Buses, a holy city, and our moral responsibilities

Here is a story posted this week on Facebook by a friend of mine. He quotes a lady called Sarah B, who was riding a bus in Jerusalem.

On the number 13 bus this morning. An ultra-Orthodox lady entered the bus from the back door, because she had a stroller with her. She needed to get to the front of the bus to pay, and needed someone to hold her baby so she’d have the use of both hands. She asked the elderly Muslim woman across from me to please hold her baby. The baby continued sleeping, and the Muslim woman was extremely pleased. “I have 31 grandchildren!” she told all those of us around her, and we smiled. The Jewish woman came back and thanked the Muslim woman profusely, and brought the baby back to the middle of the bus where the stroller was, and the Muslim woman got off the bus a couple stops later.

In most other cities around the world, that incident would barely command a snort of interest. However, this is Jerusalem. This is a city where the only known issue that the leaders of the three great religions cooperated in recent years was when they protested of a gay rights’ march. This is a city where its unity is opposed by most world leaders. And it is the place that journalists flock to in order to learn how Jews, Christians and Muslims bicker with each other, while ignoring the often larger divisions within each individual community.

For all the simplicity of the above tale and the hope it raises, it is not a solitary incident. This spirit can be found elsewhere in Israel, daily. Consider the micro-algae educational project at Kibbutz Ein Shemer, where school children of different backgrounds learn together in order to protect the environment. There was the programme sponsored by the Prime Minister’s office in June 2012 to encourage employers to hire workers from minority groupings. And the Max Rayne  School in Jerusalem is one of three bilingual schools in the project, ensuring how kids of all religions can learn together in this challenging city.

Last night, President Mahmoud Abbas secured Palestine’s upgraded status at the United Nations.  Analysing the text of his speech in the Palestinian media, at no stage did the Palestinian accept the State of Israel, under any borders or circumstances. The Jewish state was referred to hate and loathing.

It is not just that Abbas has now effectively rejected these successful projects of cooperation. The UN exists to encourage mankind to welcome each other. The international body demands that all members actively embrace such a responsibility. Yet the means and  the language of Abbas reveal how and why he rejects the core raison-d’etre of the United Nations.

C’est la vie for the proponents of peace and for safe bus journeys in Jerusalem.

Economic cost of war (2) – Gaza

Initial estimates suggest that Israel’s economy will shrink by 0.2% as a result of the recent fighting with Gaza. Last week, I detailed some of that potential impact. But what of Gaza? How can over 1.5 million people recover from the severe pounding (literally) handed out by Israel?

A recent IMF report detailed that unemployment was still over 30% in the strip of land, locked between the Bedouin of Sinai and Israel. Much of the Gaza economy is supported by external sources, often smuggled in via the tunnel system. A  video from AlJazeera illustrates this very well, filmed shortly after the current fightng had stopped. Palestinian sources imply that 140, maybe two-thirds of all operating tunnels, were destroyed. Not only does this limit the supply of goods, it removes Hamas from a very healthy supply of revenue from permits for these activities.

However, in some ways, these sketchy details highlight a deeper problem. Obtaining reliable and professional figures for Gaza in most fields is consistently difficult. Just one simple example - the number of minors killed in last week’s fighting: It will take an expert to point out that whatever the stat, and even one death is a tragedy too many, Hamas recruits fighters to its ranks from the age of 16. Thus are these deaths to be recorded as military or civilian?

Now consider the on-going poverty in Gaza, which many people take for granted. The same IMF report also mentions that the Gaza economy grew at a “high rate” in early 2012,“mainly on account of a booming construction sector that benefits from lifting of some Israeli restrictions on imports and Gaza’s tunnel trade that benefits from easing of restrictions owing to political change in Egypt“.

Statistics from the Israeli press and based on information from military sources confirm this trend. Hamas probably benefits by around US$500 million annually from the tunnel economy. While the GDP per person stands at a paltry US$1,500, it has leapt upwards by 30% since 2010. And the Israeli army has ensured that building materials, food and medica supplies continue to enter Gaza in quantity, even during the fighting.

I have commented in the past how Gaza has seen a new millionaire elite emerge in the past couple of years. New cars, often imported from China, are now common in the area. An interesting item from Eric Cunningham and dated from the beginning of the recent hostilities observed how Gaza has much wealthier base than in previous hostilities.

