Linda Gradstein TML

Israel issues travel warnings

A view of shore from a dive shop in Dahab, South Sinai, Egypt. (photo by B. Simpson via commons.wikimedia.org)

During the upcoming school holidays of Passover, followed by the summer months, many Israelis travel abroad. Europe is only a few hours away by plane, and the beaches of Cyprus and Greece are even closer. Vacations abroad, even including the flight, are often cheaper than local getaways because of the high price of Israeli hotels. However, the Israeli government has issued travel warnings for 41 countries, including Europe and Asia.

“Recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists in Belgium, Canada, Australia, France and Denmark raise concerns over additional attacks against Western targets, including Israeli and Jewish targets, by veterans of the fighting in Syria and Iraq who are affiliated with global jihad (including Islamic State) and by local elements inspired by the terrorist organizations.”

The travel warning, issued by the National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau, noted that is illegal for Israelis to travel to “Syria, Iraq (including Iraqi Kurdistan), Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.”

The warning comes amid a spate of attacks on Western and Jewish targets including the Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Jewish supermarket in Paris, the shooting in Denmark and, just this weekend, an attack on a synagogue in London.

Israeli terrorism experts say Israelis do not seem to be the primary target of these attacks.

“Until now there have been two main targets – governmental targets in Western countries and Jewish institutions,” Reuven Ehrlich, a terrorism expert, explained. “Israelis have not been the target, but I cannot tell you what it will be in the future.”

However, the warnings do not seem to be affecting travel plans. Israelis have one of the highest rates per capita of travel abroad, taking two million trips a year, although there are no statistics about how many of them are travelers who fly several times a year. Israeli travel professionals say they are telling their clients to maintain a lower profile.

“We are asking our passengers to be a little quieter, which is a good thing no matter what,” said Mark Feldman, chief executive officer of Ziontours in Jerusalem. “Israelis tend to be loud and raucous and call attention to themselves. We have several groups going to Europe in the next few weeks and we have told them not to congregate in the lobby, not to speak in loud voices and, if possible, not to speak in Hebrew.”

Read more at themedialine.org.

Israel-Turkey relations

Israelis buying a Japanese car in Tel Aviv might be surprised to learn that the car was actually built in Turkey. Tourists buying dried figs in Israel’s Machane Yehuda market probably don’t know that the figs might also be imported.

These are just two of the examples of the burgeoning trade between Israel and Turkey, trade that has more than doubled in the past five years, according to the Turkish Statistics Institute, and confirmed by Israeli officials, to $5.6 billion. About half of that is exports from Israel to Turkey, and the other half, Turkish goods, like the cars, coming to Israel.

photo - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. *(photo from commons.wikimedia.org)*

“The economies of Turkey and Israel complement each other and the trade ties are flourishing,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon told this reporter. “That’s the good news. Unfortunately, the political ties are not as good, and this is a consequence of the harsh attack by the Turkish leadership against Israel.”

Ties between Israel and Turkey have foundered since Israeli naval commandos killed 10 Turkish activists on a ship that was trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Three years later, U.S. President Barack Obama brokered a telephone apology from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the deaths of the 10 Turkish citizens, but relations have not returned to normal.

Israel and Turkey do not currently have ambassadors in each other’s countries, but do have lower-level diplomatic representatives. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consistently made anti-Israel comments, including last month, commenting on Netanyahu’s trip to Paris after the killings at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket. Referring to last summer’s fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Erdogan said Netanyahu must “give an account for the children, women you massacred.”

In response, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called Erodan an “antisemitic neighborhood bully.”

That type of Turkish rhetoric has been stepped up in advance of the June 2015 election for 550 new members of the Grand National Assembly, the country’s parliament.

“We’ve repeatedly seen that whenever there is an election campaign there is an increase in anti-Israel rhetoric,” a senior Israeli official told this reporter on condition of anonymity. “It’s almost part of the electoral campaign and the more anti-Israel you are, the more popular you are. That is something we can’t accept.”

Yet both Israel and Turkey seem happy to distinguish between their political and economic connections.

Read more at themedialine.org.

