Voor wie nog meer achtergrond en commentaar wil lezen:

Een artikel op de Miftah website (de organisatie van Hanan Ashrawi): Singing in the rain. Het betoog: met de invasie in de Gazastrook wordt de aandacht weggetrokken van het feit dat Hamas en Fatah het eens waren geworden over het ‘gevangenen document’ (tekst ook te lezen op de Miftah website) en Israel daarmee een excuus kwijt waren om niet met ‘de andere kant’ te gaan praten. Een fragment:

Singing in the Rain
Israel’s grotesquely dubbed military assault against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, Summer Rain, has apparently salvaged the Israeli government and spared it the obligation of having to deal with a wilfully unnoticed paradigm shift in Palestinian politics; namely widespread endorsement by Palestinian political factions (including Hamas) of the National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners (the prisoners’ document), which implicitly recognizes Israel’s “right to exist” and clearly adopts the June 1967 boundaries (22% of historical Palestine) as the territorial borders of the future Palestinian state, hence a national Palestinian consensus which clearly meets Israel’s alleged demands.

What a political/diplomatic disaster it could have been for Israel: all Palestinian factions agreeing to fundamental principles which would have at least given some hope to reviving a stalled peace process, and re-injecting momentum into the resumption of negotiations. Instead, Israel has chosen to fight to the bitter end in order to ensure that “THERE IS NO PARTNER ON THE PALESTINIAN SIDE,” thereby sustaining its unilateralist/expansionist policy without challenge, particularly from the international community, and guaranteeing that its delusional narrative continues to be the governing dynamic of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Hele artikel:
Miftah

Het is nooit antisemitisch om tegen onrecht te zijn. Een artikel van Ted Schmidt. Een fragment:

There is a splendid Talmudic saying that a single life is a universe. As I write, the awesome military might of the world’s fourth largest army is mobilized to secure the release of a young Israeli soldier. On the one hand we can applaud the primacy of a human life, its inherent dignity. Yet we should be appalled at the ongoing collective punishment of an entire civilian population.

Voor het hele artikel:
http://rabble.ca/redirect.php3?ID=7784

Een andere stem uit Sderot.
Sderot is het Israelische stadje aan de andere kant van de grens met Gaza, dat in de afgelopen jaren het meest te maken kreeg met de afgeschoten Kassem-raketten. Maar niet alle bewoners zijn het er mee eens dat zij gebruikt worden door de Israelische regering om de repressie in de Gazastrook op te voeren. Het artikel integraal:

A DIFFERENT VOICE FROM SDEROT
Na¹amika Zion
A proper exposure:

I have been living in Sderot for almost twenty years. For five years I have been ³breathing² Qassams. Some of them fell a few meters from my home, and for the first time in my life I comprehended the emotional meaning of the expression: ³Victims of Shock and Anxiety². All the daily worries that were
generously exported to the public are familiar to me too. All the rituals that were built around the anxieties: ³To jump in response to any unusual noise², ³To watch the sky while walking in the city², to bolt out of bed like an automaton at three in the morning and run to the fortified room. To tensely wait for the boom, to verify that everybody is okay, and so on
again.

Nevertheless I want to voice a slightly different voice. I will not say here anything new or original that was not already ground to dust before me. The only validity to my words is the fact that I am a resident of Sderot. I am not leaving the town for no Qassam. I am not returning to Sheinkin at the end of the day.

Let me start by saying, the repeated calls ³to destroy Beit Hanoun². ³to raze Gaza², ³to black out cities² and to ³turn off the water². These calls are horrifying when they are uttered by a frustrated public. They are even more horrifying when they are stated by public figures, ministers and journalists who express empathy. There are calls for whom there cannot be
empathy!! When one repeats so many times the same call, it becomes inadvertently legitimate, part of the daily agenda. What singed the ear five years ago is suddenly transformed into acceptable music and then to sweet music. One gets habituated. This process of habituation scares me even more
than the Qassams.

Sderot is a multicultural city, multi tribal. Journalists must act extra cautiously when they presume to reflect the ³Feelings of the residents². Not all the residents of Sderot seek revenge. Not all the residents of Sderot wish to ³Raze Beit Hanoun². Not all wish to be rejuvenated by rivers of Palestinian blood. We have enough on this account. Too many years, too much blood.

