A photo I took on the Gaza-Israel border last summer. An Israeli farm is in the foreground; behind it is the border wall; and beyond the wall is Gaza.

A few days ago, a friend of mine who lives in Gaza called me to chat. We last met in late 2005, shortly before Gaza was closed to Israeli citizens – even to journalists who hold foreign passports. After Erez was closed my friend, who used to work as a reporter for a Palestinian media outlet that paid him a near-pittance, leveraged his fluent Hebrew and excellent professional reputation to get a job reporting from Gaza for an Israeli media outlet. He was one of the first reporters on the scene when the Rafah border fence was blown up. “I have to admit I was happy,” he said. “I walked into Egypt just so I could breathe a little. I didn’t even buy anything. I just wanted to feel free.” You can traverse Gaza at its longest point in about an hour, and he hadn’t been able to leave in more than two years.

My friend and I don’t even bother ending our conversations with jokes about getting together soon. They’re not funny anymore.

Today’s Haaretz has an article about two men, one from Gaza and one from Sderot, who met and became friends about 18 months ago, when it was still possible for Gazans to obtain permission to visit Israel. Now they maintain their relationship via an extraordinary blog called Life Must Go On in Sderot and Gaza.

The men are unwilling to reveal their identities (read the article to find out why), so each has adopted a blogger name. Peace Man is a 30 year-old bachelor schoolteacher from a Gaza refugee camp; and Hope Man is a 40 year-old married man who lives in Sderot and works in high-tech. In alternating posts, they describe their experiences in simple, personal prose that leaves the stereotypes in the dust.

Peace Man is not an Angry Young Militant, or a Desperate Impoverished Farmer Whose Crops Are Stuck at the Checkpoint.

And Hope Man is not an Inarticulate Unemployed Resident of Sderot Who Wants the Army to Invade Gaza.

In their own words:

This blog is written by 2 friends. One lives in Sajaia refugee camp in Gaza and the other lives in Sderot, a small town near Gaza on the Israeli side. There is ongoing violence between Israel and Gaza which has intensified greatly since October 2000. Many have been killed and many have been injured. The media coverage on both sides has been extremely biased. Our Blog is written by 2 real people living and communicating on both sides of the border.

I’m absolutely delighted to see that Haaretz is finally giving intelligent coverage to the local blogosphere – especially after its abysmal coverage of blogging during the Second Lebanon War – and hope that this article is just the first of many to come.

I hope, too, that Peace Man and Hope Man succeed just a little in undermining the cliches, preconceptions, fears and stereotypes that dominate the coverage of Gaza and Sderot these days. And that soon they will be able to resume their face-to-face meetings.

The following article is my translation of a piece that was published last month on Nana, one of Israel’s biggest news and entertainment portals. The original in Hebrew is here.

UPDATE: In answer to the questions I received by email over the past few hours, the background to this article is as follows: Ido contacted me a few weeks ago, shortly after the item about the Netvision conference was published in the Iranian newspaper Khedmat. Since we have mutual friends, Ido knew about my connection with Iranian bloggers. After he’d interviewed me about the subject, Ido asked me if I could recommend a prominent Iranian blogger who would be a good source of information for his article. I recommended Arash, with whom I’ve been in contact for more than two years. I respect Arash for his honesty, his fairness and his intelligence. They both cc’d me on their correspondence, so I simply copied and pasted Arash’s original answers, as he wrote them to Ido in English, into my translation, rather than re-translating  from the Hebrew and editing them.

Finally, a bit of a mea culpa: I promised Ido and Arash that I’d translate the article nearly one month ago, but got bogged down in work obligations and didn’t have time until late last night.   Guys, thank you for your patience.

And now, the article…

 ***************

THE IRANIAN CONNECTION

Are the deepening connections between the Israeli and Iranian blogospheres the way to peace?

By Ido Hartogsohn / Nana

16 January 2008

On 25 December 2007, at the University of Tel Aviv, the Netvision Institute held its third conference on the struggle to maintain freedom of information on the Internet. The main topic was Iran: the attitude toward the Internet in Iran, Iranian hackers and also our Persian neighbour’s rapidly expanding blogosphere.

