inspired me.” But she says that when writing literature, memories are not enough. “We have to add a portion of fantasy.”

The political undertones of the book might not have been Rabinyan’s primary concern, but they are unavoidable. The symbiosis of the couple, she says, is like the symbiosis of Palestinians and Israelis inhabiting the same land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. “We have no borderlines between us, and we have no definition of our identities in ways that usually two neighbours have, and this is why we treat one another in such a way that maintains the conflict to be more than just a fight of two gangs over territory,” she says.

Instead, says Rabinyan, the conflict is defined as an existential question of identity. “It’s a matter of the Jewish DNA being threatened by the surrounding Arab culture,” and it is this fear of being swallowed that justifies—demands, even—Jews’ isolation from their Palestinian neighbours.

Source: Borderlife is cut from school curriculum, becomes bestseller

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Israel, Antisemitism and Terrorism: Gurski

2016/01/30 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski on Israel and the tendency to label any criticism as antisemitism (the former heads of Shin Bet, the interior intelligence agency, make similar points regarding the continued occupation in the documentary, The Gatekeepers):

There is no question that Israel faces significant security challenges in its dangerous neighbourhood (although I would stop short of calling those threats existential for the simple reason that Israel’s humongous technological superiority, not to mention its undisclosed nuclear arsenal, makes it more than a match for any state stupid enough to attack it) .  And Israel is, and should be, an ally of this country.  It is a vibrant, albeit unwieldy, democracy that serves as an all too rare example for the region.

On the other hand, it has been increasing settlement activity in the Occupied Territories for decades, a clear and flagrant violation of international law. It is beholden to fanatic religious zealots who are no different than the religious extremists we find elsewhere in the region. It has cracked down on freedom of association, but only for groups that are critical of the Israeli government.  All in all, some of what it does can be seen as kindling for the extremist fire.  No, terrorism does not spring solely from Israeli policies, but some of those policies are counterproductive.

Israel likes to complain that the world holds it up to a higher standard than that of its neighbours and that there are much more egregious actors who are a lot worse.  True, but as a democracy, and one that gets gazillions in subsidies from its main ally, the US, it has to put on its big boy pants and accept criticism. Without pouting and calling those that disagree with it Jew haters.

Israel has to acknowledge that its policies in the West Bank are inimical to its long term security and stop kowtowing to fundamentalist religious kooks.  We will work beside Israel to keep it safe and prosperous.  In exchange it has to accept sometimes harsh words.  Friends tell friends when they err.  Canada is Israel’s friend.  It’s time for the latter to listen.  Because it will hear more honest talk from Canada under the Trudeau government than it did under the previous one.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

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As More Israelis Go Vegan, Their Military Adjusts Its Menu : The Salt : NPR

2015/12/12 Leave a comment

Interesting example of reasonable accommodation and responding to demographic trends:

After the war, Yuval, 27, realized there were likely thousands of other vegan soldiers who were suffering from inadequate nutrition. About 5 percent of Israel’s population is vegan, among the highest rates in the world. In a nation where military service is compulsory for most people, this means ever more vegans in uniform.

So Yuval drafted a letter to the army requesting more vegan meals, more nutritionally balanced food without animal products, vegan options for prepared sandwiches, and less bureaucracy in recognizing a soldier as vegan. The note included suggestions, such as adding hummus and soy milk to breakfast, quinoa to lunch and avocado to sandwiches.

“This letter is not a demand or hint for easing of the military service,” the note read. “To the contrary, this letter aims to create equal rights and opportunities to allow for the vegan soldier to maintain a lifestyle that will enable him to perform every task assigned to him and to serve the country the best he can, whether in compulsory, career or reserve service.”

The Israeli military, it turns out, was surprisingly eager to help. A military spokesman tells The Salt that vegans serve in all capacities, including as combat soldiers. Vegan soldiers wear wool-free berets and leather-free boots, and they get an additional stipend to supplement their food, the military says.

What’s more, the Israel Defense Forces “is currently working on creating a complete meal plan for vegan soldiers who serve on closed bases,” the spokesman tells us via email. Soldiers will get extra plant-based products for breakfast and lunch, “as well as supplementary vitamin packs to ensure that the soldiers receive all the necessary nutrients.”

The army follows a number of other Israeli institutions to accommodate vegans.

In November 2014, the cafeteria for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, began offering two to three vegan options daily, with extras on Mondays, according to spokesman Tal Vider.

And in 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his residence would also commit to “Meatless Mondays” — though a spokesman in Netanyahu’s office could not confirm whether the program was ongoing.

According to Israeli media reports, veganism is on the rise among Arab citizens of Israel as well.

Even Domino’s Israel has joined in, serving more than half a million vegan pizzas in 2014.

Yuval says the army has indeed changed in the past year, in no small part because of efforts like his. There are more vegan options at lunch, but he says there is still more to be done for breakfast, dinner and sandwiches.

