Igal Sarna: The poor, moderate Israeli immigrants filled with a lust for revenge on Gaza | News & Politics | News & Comment

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 2, 2009

shelter, the pair of rabbits stopped making whoopee and the female fled in fear of the crowd and disappeared. After the missile attack, Eluz searched for her everywhere and didn't even find a scrap of fur. Thus he was left with only the grey rabbit, now a frightened widower who hardly eats and huddles in the shelter.

At home, too, it's hard. With every siren Eluz's sister Lea vomits and his mother gets the shakes. Their only comfort is that the other side is suffering more and therefore perhaps it will be over soon.

Damage from the Hamas rocket that killed Eluz's neighbour Beber Vaknin

Damage caused by a fatal Hamas rocket attack on Netivot

In the courtyard at number 59 I met some of the others who live here, all of them poor, and typical of the sort of immigrants who live in Netivot and other small towns in the south. There was the elderly Ukrainian woman, one of the million former Soviet Jews who came to Israel in the 1990s after the Berlin Wall came down. Still fearful of authority, she did not want to be photographed, hence the hand raised in front of her face in the photograph. Two dark-skinned girls were from an Ethiopian family that arrived in the 1980s.

I met Eluz's mother Ayala, originally Moroccan, and his buddies Zagoury and Haddad, who are afraid of Gaza and just want the army to kill everyone there so they can live in peace.

I understood how fear can push even moderate people into a lust for revenge

From the adjacent courtyard a fellow named Yonatan showed up with an old rifle. He has been hired by the municipality to guard the neighbouring apartment block, which lost its front door in the missile attack. He tells me how he had rolled up here in Netivot from Marseilles because of anti-Semitism via the evacuated Gush Katif settlements in the Gaza Strip, and I understood how insecurity and fear push even moderate people into a kind of lust for revenge.

Netivot, which began to thrive a bit in the mid-1990s, feels like a person who has been extricated from the cycle of poverty and has no desire to slip back into it and is prepared to do anything, so long as a bit of quiet returns.

As dark fell on Weizmann Street I could hear in the distance the heavy bombardment of Gaza, and the earth shook from the movement of tanks, preparing for the expected ground invasion. And I saw that the boy Eluz was building a kind of miniature security room of ceramic tiles for the rabbit who dwelt alone, in despair and waiting for it all to be over.

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 2, 2009

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As usual, at Christmas, Israel indulges in the sport of bombing and killing Palestinians in Gaza, the only area left for Palestinian refugees. Israel's policy of open immigration to all Jews is entirely at the expense of Palestinians and completely unfair. Israel claims that they are only attacking terrorists but forget that they are a country born from terrorism in the 1940's because a weak U S government did not want the problem of the poor themselves, only the clever scientists and rocket engineers from the ruins of Germany. and so, without much thought, recognised the new state. It might help to restore the balance if the west bombed Israel until they conform to the U N resolutions they choose to ignore.

Posted by Peter at 11:22am on January 2, 2009

More propaganda. It would be interesting to know who the legal owners of Weizmann Street and for that matter of the entire region of Netivot and Siderot were before 1948. The reporter fails in his duty by not reporting the basic facts. This is a sobstory, made up for gullible people.

Posted by Bob Visser at 1:47pm on January 2, 2009

I am amazaed how Israel sells its version of events to unsuspecting westerners!!! It was Israel that broke the ceasefire with a lethal unprovoked air raid as a prelude to the current barbaric onslaught on a defenceless population and Gazans responded with primitive home-made mortars. Get it?

Posted by Sami Joseph at 4:33pm on January 2, 2009

From both sides of the issue, there comes a cry, Why oh why, do the nations rage? Do we have to abide for long in this land of hatred and grief? As a person, who has not experienced this kind of hatred, I can only imagine that the Palestinians and Israelis want an end to the struggle and fighting and death. Wouldn't you? Peace can only come, if the people change the way they communicate with the other side, not the governments, not the militias and military of either side, but the people must make the first overtures for peace and safety. This is the way peace came to Northern Ireland and brought about the end of the "troubles." It was two women from opposite sides of the struggle, tired of losing the men in their respective families that brought about the change that shook the North to its very foundation. This is the way that peace will come to the Middle East. People who are tired of losing family members to the struggle for independence and security. Hopefully, there lives in the area, two women of strength and courage who will make the first steps and start the process without the interference of the government of either side of the issue.

Posted by nrobi at 2:58pm on January 3, 2009

Peter: It's not Christmas it's the coming election. Every time an election looms in Israel, the Palestinians get it. What price democracy? I've noticed that the Jews immigrating to Israel now seem to be of the rabid right-wing kind, mostly from America and Australia, I suppose a nascent nazi state attracts would be nazis. They are now settlers of Arab lands, and physically attack Palestinians on a daily basis, often beating up old people they find in the fields they want to take over. There are videos on youtube - Quote: We killed Jesus and we'll kill you'. They even fight the Israeli army when it evicts them; spiteful, mean, hate-filled, they are the toxic edge of this cuddly, innocent Israel some people would have us believe is the norm.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 11:12am on January 8, 2009