At rally to free Israeli soldiers, speakers take aim at U.N.

Justin Sulsky,
JTA, 7-17-07


Many young people from several overnight summer camps, including these URJ Campers, added enthusiasm at the rally to free the kidnaped Israeli soldiers Monday July 16, 2007 near the United Nations.

NEW YORK (JTA) – Thousands of demonstrators showed up for a rally organized by Jewish organizations to call for the release of three Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hamas and Hezbollah last summer.

But instead of focusing their outrage exclusively at the two Islamic militant movements, speakers at Monday's event lashed out at the United Nations and other international organizations for not doing enough to aid the soldiers.

"We're standing here next to the U.N.," Karnit Goldwasser, the wife of one of the kidnapped soldiers, told the crowd at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. "What have they accomplished? Nothing. Where's the Red Cross and Palestinian leaders?"

Hezbollah militants abducted Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26, on July 12, 2006, precipitating last summer's 34-day war in Lebanon. Their abduction came just weeks after Hamas grabbed Gilad Shalit, 20, in a raid on Israeli soil.

The energized crowd, which consisted of many campers from Reform, Conservative and Orthodox camps in the region, chanted "Free Them Now" several times. Several Jewish organizational leaders and politicians called on the crowd to chant loud enough that U.N. workers could hear their requests for help from the world body.

The focus on the United Nations comes as Jewish organizations are writing off its Human Rights Commission as hopelessly anti-Israel, while also holding out hope that the world body's new secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, will stake out a more balanced position on Middle East issues. On Monday, several speakers stressed their dissatisfaction with the United Nations.

Michael Miller, executive vice president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, said the United Nations deserved all of the condemnation it received at the rally because it was not exercising its diplomatic influence to free the soldiers.

"We’re thankful that the new secretary-general is aware of the matter," Miller told JTA the day after the rally. "But we know for certain that more can be done and more needs to be done, so we can celebrate their return back home rather than mark their continued captivity."

One speaker at the event, New York City mayoral hopeful U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, drew applause as he called the United Nations "feckless." Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel also denounced the U.N. for not doing enough to release the soldiers.

"Why is the U.N. Commission on Human Rights silent?" Wiesel declared.

The lineup of speakers included several local New York politicians and five members of the House of Representatives. Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), an African American representing parts of Queens, received an ovation when he told the crowd it was important for blacks to show solidarity with the unjust capture of the Israeli men just as Jews historically have contributed so much to the civil rights movement.

"Sometimes voices are silent," Meeks said, "and when voices are silent bad things happen."

Representatives from the Korean, Latino, Turkish and Catholic communities also received warm greetings.

Most speakers failed to offer specific plans to bring about the return of the soldiers, but had harsh words for their captors and their ideology.

"There is more than one inconvenient truth," said Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.). "In addition to global warming, there is Islamic terrorism. We need to wake up and acknowledge this. And we need to bring these men home."

At the end of the rally Gabrielle Flaum, a 16-year-old activist, presented a petition demanding action from the United Nations. The petition, signed by 40,000, is to be sent to the U.N. secretary-general, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Flaum, who came with the contingent from the Reform movement's Eisner Camp, is the founder of SOS: Save Our Soldiers, an organization that advocates for the release of the abducted soldiers by collecting petition signatures and lobbying political leaders.

"People are not going to stop fighting," Flaum, of New Jersey, told JTA after the rally.

Flaum said she was motivated to create SOS after seeing the hardship of war firsthand while on a Reform youth group trip to Israel last summer.

"One counselor told us his best friend had been killed, and another had to leave us to serve in the reserves," she said. "I came home with an incredible image and I couldn't let them go unnoticed. I had to make a difference."