In Israel, the fierce embrace of veganism has not been without controversy. Among the vegans in Israel are the founders of the radical 269 movement, whose members stage publicity stunts — including branding themselves, leaving severed cattle heads in public places, and “liberating” animals from farms. The Hebrew-subtitled version of an incendiary speech by U.S. animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky, who compares the meat and dairy industries to the Holocaust, has received more than 1 million views. Yourofsky raised eyebrows for speaking at an Israeli settlement during a visit in 2013.

“I don’t care about Jews or Palestinians, or their stupid, childish battle over a piece of Godforsaken land in the desert,” Yourofsky told +972 Magazine at the time. “I care about animals.”

While many vegans do comply with Israel’s near-universal draft for Jewish citizens, some say serving in the Israeli army violates the same morals that drove them to avoid eating animal products.

Haggai Matar, a vegan and a journalist in Tel Aviv, spent two years in prison as punishment for refusing the draft in 2002. He said he did not understand vegans who participated in what he sees as Israel’s abuse of Palestinian rights.

“It’s absurd that combat soldiers can feel very bad about hurting animals, but they have no problem to drop bombs on Gaza and kill hundreds of people,” he says.

Matar, 31, says military prison had few vegan options, but his parents brought him soy chocolate milk, and he and other vegan prisoners were often allowed access to the prison kitchen.

Law professor Aeyal Gross of Tel Aviv University warned in 2013, in the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, against “veganwashing,” or using Israel’s vegan-friendly face as a mask to cover up what he sees as human rights violations.

Yuval, the soldier who pushed for vegan food in the army, says not all vegans are pacifists.

“We are fighting terror organizations,” he says. “I believe that the vegan reform in the IDF is paving the way for an even more moral army.”

Source: As More Israelis Go Vegan, Their Military Adjusts Its Menu : The Salt : NPR

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S. Africa may cancel dual citizenship to curb IDF enlistment | The Times of Israel

2015/09/08 Leave a comment

Foreign military service in principle suggests a greater loyalty to the country of military service, but this measure seems unduly targeted at South African Jews who join the IDF:

Obed Bapela, a senior ANC official who heads its National Executive Committee on International Relations, said the “model” of dual citizenship may not have “a place in the world,” the South African daily The Sunday Times reported.

The government in Pretoria has been among the most hostile to Israel in recent years. South Africa’s minister of higher education Blade Nzimande, a member of the Communist Party, has openly campaigned to boycott Israeli universities and other institutions, and was denied entry into the country for a working visit to Palestinian Authority areas in April.

An ANC party conference discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the issue of South Africans serving in the IDF, in July. The issue would be taken up again in the party’s National General Council in October, the Times said.

The country’s Jewish Board of Deputies has accused ANC officials of singling out South African Jews.

While IDF enlistment was cited explicitly by Bapela and others as the reason for reconsidering South Africa’s acceptance of dual citizenship, no figures have been provided by the party for how many South Africans actually serve in the IDF. With a population over 53 million and large immigrant populations from Asia and other parts of Africa, any change to the South African constitution to enable stripping South African migrants to Israel of their citizenship may end up affecting millions of other citizens.

Jews account for an estimated 0.2 percent of the country’s population. It is not known how many currently serve in the IDF.

Source: S. Africa may cancel dual citizenship to curb IDF enlistment | The Times of Israel

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Breaking taboo, Jerusalem Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship | Reuters

2015/08/05 Leave a comment

Interesting choices that Palestinians are faced with:

In East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, a move not recognized internationally, issues of Palestinian identity are layered with complexity.

While Israel regards the east of the city as part of Israel, the estimated 300,000 Palestinians that live there do not. They are not Israeli citizens, instead holding Israeli-issued blue IDs that grant them permanent resident status.

While they can seek citizenship if they wish, the vast majority reject it, not wanting to renounce their own history or be seen to buy into Israel’s 48-year occupation.

And yet over the past decade, an increasing number of East Jerusalem Palestinians have gone through the lengthy process of becoming Israeli citizens, researchers and lawyers say.

In part it reflects a loss of hope that an independent Palestinian state will ever emerge. But it also reflects a hard-headed pragmatism – an acknowledgement that having Israeli citizenship will make it easier to get or change jobs, buy or move house, travel abroad and receive access to services.

Israeli officials are reluctant to confirm figures, but data obtained by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies indicates a jump over the past decade, rising from 114 applications in 2003 to between 800 and 1,000 a year now, around half of which are successful. On top of that, hundreds have made inquiries before the formal application process begins.

Interior Ministry figures obtained by Reuters show there were 1,434 applications in 2012-13, of which 189 were approved, 1,061 are still being processed and 169 were rejected. The remainder are in limbo.

Palestinians who have applied do not like to talk about it. The loyalty oath is not an easy thing for them to sign up to and becoming a naturalized Israeli – joining the enemy – is taboo.

“It felt bad, really bad,” said a 46-year-old Palestinian teacher who took the oath a year ago. Despite her reservations, she knew it was right for stability and career prospects.

