My third piece for the Guardian newsblog is about bloggers who don’t like to write about politics. It starts like this:

One of Israel’s most famous bloggers never writes about politics. “It bores me,” explains Liat Bar-On, a 36-year-old journalist. “I consider myself a leftist and I was against the Gaza war, but I don’t want to write about the violence and the corruption and the crappy reality around me. I prefer to bury my head in the sand and ignore it all.”

Bar-On’s blog, Doda Malka (Auntie Malka), is about “life and relationships – that is, about my relationships.” She channels her considerable writing talents into musings about topics that range from why she gets irritated with friends who send long text messages to her mobile phone, to whether or not she would like to become a single mother via artificial insemination.

Click here to read the rest.

The following is a letter that was sent today to Pinchas Buchris, the Israeli Defense Ministry Director-General. To paraphrase the person who sent it to me, it just goes to show that this conflict is all about who owns the hummus!

Hummus by Liormania on Flickr, Creative Commons

Dear Mr. Buchris,

On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 2 million members and supporters worldwide, I am writing to propose an idea that would draw attention to how simple it is to reduce violence. I’ve attached a copy of a poster that we hope you will allow us to post on both sides of the Gaza Strip and West Bank barriers. The sign depicts what the world wants to see: Israelis and Palestinians breaking bread together, something that often seems unachievable. The meal is vegetarian-the only diet that does not involve bloodshed-and the poster carries the slogan “Give Peas a Chance,” which is inspired by John Lennon’s song about war. We have also included the statement “Nonviolence Begins on Our Plates: Go Vegetarian” on the sign in both Hebrew and Palestinian-Arabic.

Throughout the Middle East and the world, animals raised for their flesh, eggs, and milk routinely suffer physical and emotional pain, terror, and death. Certainly, these are horrors that humans come to understand during times of war. Treated as inanimate objects who are not worthy of our respect, many animals are still conscious and able to feel pain as they are skinned and dismembered-something that can only be described as torture. Although we are often powerless to stop much of the violence in the world, every time that we sit down to a meal, we can make the choice not to participate in violence against animals.

While choosing a falafel sandwich over a lamb chop might not create instant peace, it will reduce the amount of preventable suffering in our world, which is valuable in and of itself. International peacemaker Mohandas Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Please let me know that we have your permission to place these posters on the barriers. Thank you for your consideration.

Very truly yours,
Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

Update: Mohamed took the time to go over to the PETA blog and confirm that this is not a joke. Voila, the posters.

Protesters demonstrate against the BBC in London. Credit: Frantzesco Kangaris/Agence France-Presse

A reader who works for the BBC wrote to ask if I planned to post about her employers’ decision against broadcasting a fund raising appeal for Gaza. The Beeb based its decision on the concern that broadcasting the appeal while the story was ongoing would give the impression of bias. John Burns of the New York Times summarizes the ensuing controversy here.

Anyway, I responded to this reader’s query by observing that I hadn’t really been following the controversy very closely, even though I knew it was a huge story in the UK. Privately, I thought it sounded shrill, polarizing and unnecessary. And even more privately I thought, “Eh, the Brits are so eccentric. After all, they eat yeast paste on white bread for breakfast. Eechs. And besides that, imagine thousands marching on the streets of London if the Beeb refused to broadcast a fundraiser for East Timor, Congo or Sri Lanka. Ha!”

So I suggested that this reader might be interested in writing a guest post for this blog. Below is her response, which I am publishing with permission. The reader’s name is witheld for obvious reasons.

Oh, two more things: Sky news also decided against broadcasting the appeal; and in the end, the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) raised GBP 3 million – even though the money might never actually end up helping the people of Gaza.

***

Hi Lisa

Truth be told, I’m reluctant to write about it because: (a) I do not proclaim to be a writer – nor a decent one at that and (b) although I understand the decision not to air the appeal and, to a degree, stand by the decision, I’m still unsure whether or not it was the right decision in the long run. The argument that the Director General puts forth is that it’s a continuing news story and by broadcasting an emotional appeal on a news channel with harrowing images, it might appear that the BBC was “taking sides”. In addition, management was not convinced that the funds raised would reach the victims and those in need. And yet, by not broadcasting it, the BBC has been denounced as pro-Israel/ anti-Palestine and taking sides.