The conference did not go unnoticed in Iran. Five days later, on December 30, the Iranian news site Khedmat, which is considered close to former president Khatami, published an item under the headline, “Zionists Express Interest in the Subject of the Internet in Iran.”

“‘The Internet in Iran and its various facets’ was the subject of a conference that took place at Tel Aviv University in Occupied Palestine,” reported Khedmat. “The conference participants discussed the role of the Internet in contemporary society, and Internet struggles. Iranian blogs, rap music and the role of the Internet in creating other types of music that imitate Western culture were amongst the subjects that interested the Zionists.”

The article further reported that a committee of “Zionist experts” criticized Iran’s limited access to some internet sites.

Israel is a concept that does not exist

The Israeli media has been paying attention to the lively Iranian blogosphere for several years now. Amongst other things, the visit to Israel of Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan (Hebrew link) was mentioned in several international media outlets. From the perspective of the Israeli reader, Iranian bloggers are a comforting alternative source of information about another Iran – one that is friendlier and less aggressive to Israel. Over the years, articles about the Iranian blogosphere portrayed it as a different voice from a society that was usually shown in the Israeli media as closed and extremist.

Recently, the Iranian blogosphere has been the subject of academic studies in Israel. In the talk she gave at the Netvision conference, for example, Dr. Liora Handelman-Bavor said that, eight years after the launch of the first Persian language blog, “The [Iranian] regime’s attempts to suppress the blogosphere have largely failed.” Dr. Handelman-Bavor claimed that the Iranian blogosphere was intimately connected with alternative culture, the graffiti phenomenon and street art.

And now, based on the item in Khedmat, it seems that the Iranian media is aware of Israel’s interest in the Persian blogosphere.

But according to Arash Kamangir, an Iranian blogger who lives in Canada, few Iranian bloggers are aware of the interest they have aroused in Israel. “You probably know that the term ‘Israel’ does not exist in the official language of the regime of Iran. Even in my passport I am banned from traveling to ‘Occupied Palestine,’” he wrote in response to the questions I sent by email. “The average Iranian blogger is very anxious about being known as a person ‘who has connections with Israeli guys.’ A very interesting example happened a short while ago, and I believe it describes the whole situation.”

When Ahmadinejad moved to WordPress

As a means of illustrating the extent to which Iranian bloggers must be careful to avoid contact with Israelis, Kamangir offered an amusing-yet-sad anecdote about an incident that occurred last summer. This incident also shows how ordinary people who are citizens of enemy states find themselves making contact – albeit of a hesitant, groping kind.

“A friend of mine writes a blog about technology,” recounts Kamangir. “And a very helpful plugin for this system is called FireStats and is designed by an Israeli blogger. When my friend started using FireStats he was so fascinated by the functionalities that he wrote a post about it, in Persian of course. The next day he found out that he is getting hits from a Hebrew page. It turns out that the Israeli guys are also amazed that an Iranian person is using their code. So, they write a Hebrew post which reads, in English, ‘The formula to peace with Iran.’”

Omri, the Israeli blogger who discovered the post by Kamangir’s friend with the technology blog, wrote an amusing post that describes an imaginary conversation between Ahmadinejad and the leaders of Iran, in which the latter warn the president against attacking Israel because, “FireStats is developed in Givatayim, so if we destroy Gush Dan [Greater Tel Aviv] there won’t be any more versions!”

One of the Israeli readers surfed over to the Iranian’s blog and left a comment – in Hebrew. This apparently freaked the Iranian blogger out a bit. He deleted the comment and went over to the Israeli blog, where he left a comment asking for an explanation of what had been written about him. And that is how a discussion in awkward English was initiated between Iranian and Israeli bloggers. But a Utopian dialogue that unites “enemy” bloggers in an amusing exchange about politics and WordPress can be taken only so far.

“I wrote a piece titled ‘Iran-Israel Peace through a Wordpress Plugin,” recounts Arash. “Because of the sensitivity of the issue I sent an email to my friend asking for his permission before I would publish the post. The answer was very short: ‘Arash, you know this can be dangerous.’”"