While thousands of Gazans flocked to the territory’s short but stunning coastline this summer, when relative peace still reigned, the abrupt bang of hammers and whir of power-drills could be heard on almost every corner of the capital, Gaza City.

Sky-scraping apartment complexes, glitzy new shopping malls and extravagant hotel retreats were sprouting up amid the rubble, and unemployment had dropped to 28 percent from a record-high of 45 percent at the height of the blockade.

Cunningham’s piece even displays a picture of the new funfair. Pointedly, he concludes by citing a second IMF analysis, posted this October. Gaza’s economy is set to grow by 7% in 2013 and 6.5% in 2014.

You are left wondering. Why does Hamas and its allies would want to jeopardise this prosperity that benefits for the Palestinians and replace it with an on-going bloody fight with Israel?

Hamas or Israel? The answer is in the economy

Pick up any UN analysis or a report from a relevant NGO, you will find details of how Gaza’s economy is struggling. The facts seem overwhelming – how unemployment, low exports, little private sector growth.

For all the pages of statistics, something does not add up. According to the World Bank, under 30 years of Israeli sovereignty, the Palestinian economy grew by 5.5% annually in real terms until 1999. That is phenomenal by any standards, and Gaza was part of that achievement.

If you look for current information about Gaza, which has not been tampered by officials with an agenda to grind, then there is much anecdotal evidence. I have reported on the new cars from China that have become very popular in recent months. These have probably been purchased by the new elite of millionaires club, identified by the Arab media. And all this has been reported by corporate journalists staying in some very comfortable boutique hotels.

Life for people in Gaza is not simple. Israel limits travel on its side, although even in times of war passage is not totally closed off. The Egyptian border is open, but Bedouin tribes control the territory beyond. And the Hamas government runs an agenda that bothers little with principles of democracy and pluralism.

If the citizens of Gaza complain that Israelis live in a secluded paradise, one can understand their frustration. Since freeing up the economy from tariffs in the mid 1980s, Israelis has experienced a leap forward in standards of living. Today, the economy is growing at around 3% annually, one of the better performers in the OECD. JVP in Jerusalem is one of the world’s most successful venture capital groups in the world, reinvesting profits in cross-ethnic projects. to take a specific industry, the biotech sector has boomed in the past decade, creating thousands of jobs and billions in wealth.

Historically, Gaza has been known as a fertile territory with an educated populace. When Israel departed in 2005, it left behind and intact a thriving greenhouse industry. Not only has that been ransacked and confined to the sand dunes or converted to military training grounds. The leading export in 2012 has been the 1,200 rockets hurtled towards Israeli civilian areas.

The Palestinian leadership in Gaza would have the world believe that the poverty of the territory is caused by the Israeli military. The pain of that fallacy is most felt by the residents themselves. However, if only the problem was a few gross inexactitudes over economic policy.

As Hamas has proven, if you can lie during peacetime, it does not take too much effort to cover up the self-inflicted horrors of war.

If the Palestinians had their own “Arab Spring”…..

Earlier this month, a most unusual iten appeared in the Arab media. Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, commenting on the “Arab Spring and the Israeli enemy”, observed that:

Many Arabs don’t know that the life expectancy of the Palestinians living in Israel is far longer than many Arab states and they enjoy far better political and social freedom than many of their Arab brothers. Even the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip enjoy more political and social rights than some places in the Arab World. Wasn’t one of the judges who sent a former Israeli president to jail is an Israeli-Palestinian? The Arab Spring showed the world that the Palestinians are happier and in better situation than their Arab brothers who fought to liberate them from the Israelis.

The item came after a series of economic demonstrations during August in the West Bank. Whether these acts were a genuine outburst of distress or Hamas trying to wrestle power away from the Palestinian Authority (PA), I will not debate. The key issue is how strong is the Palestinian economy. Does the populace of Ramallah and Gaza need its own protest movement? And if so, who would be on the receiving end of the complaints?

It has long been accepted that the Gaza and the West Bank are two separate economies. Even the ruling powers – Hamas and the PA – appear more united by the hatred of Israel rather than a common political plan.

Gaza’s immediate progress is hampered by Egypt’t battles in the Sinai with various Bedouin tribes. It is not just that Egypt is Gaza’s route to global trade, Cairo supplies around 70% of the power for people in the fertile costal strip. Yet despite such geopolitics and Israeli security restrictions, I have observed previously that evidence suggests that the area now boasts over 600 millionaires.