Israel-China economic ties keep growing

A senior delegation from Shengjing visits JVP in Jerusalem. (photo by Yael Rivkind, JVP, via israel21c.org)

Fiona Darmon, a partner at JVP, one of Israel’s most successful venture capital funds, was recently in China at a meeting with a large investor. She sat in his office for more than an hour, chatting with him about everything but business. Only then, she said, did he nod to his subordinates, and Darmon was taken into another room, where the business discussions began.

“The mindset in China is that if we’re going to do business and I’m going to entrust you with my capital, let’s see if we have a personal rapport before I even move to the next step,” Darmon told this reporter. “It’s about you as a person, first.”

Israelis are not known for their patience, and that can be a challenge, said Ilan Maor, a managing director of Sheng-BDO (Business Development Organization) and a former Israeli consul in China. Yet economic ties are “booming,” he said.

“The most important aspects of the commercial cooperation are gradually moving from buying and selling toward the main pillars of the future of technology and investment,” Maor explained. “China is taking its place gradually as a strategic player in the Israeli market.”

As an example, the Chinese company Bright Star is on the verge of buying a majority stake in Tnuva, Israel’s iconic dairy company. The company is so central to Israel’s image of itself that, on leaving Israel, the last thing you see on the way to duty free is the logo of Tnuva’s cottage cheese container made out of flowers. If the sale goes through as expected, China and Israel’s kibbutz cooperative movement will share ownership of the dairy company.

More and more Chinese business people are visiting Israel looking to invest and to learn from Israel’s entrepreneurs.

“Israel is not only the ‘startup nation,’ it is also the ‘innovation nation,’” said Xueling Cao, director of the Shengjing Group, who was in Israel when she spoke with this reporter. “China is a huge consumer market and Israel is a huge source of innovation and technology, and we can match the two together.”

Read more at themedialine.org.

UNRWA needs reform

Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist, has launched a campaign against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), tasked with providing “assistance and protection” for five million Palestinian refugees around the world. In Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, UNRWA provides food, other aid and runs schools.

Eid said a recent study by well-known Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki shows that 70 percent of Palestinian refugees are seeking financial compensation rather than the “right of return” to their former homes in what is today Israel. He said that UNRWA, however, has an interest in perpetuating the right of return, in part, to justify its large budgets. These assertions are part of Eid’s blistering attack on UNRWA, which operates with a $1.2 billion budget from donor countries, including the United States.

“Palestinians in refugee camps are suffering, while UNRWA is gaining power and money,” Eid, who grew up in the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem, told a small group of journalists. “In Gaza, you hear more and more voices saying that UNRWA is responsible for delaying the reconstruction of Gaza” after the heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza last summer.

In an article in the Jerusalem Post earlier this month, Eid called for a five-point program to reform UNRWA including a call for an audit of all funds allocated to UNRWA and a demand that the organization dismiss employees affiliated with Hamas, which controls Gaza.

“Hamas has never denied that the majority of UNRWA employees are affiliated with Hamas and coordinate with the organization,” Eid said.

During the past summer’s fighting in Gaza, Israel accused UNRWA of allowing Hamas to use its schools to fire rockets at southern Israel, a charge UNRWA denied. Later, UNRWA found rockets in two empty schools and issued a strong condemnation.

Read more at themedialine.org.

Refugee recognition

President Reuven Rivlin Rivlin addresses the Nov. 30 ceremony at his residence marking the first Day of the Expulsion and Deportation of Jews from Arab Lands and Iran. (photo by GPO/Mark Neiman)

It may have been 47 years ago but Yossef Carasso remembers every detail of the night that he was taken to an Egyptian police station from his home in the city of Tanta, near Cairo. It was the first night of the 1967 war.

“We were the only Jewish family still left in Tanta and, at 10 p.m., there was a knock on the door,” said Carasso. “The policeman told my father, ‘We’re looking for your son and son-in-law.’ They took us to a police station and left us there all night.”

Carasso, who was not accused of any crime, was among 400 Jews who were imprisoned in Egypt at the start of the war when Egypt, along with Syria and Jordan, attacked Israel. For six months, he said, his parents didn’t know if he was still alive. Finally, he was allowed to write to them. Two years later, he was released and, the next day, he and his family left Egypt, originally for France and then for Israel. According to Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), almost 120,000 Jews left Egypt in the 1950s and ’60s. There are only a few dozen Jews left in Egypt today.