Bad Moon Rising As the month of Av begins, a rally for captured Israeli soldiers inspires Jews of all ages

Jonathan Mark - Associate Editor
New York Jewish Week, 7-20-2007



The Jewish summer is haunted and insiders know it. The 21 days of the Hebrew calendar, falling this year between July 3 and July 24, contain the looping anniversaries of misjudgment, from the Golden Calf and the breaking of the Ten Commandments to the Nazi liquidation of the Kovno Ghetto; from Babylonians and later Romans destroying Jerusalem, to the twin burnings of the Temple, to the triple kidnappings of Israeli soldiers in the summer of '06.

The new moon of Av is a bad moon rising. Lock the barn and don't scare the horses. These are the days when children, despite the heat, are kept out of swimming pools; men stop shaving, cheeks go prickly, eyes seem bleary; travelers are advised against traveling; musical instruments are unplayed, lovers don't marry, meat is uneaten and wine unsipped (except on Shabbat). Sages link the Zodiac sign, the lion, to a verse in Lamentations, "He is a lurking bear, a lion in hiding." Wild animals wait in ambush.

If Passover's rituals evoke liberation, the Jewish midsummer evokes irritation, siege, abandonment by God, man, weather and luck.

On the first day of Av, July 16, at the rally across the street from the United Nations to demand the soldier’s release, there were those in the crowd of 3,000 who shrugged and said the soldiers - Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev — were probably dead. Other rumors had them alive, alone in a private Auschwitz.

Speakers on both podium and sidewalk spoke of them as "kidnapped," helpless as the Lindbergh baby, as if Shalit, Goldwasser and Regev weren’t captured right out of their military units while fully armed and on duty. But if the Six-Day War made messiahs out of Israel’s military men, failure infantilizes. Or maybe, the grace of Jewish unity allows us to imagine these boys as our own, loved simply for being ours as an infant is loved for the most primal reasons, for being our blood, if only spiritually, from the very dawn of their lives.

"When I hear the names of these soldiers in shul," when their names are read aloud with their mothers’ names in the traditional phrasing for a Jew needing mercy, "I hear these very names, (Ehud, son of) Malka, (Eldad, son of) Tova, (Gilad, son of) Aviva, such traditional, iconic motherly names," said Sarah, a West Side mother.

"And the names of the sons, Gilad, Ehud, Eldad, such Israeli names," said Sarah's friend, a woman sleeveless in the heat, who asked that we not use her own Jewish name.

"We were young when Israel was young," said Sarah's friend. "Back then, the soldiers were our age. We looked at them in awe. Now we’re the age of these soldiers' parents, and we have children as old as these soldiers. No matter which way you look at it, our hearts are with them, with their parents and their wives, and their siblings."

We look at the soldiers and say, "I know that guy." A delegation from Conservative Judaism’s United Synagogue held a placard that said, "Gilad Shalit: bar mitzvah at Masorti Kehilla Kfar Vradim."

There were hundreds of young people - campers bussed in for several hours from the Berkshires, the Poconos, the Catskills - more than a few of whom wanted to not only move to Israel but to risk their lives for her. Who among them was bar mitzvahed and would be someday be lost behind enemy lines?

Teenagers came from the Conservative movement's Camp Ramah, the Reform movement's Camp Kutz and Camp Harlam and from the Orthodox Camp Moshava, along with several others. They rode on busses for as much as a six-hour round trip to a rally in Manhattan because that is what Jews do when another Jew is in trouble.

Jesse Gruber, 14, a Moshava camper, said, "I don't even know if they're still alive." But he didn’t mind giving up a day of camp for this “because this is what it’s all about, caring for the Jewish people.”

Irwin Kula, the president of CLAL - The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, wearing a T-shirt in the noon heat, said, "The story here is the young people. We always worry about young people. We're obsessed with continuity. What this rally proves, whether you're on the right or the left, is be real, be genuine about the issue. Don't obsess about continuity; just put out what you deep down and genuinely believe, what you are passionate about, and your passion, your genuineness will generate connection. This is a midday Monday, middle of summer, no one is around, and meanwhile these kids are proud to be here, even if they had to ride for hours, because this is genuine. This isn't some program about Jewish identity; this is real 'Jewing.' This is what Jews do."