Just as a side note: this isn’t the first time that an appeal was rejected by the BBC. In 2006, the BBC rejected an appeal for East Africa, again, because they weren’t certain that the funds would reach the victims.

I don’t mean to sound like a PR piece for the BBC and as I said, although I understand the decision I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that it is the right one.

What does piss me off, however, is that this tragic war and the BBC’s refusal (as well as Sky’s refusal) to air the appeal, seems to have been hijacked by and turned into yet another example of how evil they perceive Israel to be. Or how “powerful Jews” lobby and influence broadcasters. Every day, I am emailed viewer’s comments about our programmes and recently, I’m particularly astonished at people objecting to a presenter on a children’s show (“Blue Peter“), who is rediscovering his Jewish roots. The comments are too depressing to reiterate.

I should probably note that I’m not Jewish (or Christian- never even been baptized!) but rather, just another person who wants peace in the Middle East.

Also, perhaps it’s my Canadian upbringing (and thus hyper sense of political correctness), but I am regularly shocked at how anti-Israel (anti-Jewish? I don’t know), Europe and Europeans can be. Not anti-Olmert/current politicians – but out and out ANTI-ISRAEL. And even though I identify as someone who is left-wing, I always seem to find myself isolated when it comes to that old debate that everyone and their dog has an opinion about  – i.e. Israel’s right to exist.

Sorry to have gone on about this, I guess I’m just tired of walking past the protests outside my work and having “shame” screamed at me for something out with my control. It’s been cathartic though!

Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s most popular satire show, stood proud and strong against the consensus during the Gaza military operation. While the mainstream media – both Israeli and international – kept on reporting that an estimated 90 percent of Jewish Israelis supported the operation, Eretz Nehederet stuck with an unmistakably anti-war message. And yet, the show remained as popular as ever – probably because it’s totally irreverent, dishing it out to pretty much everyone (Hamas, the IDF, the government, Members of Knesset, pop stars, the Israeli media and the foreign media) with hysterical humour.

“Throw On You Til” is a hip hop song that satirizes the foreign ministry’s less-than-successful attempts to communicate Israel’s position. Now that someone’s put in subtitles and uploaded it to YouTube, you can all enjoy it. Note the pidgin English, Israeli style, mixed with hip hop style. Brilliant.

Against a dramatic black background, the cover of last week’s Time Out Tel Aviv shows a white dove marked as though viewed through a sniper’s rifle. The caption has two meanings. It could be “say goodbye nicely,” which is how one instructs a small child to bid farewell. Or it could be “say peace is lovely.”  Combine the two, and you get “say goodbye nicely to peace”; or, in more sophisticated English, “bid peace a fond farewell.” The sub heading is, “Tel Aviv between Gaza and Sderot.”

According to the polls, 90 percent of Israelis support the Gaza campaign. I find that number quite worrying: public debate and a diversity of opinion are, as Ohad notes in this post, essential characteristics of a healthy democracy; and anyone who has expressed even the mildest anti-war sentiment can testify to the intimidating responses that have, I noticed, cowed many people into silence.

The intimidation ranges from verbal violence (“traitor!” “fifth columnist”) to the threat of being fired from one’s job – as in the case of Channel 2 anchor Yonit Levi. One friend even received death threats – via Facebook, if you can believe it. Assuming, though, that all the people polled about the war know that the Israeli media’s reporting has been controlled by the army spokesman’s iron fist; and assuming that everyone polled is both well-informed about what is really going on in Gaza and unafraid to voice an opinion that deviates from what we are constantly told is the mainstream, that still leaves one person out of 10 opposing the war. In this edition, Time Out Tel Aviv gives them a voice. Below are some translated excerpts.