Last week, Carasso attended a ceremony at Israeli President Reuven Rivlin’s residence, designating Nov. 30 as the national day of commemoration of the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran. According to the United Nations, about 850,000 Jews left their homes in Arab countries; and 750,000 Palestinians became refugees with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The largest number of Arab Jews came from Morocco, Algeria and Iraq. Today, half of all Israelis have roots in Arab countries.

Read more at themedialine.org.

***

On Dec. 3, World Jewish Congress co-hosted in New York with other Jewish organizations The Untold Story of 850,000 Refugees. More than 400 people attended the event that came on the heels of the first official commemoration in Israel of the suffering of Jews who were expelled or forced to leave Arab and other Muslim countries in the wake of the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Israel’s United Nations Ambassador Ron Prosor opened the evening, calling on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to work for the establishment of a documentation and research centre dedicated to Jewish refugees from Arab countries. WJC President Ronald Lauder spoke, as did Malcolm Hoenlein of Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Dudu Tassa and the Al-Kuwaitis performed; Rabbi Elie Abadie of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries and Nelly Shiloh of the Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN presented a selection from Iraqi-born Israeli writer Eli Amir’s novel The Dove Flyer; a portion of the movie Farewell Baghdad was screened; and remarks were also heard from Cynthia Shamash, whose memoir recalling her family’s escape from Baghdad when she was a child will be published next year.

– From worldjewishcongress.org

Israelis buy more guns

Yoram Issachar, who owns a contracting company in Jerusalem with his father and two brothers, has carried a Baretta 765 for the past 25 years. He works in Jewish communities on land Israel acquired in the West Bank, employing 15-30 Palestinian laborers, and carries the gun for his protection. Now, after the attack in Jerusalem that killed four worshippers and a police officer, he plans to upgrade to a larger gun. Immediately after that attack, he said, he took out his gun and cleaned it to make sure it was ready for use.

“I want to buy a Glock because each bullet is larger, and it shoots faster,” he said. “It will give me more security if I need it.”

He’s only used the gun once. In 1992, several young Palestinians threw stones at his car as he drove through the Palestinian town of El-Bireh, damaging his car although he was not hurt. Angry, he jumped out of the car and pursued them, opening fire at their legs, although he did not hit them.

In the wake of a series of attacks that have left 11 Israelis dead over the past weeks, Israelis are lining up to get a gun licence. Those who already have licences are carrying their guns with them more often. The Israeli government has asked everyone who has a gun to carry them in public, to help reinforce Israel’s security situation, and some who would leave their guns at work, such as security guards, are urged to bring them home.

“People are nervous after recent events, and anyone who has a gun should carry it around rather than leave it at home,” Yakov Amit, the director of the gun licensing department for the Ministry of Public Security, told the Media Line. “We want as many people as possible to be able to respond to an attack.”

Amit said there are about 300,000 guns held legally in Israel – half of them by individuals such as Issachar who carry them for self-protection, and the other half by security guards at public institutions. Israelis must demonstrate a need for the gun, and pass a psychological test as well as a shooting test before they receive a licence. The licence must be renewed every three years.

In the past decade, there have been a series of incidents in which people have been killed by guns at home, either in accidents or intentionally. At least 16 women have been killed by their partners using licensed guns, since 2002, according to women’s groups. Yet, Israelis who carry guns say they make them feel safer.

“When I moved to Israel in 1976 from Memphis, Tenn., I brought two hand guns with me,” said Alon Kirschner, a physiologist. “In Tennessee, if you don’t have a gun by the time you’re 8, you’re considered a sissy.”

Read more at themedialine.org.

Israel hopes tourists return

Temple Mount Western Wall on Shabbat. (photo by David Shankbone via en.wikipedia.org)

Robin and Jon Sirkin prepared to celebrate their son Eitan’s bar mitzvah in Jerusalem last weekend. There was a Dr. Who theme and an ice-cream bar planned for the reception at the synagogue after the services. As part of the celebrations, Robin Sirkin’s brother, sister, aunt and cousin were planning to make their first trip to Israel. She booked a trip to southern Israel and a meal at one of Jerusalem’s most expensive restaurants for 15 people.

Four weeks ago, just after the ceasefire was declared between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, they all canceled their trips. Sirkin, who moved to Israel from Cleveland three years ago with their four children, said she tried to convince her relatives that the ceasefire would hold, but to no avail.