So Iranian bloggers cannot write openly about Israeli bloggers?

“When Iranian bloggers have to censor themselves when it comes to sharing the mutual passion for scripts and other nerdy stuff with Israeli fellows, I guess showing any attention to ‘the Israeli interest in the Iranian blogosphere’ is out of context.”

So why are you not more cautious about entering into contact with Israeli bloggers?

“I live outside Iran, in Canada. There is a saying in Persian, “When you are drowning it does not matter if it’s one meter or 100 meters.”

Posts from the Underground

Estimates of the number of blogs in Iran range from 170,000 to 700,000. These are certainly impressive numbers, but Kamangir says that they are not an accurate reflection of Iranian society – particularly in the sense that the people who live in the less developed areas are unrepresented. “Most Iranian bloggers are middle class university students,” he writes. According to Kamangir, Iranian bloggers tend to be more liberal than the rest of the population.

On the other hand, Kamangir stresses the importance of differentiating between the opinions expressed by the Iranian regime and those of the ordinary people. “A friend of mine who came from Iran a few days ago was telling me that it is quite common to see Iranians criticize the regime, even using offensive words, in the public transit.”

“At the same time,” continues Kamangir, “A big portion of the Iranians have been exposed to the propaganda of the regime for decades and thus have unintentionally become ambassadors of the Islamic entity in many aspects…there is a big difference between an Iranian who is living inside Iran and the one who has had the experience of living in a free society, such as Canada.” According to Kamangir, when Iranian leave Iran they “start to question what they have been fed by the regime for a long time and start to think independently.”

“Blogs written by Iranian students abroad play a major role for these ‘new-born’ Iranians,” he writes. “Fortunately, this trend of free thinking is not limited to the Iranians who live outside the motherland. There is a huge number of blogs written by Iranians who live inside Iran and these blogs substantially question the official opinions of the regime. Interestingly, the questioning covers issues ranging from the official narration of Islam to human rights and sex.”

A different image of Israel

Although the circumstances are not yet ripe for an Iranian-Israeli blogger connection that could be a contra to the enmity of the Iranian and Israeli regimes, Kamangir writes that “…very strong links have been formed between the Iranian and the Israeli blogospheres. The strongest one, which I am aware of, is our communications with Lisa Goldman and her blog, On the Face. From time to time I translate her posts to Persian and the statistics of my blog, which I too get from FireStats, shows that a lot of my visitors follow her posts passionately. There are of course other Israeli bloggers whose blogs the Iranian bloggers follow, but Lisa has become almost an icon* for many Iranian bloggers I have talked to.”

“The Israeli blogosphere in English is a window into Israeli society for Iranians,” said Lisa Goldman in an interview for Nana10. “That is why I often translate items from Israeli blogs [in Hebrew], in order to expose a different view. Because the most interesting things written about Israel are written only in Hebrew.”

Goldman, a Canadian-born freelance journalist, spoke about some of the fascinating encounters created by the connection between the Iranian and Israeli blogospheres.

“I do receive emails from Iranians. It is as if they want us to know that they are not all as they are made to seem in the media, and I’ve had some fascinating encounters. There was someone in Tehran who used to chat with me via Messenger. He was a really intelligent, knowledgeable guy who knew excellent English. We used to chat about the situation in Iran, the elections, democracy and Israel, about which he was remarkably well informed. He even spoke a little Hebrew. But he refused to tell me his real name, and he was pretty paranoid. Each time he logged on, he was at a different computer and using a different online identity. I felt as though I were receiving messages from the Resistance. It was an amazing experience, but one day he disappeared and I haven’t heard from him since.”

How do Iranian bloggers find your blog?

“Look, I try to show a more human, complex and nuanced picture of Israeli life. They’re sort of stuck behind the Middle Eastern version of the Iron Curtain, but they’re very curious about us. They want to find out more, and it’s as if they’re extending their hands out through the Iron Curtain. The fact that I don’t write only about politics, but also about my day-to-day life in Tel Aviv, shows them a lively, modern, Levantine city that they would never see in the mainstream media.”