In a weekly column titled “Reality,” (p.10) Amir Ben-David parodies the wildly popular Big Brother reality TV show that ended last month. (I blogged about his friendship with the editor of of Time Out Beirut during the Second Lebanon War). The hosts of the show were Erez Tal and Assi Ezer. Excerpt:

Erez Tal: And once again we join you, with a show that will have you on the edges of your seat. It’s called “the big boom.” Yes – tonight we have eliminations (from the show). Tension is high. Nerves are frayed. Everyone is biting his nails, especially the handsome young man standing here next to me. Good evening, Assi Ezer.

Assi Ezer: Good evening, Erez. Or, as I prefer to call you, Erez Crossing…

Erez: Ha, ha. Very funny.

Assi: I couldn’t resist. Yes, as you said, tonight is a big night. Everyone is sending SMS’s like crazy, but only one candidate will be eliminated at the end of this evening. Only you, the viewers, will decide who that will be. The lines are open and the decision is all yours.

Erez: Remind us, Assi, who are the candidates for elimination tonight?

Assi: With pleasure. Can you smell the smoke? Three are turning on the rotisserie tonight – Jabalyah, Dir El Balah and Nusseirat Refugee Camp. Our brave air force pilots are already sitting in their fighter planes. The tension in the offices of the higher command is at its peak, and only our viewers, who are SMSing now, are the ones that will decide who the pilots eliminate from the face of the earth by the end of this evening.

Erez: Just like that? They’ll eliminate them? Erase them completely?

Assi: Completely! We won’t leave a single stone untouched.

Erez: Children? Women? Old people?

Assi: All of them!

****

On page 28, editor Itai Waldman‘s column is about the despair engendered by the increasing frequency of wars in this region, and the sense that a normal life is ever more elusive. Excerpt:

“You sit on the sofa watching TV and you see the parade of politicians, ministers and generals, and all sorts of people that they find in the attic whenever there’s a war, because they wore a rank on their epaulets so they must know something about something, and everyone analyzes the event, and then we go to our correspondent in Sderot who interviews people where a rocket just fell that very second, and you listen to it all, and you simply refuse to believe that it’s happening again. Because the most frustrating thing about wars is that they never ask you. You’re living your life, in the center of Tel Aviv as it happens, trying to be a good citizen and just go with the flow from age 0 to 80, and to have a nice life, without hurting anyone and without being hurt by anyone else, and every few years, one fine morning, they drop a war on you. And you feel like shouting, ‘Hello?! Could we do this some other day? Because it really doesn’t work for me today; I had other plans. Like living, for example.’

But you can shout until tomorrow, because no-one is listening, and no-one really cares. Not in the places where they make decisions, at least. And you think it could be otherwise, and it could even be that you have some good advice up your sleeve, but with the cacophony of words coming at you from every direction you’re pretty sure that no-one will listen to you, and besides, how much does it really matter?

And then the IDF goes into Gaza, and by the end of the day the generals summarize the first day of the ground operation and say that it was a fantastic day and that we achieved all our goals (‘what goals?’ you wonder naively to yourself), and sometime during the news broadcast, quietly and without moving his lips too much, the anchor announces that one of our soldiers was killed. And the subtext is that one dead in nine days is really nothing and we can be happy and go to sleep with smiles on our faces because the operation is succeeding and everything is fine, but it’s 1 a.m. and you’re very cold and you can’t fall asleep so that probably means that nothing is fine.

And all you can think about is that poor boy who last week was hanging out with his friends at the mall, and after that he went to see a movie with his girlfriend, and then they went back to his place, and they made love the way you do when you’re 18, quietly, because you still live at home and your parents are sleeping in the next room. And in the morning they get up together, and he goes to the army and they make plans to meet when he gets his next furlough, in another two weeks, and until then they will speak on the phone, ‘I’ll SMS you when I’m back at the base, so you’ll know I’m okay.’ And then the war starts, and they tell him he is going into Gaza, and she is worried, and he tries to calm her down, and she won’t be calmed, and he has to hang up, and she’s alive, and he’s dead.”