“It’s devastating and heartbreaking and feels unsupportive,” Sirkin told the Media Line. “I think they’re overreacting, but we have a different sense of security here.

She said they held off telling their son that his relatives had canceled, hoping that as the big day he approached he would be more excited about the ceremony and the party, and less disappointed.

“He was a little sad, but he’s trying not to focus on that,” she said.

The Sirkins are not alone. Mark Feldman, CEO of Ziontours, said that the seven weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas over the summer has devastated tourism for the rest of the year, except for the Jewish holidays this month, and Christmas. Feldman said they lost about 2,000 bookings, and most of the time waived the cancellation fees.

“Tourism for the rest of 2014 simply doesn’t exist,” Feldman said. “Now we’re looking toward 2015, and hoping the government will begin to lay the seeds to allow tourism to begin to come back.”

Read more at themedialine.org.

Rebuilding Gaza: Will PA and EU become more involved?

With the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are asking when and how reconstruction of the battered coastal enclave will begin. United Nations workers in Gaza say that 55,000 refugees are still taking shelter in 41 UN schools, raising questions about how the school year will begin in two weeks, already delayed from its scheduled opening in August.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah told representatives of several international organizations that the PA will repair homes that have been partially destroyed and will rent homes, as well as secure temporary homes and even tents, for displaced people. It was the first sign that the PA will take a more active role in Gaza, which has been controlled by Hamas since 2007. In the spring, Hamas and Fatah announced a unity government, but it has not met or functioned since the fighting began soon after the announcement.

A report by Shelter Cluster, which is co-chaired by the United Nations Relief and Works Authority (UNRWA) and the Red Cross, found that 17,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged in the seven weeks of fighting. An additional 5,000 homes still need repair from previous rounds of fighting while, even before the latest conflict started, there was a deficit of 75,000 homes. According to Shelter Cluster, at the rate of 100 trucks with building materials crossing the border into Gaza, it would take 20 years to rebuild the densely populated strip.

Read more at themedialine.org.

Sderot residents hope Tel Aviv finally understands them

Motorists in Tel Aviv take cover from an incoming terrorist rocket. (photo from IDF Spokesperson’s Unit via Ashernet)

In Sderot, Simone Mizrachi wearily follows her two-year-old grandson as he happily jumps on the bouncy castle in a large indoor playground. A balloon pops and she jumps. The playground has four large underground bomb shelters in case of rocket attacks.

“Enough already,” said Mizrachi about the dozens of rockets fired at this small town in recent days. “My grandson is the second generation already living through these rockets. When we see smoke from the rockets, I try to tell him, ‘Look at the clouds up there,’ but he knows it’s not clouds. At age 2, he already knows what’s going on.”

Mizrachi has lived in this lower-middle-class town of 24,000 for 32 years and has raised her four children here. For the past 13 years, she said, Sderot has been under constant rocket fire. Because it is less than a mile to the border with the Gaza Strip, there are only 15 seconds to get to a shelter after the siren sounds. The Israeli government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build bomb shelters here – at bus stops, schools and in private homes.

Now, for the first time, rockets are hitting Tel Aviv. Mizrachi said she hopes Israel can end the rocket fire all over the country. But, she added, there is a certain satisfaction in the idea that Israelis in bourgeois Tel Aviv now understand what Sderot has been living with all this time.

“Where have they been for the past 13 years?” she asks angrily. “Now, they are finally getting a taste of what it is like to live here. There are times that we get 60 rockets a day. Maybe now that they feel it, the government will finally do something.”

Read more at themedialine.org.

Rivlin: Israel’s new president

Reuven Rivlin votes in the presidential election in the Knesset. (photo by Ashernet)

On June 10, Israel’s 120-seat parliament chose longtime Likud member Reuven Rivlin as the country’s next president. He will succeed Shimon Peres, who retires next month at the age of 90.

Rivlin, who served two terms as speaker of the Knesset, has been a member of parliament for almost 20 years. He won on the second round of voting, beating out rival Knesset member Meir Sheetrit in that round. He said that he will serve the entire public.

“This [Likud] party was my home as I said it would be until I was legally obligated to leave it. Now, I am no longer a party man, I am no longer a faction man. I am everybody’s man. A man of the people,” Rivlin told the Knesset.

Read more at themedialine.org.