Staff Sergeant Dvir Emmanueloff

So life goes on here in southern Israel. Beer-Sheva has not had a rocket attack in three days now, and so many of the city’s residents are returning and heading back to work. My university classes are canceled for the upcoming week, but I have been spending the past few days catching up on readings (that is, when I haven’t been talking to Cleveland reporters).

Ground forces entered Gaza yesterday, which may change everything. So far only one soldier has been killed, a 22-year-old Jerusalem man named Dvir Emmanueloff. My heart goes out to his family. He was so young, and he looked like a lovely person.

In Israel, military service is compulsory except for ultra-Orthodox Jews, who can to choose to study in yeshivas or do national service instead.

Women usually serve two years, while men serve three or more. Israelis are recruited right after high school, which means much of the Israeli Defense Force is composed of soldiers barely my age. So when a young soldier loses his life, the whole country comes together to mourn him/her. Indeed, practically every Israeli has been devastated by one conflict or another. So it should not seem so surprising that, unlike in America, almost every fatality here is announced by name in the national media. Israelis truly understand the meaning of the word sacrifice.

Unfortunately these young soldiers suffer a heavy toll. In 2006, 19-year-old infantry man Gilad Schalit was captured by Hamas; three years later, he is still being held for ransom for future prisoner exchange deals.

Captured soldier Gilad Schalit

Now Israelis are pushing for the government to demand Schalit’s release before any ceasefire is brokered with Hamas. Six months ago, Hamas released a video of Schalit to prove that he is alive. But who knows whether the group will kill him now in revenge for this war. The possibility also exists that perhaps Schalit is being held hostage outside of Gaza. Thus, there is no guarantee that the IDF will be able to rescue him. Still, I pray that his mom and dad will be able to hold him in their arms again soon.

Meanwhile, the Gazans continue to suffer a disproportionate amount of casualties, and Hamas deserves a large portion of the blame as I explained in my previous posts: Bringing in the New Year with a Bang! and Crazy Bloggers.

But as the war goes on, more and more Palestinian hearts harden against Israel. The country is in danger of isolating political moderates in Gaza and the West Bank, and the war most likely will further radicalize the Palestinian territories.

Israel has every right to defend its people, and the country should not be expected to just sit back and let terrorists pound its southern cities with rocket and mortar shells. But I question whether war is ever the answer? Will this war actually stop Hamas from firing at Israel? Will the moderate (yet highly incompetent and corrupt) party of Fatah regain control of the Strip? Or will the war push Gazans closer to more radical jihadist groups?

I have many Israeli-Arab friends here who are not happy about the situation. As one Arab classmate said, “it will not solve anything.” In the meantime, his family in Gaza must suffer in silence.

Yet there are also Israeli-Arabs who support Israel in this conflict and who consider Hamas a major threat to coexistence between Arabs and Jews. But forget about interethnic violence, Hamas can’t even help itself from waging war against other Palestinians! Most recently the group has resorted to maiming Fatah supporters so as to prevent them from aiding and abetting Israel.

I suppose we will have to wait and see what kind of havoc this war will wreak. But as reporter Daniel Klaidman so brilliantly explained in his latest Newsweek article, A Plan of Attack for Peace, there may be hope yet.

Life goes on for me too. I have it lucky; I have escaped to a suburb that it outside the rocket range (at least for the time being). Things are peaceful here, and I can go to bed knowing that a blaring siren probably will not wake me up during the middle of the night.

But the war has considerably affected some of my fellow cast mates in our play, “Guys and Dolls.” One backstage assistant lives in a village only a few miles away from the Gaza Border, where she is able to watch the exchange of rocket fire between Israel and Hamas. She walked into rehearsal today saying that last night was the scariest night of her life.

It must be a relief for her then to travel to this little suburb for rehearsals (before the war, we practiced in Beer-Sheva). Although, we are still taking precautions. Tonight, we gathered in a bomb shelter.

"Guys and Dolls" rehearsal in a miklat (bomb shelter)

I guess in Israel you can never be certain of your safety.

This is an extremely clear and concise article, and the authors do a wonderful job at summarizing the Israel-Palestine conflict while providing insight into how to solve the conflict in the near future.

A Plan of Attack for Peace

So in response to WKYC’s piece on the situation here in Beer-Sheva, my particular story got some wacky comments from a couple of, um, interesting bloggers.

The weirdest was from a man who called himself bsteeler:

“How ignorant are these Hamas terrorist???? Don’t they teach history in their schools?? The countries of Egypt,Syria & Turkey (I think) suprise attacked Israel & all 3 countries were running with their heads between their legs 7 days later, 3 countries against 1 little country Israel!!! Israel……….do what you have to do to protect your people, hold nothing back.

