The war of the poor

The Israeli town of Netivot was attacked by Hamas missiles this week. Igal Sarna meets the moderate immigrants now filled with a lust for revenge

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 2, 2009

Strangely enough, it is the boy Eluz's rabbit that will remain engraved in my memory after this war. Sometimes a small animal sends a message that humans find hard to transmit, like the hare in the Finnish writer Arto Paasilinna's book, The Year of the Hare.

This week I had wanted to go to poor, wretched Gaza, where the smoke is rising, but it has remained closed to me. For two years now the army has been preventing the entry of Israeli reporters to the place where what is happening is causing me, at home in Tel Aviv, to shudder with anger and embarrassment.

The disproportionate destruction of Gaza is reminding me of Iraq

The disproportionate destruction of Gaza is reminding me of Iraq, the Second Lebanon War and the way the first world drops the latest thing in technology on a failed third world, in a military operation that looks like some sort of Pyrrhic victory.

Since Gaza is closed, I drove to our small southern towns that are under a sparse missile attack. In face of the burning suffering in Gaza, they are living in what appears to be slow erosion. Thus I came to the apartment block at 59 Weizmann Street in Netivot and found the rabbit.

Netivot is a small immigrant town of 26,000 people at the edge of the desert, which only this week started to be hit by rockets. All Netivot wants is not to be its neighbour Sderot, which has been pummelled by Qassam rockets for eight years. These small cities facing Gaza are the hostages of a lousy situation that bloodthirsty politicians, militias and armies are forcing on those who live on either side of the border.

The boy Eluz, from an apartment on the second story of the building, told me how he had developed a small business plan that has gone entirely awry because of the war. He had bought a pair of rabbits, a small female and a large grey male, and planned for them to reproduce rapidly and to sell a lot of bunnies and accumulate pocket money. His father is an unemployed crane operator and money is always short at home.

Eluz left his rabbits to have a good time in the abandoned shelter

When his mother forbade him to raise the pair in the family's small apartment, Eluz went down to the abandoned shelter that no one had ever used and found his old play-pen there. Under the armoured window, he padded the play-pen and left the rabbits to have a good time in the dark.

But the moment the war broke out and the missile from Gaza landed and killed his neighbour Beber in the courtyard, everything crashed. Thirteen families of neighbours ran in panic to the

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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