The view on the current Israel-Hamas conflict, as seen from inside Israel
When Britain was bombed by the Germans in World War II, the Allied air forces went and bombed cities in Germany, essentially saying, “Stop your bombing or we’ll kill more civilians.”
When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1942, it led to the United States eventually dropping the most deadly bomb known to man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When Israel is attacked—for years—they sit and they wait. They pace and they plan. They ask their citizens to understand their dilemma, for they know that to stop the attacks from the Gaza Strip, from Lebanon, from the West Bank, would be international suicide.
What is the difference between Israel, Britain and the USA?
For years, Katusha rockets have been falling on the cities of Ashdod and Sederot, but still the government practices restraint. They tread lightly on soil that once was their own; they defend the land they have left; they plan for the day when enough is enough.
Today and yesterday, tomorrow and the next day, there will be meetings in secret rooms on how to lessen the civilian impact on innocent Gazians. They will plan how to safely conduct humanitarian aid within Gaza. They will try to save lives and mourn their casualties, and they will understand that whatever they do, they will be looked upon as oppressors of a people.
And in their heads, they will mourn for the people who do not understand, the ones who honestly believe in their heart of hearts that Israel came down too hard on the men and women who had—and still have—the ideologies that Israel and the Jewish state should be obliterated.
When the ground troops finally entered Gaza recently, they knew that lives were at stake, but they were not doing it for themselves; they were doing it to lessen the impact on innocent civilians. It had been decided that air strikes on Hamas compounds were causing too much destruction of civilians and their lifestyles; the tactics used by Hamas were too detrimental to those who had no involvement. So they went in—not in an effort to kill civilians, but in an effort to get rid of the men and women involved in deadly terrorist activities.
You are not innocent if you’re an old lady carrying guns and shooting at soldiers; you are not innocent if you let Hamas shoot rockets from your hospital; you are not innocent if you incite violence. So who are you, the international community, to decide what is right or wrong without all of the facts? Who are you to think that Israel is the oppressor?
As a young man living in Israel, I am shocked to see the amount of hatred directed towards a country that is merely trying to defend its people. Did you, the international community, say a word about the civilians whose lives are torn apart day after day by terrorism in Israel? Did you ever take a second to think of the reasons Israel was in Gaza in the first place, or did you just believe all the propaganda? Did you see the little girls crying on television and think, “Those Israelis are the scum of the Earth”? (Even though those little girls on television last week were hit by a faulty Hamas rockets?)
It amazes me to see how a population so devoted to enlightenment can still unleash such baseless hate. As a Jew, will I be subject to anti-Semitism when I get home? Will we really step back in time and let such ignorant taste and media rule our lives again?
When I walk in the Holy Land, I see beauty, true and pure. I see history and morals held in highest esteem. I touch the kotel (the western wall) and pray for peace in the world. I don’t see a country in the Middle East ravaged by war—I see a country united in a fight for their existence . . . and that is beauty.
Remember what Yitzhak Rabin said minutes before his assassination: “Peace is possible.” M
Freeman Lewin is a 17-year-old senior at Frances Kelsey Secondary School in Mill Bay. He is currently on a two-month intensive high-school program in a small city in Israel called Hod-Ha Sheron.
lastword@mondaymag.com
So, my mother thought, rightfully so, that it would interest me to read this article. Now, I usually try to be impartial in my criticism of any one asserting their opinion, and I am always interested into the insight of anyone who has an opinion that is different than mine… particularly if they are representative of the impressionable youth of tomorrow. This guy is a student at my mothers school, and if he knows just about as much as I did at the ripe old age of 17 I am pretty sure no amount of insight from me would penetrate his perspective of this conflict. I miss those days of fierce resolution, when the world is black and white, there are bad guys and good guys – ‘fighters for peace’, whatever that oxymoron means.
In his compassionate defense of Israeli actions, he states: They tread lightly on soil that once was their own; they defend the land they have left; they plan for the day when enough is enough.To be honest, in this statement he could have just as easily been talking about Palestine… it is the Palestinians who also laid claim to this land. What if all of a sudden everyone was told to leave Vancouver – it was going back to the oppressed population we all have benefited from who had it in the first place? Would people not say that the past is that past, and that an action such as this is unacceptable for those who have settled there afterwards… that it is not the current citizens fault the territory was taken years before?
As I have said before and I will say again, there is all kinds of grey here. These are the words from a boy who is in Israel, watching Israeli TV, and listening to the Israeli recollections of the context of this war. I am a Canadian as well, but living in an Arab state, looking at pictures from inside Gaza too painful to share, surrounded by those who had to leave or were forced out… leaving their families behind who were hostage in this war.