Remember……..the very land you live in was promised to Abraham the father of Israel to himself & his “seed” by GOD.”

First, Turkey never invaded Israel, ever. Second, nice touch on the whole Abraham “seed” thing. I guess religious fanatics abound!

But the response bsteeler got from a commenter calling himself throwmeabone was just as nutty:

“How ignorant is bsteeler to believe there is a god? God is for the weak who cannot bear the death of loved ones or taking responsibility for their own pathetic lives.”

However, the one that irked me the most was from suckstolivehere (I know, what a classy name!):

“I don’t feel a bit sorry for her at all. As unstable as that area is, I sure wouldn’t go there for my education, but let that be considered a lesson. I think now she knows it time to get out.
…and for anyone else heading that way, I don’t suggest you do so.”

In regards to his comment about the “instability of the region,” well, that’s a bit of a generalization. And yes, I will admit that I did find his comment a bit patronizing. A lesson learned…time for me to leave? Yeah right.

I’m sad to say that I did feel the need to respond, but I used my response as an opportunity to educate people:

“Time to get out? I’m just getting started over here!

I do not regret my choice to travel to Israel and Palestine – where better to study Middle East studies than right in the heart of the region?

Millions of tourists visit Israel and the West Bank each year and dozens of international students come to study here for extended periods of time. My program in Beer-Sheva has about 25 to 30 foreign students, most of whom are Americans.

While the rocket attacks have shaken us, none of us have decided to leave the country and we won’t unless the U.S. Embassy orders us to do so. We are hopeful that this conflict will be resolved within the month and that we will be able to continue our studies as planned.

To put things in perspective…

Hamas missiles are a serious threat to Israel, most especially to cities close to the Gaza border such as Sderot, which for years has suffered from an incessant barrage of rocket attacks. When the ceasefire ended on December 19th, Hamas increased its fire dramatically; for instance, on Christmas Day more than 80 qassam rockets were fired into southern Israel from Gaza.

That being said, however, only four Israelis have died since the conflict began one week ago. Most of the Grad rockets that have been shot deep into Israeli territory, including towards Beer-Sheva, have fallen in open fields and have caused little damage. The missiles themselves are not very sophisticated and Hamas currently is not capable of directing them at specific targets. Clearly, the group’s victories come more from instilling fear in people than from wreaking any major destruction – at least in Israel.

It has been much more successful in ruining the lives of Palestinians. While one may justly criticize the Israeli economic blockade against Gaza, which has detrimentally affected more innocent civilians than Hamas militants, one cannot deny that Hamas cares little for the dignity of its own people.

While I have mixed feelings about war in general and the devastation that result from it, I believe that any criticism against Israel in this case must also acknowledge Hamas’ complicity in the rising death toll in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas thrives on being bombarded because as Palestinian casualties increase, the more sympathy it garners from international activists. I wonder why more people do not question why this terrorist organization chooses to build missile smuggling tunnels underneath civilian homes or store weapons in public spaces such as mosques, thereby making them proper targets for Israeli bombers? This is the game that Hamas plays.

The irony in all this is that for a while, Hamas was losing support among Palestinians as the group’s bloody campaign against dissenters wracked up local casualties too.

But unfortunately this war may now bring Gazans closer to Hamas than ever before.

Regardless, my heart goes out to both Israelis and Gazans suffering from this conflict, and I hope and pray that a diplomatic solution is reached. Both sides deserve to live in peace and stability. And the Palestinian people deserve a leadership that is genuinely committed to serving them.

Lastly, before one makes any judgment calls about the Middle East, especially in regards to its stability, he or she should visit the region first.

Indeed, I would encourage more Americans to travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories because it is only through experiencing the situation here firsthand that one can gain any proper understanding of it.

Putting the current conflict aside, most days in Israel and the West Bank are uneventful and pass by peacefully. I should mention that only southern Israel has been affected by the rocket attacks and tourism continues to thrive in Jerusalem and the rest of the country.

However, if taking a trip here still seems too daunting, then there are plenty of other wonderful countries to visit in the Middle East, such as Egypt, Jordan and the UAE.

Americans still have much to learn about the region, its people and its many different cultures. We should be wary of dismissing the Middle East with sweeping generalizations.”

Ha! Take that suckstolivehere!

I was interviewed last night by reporter Paul Thomas from WKYC Channel 3 News in Cleveland, the NBC affiliate. It was the lead story on the eleven o’clock news!

