Belvoir lies just five kilometres as the crow flies north of Ein Harod. It is one of a chain of fortresses built by the Crusaders more than eight hundred years ago. Our wheat fields almost border with its moat. The same moat that Saladin's sappers burrowed under to undermine the fortress' eastern tower. Their defences breached the besieged knights of the order of St John defending Belvoir surrendered to Saladin.
The Saracen general admired the defenders’ brave stand. Magnanimous in victory he decided to free the fortress' full complement of knights and foot soldiers on condition that they swore never to fight him again. The defeated force accepted the terms of surrender and left for Sidon (now a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon.) Two years later they renounced their oath and joined forces of the Third Crusade preparing to attack Saladin.
Initially the Crusaders regained some lost territory; however they were dependant on reinforcements from Europe. So when enthusiasm for the holy wars waned they were forced to leave their last stronghold at Acre withdrawing to Cyprus and Rhodes.
The knights of the order of St John, the last defenders on Rhodes were eventually ousted by the Turks and left the island in 1522. After a brief stopover on Crete they settled in Malta where I met them last week. Not the knights of course but their legacy. Thanks to meticulous restoration of their magnificent fortifications, churches and towns they appear almost untouched by the ravages of time.
We met Salah soon after we arrived in Malta. He sold bus tour tickets opposite our hotel. The red jacket he wore identified him with the bus company he worked for. His swarthy complexion and accent indicated that he hailed from somewhere in the Maghreb. Later we learnt that he had left Libya before the uprising. We struck up an amicable acquaintance unaffected by the fact that he is a Libyan Muslim and we are Israeli Jews. Of course we knew that Salah wanted to sell us bus tours regardless of whether we were Jews or Arabs.
On the last day of our stay we met his friend Amin, an exile from Tunisia. Both tour salesmen regard Malta as a stepping stone to a better life in Europe. Perhaps one day they will return home.
Salah (his name means merciful) brought to mind his namesake Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūbi (Saladin) known to be both merciful and implacable, according to mood and circumstances.
Amin means trustworthy; however the immediate association his name made was to Haj- Amin al-Husseini, the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem.
Salah and Amin went out of the way to help us with transportation on our last day in Malta. They had nothing to gain and maybe lost a few sales while they were helping us.
The moral of this Maltese anecdote is don’t trust mental associations and resist the temptation to stereotype people.
On Friday night five members of the Fogel family, three of them three children were brutally murdered in their home in Itamar near Nablus. Palestinian Entity chairman Mahmoud Abbas mulled over the murder for five days before condemning it to the Palestinian public. An earlier terse condemnation extracted from him when he was interviewed by an Israeli news media correspondent failed to impress anyone.
Reflecting back to Wikileaks and the revelations that the negotiations between Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas almost led to an agreement, have tempted some observers to speculate about missed opportunities.
More hard-nosed analysts familiar with Abbas and his predecessor used a variety of similes including the old English proverb “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink,” to state that no Palestinian leader is capable of signing a peace accord with Israel. If so, they claim, why not put Abbas to the test? Thomas Friedman and others have repeatedly urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop making unnecessary demands of Abbas.
If at the end of the negotiations Abbas refuses to put pen to paper it will be difficult to blame Israel for the failure of the talks. If he signs he will receive a Nobel prize and maybe a bullet.
At present we appear to be the side raising obstacles, inveterately refusing to conclude a peace settlement. We have nothing to lose. I’m sure Netanyahu knows that, just the same he can't call Abbas' bluff. His right wing coalition partners and many in his own Likud party oppose the very concept of territorial compromise and the two-state solution. So he makes it difficult for Abbas to agree to sit at the negotiating table. The Obama administration's insistence on a building freeze in the occupied territories was counter productive.
Observers have shown that building has never really stopped. Admittedly too few homes are being built to satisfy the Jewish settlers and too many according to the Palestinians and the various "watch" organisations.
This week following the horrendous murder in Itamar the Israeli government announced it would build four hundred new homes in Judah and Samaria(The West Bank). At first an attempt was made to present the new construction as unrelated to the murder, but Netanyahu himself stated emphatically "They murder, we build."
Four hundred homes are too few to appease the right wing extremists and too many to quiet the Palestinians and our left-wing activists.