I know that ‘truth’ is in the eye of the beholder, and I fear that this sort of perspective, though it seems to come from an earnest place, is not reflective of the statement it is trying to promote. If the goal is representing Israel as democratic and the promoters of peace in amongst those war-torn middle eastern states, why are they perpetuating discrimination of 2 Arabic political parties in barring them from participation in their ‘democratic’ elections? Evidence of the Israeli oppression is not only in their assault on Gaza, but their actions at home. Their constant awareness of the ‘population problem’, their fear of Arabs taking over what is rightfully theirs through their religiously reflective policies, is all too real. So this is what democracy looks like… I see. I must have been confused before about what equality means.
For that matter, so must be the thousands of protesters in the streets all over the world… oh, and putting America on the resume of rightful retaliations in your adress to your fellow Canadians and the rest of the world? really? thats not going to win you many votes in the promotion of Israel as a peaceful, humanitarian state.
Just as strong as the Israeli conviction that the ‘Arab world is out to eliminate them’, so too is that feeling of focused ethnic discrimination for Gazans that the Jewish Zionists are all too willing to see them eliminated… many voices from the state seem to be questioning what price they will have to pay next to legitimize the wrath of Israel.
It is all shades of gray…. if a child is brought up in war and desperation, how can they ever know peace? Is it the child’s fault they are full of hate, or is it the fault of those who created the context of that marginalization and oppression? How can you even speak of fault in this case?
One thing I do know though: if they call their ridiculous restrictions on the aid coming to Gaza doing ‘everything they can to facilitate…’, I do beg to differ. I hope the stipulations are different now that the assault has ended. I packed aid for Gaza, and my friends pack aid almost every night in a warehouse on the outskirts of Amman. It takes us hours to get enough aid together to help a handful of families due to the ridiculous numerical and product restrictions the Israeli border officials have. I was told to repeatedly unpack and repack boxes because the Israelis had turned away a whole truckload of aid because of a subsituted a can of beans for a can of foul. I cried because no boxes had any tins of vegetables allowed on the list, even though Jordanians had donated a heaping pile of them.
I know I will never walk a mile in his shoes, and I’m sure my convictions would be influenced as well on the other side of this border. We are mere kilometers apart, both at home and here on the other side of the world. I only hope that this boy sees the truth in the truth he is living… More than 1,300 Gazans were killed in Israel’s three-week assault on Hamas; more than 5,000 wounded. Hundreds of private homes were destroyed. Israel lost 10 soldiers to combat, and three civilians died in rocket attacks from Gaza. In his eloquent discussion of the impact on Israeli safety and the impact on their livelihood due to the conditions preceding this conflict, I wish he would mention as well the role of Israel in cutting off the supplies to Gaza before the rockets were fired.
Negative perception is sometimes the creator of all enemies – the only way to combat this perpetuation of mistrust is through understanding. I think it noble of him to call out the international community for their misunderstanding of the issue, but who is he, with all due respect, to decide what is right or wrong without all of the facts? As a young woman living in Jordan, I am the one who is surprised to see such a one-sided mis-representation from my fellow countryman.
His fear of being targeted due to his religion, I find, is highly unfounded. Maybe he has not seen the pictures of his fellow Jewish members of the faith marching in the streets of new york claiming this assault has nothing to do with their religion? Are they the ones who are dishing up this expected anti-semitism he speaks of? Or worse, will he mis-understand every assault on his Israeli perspective of this conflict to be an attack on his faith, blinding him to enter into a dialogue with those who don’t agree with him?When he goes back to Canada will he feel the need to ‘enlighten’ all of his classmates on his perspective, marginalizing the ‘participant of terror’ in that back of the classroom whose only crime is having an Arabic family who immigrated to Canada?
In peoples fear of discrimination, inevitably they make dangerous generalizations of those they ‘fear’ most. Who is he to say that the entire international poulation thinks Israeli’s, or worse, Jews, are the ‘scum of the earth’? or that noone has entertained information from both sides of this conflict in a effort to enlighten themselves and those around them to perspectives like his and completely opposite of his? Fear is based on ignorance.
I think how deep this divide goes is something that is beyond both of us as Canadians, to be honest – living in Jordan and speaking with the people in this region who have lived their whole lives with these neighbours has made me hopeful and understanding.
Maybe we can all try and see that there is never an easy way to assign blame, even if every instinct of rationalization in your body screams that there must be a logical reason to all of this, that history is not doomed to repeat itself. Can we not learn from this conflict, and from the conflicts he mentioned before? With all of the innovations in the world is there still no way to quench societies thirst for an enemy? I hope he manages to learn this before he brings this dangerous hostility home.
Then, and only then, will peace be possible.
To be honest, there hasn’t been much going on in the past while anyways… work is still really great and I will be very sad to leave the wonderful people I was so lucky to share this time with, but outside of work it was a bit of the hum drum of winter. It didn’t help that every weekend was worse weather wise than the next – we had hail at one point, and terrible wind and rain.