—–

“And now you’re frustrated. And your frustration is so big that you can uproot mountains and make buildings collapse. Frustrated, you watch the news hosted by Raviv Druker and Ofer Shelach, whom you usually like a lot, as they talk with some general from the reserves, and they start with that fascist mumbo jumbo, and Shelach says that the best way to fight in a heavily built-up area is to blow up the whole neighbourhood first and then to fight in an open area, and they laugh, they really, really laugh, and you think ‘How can you laugh? How are you able to laugh?’, and you feel as though you’ll never want to laugh again.

Wars have a certain cumulative quality. When you’re a kid and they bomb you, and your dad takes you in his arms and runs to the shelter, the whole situation is infused with a sort of weird childhood magic. And when you’re in the army and you enter a battle with your unit, you’re so brainwashed that it doesn’t really touch you. And you can even survive your first war as an adult civilian. But one day the moment comes when you just collapse.

And that’s what you feel is happening right now. That you don’t understand what they want from you. That you don’t understand why now. That everything looks so capricious, illogical, unfair. And you’re sad for everyone – the people of Gaza, the people of southern Israel, who didn’t do anything bad to anyone either, but mostly for yourself. You’re sad for yourself because you don’t want to to spend the rest of your life like this – from bombing to bombing, from injustice to injustice, from death to death. You’re sad for yourself because life has taught you that you only have yourself. And the only people you thought maybe you’re not sad about are the politicians, but then you give that a bit more thought, and you’re sad for them too. They’re so contemptible, so impotent, that it would be disgusting on your part not to feel grief for them.

War is something huge. Enormous. And you can look at it from so many different angles. You can talk about the causal factors, and you can talk about the disengagement from Gaza; you can try to understand if this is calculated as an election strategy, and you can talk about the crisis within the political left; you can talk about the wartime induction of the media, and you can talk about pathetic celebrities, that go to perform in the bomb shelters in a cynical attempt to revive their careers. But talking about all that will just make the war continue. And that is why the only subject worthy of discussion in wartime is the people who are dying. The newspapers should be filled with lines upon lines with the names of the dead, and who they were, and what they did, and what they wanted to do tomorrow morning but will never do. People who planned to live here with us, today, and to breathe the air that I breathe now when I write this text, and the air that you breathe when you read this text, and the only thing that touches their cold nostrils right now, is ash.”

*****

On page 30, Elinor Davidov writes about  a 40-episode television documentary called Gaza-Sderot, Life in Spite of Everything. Each episode features an interview with an ordinary person on either side of the border, describing daily life. The result is a fascinating combination of drama and banality that makes the series well worth watching. It was co-produced by a staff from Sderot’s Sapir College, Gaza’s Ramattan Studios and the German-French arte.tv (photos and bio blurbs are here). On page 31, there is a sidebar: it reproduces a sad and desperate IM chat that took place between one of the Israeli producers and a Gazan producer shortly after the windows on the latter’s house were blown out by a bomb that fell on the house next door.

Hadash MK Dov Khenin wrote a long opinion piece that starts on page 35. I’m running out of time for translating, so I’ll just do the introduction:

“And of course it would never occur to anyone to think that this military operation has actually made life worse for the residents of the western Negev. After all, it’s ‘our right and even our obligation’ to protection civilians. Everything is buried under the rhetoric that deals with the most immediate response – they’re shooting at you, thus you are permitted to shoot back, and you are even permitted to go a little crazy and shoot at everything that is in your way. Is it wise to shoot? Are there other ways to stop them from shooting at you? Not now. We’re shooting now.”

Page 37 has a sidebar that describes the Israeli media’s total silence about the anti-war march I blogged about last week. According to the item, 15,000 people participated in that demonstration. Each of the major media outlets offers an official explanation as to why they ignored the story.

A series of snapshots – mini-interviews, slices of life – from southern Israel are spread out over pages 38-41.

And there you have it – voices from amongst the 10 percent.