Jews came by chartered busses from distant cities, and they came by subway and public bus from the boroughs. "More people came to this rally by public transportation than we usually see," observed David Pollock, associate executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, one of the rally organizers, along with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, United Jewish Communities, UJA-Federation, the American Zionist Movement, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. David Sable, a lay leader at UJA-Federation, planned, at the rally's end, to go across the street to the secretary general’s office, or as far as he could get, with "110,000 signatures on a petition," said Sable. Many of the signatures were gathered at Freethesoldiers.org, a Web site dedicated to news and activity regarding the captives.

The crowd applauded Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel when he said, "Those who kidnapped [the soldiers] are cowards and criminals ... What they are doing is an insult not only to Jews but to all civilized people ... In choosing kidnapping, Hezbollah and Hamas have excluded themselves from the code of the family of nations, and they deserve universal disdain, condemnation and punishment."

If Hamas ought be punished, few in the crowd knew quite how. Israel has decided to send Hamas fuel, food and electricity, for humanitarian reasons, without demanding Shalit's release.

Ehud Goldwasser’s mother Malka told the rally, the conditions of her son’s captivity "is a humanitarian issue," too. "As a mother," not to be given any "sign of life, it is misery."

And next week, on the last haunted night of the 21 days, in Jewish camps across the distant hills and hollows, the young ones will march in the dark with flashlights and torches to mountain lakes, as if the waters of Babylon, to read Lamentations as they sit cross-legged in the grass. They'll listen to voices, coming through the crickets and shadows: "Her children have gone into captivity...."

It must have been hell for their mothers, too.

Eldad and Ehud said to be alive

There are some official signs that both Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26, are still alive. This new information comes just after the first anniversary of this abduction (July 12, 2006). JTA posted this story yesterday (7-15-07):

Israel received an indirect assurance that its two soldiers held by Hezbollah are alive.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose country hosted representatives from the Lebanese militia last week, indicated Sunday that the condition of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser had been discussed.

"It is my understanding that the two soldiers are alive," Kouchner told reporters. "I raised the subject with the Hezbollah representatives. They told me that the talks on a prisoner swap are in an advanced stage."

Israel has said that the two army reservists were likely wounded when they were abducted by Hezbollah guerrillas in a July 12, 2006 border raid. Hezbollah, which has demanded that Israel released hundreds of Arab prisoners in exchange for the hostages, has refused to give details on their state of health.

One Year Anniversary

365 days after being kidnapped there was an official sign that Gilad Shalit is alive, I posted the video here yesterday, but here it is translated in English from the BBC:

"I, the soldier Gilad, son of Noam Shalit, held by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

Mother and father, my sister and my brother, my friends in the Israel Defence Forces: I send you from jail regards and my longing for all of you.

An entire year has passed with me in jail and still my health condition is deteriorating and I need extensive hospitalisation.

I am sorry for the lack of interest by the Israeli government and the army in my case and in the demands of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

It is clear that they must accede to these demands in order that I may be released from jail.

Especially as I was involved in a military operation under orders and I was not a drugs dealer.

Just as I have parents, a mother and a father, the thousands of Palestinian detainees also have mothers and fathers who must have their sons returned.

I have great faith in my government that it will take more of an interest in me and will answer the demands of the mujahideen.

Cpl Gilad Shalit"

Also take a look an an interesting post from Jewlicious on the video



Israeli boys take part in a demonstration outside the Knesset in Jerusalem marking a year since Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Hamas.

Shalit speaks on video

JTA, 6-25-07

The kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was seen speaking on a video released by Hamas.

"I have been in prison for an entire year and my health is deteriorating. I need lengthy hospitalization," Shalit says in Hebrew on the video, which was released Monday.