Fewer reasons to kill one another

So are blogs the way to create unmediated contact between Iranians and Israelis who, it sometimes seems, are led by politicians whose careers were built on a mutual agreement to issue bellicose threats against one another? When the media on one side serves the interests of the regime, and the media on the other side sells newspapers with lurid headlines about existential threats caused by Iranian nuclear warheads, perhaps the blogosphere could be an alternative source of information.

Eli Cohen, a senior research manager at Netvision, says, “The internet facilitates connections between individuals and bridges between cultures. Once you neutralize the political landmine it is possible, with the help of the internet, to create wonderful interpersonal relationships between human beings and to see that both your sorrows and your joys are very similar.”

Goldman, too, sees blogs as a tool for creating understanding between peoples. “We must find a way to get past the pre-conceived notions and one-dimensional portraits presented by the mainstream media,” she says. “They just perpetuate conflicts. I think that if you hear a human voice from the other side, that’s the beginning of the way.”

“I am not a sociologist. Neither am I a philosopher. However, I do know that when people talk they find less reasons to kill each other,” agrees Kamangir. “And this is what blogging is so generously providing us with.”

*I swear I did not encourage Arash to call me an icon.

There was a suicide bombing yesterday. It was in Dimona – which is a kind of depressing one-horse town, distinguished by high unemployment and a dearth of entertainment options, in the middle of the Negev.

“Only” one person was killed. I don’t have to make any effort to recall a time when I barely noticed a bombing that killed “only” one person. Actually, I still live with that feeling of waiting for the daily bombing to occur, of classifying my friends according to those who were afraid to hang out in cafes and those who were not, and of spending a lot of money on taxis because buses just weren’t worth the risk.

I stopped getting upset by suicide bombings more than five years ago. I didn’t have any energy left. And I still don’t. One of the things that really tired me out was the script: the initial reports, followed by the live feed, followed by the speculation (where was the bomber from and what group did he represent, etc.), followed by the rolling script at the bottom of the television screen, with the increasing number of dead and wounded, followed by condemnations issued by the Palestinian Authority, followed by a statement from the prime minister’s office, etc. etc.

It was always the same.

The Dimona bombing was unusual for three reasons:

1. Dimona had never been hit before;

2. A lot of people thought the bombers may have come from Gaza, through the Sinai (turns out they were wrong), which would give us all another reason to be hysterical about the Rafah border being blasted open by Hamas two weeks ago;

3. One of the bombers failed to detonate himself, and was subsequently “liquidated” by Police Officer Kobi Mor, a.k.a. The Hero of the South. The liquidation was caught on film, by a guy who just happened to be there with a video camera because he had been hired to film a bar mitzvah celebration nearby.

The film was first broadcast on Channel 2’s 6 p.m. news magazine show, Six With Oded Ben-Ami. Prominently displayed at the top of the screen was the slogan, “Courtesy of Elul Film Studios, Ronen Peretz.” You can see a bit of the footage here. After it was broadcast, Oded Ben-Ami interviewed Ronen Peretz. You did such a great job, praised Ben-Ami. Just like a real TV news cameraman. How did you know how to get the frame just so?

Oh, said Ronen. I’ve been filming weddings, bar mitzvahs and circumcision ceremonies for years, so I’m a real pro. I could come work for Channel 2 (he added, hopefully).

At the end of the interview, Ben-Ami expressed the common platitude that Peretz should only film happy occasions from now on. Yes indeed, enthused Peretz. I wish only happy occasions for you, too – and that you should have them all filmed by Elul Studios.

Gah!

I watched the footage of Kobi Mor shooting the wounded second suicide bomber – the one whose belt didn’t explode – about three times. It was a tricky operation, you see, because if Mor had missed he could’ve detonated the explosives belt. Or he might have given the terrorist another opportunity to pull the detonator.

Then I started to feel disgusted. With the coverage of the event. With myself, for watching.

