Alice

Alice, her last name escapes me, was a middle-aged widow who supplemented her pension by renting out her spare back bedroom.

Roni and I had been directed to her cosy suburban home by the local tourist information office. We had just arrived in Sidney, Vancouver Island and were looking for a place to stay for a few days.

We were her first Israeli guests, so Alice though curious, phrased her questions cautiously.

After serving us breakfast on the three mornings we stayed with her Alice liked to "pull up a chair" and ask about the kibbutz, Israel and the troubled Middle East.

Obliged to satisfy her curiosity and duty-bound to explain the Israeli case we usually ended up behind schedule with our daily tour itinerary. That was five years ago when we were visiting our family in Canada and had embellished our visit with a tour westward. I hope Alice is well, still renting out that back bedroom and recalls our efforts to win her over.

I doubt if I possess special advocacy skills or have a unique aptitude to present Israel's case. Just the same, by dint of past experience I believe I know how difficult it is to explain ourselves. Admittedly Alice was friendly and receptive so her "conversion" hardly counts. In the past I have encountered less sympathetic, at times brusque even antagonistic responses to my efforts to present Israel's point of view.

In 1974 I spent more than two years in Melbourne as a youth movement emissary (shaliach). During that time I was asked by the Australian Zionist Federation to help with P.R work. In those days the Hebrew word Hasbarah

was not in vogue, propaganda had a negative ring to it, so P.R was the innocuous default term used. At least once a week, sometimes more I was called on to explain Israel's case. Talking to a Rotary Club meeting or addressing a branch of one of the local social organisations was usually chummy and uneventful.

If the members hadn't consumed too much beer my concise after dinner presentation was well received.

However addressing student groups and local branches of the Australian Labour party was more hazardous. When I first encountered the “roving hecklers” it was disorientating. The standard Israeli government guidelines for public speakers were inadequate. Soon I formulated my own guidelines drawn from personal experience. They proved to be more effective. However actions speak louder than words and no matter how hard we try some of the things we do are difficult to explain.

Later on when I worked at the Kibbutz Seminar Centre at Efal and with foreign volunteers in my kibbutz I acquired an awareness of their perception of Israel and the Palestinians. In many cases this perception is incomplete; at times naïve and in extreme instances it is distorted.

Today kibbutz volunteers are a small insignificant “curiosity.”

In the heyday of kibbutz “volunteering” more than half a million foreign volunteers, most of them non-Jews came to see Israel through the kibbutz volunteers programme.

From feedbacks we conducted when I worked at Efal it appears that their overall experience was positive. In effect they became our ambassadors of goodwill

In his article “The Hasbara Challenge” which appeared in Yediot Ahronot this week Israeli psychologist Irwin J. Mansdorf claims that countering anti-Israel propaganda can’t be handled effectively by volunteers. He was referring to a government sponsored campaign to enlist the help of rank and file citizens to present “our point of view.” Mansdorf who specialises in analysing the political psychology of the Israel-Arab conflict says.

“Part of the reason that Israel’s image is hard to counter is because the problems are real and the dilemmas faced are complex and multi-layered. It is naïve at best to expect the country’s teachers, dentists and bus drivers to succeed where seasoned, educated professionals have not.”

In a recent T.V panel discussion on “Hasbara” one of the speakers described our problem with the Swedes as, “a love-hate relationship. We love the Swedes and they love the Arabs.” “That’s not so,” said a friend and fellow worker (he was born in Sweden,) “the Swedes love the underdog.”

Israel has the most powerful military machine in the region. If need be it can deliver devastating blows. We are no longer the underdog we were in 1948 or before June 1967. Some regard us as the neighbourhood bully. The preemptive military actions we consider to be necessary are perceived by foreign onlookers as aggression. They fail to appreciate our existential need to strike at our enemies before they attack us.

Mansdorf's article was published at the end of " Israeli Apartheid Week " conducted on campuses and other places all over the world.

This is not a metamorphosis of older worn out Israel bashing events. It was the sixth consecutive International Israeli Apartheid Week which lasted for two weeks. The organisers describe it as, "one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar."

