JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Dream on, Moshe

By Uriel Heilman · May 5, 2009

A former Israeli defense minister wishes Egypt and Jordan would absorb the Palestinians. Dream on, writes JTA Managing Editor Uriel Heilman.

5 Comments | Share This | Egypt, Gaza, Jordan, Moshe Arens, West Bank

Animated short on Gaza closure

By Uriel Heilman · March 5, 2009

The animator for “Waltz with Bashir” has a new animation about the closure of Gaza.

3 Comments | Share This | Gaza, Waltz With Bashir

That bittersweet feeling

By Uriel Heilman · January 23, 2009

It was almost inevitable that most Israelis would be left with a somewhat sour feeling at the end of the war in Gaza, write Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff in Ha’aretz.

3 Comments | Share This | Gaza, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Israeli Consulate to hold public press conference via Twitter

By Daniel Sieradski · December 29, 2008

The Consulate General of Israel in New York will be holding a public press conference about the war in Gaza via Twitter.

1 Comment | Share This | Gaza, Hamas, Israel, War

Film on Tom Hurndall recalls fatal shooting in Gaza, and the fallout

By Uriel Heilman · October 13, 2008

Britain’s Channel 4 has produced a new film about Tom Hurndall, the 21-year-old British activist who was shot in Gaza by an Israeli sniper in 2003. The film documents the efforts by Hurndall’s parents to have Tom’s death investigated and the soldier who shot him brought to justice.

In a preview by Kate Kellaway of the U.K. Guardian, father Anthony Hurndall talks about the pain of observing his own government’s silence about the death, and its lack of pressure on Israel for an investigation. Kellaway writes of Anthony Hurndall:

There is barely suppressed outrage in his voice as he remembers the British government’s failure to protest when Tom was shot: ‘The government viewed Israel as a close ally who they did not want to put out in any way.’

It was only when a Tel Aviv bar was bombed by two British Muslims three weeks after the shooting of Tom in 2003 that Anthony became aware of how skewed the British government’s attitude could be. ‘Jack Straw expressed deep sympathy to the Israelis and promised to put all the resources of the British government at their disposal. This was our government taking responsibility for two people who were not employees of the British government, merely two citizens of Britain who happened to be in Israel.’

But when their own British citizens (Tom, along with Iain Hook, a UN worker shot by an Israeli sniper in November 2002, and James Miller, a documentary-maker shot by an IDF patrol in May 2003) were attacked by Israeli soldiers, there was no outcry (no ministerial interest at all, beyond a standard request, from a junior level, for a proper inquiry). ‘They were shot not by people for whom the Israeli government had no responsibility but by their own soldiers. That, for me, was outrageous.’

5 Comments | Share This | Gaza, International, Israel

Where is Gilad Shalit?

By Uriel Heilman · September 15, 2008

For an extensive feature, the U.K. Times sends reporter Christine Toomey to the Gaza Strip in search of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Zahar says nobody from Hamas knows where Shalit is. Top Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef warns Toomey against asking too many questions about Shalit ("People get suspicious,” he says). Abu Khatab Doghmush, a clan leader, says the Kassam Brigades have Shalit and that he is treated well – a claim echoed by the spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees. The Kassam Brigades refuse to speak to Toomey.

The only thing Toomey seems certain of is that she’s getting the runaround. She writes:

To travel into the Gaza Strip is to enter into a heart of darkness in the Middle East. The pain and hatred of those I will meet there does little to inspire hope of a happy outcome to the hostage situation. The raw power-mongering of Palestinian politicians and the militant factions I encounter is matched by the cold calculations of Israel’s leaders, who have worked out the exact price they are prepared to pay to secure Shalit’s release. In the face of this cynical standoff, Shalit’s family is left in agonising limbo.

Read more.

3 Comments | Share This | Gaza, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

All the conflicts fit to print

By Uriel Heilman · September 8, 2008

The New York Times has had several noteworthy pieces on Islamists and Israeli-Arab affairs over the last few days:

• Michael Kimmelman penned a piece on tension in the Gaza Strip between Palestinians’ secular orientation and life under Hamas Islamist rule: ”Watching ‘Friends’ in Gaza: A Culture Clash.”
• The Ethicist, Randy Cohen, answers two readers’ question about the ethical implications of Jews falsely identifying themselves as Christians on visa applications to Arab countries that are hostile to Jews and/or Jewish practice.
• Benjamin Weiser reports on the Palestinian Authority’s effort to fight a $192.7 million judgment against it for a terrorist attack at a bat mitzvah in the northern Israeli city of Hadera in 2002 that left six people dead.
• Isabel Kershner reports that the window for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be closing.
  
• And, finally, from a bit farther afield, the Times’ Sunday Magazine has a distressing but important feature by Dexter Filkins on the complexities of fighting the Taliban on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The upshot: It doesn’t look good for U.S. efforts against the Taliban.

0 Comments | Share This | Afghanistan, Gaza, Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palestinians

Reflections of an American-Israeli-Palestinian Jew

By Uriel Heilman · September 4, 2008

The Israeli activist who went to Gaza by boat from Cyprus, flouting Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory, wrote an account of his arrest by Israeli authorities upon his return to the Jewish state.

The activist, Jeff Halper, says he was given honorary Palestinian citizenship in Gaza, making him probably the only American-Israeli-Palestinian Jew in the world (Halper is a native of Minnesota).

Here are some of Halper’s reflections:

To be honest, we Israeli Jews are the problem. The Palestinian years ago accepted our existence in the country as a people and are willing to accept ANY solution – two states, one state, no state, whatever. It is us who want exclusivity over the “Land of Israel” who cannot conceive of a single country, who cannot accept the national presence of Palestinians (we talk about “Arabs” in our country), and who have eliminated by our settlements even the possibility of the two-state solution in which we take 80% of the land. So it’s sad, truly sad, that our “enemies” want peace and co-existence (and tell me that in HEBREW) and we don’t…

When I was in Gaza everyone in Israel – including the media who interviewed me – warned me to be careful, to watch out for my life. Aren’t you scared? they asked. Well, the only time I felt genuine and palpable fear during the entire journey was when I got back to Israel. I went from Gaza through the Erez checkpoint because I wanted to make the point that the siege is not only by sea. On the Israeli side I was immediately arrested, charged with violating a military order prohibiting Israelis from being in Gaza and jailed at the Shikma prison in Ashkelon. In my cell that night, someone recognized from the news. All night I was physically threatened by right-wing Israelis – and I was sure I wouldn’t make it till the morning. Ironically, there were three Palestinians in my cell who kind of protected me, so the danger was from Israelis, not Palestinians, in Gaza as well as in Israel.

Your thoughts? Feel welcome to comment below.

26 Comments | Share This | Gaza, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palestinians