The recording is the first sign of life from Shalit since a handwritten note was delivered to his parents nine months ago. Shalit's father confirmed that the voice was that of his son.

Abu Mujahid, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, a Hamas-linked group, said Shalit is “alive and in very good shape.”

“His health is good and he's stable. We are treating him according to our religion's instructions on how to deal with war prisoners," Mujahid said, according to reports. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which emphasizes Palestinian rights, called for Shalit’s immediate release.




YouTube

Sderot is us

Ari Shavit, Haaretz, 5-28-07

Every night, Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal tours his city, checking the number of houses with lights on. Last week the number of lights dropped each evening. On the eve of Shavuot it reached a nadir. Whole apartment blocks stood empty. On the street where Moyal himself lives only a few residents remained. At its height, Sderot had a population of 24,000, the exhausted mayor says. In recent years, when the Qassam attacks mounted, the number fell to about 20,000. But now, with the refugees whom Hamas chased out being scattered throughout the country, no more than 10,000 people remain in the city. And suddenly the feeling is that perhaps it has really happened: Perhaps Sderot has been broken.

But Sderot has still not been broken. If the rocket attacks cease, most people will return. Without security, without hope, without happiness - a depressing return to no-choice. So the basic fact remains: Sderot 2007 is a city that seems cursed. A frontier city with no home front. A frontier city with no aura of heroism. A frontier city that the government should protect, but isn't protecting. A frontier city that the nation should be standing behind, but is not. A frontier city abandoned by the center of the country.

It should not have been like this. Sderot is not Gush Katif. There is no debate. On the contrary: Sderot is a "Green Line" city. Sderot is a post-withdrawal city. Sderot is the righteous Israeli city after the occupation. Sderot is the future. Indeed, it is the litmus test that will teach us in real time what we can expect in the future when we withdraw completely. This being the case, Sderot should have been the apple of the eye of all those preaching withdrawal in the past, and of everyone who still believes in withdrawal. Sderot should have been the city of peace writers and peace singers and peace industrialists. A "peace now" city. A city of Israeli solidarity. A city of mutual responsibility. A city where strong Israelis stand together with Israelis who are less strong in the face of Islamic zealotry.

All this is not happening. Bank Hapoalim is funding the new emergency center there. But the large sum needed to renovate the city's shelters was raised by American evangelical Christians. The major community work in the city is being done by Hanan Porat. Yitzhak Mordechai is working in Sderot, and Arcadi Gaydamak is amusing himself there in the absence of the center of the country. Enlightened, satiated Israel is not standing with all its strength behind Sderot.

The attack on Sderot is a strategic attack on peace. It is an attack on the two-state solution. If the attack succeeds, there will be no chance of any future withdrawal. If the attack succeeds, the occupation will be perpetuated. Therefore, before the great political decision is made on how to act in Gaza, a moral decision has to be made about Sderot. Sderot must become the national project of the current period. Its residents cannot be expected to confront the Qassams alone. In the face of buses removing people from the city, buses of supporters must set out for it. In the face of the economic collapse of Sderot should come an unprecedented economic embrace of it by government and nongovernment bodies alike.

At the same time, it should be made clear that there is one law for Sderot and Tzahala: A Qassam on Sderot is like a Qassam on Kikar Hamedina. The insensitivity has got to stop. Sderot has to be defined as the Israeli front line. The struggle for the city should be viewed as both a struggle for Israeli sovereignty and as a symbol of the responsibility of Israelis for each other.

Sderot is us, all of us. We rise and fall with Sderot.

Israelis take stock of their middle-aged state

By Gil Troy, Canadian Jewish News, May 25, 2007

Like vigorous baby boomers who wonder whether their current good health or inevitable decline is the more defining reality, Israelis celebrated their country’s 59th anniversary uncertain about the state of their state.