Here is the piece, be sure to check out the video on the side:

Local college student in Israel dodges rocket fire

By the way, IDF officials are now saying that Hamas’ missiles may be able to hit just outside of Tel Aviv if launched from the northern Gaza strip.

I fled Beer-Sheva yesterday.

A cowardly act perhaps, but so have many of the other Israeli and international students at BGU.

I’ve escaped to a suburb that is outside the range of the Grad rockets, but close enough to the city that if classes do resume next week I’ll only be a short drive away.

I can’t tell you how nerve wrecking this whole experience has been. Seven rockets hit Beer-Sheva yesterday, most landed in open fields but one allegedly struck behind the dormitories.  Yet another one hit this morning.

Beer-Sheva has never experienced anything like this before, and the the terror being inflicted upon the city has set everybody on edge.

To make matters worse, the siren system is on the fritz and residents can only rely on the radio to alert them of incoming missiles.

To say that the sound of the rockets hitting and exploding is frightening is an understatement. I now have some understanding of what the British went through during World War 2.

What is so aggravating is that Hamas seems to be winning the propaganda war. The media is filled with stories denouncing the “Zionist” aggression, blah, blah, blah.

One analysis I read compared the “disproportionate scale of Israeli air strikes in response to the pinprick provocations of the home-made rockets fired from Gaza at southern Israeli towns…”

Pinprick provocations?! Perhaps the author should spend a few months living in a city like Sderot – a mile from the Gaza Strip – where the city’s people face a constant barrage of missiles everyday. It’s impossible to live a normal life there, and as I wrote in a previous blog, the city’s playgrounds come equipped with bomb shelters and 75-94 percent of children suffer from post traumatic stress disorder.

It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to the Gazans and their struggle as well as to the every increasing death toll in the Strip. Of course I am! In my blog I have decried the racist anti-Arab sentiments simmering in this country, as well as the terrorist attacks inflicted by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. I want peace for Israel and Palestine, and I hope and pray that a just solution for both sides will be reached.

But criticism must be given where it is due. And Hamas simply is not worthy of my tears.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. And while many may condemn Israel for driving Gaza further into poverty through the economic and political isolation it has imposed against the regime, I wonder what the international community really expects the country to do?

Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Does the world really expect Israel to sit back and allow Hamas officials and militants to pass through checkpoints unhindered or to allow them access to the global market so they can purchase bombs with greater ease?

Hamas has been shooting rockets into the Negev for months now, in clear violation of the terms of its six-months ceasefire with Israel. And when the ceasefire expired on December 19th, it was Hamas who decided not to extend it by firing even more missiles into southern Negev cities, including Ashdod and Ashkelon. One particular day saw more than a hundred rockets shot over from Gaza!

I complain that Beer-Sheva has it bad, but I can barely imagine what Sderot is experiencing right now. In Beer-Sheva at least we have sixty seconds from the time of the alarm to get into a bomb shelter. Sderot only has 15 seconds, and from what I hear they have been told not even to leave their houses during this time of crisis.

To put it simply, this Israeli incursion into Gaza was a long time coming. The country could not just wait for Hamas to come to its senses and stop attacking Israeli citizens. Something needed to be done and Israel believes it have taken the right course of action.

Unfortunately, that may not be the case. Israel has a bad habit of not achieving the aims of its military missions. And repeated battles with Hamas in the past have not stopped the terrorist regime from carrying on with its qassam and Grad rocket attacks.

I will unequivocally admit that the biggest victims in this whole conflict are the Gazan civilians. Casualties have reached almost 400, compared to the 4 or 5 Israelis killed from rocket shrapnel. Although, that’s not from a lack of trying on Hamas’ part. Its rockets are meant to kill people, but lucky for Israel, Hamas has been incompetent in this endeavor.

But what Hamas is not inept at is destroying the lives of its own people. You would have to be naive to believe that Hamas actually cares for its Palestinians brethren. It doesn’t and this brutal organization takes no issue with erecting offices and factories and building underground smuggling tunnels in populated civilian areas. Hamas thrives on human shields and casualties because this is what wins them the propaganda war. The more dead Palestinians, the more sympathy the groups gets from the international community. It sickens me to the core.

In 2006, Gazans elected Hamas to parliamentary control largely as an act of protest against the corrupt political party of Fatah. But for a while, Hamas was loosing supports among its people as political infighting and the assassination of political dissenters wracked up local casualties too.

How ironic now that through this mini-war, Israel may bring Gazans closer to Hamas than ever before.

So I was on the news this week as was my friend Sirena, who is living in Jerusalem. We were interviewed for a local news channel in San Diego in regards to what has been going on here. The reporter is a friend of ours from Medill…I guess those journalism contacts really come in handy.