Breaking taboo, Jerusalem Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship | Reuters.

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The dichotomy of life as a gay Palestinian with Israeli citizenship

2015/08/01 Leave a comment

Interesting vignette:

For the 27-year-old, a well-known socialite in Tel Aviv’s LGBT community, the city is a haven for gay men, but Abu Seif says he considers himself a Palestinian and that as such, he can never fully integrate.

His struggles, along with those of two other protagonists are the subject of “Oriented,” a new Israeli documentary, touted as the first to focus on gay Palestinian citizens.

…During an interview this week at a spacious apartment in Jaffa — the mixed Arab-Jewish city merged with Tel Aviv — the three protagonists of “Oriented,” sporting the latest trend in beards, could easily be mistaken for any hip Jewish residents of Tel Aviv.

The liberal Israeli city is considered a gay refuge in an otherwise largely intolerant Middle East, where in some places, gays are persecuted and sometimes killed. Same-sex relations are punishable by death in Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. Some gay Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have fled their conservative homes to come out in Tel Aviv. Even in Jerusalem, the same gay friendly climate does not always thrive.

Abu Seif is critical of Israel, his country of citizenship, over its policies toward Palestinians but also criticizes the Palestinian society, where homosexuality remains taboo and where there is little tolerance for gays.

On his documents, he is an Arab citizen of Israel, like the two other protagonists in “Oriented” — 27-year-old Fadi Daeem and 26-year-old Naeem Jiryes. The Arab minority makes up about 20 percent of Israel’s population.

All three are fluent in both Arabic and Hebrew and easily switch between the languages. But while in Tel Aviv their sexuality is hardly an issue, they say their national identity is.

“At the airport while my Jewish partners … are already at the duty free, I’m still being checked,” said Abu Seif, referring to the extra level of scrutiny Arab Israelis often face. “So I’m for sure not an Israeli gay man. I’m gay something. So I’m gay Palestinian.”

The dichotomy of life as a gay Palestinian with Israeli citizenship – Israel – news | Haaretz.

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CIJA spokesman Steve McDonald gives effective tips how to advocate for Israel

2015/01/29 1 Comment

Rather candid and open advice, and more nuanced than one would judge from public statements:

McDonald proceeded to offer a series of useful and concise tips to anyone who is interested in advocating on behalf of Israel:

• “Don’t feed into the complexity of the situation”; that would only make it more difficult for the average Canadian to understand.

• We need to take the other side’s arguments off the table.” Agree that Palestinians deserve a “democracy”. “What they don’t deserve is Hamas.”

• Acknowledge the legitimacy of some Palestinian grievances.

• Say that it’s “not about taking sides”. “Also, the argument that the other side shot first doesn’t work.”

• “If our first response to Palestinian suffering isn’t empathy, we lose.”

• Point out that Israel did withdraw from Gaza and has always accepted ceasefires.

• Finally, “when you’re having a conversation with someone about Israel, have a real conversation. Never defend the indefensible, i.e. settlements.”

CIJA spokesman Steve McDonald gives effective tips how to advocate for Israel.

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In Israel, debate over whether French Jews should come — or stay home

2015/01/17 Leave a comment

Interesting debate in Israel – key question highlighted:

“To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray; the state of Israel is your home,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address.

If a new wave of French Jews move to Israel, they will join what was a record 7,000 compatriots who made the journey last year. But that movement is already rekindling debate among Jews, who ask: Is it better for French Jews to come to Israel or stay home and insist that French society, including the country’s swelling Muslim population, accommodate them?

The debate comes with a contemporary twist: If Jews abandon France in large numbers, are they not doing just what Islamist extremists want — ridding France of its Jews?

“I think what we are seeing now is the old Zionism, the idea that the only place to be is Israel,” said Smadar Bar-Akiva, executive director of JCC Global, an umbrella group of more than 1,000 Jewish community centers worldwide.

Immigrants from France make up a sizable portion of all Europeans migrating to Israel. In 2013, about 12,000 Europeans migrated to Israel, at least 3,000 of them French. In the first nine months of 2014, 5,000 French people migrated to Israel.

“Aliyah is wonderful. We would love to have more Jews in Israel,” Bar-Akiva said, using the Hebrew term for immigration, or “ascending,” to Israel. “But I’d also like to have strong Jews all around the world. I think that it is self-defeating for us to tell them to pack their bags and leave France.”

In Israel, debate over whether French Jews should come — or stay home – The Washington Post.

And a good history of French antisemitism by Andreas Whittam Smith along with a sobering conclusion:

If the Jews cannot live in France any longer, it would be an incredible disaster. The French Republic would have spectacularly fallen short of its ideals. Fortunately Francois Hollande, and Manuel Valls, well understand this and are taking significant actions to buttress the self-confidence of Jewish citizens. Valls also said: “If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure.” Exactly right.

Anti-Semitism in France: A prejudice that hardened in 1789 and which has come in waves ever since – Comment – Voices – The Independent.

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