The BBC news service has confirmed this economic improvement. At a primary level, the tunnel economy has created a new elite, specifically people close to the Hamas regime. In tandem, there has been “a surge in the value of land with prices more than doubling in the past two years.”

There many who argue that if Israel were to withdraw most of its security regulations, then this new wealth would spread to others. Almost by definition, this is a given, although the process could be kickstarted if Hamas were to cease daily rocket attacks in to southern Israel. An additional factor that impedes progress are the social limitations imposed and dictated by Hamas on its own people, measures which have now led to a daming report by Human Rights Watch.

The situation in the West Bank has similarities to Gaza. As the IMF reported, an economic boom is in progress. The 9% increase in growth for early 2012 is a direct continuation from the achievements of 2011.

That said, the PA is till crying poverty. Civil servant salaries for August were only delivered in early October. Although the Ramallah government does not expect to emerge from the economic crisis soon and begs for assistance from overseas, an analysis from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reveals that there is still a lot of money around.

Stocks of Palestinian assets invested abroad in 2011 were about $5,233 million, while stocks of foreign liabilities on the Palestinian economy were about $4,512 million……primary results of the International Investment Position (IIP) for the Palestinian Territory by the end of 2011 revealed that the net IIP had amounted to about $721.0 million,  which means that the Palestinian economy of its various sectors had invested outside Palestinian Territory by more than the investment amount in the Palestinian Territory from abroad.

So what next? It would seem that both in Gaza and in the West Bank, money is around but not flowing to those positioned at the end of the food chain, about 95% of the population. And that raises the old and recurring issue of corruption and graft. Only recently, a former aide of President Arafat was convicted for embezzlement. If I was a Palestinian, I know that I would be protesting to my leaders about such vast distortions.

Is that a more serious problem than resolving the issues with Israel, I am not to judge. However, it does leave a question for European and American donor countries to the Palestinians – where and how should they continue to transfer money?

Ealier this month, the European Union agreed to a further 11 Million Euro of assistance to UNRWA. What is significant is that for all the murderous troubles facing the Palestinians in Syria, barely 10% of the money will go to lending then support. Most of the money will go……elsewhere.

When will the donors wake up? When will the Palestinians really open their mouths of distress against all of these distortions?

Will the real Gaza economy stand up and be counted?

The headline from the New York Times made for a simple summary of a UN report: “U.N. Sees Bleak Outlook for Gaza Unless Services Are Improved“

The UN describes how this narrow fertile strip of land, which has been run by Hamas since 2007, may not be fit for habitation by 2020. Education, health and other basic services are on the point of collapse. Unemployment is high. It is sandwiched between geopolitical tensions of Egypt and Israel. Life is very difficult.

To emphasise the point, Maan News service, based in Ramallah, reports that yet again Palestinian Authority (PA) employees in Gaza may not be paid their salaries. The background appears to be a combination of reasons; lack of funds within the PA and also a dispute between the Palestinian Government and its supposed Hamas allies in Gaza.

So how does one reconcile this gloomy picture with new investigative journalism from Arab sources that of the 1.6 million people in Gaza, there are at least 600 millionaires. In fact, on the ground witnesses reveal a very different kind of Gaza than the one depicted in the UN report.

Informed Palestinian sources revealed that every day, in addition to weapons, thousands of tons of fuel, medicine, various types of merchandise, vehicles, electrical appliances, drugs, medicine and cigarettes are smuggled into the Gaza Strip through more than 400 tunnels. A former Sudanese government official who visited the Gaza Strip lately was quoted as saying that he found basic goods that were not available in Sudan. Almost all the tunnels are controlled by the Hamas government, which has established a special commission to oversee the smuggling business, which makes the Hamas government the biggest benefactor of the smuggling industry.

So what’s the truth? The bottom line of the UN report is that 99% of Gaza’s troubles are the fault of Israel. Well, nobody can argue that Israel finds Gaza a welcome neighbour. Daily rocket fire from the Hamas territory did not cease even as schools started up again this week. The problem was that this context was omitted by the authors of the UN document.

The UN also sw correct to underemphasise the large role that Egypt plays in the Gaza economy, such as providing much of its electricity. More recently, because of the increasing terrorism in Sinai, of which Hamas affiliated groups have a significant part, Egypt has been clamping down on its border with Gaza. Only 24 hours ago, CNN detailed how many smuggling tunnels, a core of Hamas’ revenue stream, have been shut down by Cairo.