Palestinian American journalist Ali Abunimah hints at the organisation's goal in IAW's website,

"But as in other apartheid systems (South Africa and Northern Ireland), attempts at partition or repartition are likely only to change the parameters of the conflict rather than resolve its underlying causes. A comprehensive approach to ending apartheid in Palestine/Israel must therefore guarantee equal rights to all the people of the country, make restitution for past and present injustices, and provide constitutional guarantees that no group will ever again be victimized because of its ethno-religious identity." Unless I have misread him their goal is a one state solution.

While the uproar of the Ramat Shlomo housing project, which is not in East Jerusalem but closer to Shuafat (thank you Bryna for correcting me) has strained our relations with the Obama Administration another flare-up has made the headlines. Two weeks ago The Economist blamed both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for “fanning the flames.”

The paper was referring to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announcement that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem would be listed among some 150 national heritage sites that his government proposes to refurbish. The two tombs weren’t included in the original list of heritage sites and were added when the Shas party leaders insisted on their inclusion. Ostensibly renovations are in order and preserving national heritage sites is a worthy project. The problem is that the word refurbishing whether it is written in English, Hebrew or Arabic can be construed as a move to de-Islamise the sites in question.

“Mahmoud Abbas put his oar in by accusing Mr Netanyahu of inciting “religious war”. This statement was seen by youngsters on the West Bank—as he must have known it would—as a signal to take to the streets. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Gaza-based prime minister, called on West Bankers to rise up in a new intifada."

In this volatile region events have a mind of their own. On Monday at the height of the clashes between the police and the Palestinian riffraff (the best term I could find) another very important event took place. The long overdue dedication ceremony for the Hurva Synagogue, located in the middle of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, took place. I stress without any hesitation that the ceremony should not have been postponed.

This ancient synagogue twice destroyed has risen again from the rubble.

Among the baseless rumours circulating in the West Bank and Gaza, many of them generated by the Palestinians, is the obstinate claim that Israel plans to rebuild the Third Temple.

New York Times correspondent Isabel Kershner commenting on the dedication ceremony said, - “Because of the topography, seen from certain points around the city, it rises above the Islamic shrines of the compound revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, and by Jews as the Temple Mount, including the Al Aksa Mosque.

In Damascus, Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, said the synagogue’s dedication signified “the destruction of the Al Aksa Mosque and the building of the temple,” according to Agence France-Presse.

The State Department said the United States was ‘deeply disturbed by statements made by several Palestinian officials mischaracterizing the event in question,’ which could heighten tensions. ‘“We call upon Palestinian officials to put an end to such incitement,’ said P. J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman. “

Today The Economist opened “A reader debate on Israel and America,” and continued with a lead article asking “Where did all the love go?” eulogising the special U.S – Israel love affair. The author offers several explanations.

“One school of thought holds that Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton escalated their reaction to the Biden insult in order to make Mr Netanyahu abandon his rightist allies and tread the American path to peace; some say the president was waiting for a chance to destabilise him to force his replacement by someone more emollient. A rival theory is that there is no plan: Ramat Shlomo simply ignited the rage that has smouldered in Mr Obama’s breast since Mr Netanyahu refused his call last year for a total freeze on settlements, forcing Mr Mitchell to waste nearly a year niggling for a temporary compromise.

Aaron David Miller, a veteran State Department negotiator now at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, is one of those who suspect the administration has been driven more by anger than calculation and that its war of words could misfire. “If the president backs down, round two also goes to Netanyahu,” he says. “The administration has created a problem for itself and I’m not sure how they climb down unless Bibi himself helps them.” But patching over the underlying tensions will be hard.”

Particularly worrying is the paper’s reference to General David Petraeus, “Who in a testimony to a Senate committee this week said the unsolved conflict in Palestine was fomenting anti-Americanism in the wider region. An obvious point, perhaps; but yet another reason why the love is draining out of a special relationship.”

Israeli observers claim this is a gross exaggeration and the current difference of opinion will blow over.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 18^th of March, 2010.

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