Me:

Interview December 31st, after the first rocket attack against Beer-Sheva

Interview December 28th, after the Israeli offensive began.

Sirena interview (with pictures of me).

My “Islam in Russia” professor has decided to leave the country…that’s nice.

Several bombs hit Beer-Sheva this morning, and I expect the bombardment to continue.

The first one went off at around 8am, but apparently the alarm system wasn’t functioning, so I slept through it.

But the siren was up and running again at around 8:40am, as I was in the middle of the brushing my teeth. This time I made it to the bomb shelter.

I heard at least three explosions, and they sounded louder and closer than before. I’ve found out that one landed only 2 kilometers away from the university on top of a school building. There are no casualties, but Israeli TV is showing footage of the resulting hole on the roof.

Right now I’m stuck in the university’s student center on campus. My first class was canceled this morning but the second one is still scheduled for 12pm. However, as I have been sitting here the students have rushed to the basement level of center twice as the news is reporting more sirens. But we didn’t physically hear the alarms, so perhaps those later rockets did not hit as close.

The campus buildings are heavily fortified, which means I am safe sitting here. I don’t think I’ll try to walk back to my dormitory right now.

I guess I was lucky this morning. I slept through my cell alarm and woke up late for class (mainly because I stayed up all night worrying that another siren would go off as I was asleep). I could have been walking in the middle road when the siren sounded. I have no idea where I would have hid.

Welcome to Israel.

Two Hamas rockets hit my host city Beer-Sheva tonight.  The siren went off at around 9pm and I took cover under the bedroom door frame. I could hear the rockets exploding as they touched ground.

One of them struck a residential neighborhood, landing in a kindergarten yard. Thank God there were no casualties.

But that neighborhood is only a few kilometers away from my university. Israeli students here reassure me that it’s really not that close to us at all. Yeah right…this city (and country) is way too small for something to be “not that close.”

That’s Israeli denial for you.

For now things are calm and I’m safe.

Here’s are two articles to ponder during the holiday:

TIME.com
On Thanksgiving, not much to give thanks for in Gaza

As you sit down to a Thanksgiving feast, please spare a thought for the starving Palestinians of Gaza. There are 1.5 million of them, most of them living hand to mouth, or on UN handouts, because Israel has them under siege.

It’s a vicious cycle, one that’s being repeated every few months or so. The Islamic militants do something crazy, Israel strikes back, the militants fire missiles into southern Israel and then the entry points into Gaza slam shut. Food and the basic necessities of life are squeezed off to the barest minimum.

And who suffers? Not the militants, not Hamas nor Islamic Jihad. As usual, it’s the people of Gaza who are dazed with hunger. My friend Azmi, who has diabetes, tells me he is running out of insulin, and he can’t find any pharmacy or hospital that still has supplies.

Dialysis machines are breaking down in the hospital (the rare moments when there’s electricity to run them) and there are no spare parts to replace them. Bakeries have run out of flour. “I’ve been to the Cairo zoo,” says Azmi, “and I swear those animals are treated better there than we humans are in Gaza.”

Many stories are written about the smugglers’ tunnels that honeycomb Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. We write about how the smugglers bring Viagra and tiger cubs through the tunnels, as though Gaza were some big exotic shopping mall, a Neiman Marcus on the Mediterranean. But the truth his, all the stuff coming through the tunnel is expensive because it is taxed by the smugglers, and beyond the reach of most Gazans.

In the Third Act of this sorry performance, the international community and the UN start complaining loudly, and Israel lets in a few dozen trucks of food, or turns the fuel spigot on for a few hours to reduce the international outcry and show what good guys they are. That’s what happened today. The Israelis let in 40 trucks. It’s hardly enough. At a minimum, says Chris Guness, an UNRWA spokesman, “We need to bring in 15 trucks a day, every day.” Adds UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories Maxwell Gaylard, “This is an assault on human dignity with severe humanitarian implications.”

Then we have Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, obviously irritated by Gaza questions during his valedictory tour to Washington. He dismissed the near-famine in Gaza as nothing more than the whining of a few cry-babies, as if he expected them to make souffles out of sand, soups from stone.

Israel wants to draw a curtain around Gaza so nobody can see how it’s punishing the Palestinians. That’s why, for the past two weeks, they’ve barred the foreign press from entering Gaza. The reason, says the Israeli military, is that catch-all phrase “security”, and it is pronounced with arrogant solemnity as if to say ‘Take it from us, we have our very good reasons. Don’t challenge us.”