For the record, I was talking to a journalist last week, who had recently been through some of these tunnels. He described what seemed to be large and growing centres of commerce, which would do proud any transportation highway around the world.

At the end of the day, the economies of Gaza and Ramallah may share a common trend. Life may not be comfortable for all, while there are still many who are doing well – in fact, really well. However,for the UN to argue that life is unbearable in the Palestinian territories and that is all the fault of Israel’s reminds one of those who print such racist tractates as the “Protocols of Zion”. Both contain the same level of hatred and distortion.

Investing in the Palestinian economy – who gets what?

It was recently pointed out to me by a blogger friend that American federal agencies are encouraging those willing to listen that they should place greater investment in the infrastructure of the Palestinian economy. The aim is to move away from the traditional support given to UNRWA or non commercial elements.

A World Bank report in September 2011 describes “the necessity of both sustainable economic growth and effective institutions for a future viable [Palestinian] state. (And)……investment opportunities have arisen in Palestine. For example, in 2011 the Rasmala Investment Bank established the Ras­mala Palestine Equity Fund, which seeks to “achieve long-term capital appreciation by investing in a diversified portfolio of growth and value stocks listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange in securities anticipated to undergo initial public offerings as well as securities at their initial public offering.

One reason for this encouraging change of approach is that the senior Palestinian leadership has yet to shake off the whiff and evil of corruption that pervaded the Arafat dictatorship. To paraphrase a second blogger, Arnold Roth:

Muhammad Rashid, Arafat’s money-carrier (literally), has been arrested. He has been running the Palestine Investment Fund, which in turn controls the Arab Palestinian Investment Company. This organisation is dominated by Tareq and Yasser, the sons of President Abbas.

May not look good to outsiders. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has reserves. Reuters recently observed that:

The Western-backed PA ….says it has poured around $7 billion into the Gaza Strip since its rival Hamas seized control in 2007, but complains that the Islamist group is stymieing its efforts to balance its books……The PA says it spends $120 million a month, or more than 40 percent of its whole budget, on salaries and services in Gaza. 

Remember, those salaries includes dosh for those people launching rockets daily into Israel. And they more than likely funded the “security” provided to a journalist friend as he toured Hamas smuggling tunnels last month. It is also useful to recall that much of this funding comes from the generosity of European taxpayers - over 1 billion dollars since 2008.

Maybe Western leaders are finally aware that this displacement of resources is adversely effecting the average “man on the street” in Ramallah or Jenin. For example, Palestinian sources note that hospitals are facing closure, as they are starved of income. And because the PA has consistently ignored its water obligations under the Oslo Agreement with Israel, villages in the Bethlehem district are now running dry.

Where next? Difficult to say. Palestinian banks are also in a precarious position as they have been struggling to feed the needs of central government. One thing for sure – if you want to invest in the Palestinian economy, make sure that central sources are nowhere near the distribution table.

4 updates on the Palestinian economy

The Palestinian economy may still dwarf in size compared to its Israeli neighbour. It still looks to the international community – particularly the World Bank and the EU - for taxpayers handouts. That said, times are a changing.

1. Exports

The security situation has finally eased enough for Israel to enable trade to recommence between Gaza and the West Bank. On 6 March, after negotiations with the World Food Programme (WFP), 13 lorry loads of date bars from Gaza were transferred to the West Bank, the first such transfer since 2007.

2. Business Development Loans

Thousands of young Palestinians will receive access to financial loans to support their new businesses through a United Nations-backed initiative, which seeks to stimulate the creation of new jobs. The “Mubadarati” loan programme will be carried out by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in collaboration with Silatech, a social enterprise company that focuses on creating opportunities for youth in the Arab world.

3. Energy

On a slightly negative note, one problem which continues to plague the Palestinian economy is the lack of continuous energy in Gaza, most of which is supplied via Egypt. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza, has been quoted as blaming his friends in Cairo. Although a temporary solution has been found, it looks as if factories will be operating on a shortened working week for sometime to come.

4. Israeli involvement – Healthcare

While Palestinians and Israelis are not known for being the best of friends, in the medical sphere the story is often different. Palestinian journalist, Abu Khaled Toameh reported this week that the Palestinian Health Minister, Fathi Abu Mughli, organised a tour of Ramallah by an Israeli team of professionals – although the visit was cut short after strong local protests.