Just because I belong to those who believe in a proper welfare state, it is important for me to say: ³The State of Israel did indeed absolve itself of responsibility to many areas of the economy but it did not absolve itself of the responsibility to Sderot. The media did not forget Sderot. The Israeli public did not remain indifferent. The army did not pump itself less because
we are residents of the periphery rather then of Ramat Aviv C. The opposite. The media grabbed Sderot in an empathetic and suffocating hug. The public and all its sections expressed concern and solidarity and poured on us a rain of gestures and gifts. The IDF pounded the Gaza strip, day and night.
Government ministries poured money here, lots of money. That was how the State was supposed to continue until things would get better. But, ³Where is the money²? screamed, two week ago, high risk youths whose support structures were closed and they were thrown into the street during these hard times of all times. This is the real important question which remained
echoing in space without an answer. Where did the money go to? What are the priorities? Does the municipal structure provide a true and correct response to the needs of this exhausted city? The Qassam produces true anxieties and mental burnout, but it also provides a dangerous screen to economic and social problems which are not less deep and which the city must deal with.

I did not fall off my chair when I heard Shimon Peres chiding us to maintain restraint, for which he received the headline: ³Kassam Shmassam². The wording certainly did not shine with political wisdom, but the content and the criticism were certainly worthy of examination. What Peres essentially
said was that Panic is not a work plan. That destruction of Palestinian cities is not an agenda. It is better for us to focus on the defense and strengthening of Sderot rather then grab some short term media profits at the expense of the real tasks. The town is indeed exhausted but it is not under an existential threat.

Leadership does not need to promote hysteria, it needs to calm. It does not need to aid hyperventilating, it needs to help all of us to live in a complex reality in which there are no magic solutions, and certainly no power ones. A leadership does not need to black out a city and block the entrances, it must continue the routine of life and to broadcast stability.
It does not need to rush and close the education system, it needs to nurture and strengthen it. After all, the kids that are wondering outside are less protected and are more traumatized than children who are inside a stable and supportive fraamework. A brave leadership can go far by transforming the
calls for the blood of Palestinians into extraordinary initiatives such as meetings between youth from Sderot and Gaza.

The media coverage during the past month raised my disgust threshold to high levels. It reinforced emotions, and fanned instincts and creatively orchestrated an endless number of dramas without blinking and without checking. The settlements of the ³Gaza wraparound² who are in the same boat as Sderot are almost forgot. Sderot became a nickname for hysteria and
fainting. Take for example the sweeping wording for the strange initiative to blackout the city. ³Sderot is in total darkness² screamed the headlines. After all, every child knows that the houses of the residents cannot be blacked out, only the street lighting. The ³Blackness², therefore, was relative at best but the political or populist goal was accomplished.

In the beginning of June the ³Festival of Southern Cinema² took place in Sderot. An uplifting experience that somehow did not rate media coverage. In the darkened halls, David Ben Shitrit¹s jolting movies about the refugee experience of Palestinian women were screened. Also the story of the ³Refusenik² pilots. This looked almost hallucinatory. Outside the Qassams are whistling and on the screen endless Palestinian suffering is splashed.
Many spectators bolted out of the theatre. They did not want or could not allow the images to crack their defense mechanisms. The cultural building of the power ethos and the victim mentality that we get intravenously injected with after out first breath on earth is so deep that, at times, it appears
impenetrable. For me it was a most powerful moment. This is a Sderot I want to live in. A Sderot that does not forget that on the other side of the equation there is human suffering as well.

The Media narrative has been addicted for years to the Power Paradigm. Our screens expose, one after the other, non-smiling and non-apologetic marching security types, who expose before us hypnotic plans to defeat the Qassams through deep penetrations, daring commando operations and a host of other
creative ideas that seem to have been taken from the operational arsenal of ³Fatal Mission 2² or ³Rambo 3². One after the other they emerged this month in Sderot where the microphone caught their deliberations with uninhibited commitment. Even the Hebrew language was long since recruited and, in turn, created an inventory of proper terms that were cleansed of unnecessary sentiments and thus allowed the selective reporting of what had happened in the territories. The media collaborated obediently and the Hebrew language
was reborn, cleansed and easy to pronounce. ³Exposure², ³Engineering Operations², ³non-combatants².