This morning I read Assaf Schneider’s television review in Maariv, and discovered that I was not alone in feeling disgusted. Here is what he wrote (my translation):

** *

Bullets for the Masses

by Assaf Schneider (television critic)

Maariv newspaper/February 5, 2008 (page 22)

A suicide bombing is an emergency event – and also an unexpected event that upsets normal programming schedules in ways that are remarkably predictable. It is possible to predict, with mathematical precision, the length of time that will elapse before Eli Benn, the head of Magen David Adom, is asked, “Are there any injured still at the site?” It is possible to guess how Roni Daniel will analyze the event. It is possible to gamble on the precise moment at which Zvi Yechezkeli will show footage of candies being distributed in Gaza.

(AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

And it is usually possible to recite in my sleep the words that I and my colleagues will write the following day. Who managed to get the first live feed from the scene. Who suffered the humiliation of being forced to use someone else’s footage. Who forgot to pixel out a corpse. And what incoherent nonsense was uttered by some eyewitness, while in the background ZAKA personnel were hosing away the bloodstains.

(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

I prepared myself to record the customary anecdotes that would invariably include “and suddenly I heard a boom.” And then, as evening approached, the hair-raising video footage documenting the liquidation of the suicide bomber who failed in his mission was broadcast. Roni Daniel*, Zvika Yechezkeli** and the incoherent guy who said, “suddenly I heard a boom,” were pushed aside. We’d never seen anything like this before.

Here are my reservations (or, should I say: ass covering): Police officer Kobi Mor performed his job with bravery and cool-headedness. It appears that he acted correctly, given the specific circumstances.

Police Officer Kobi Mor

A suicide bomber who is groping for a detonator is not the kind of person with whom you want to engage in soul-searching dialogue about co-existence and brotherhood. And an event like this, which is perpetuated in front of the cameras second by second, is news material that any editor would leap at. An editor who decided against using the material wouldn’t be an editor. But the quantities- oh, the quantities.

And the celebrations of blood, and the endless repetitions, and the pornographic details, and the “by the way” attitude with which the footage was presented. Hello dear viewers, come see how a man is killed. And because we know how much you love this style of snuff film, here – have some more. And hey, he’s dead again. Did you catch how his hand jumped? Here, we’ve got a close up for you. Look, you can see how his body jumps upward each time it’s hit by a bullet. You wanted reality? You got it. One bullet, another one and then another three. Pop-pop-pop. And those aren’t blanks, like the ones you used in basic training. Walla, too bad you don’t have HDTV, because you missed the blood spray.

How did we get to this point? How did we regress to the point of broadcasting the killing of a man so offhandedly, without even a warning that people with sensitive stomachs should distance themselves from the screen? Warnings? Who cares. Look at how the bullets are turning him into a pulp! And to hell with delicate stomachs and respect for the dead no matter who they might be, including animals.

And that’s before we even talked about the Catch-22 that accompanied the confirmation of the killing. Before some leftist lawyer could figure out what was happening, Police Officer Kobi Mor was already given a promotion. He stripped off his windbreaker, was outfitted in a properly ironed uniform and placed in front of the cameras. And everyone saluted.

This crude and vulgar behavior is not a passing phenomenon. It was not an outpouring of pain over the suicide bombing, or a reaction to the rare video footage. It has become part of our regular meal – for news editors and viewers alike. We are slaves of reality, addicted to bullets. For example: yesterday morning, immediately after the suicide bombing, Channel 10 spoke with Shalom Bar-Avi, an eyewitness whose wife had disappeared in the confusion that followed the explosion. Bar-Avi was torn between the need to perform as an amateur reporter, and his fear that the worst might have happened. It was terrible to listen to him. The reporters in the studio already knew that a woman had been killed. They didn’t miss the potential of the story. Poor Bar-Avi was kept on the line for a long time, probably considering himself a winner. Finally, he was informed that his wife was safe and unhurt. And what would have happened if, God forbid, she had been wounded? It would have been a fantastic human interest story, of course. And to hell with everything.

*Roni Daniel: Channel 2 reporter
**Zvi Yechezkeli: Channel 10 reporter