This is no new phenomenon. Israel has consistently proved its willingness to cooperate in the medical arena. Official stats show that in December 2011 and again in January 2012, around 1,400 humanitarian permits were issued to allow Palestinian patients and accompanying relatives into Israel. Back in May 2011, the Sheba hospital near Tel Aviv had supported a project to enable 1,000 Palestinians in the Tulkarm area to receive hearing aids.

Just how large are economies in the Middle East? The World Factbook puts the Palestinian GDP per person at US$2,800. Israel’s figure is over US$31,000. The countries of Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia leave everyone way behind.

Yet you have to wonder if these kingdoms invest in their Palestinian friends as Israel does.

World economic gloom and Middle East anomalies 2

A couple of weeks ago, I wondered why if G8 economies are plunging into a debt-driven recession, they are handing over US$80 billion dollars to Libya, the world’s sixth largest oil producer. Non comprende on my part.

Yesterday, I learnt of another Eastern absurdity that is fooling Western politicians.

The European Parliament (EP) budget committee proposed to increase financial aid to the Palestinians by €100 million in 2012.

Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong in giving to the Palestinians per se. The ec onomy of the West Bank may have picked up. A lovely new mall has opened in Gaza. But the economic base is still very limited.

That said, the question is whether in a time of severe economic instability, foreign monies – extra cash at that – is to be handed out to a grouping, which has a poor record in abiding by the principles of accountability and transparency?

ITEM 1: For years, the Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC) provided an excellent job, monitoring European transfers to Palestinian organisations. The report card for Brussels was so poor that the EU was not even able to publish its own investigation into the issue.

It is nearly a decade since Nigel Roberts, the previous World Bank’s top official in the region, described global financial support for Palestinians as “the highest per capita aid transfer in the history of foreign aid anywhere”. And still the questions remain. Where has it gone to? What has it achieved?

ITEM 2: Numerous UK-based investigative groups over the past few years have posed similar questions to the FPC. The Daily Express newspaper was forced to post the headline: “How 100m of your cash goes to fund terror.” A year later, The Taxpayers Alliance pressure group similarly wondered why aid is distributed without reasonable scrutiny. And I have seen similar articles in Germany, Australia, et al.

ITEM 3: NGO Monitor is an academic group, based in Jerusalem. Over the past decade, it has forced several governments to reconsider their funding efforts of teams, supposedly advocating peaceful change on behalf of Palestinians. In fact, on many occasions, a more deceitful agenda has been hidden from the national Treasuries concerned.

One excellent example is the Dutch government. Over the past 18 months, it has realised the need either to downgraded or to eliminate support for NGOs that have effectively encouraged a policy of incitement against Israel, while purportedly focusing on bettering the lives of ordinary Palestinian citizens. 

And so on.

All of the above have no small share of their critiques. They are despised as right-wing with a narrow – even Zionist – agenda. Even if all this was true or partially true – and in many cases that is inaccurate – , “so what“?

Public taxpayers money is being distributed without due regard. That is unacceptable!

These are not empty words. Just google the phrase “Palestinians + corruption”, and see what you end up with. Abbas, Arafat, Arafat’s family - the list is endless of top people associated with creaming off money. And as Palestinian tax revenues are weak, most of those funds must have come from………… Deja vu!

Will the next load of European dosh support the peace process? “Tawfik Tirawi, former commander of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Force in the West Bank, has said (last week) that Fatah has not abandoned the armed struggle option against Israel.” Can this threat be interpreted as a case of ‘give me the money or I start blowing up the peace process’?

What next? I quote a very simple line of thought from Laima Andrikiene, MEP and vice chairperson of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights:

It was about time the European Parliament showed some common sense and demonstrated that it can base its policy with countries beyond the EU on clear-cut strategy and reason.

The real poverty in Gaza

One year after Israel naval commandos stormed a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza, a second flotilla is now setting off with the same aim.

Last year’s attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza ended in farce, each side with their own spin. Did Israel break international law? On the other hand, why were some of the participants up for a very violent fight and why was much of the so-called aid out of date? Strange.

As for this time round, let’s move past the rhetoric and ask if Gaza really needs an armada of aid. Was David Cameron correct when he said earlier this year that Gaza is a “prison camp”?

Israelis will argue that Gaza is not what the BBC or New York Times try to portray it as. While not exactly the Bahrain of the Near East, neither is Gaza totally a basket case. For example, the Hebrew newspaper “Yediot” had a 2-page feature with colour photos, detailing how Gaza is developing. The beaches look full and the shops are busy.