From the outside, Iranians’ and Palestinians’ genocidal threats – reinforced by a relentless assault on Israel’s politics, history and ideology – makes the Jewish national project appear precarious. From within, post-Lebanon-war recriminations, political corruption, ideological drift, and social tensions intensify the pessimism.

Yet, this supposedly dysfunctional society is remarkably functional. Palestinian terrorism has been reduced, with the improved security restoring Israel’s characteristically vibrant normalcy. The stock market is booming as Israelis continue their friendly competition with Americans for the title of world’s most charitable citizens, based on donations per capita. Even the summertime war produced a bomb-shelter-induced baby boom this spring. Never underestimate a country whose citizens can transform being bombed into making babies.

The magic numbers four billion, 3,186,739, 257,000, 9.2 and 2.7 quantify Israel’s everyday miracles.

• Billionaire Warren Buffett spent $4 billion buying Iscar, part of foreigners’ $23.7 billion investment in Israel’s economy, which grew 4.5 per cent in 2006.

• In a country of seven million people, 3,186,739 Israelis voted in the 2006 election, the Middle East’s 17th free election, uniquely involving Muslims, Christian and Jews.

• Israel’s marvellous universities teach 257,000 students cutting-edge and traditional skills.

• The percentage of the Israeli economy devoted to the non-profit sector – 9.2 per cent, ranking the county fourth worldwide – illustrates Israelis’ exceptional commitment to charity, volunteering, and tikkun olam, fixing the world.

• Finally, the Israeli Jewish birthrate of 2.7 children per woman represents the highest rate among developed countries. More than 100,000 new babies last year joined a future-oriented, family-friendly, community-building, values-rich society.

Still, the country faces serious problems, many of which are Israel’s version of broader western dilemmas. While Israel’s quest for peace with its hostile neighbours is unique, the underlying dilemma is familiar to post-9/11 westerners. Many Israelis have lost faith in diplomacy. The failure of the Oslo peace process to yield peace despite major Israeli concessions, along with the exterminationist culture feeding Islamist terrorism, has made many peaceniks skeptics. Diplomacy requires certain common rules and limits. Just as Cold War liberals wondered whether it was possible to negotiate with Communists, most Israelis and westerners doubt diplomacy can work with jihadists.

While Israel’s neighbours need to restore Israeli faith in diplomacy, Israel’s leaders need to re-establish their people’s trust. The scale of corruption is outrageous. Israelis wonder whether their leaders are a particularly bad bunch, whether society is experiencing a deeper values crisis, or whether the investigative scrutiny magnifies misdeeds into major crimes. Amid the modern media magnifying glass, Israel desperately needs worthy successors to David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin, founding fathers of the country who despised each other ideologically while both leading simple, modest lives.

Whatever explanation people offer for the corruption contagion, Israel’s material success has triggered a broader cultural crisis that all westerners will recognize. The new generation of Israelis – especially the secular majority – tends to be wealthier, more individualistic, more self-confident and more selfish than the founders’ generation of only decades ago.

Modern Israelis, like so many of us, are the children of modern consumerism, with television-compressed attention spans and iPod-induced self-involvement that’s balanced out by computer-fed creativity and connectivity. Israelis have to develop a communal ethos that cultivates modern individualism and ingenuity without abandoning a sense of national mission and idealism.

For a people battered recently and historically, the ability to be normal is quite exceptional. Living well truly is the best revenge, a repudiation of Nazi exterminationism as well as Palestinian terrorism. Israelis do and should delight in sharing their modern dilemmas with fellow westerners. At the same time, this celebration of normalcy and the powerful realities of daily living should not eclipse the special dimensions of Israeli life or the country’s unique challenges, even though they appear to Israelis living through them as quite normal, or at least familiar.

The Zionist revolution built on Jews’ exceptional history and sense of togetherness while promoting a vision of national normalcy. Modern Israel dances on the head of a similar pin, hoping, like the traditional fiddler on the roof, not just to keep balance but to live a life filled with meaning and joy.