Well, the foreign press did challenge the Israeli government. We took the matter to the high court, petitioned Olmert and got our editors to write letters of complaint. Some journalists talk of chartering a boat from Cyprus and trying to run the Israeli naval blockade. These are desperate tries, but this is a violation of the press’s freedom, and the world’s right to know. This is the sort of shameful attitude you might expect from Zimbabwe’s Dictator Robert Mugabe, not Israel. Please.

Choking the life out of the Gazans isn’t going to make them turn against their Hamas overlords. On the contrary, says my friend Azmi, “Everything that Israeli does isn’t harming Hamas in Gaza. It’s making them stronger.” Starving Palestinians and depriving them of medicine certainly isn’t going to make them like Israelis, or their supporters in Washington, any better.

Happy Thanksgiving.

By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

and…

HAARETZ.com
Thanksgiving in the Holy Land – Grace and 4 Questions
By Bradley Burston

TEL AVIV – I have a need to say grace this Thanksgiving night, but I’m not ready.

There are American Jews – especially those, like me, who grew up as the youngest in their family, and thus were forced, year after year, to recite the Four Questions at Passover – who may look at Thanksgiving as a Seder without the embarrassment.

Now that I am grown, though, and living thousands of miles from that home, I find myself asking questions about Thanksgiving. And about how and why one says grace.

This morning my wife asked the most important one. It is a question which, in the act of asking, says grace:

“What would this land look like, if we were really thankful for what we have?”

We were on the highway to Tel Aviv, where she works as a nurse for Africans who fled their homes in grave peril and found shelter, for the moment at least, in Israel.

It is not difficult, in that clinic, to understand the story of the first Thanksgiving. There are people seeking refuge in a strange land. Some of the inhabitants, who do not know nor easily understand the refugees, elect to help them survive.

It is in a place like this, that what appears to be a simple question, can shed a world of light.

The answer, I suspect, is that if we were truly thankful for what we have, then what we would have here, is peace.

But I’m not ready to accept that, just yet.

You can feel it drain out of you in this place, your ability to feel blessed, to feel grateful. It is one of the ways that the land devours its inhabitants. History has been cruel to everyone here, Jews and Arabs in particular, displacing them, oppressing them, disenfranchising them, putting them to flight, putting them to death. Compelling them to fixate on a partly imagined past and a partly impossible future. Robbing them of their ability to live in the present, to see what they do have, to give thanks.

As an experiment, walking around the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Jaffa outside the clinic, I told people the story of the first Thanksgiving. The reactions of both Arabs and Jews were strikingly similar. “So the Indians helped these white people, then the whites turned around and annihilated them?”

Both sides identified with the Native Americans, welcoming at heart, ripped off and murdered for their trouble.

It makes you wonder. What would this land look like, if they had been welcoming to us, and if we had been ? if we were – welcoming to them?

We can know, if nothing else, that we would spend much more of our resources teaching children how to make a better life for themselves and others, and much less teaching them how to clean and operate a rifle.

We can know, also, that we would spend much more of our time and trouble producing clean water, for example, and worthwhile workplaces, rather than finding ways to claim and fight over the dwindling resources we have left.

There’s a reason, I believe, that Thanksgiving takes place in a season of transition, with the brief, heartbreaking natural artistry of leaves catching the colors of fire just before they dry and fall. There’s a lesson, also, in the fact that in the Holy Land, the autumn is our only true spring. It is when the rain comes, and restores new life to the burned-brown vegetation, dead as winter, that summer leaves behind.

What would this place look like, if instead of craving what the others have, people truly appreciated what they themselves possess?

They might realize that compromise, rather than ferocity, is a part of God’s work. And a large part of being fully human.

If we could get past the endless, the irresolvable debates over who was here first, who are the true natives, who has done more injustice to the other, perhaps we could better value life and each other.

There are children right here with nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep – if we really appreciated what we have, wouldn’t we help them?

We, all of us, waste their resources of intellect, youth, life itself, in lethal obsession over the other half of this place, allowing the conflict to keep help from reaching the needy in their midst.

Why, in the end, is this Thanksgiving night different from all other nights?

Because, before we eat, even before we say grace, we stop to think. We stop in order to notice what God’s work really is. To appreciate the ways in which it gives us life, sustains us, and has brought us to this night.

We stop to be reminded that these gifts of sustenance are to enable God’s work. And to be reminded that everyone in this world is, in fact, God’s work.

Tonight, together, we bless the glory in the miracle of the most ordinary. It took countless impossible coincidences of heritage and survival and geography, and faith amid blackness, and people doing God’s work for its own sake, to allow us to come together this night, and to give us the power and the wisdom and the gratitude, despite everything, to be able to listen for the stirrings of peace in the word …

Amen