The timing of the announcement and the way it was done drew considerable criticism. The prime minister could have okayed the building quietly without a public announcement. It's quite likely that they would have been recorded as part of the ongoing "business as usual" construction project. The fact that the building units were earmarked for settlements that will probably remain a part of Israel in any future division of territory was played down. Apparently the political value of the four hundred units is the main consideration.
Last week the name Victoria brought to mind a long-dead queen and a town in Malta. This week the association is with a German cargo ship chartered by a French company flying a Liberian flag. The ship sailed from Lattakia in Syria to Mersin in Turkey, from where it set off bound for Alexandria. Some 200 miles from the Israeli coast at a point south-west of Cyprus the Victoria was waylaid by Israeli navy commandos. It was a quiet methodical boarding without resistance from the ship's crew. The Victoria and its cargo had been under surveillance by Israeli intelligence authorities. The boarding party was able to identify the specific containers loaded with six C-704 land-to-sea missiles, two launchers, computerized operating stations and two British-made coastal radars. The shipment also included 230 powerful 120mm mortar shells, which have a range of 10 kilometers; 2,260 smaller 60mm mortars, whose range is 2.5 kilometers; and 74,889 rounds of Kalashnikov rifle ammunition. Operating manuals printed in Farsi accompanied the munitions. Although the ship was heading for Alexandria it seems its real destination was El-Arish and the cargo was intended for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Some of the weapons cargo came from Iran but was loaded at Lattakia.
I doubt if we have ever been good at explaining ourselves and our actions to the world. Some people blame the world because it doesn’t want to hear what we have to say. Others point to our lack of expertise in the field of public relations. When the Victoria was brought to Ashdod port we had a golden opportunity to correct our bad PR record.
The problem was that too many ministers wanted to jump on the bandwagon.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and of course Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu set separate timetables for a press conference scheduled to be held on the wharf alongside the Victoria.
To their credit they managed to agree to open the show at noon. In addition to the press conference the cache of Iranian weapons was on display.
Like everyone else the large number of foreign news media reporters and photographers had to be checked by our GSS (General Security Service) personnel. The check was meticulous to the extreme on account of the presence of the prime minister and took a lot longer than anticipated. A large contingent of foreign reporters and photographers tired of waiting in the midday sun left without covering the event.
Military correspondent Yaakov Katz quoted one disgruntled journalist who said as he walked away “Israel shoots itself in the foot every time,”. “Now, at least, everyone will understand why the pictures of the weaponry aren’t going to be broadcast all over the world.” Another reporter remarked, “Next time keep Netanyahu away.”
Admittedly there is only one story this week – Japan. Everything else is relegated to small print on the inner pages.
Likewise the murder at Itamar barely raised a ripple of interest in the foreign press. Even when it was decided to release photographs of the slaughtered Fogel family to the foreign news media, little changed.
“For the pictures to really touch readers' hearts and shock them, we first need to share the whole story," explains Giulio Meotti a reporter with Italy's 'Il Foglio' newspaper. "But reports of the murder in Itamar were minimal. The Italian media emphasized the fact that this was a settler family with a hidden message that the murder was permissible."
"In order to publish tough images you really need to be a brave editor," says Meotti, who made it clear that no one in Italy would have the guts to disrupt an Italian family's dinner with those kinds of pictures. The Italian media, much like its international counterparts, suffers from prejudice against Israel. A good picture is a dusty teddy bear placed by Hezbollah at the scene of sites bombed by Israel. The photos from Itamar just interfere with the story the European media is trying to tell."
Another story is Purim, the Feast of Esther, celebrated this week.
We had a preview last week in Malta. Our stay there coincided with their local carnival. Apart from the main parade the secondary events were remarkably like our Purim. Children everywhere wore fancy dress costumes. I have included one scene here.
Every year someone questions the historical context of Purim. Neither . Esther, Mordechai nor anyone else (excepting Xerxes) mentioned in the Purim narrative has been found in the recorded history of the Persians and the Medes . There is a tomb in Iran claimed to be the resting place of Mordechai and Esther. Until recently the tomb was revered by Muslims too. Now there are reports that the Iranians want to demolish it.
With or without historical confirmation we will be celebrating Purim this year too.
Chag Sameach
Beni 17th of March, 2011.
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