I am revolted by our Palestinian neighbors who recycle again and again historical errors and are not succeeding in building a Riviera in Gaza instead of shooting Qassams at us. By doing so they are passing a verdict on millions of ³Non-Combatants² to live in a more horrible squalor than the one they already live in. But he who sows wind during forty years of occupation
is destined to reap a storm, and it is occurring in front of our eyes and it doesn¹t let go. Yes, even after the disengagement. Reality is becoming increasingly more complicated and the State of Israel is heavily responsible, too heavily responsible for this quagmire.

Every time when a little quiet sets in the past few years, or some understandings were achieved, comes the next ³focused liquidation² of a senior wanted person or a junior wanted person and Sderot immediately assumes an absorption stance. Who benefited from all these liquidations?
What kind of security did we buy for ourselves, at the end of the day, save for the next barrage? After that comes the Big Blitz. For months we did not close our eyes, not only because of the Qassams. The IDF pounded the ³Launching areas² 24 hours a day from the sea, the air and the ground.
Restless nights for Sderot and the neighboring villages. A nightmare for the residents of the Gaza strip. An endless and useless bombardment. On whom? For what? For what purpose? Who did it benefit? What security achievements were ascertained?

Amir Peretz whom I respect took a brave step as Minister of Defense. He reintroduced the moral discussion into the narrative. The very morality that was pushed many years ago to the outskirts of the public debate. If and when it was mentioned, it was generally only in a soft tone and mumbling
apologetics that were whispered only after all the advantage calculations and image problems were reviewed. Not what we did and not how we will look to the world. However, the person that reintroduced the moral discussion into our narrative is building in the past few weeks a cemetery in his heart
where dozens of bodies of innocent Palestinian children and civilians are lying. ³I am stepping on my own soul² once said Yitzhak Ben A¹haron. Amir Peretz is in my eyes almost a tragic hero. In the past few weeks he is stepping on his own soul. Or at least that is how I wish to see it. One whose heart did not turn to stone and that the IDF power did not cause him total drunkenness.

Amir Peretz, you have heard many voices in Sderot recently, it behooves you to hear this voice too. I am approaching you because I do not have another address. Olmert¹s ears are blocked to the following message: Break this crazy ³Had Gadia² paradigm. Stop the liquidations policy. Cease this massive
bombardment. Do not lead us under the populist deception of ³more force and more force². It is not calming, it provokes panic. Everything was already tried ad nauseam. ³The butcher already slaughtered the bull and the fire did burn the stick that beat the dog that bit the cat that ate the lamb². Only the water did not yet extinguish the fire.

Propose a creative policy. Speak to them already!! Through overt channels or covert ones. Break the deceiving myth of ³There is nobody to talk to² with which we are being drugged time and time again by cynical politicians and their loyal spokespersons in the media. Listen to the voices of the
prisoners, the voices of the moderates, to Abu Mazen and to the voice of the Islamic Jihad who is ready to stop the fire if the liquidations will cease. Do not close any window of opportunity deliberately, and don¹t abolish any initiative in its infancy only in order to maintain a fossilized thought paradigm. Try at least, but honestly, without fear and preconditions, the political option. It is your moral duty!! If not, Hava Alberstein¹s binding
transcription to the ubiquitous Had Gadia song will exemplify our reality as I complete this article: ³Once again we start from the beginning².

A few hours after this article was sent to the editorial office, the Kerem Shalom incident triggered a tragic escalation and, at once, toppled the entire deck of cards. The abducted soldier, the shot boy. Dead and injured soldiers. Summer rains in Gaza. On the background of last week¹s events this article looks irrelevant and out of context. On a temporal dimension it is
possible that it is VERY relevant. One think is painfully certain in the midst of the oppressive uncertainty: Hava Alberstein¹s prophecy is now a reality and the Had Gadia is a continuing history.

Na¹amika Zion, Sderot.