The Israeli army issued a video this week of a typical convey of luxury goods passing into the Gaza Strip from Israel. Similarly, a snappy 80 second utube clip clearly reviews how many parts of Gaza have long since abandoned poverty levels quoted by politicians. (You have to wonder who posted the original video.)

OK, so for more objective reporting, I turned to overseas correspondents. A Japanese writer had observed a few months ago that “Gaza and the West Bank are the only places in the world where I have seen refugees drive Mercedes.”

This week, a syndicated article from Ethan Bonner looked in depth at the emerging tunnel economy of Gaza. A powerful opening paragraph observes how: -

Two luxury hotels are opening in Gaza this month. Thousands of new cars are plying the roads. A second shopping mall – with escalators imported from Israel – will open next month. Hundreds of homes and two dozen schools are about to go up. A Hamas-run farm where Jewish settlements once stood is producing enough fruit that Israeli imports are tapering off.

Kevin Myers in a brave analysis in the Irish Independent asks: -

how can anyone possibly think that Gaza is the primary centre of injustice in the Middle East? According to Mathilde Redmatn, deputy director of the International Red Cross in Gaza, there is in fact no humanitarian crisis there at all. But by God, there is one in Syria, where possibly thousands have died in the past month.

After all, if the Palestinian news agency, Ma’an, is to be trusted, there is no shortage of cars in Gaza. The reason for the lowish number of new items is due to the local tax regulations imposed by Hamas.

An interesting blog summed up the forked approach to Gaza’s economy very succinctly:

While violence continues in Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, there is one place in the Arab world where stability is growing as factories and farms multiply, construction booms and unemployment drops.  Ironically, that place is Gaza – the place singled out for international attention as the next flotilla prepares to sail, staffed by leftist loonies bearing solidarity, love and concern for people who are better off than many Americans living in Newark, Detroit, Washington D.C. and New York.  These pusillanimous rescuers are not floating off to Darfur, Congo or Sudan where photo-ops are hard to come by and marauding thugs are unfazed by such concerns as respect for interfering faux do-gooders.  They are not trudging to Afghanistan where sick people and the medical staff who tend them are marked for murder, nor will they insist on seeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for five years without a single visit by the Red Cross.  Their outpouring of compassion exists only for the purported victims of Israeli aggression – there is no credence given to the barbaric tactics of Hamas planting its military operations in the midst of their own civilian populations, or murdering its own domestic opposition, much less targeting Israeli children on school buses for demolition.

So is the latest flotilla designed to help the people of Gaza or satisfy the dubious ranting of those people claiming to be supporters of peace?

The Israeli army and society – a personal viewpoint

My son is just finishing basic training in an infantry unit in the Israeli army. When I explain this to colleagues around the world, a wave of enforced silence hits the conversation.

Am I mad? Is he mad? Can’t you send him off to university? Isn’t it dangerous? etc etc

Well, yes Israel is surrounded by enemies. Our democracy needs defending. There is talk of the next Gaza campaign. And that’s before you mention the possibilites of Egypt worming its way out of peace treaty or the Iranian threat or Syrian unrest …..

There again, this is not Syria. Nobody sends soldiers up on rooftops to fire at protesters in Tel Aviv, nor in the West Bank for that matter. For all the complaints raised by international protest groups over the January 2009 battle in Gaza, no soldier was found guilty of issuing immoral orders.

This is very much a people’s army, where your commanding officer can often be your neighbour.

Mere words? I think not. Have a look at recent postings on the website of the army, the IDF, Israel Defence Force.

1) “There is a 200% increase of minorities volunteering to join the IDF”. This includes Bedouin, Druze, and Arabs of different religions. The report does not mention the many immigrants, who are able to complete their voluntary conversion process to Judaism through the army.

2) Over the past 4 months, the IDF has helped Druze farmers transfer 12,000 tons of produce to their fellow religionists in Syria. This has become an annual process, facilitated by the Red Cross. Fortunately, this year’s crop was completed before the Syrians closed the border as part of their clampdown.

3) The IDF was one of the first teams to send a field unit to Japan. This follows on its success in Haiti and other countries, which have suffered from a natural disasater in recent years. 

Many elements of the ultra orthodox continue to ignore the importance of the Israeli army as a motivator, as a builder of society, as a provider of skills for life, and much more. In truth the IDF remains far more than just a big bully as frequently projected by the likes of the New York Times or the BBC.

And if my son is part of that process, I am proud of that.