David Jablinowitz, opinion editor for the Jerusalem Post, answers a question at one of his March talks at Congregation Beth Israel. <\/i>(photo by Pat Johnson)<\/i><\/p>\n
The intensely emotional debate in Israel right now centres on whether the government and military should be negotiating with Hamas for release of the hostages, extending the war or finding some combination of approaches to the situation.<\/p>\n
David Jablinowitz, opinion editor for the Israeli English-language newspaper and media platform Jerusalem Post<\/i>, spoke in Vancouver March 20. He shared with audiences at Congregation Beth Israel the rock and the hard place Israelis \u2013 including Israeli media \u2013 are between in the current crisis. Beth Israel\u2019s Rabbi Adam Stein introduced Jablinowitz and emceed the discussion. The journalist spoke again the next night, at Shabbat services.<\/p>\n
The Israeli government estimates that there are 59 remaining hostages in Gaza, of which 24 are believed to be alive. Testimony from rescued and released hostages say Hamas terrorists are poised to murder the captives if Israel Defence Forces ground troops approach \u2013 and this danger is in addition to the possibility that Israeli military strikes could unintentionally kill or injure Israelis held in Gaza.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is why there is such an emotional dispute in Israel right now,\u201d Jablinowitz said. \u201cAre we going to lose these 24? Because some Hamas terrorists, of whatever level, the highest or the lowest, have orders that the moment the Israelis get close, you kill the hostages.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, Hamas is unsurprisingly not negotiating in good faith, he said. Although the terror regime has been significantly weakened, they continue to behave as though they have the upper hand.<\/p>\n \u201cHamas is playing hardball,\u201d he said. When an individual or a group is in a weakened position, rational behaviour would see them become more amenable to compromise. Hamas appears to respond otherwise, making counter-demands that Jablinowitz characterizes as \u201ctotally unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are they doing that? Why does Hamas have the gall to do this?\u201d he asks. \u201cBecause it plays into their own hands.\u201d<\/p>\n Israeli intelligence officials, he said, know that Hamas has been using ceasefires as an opportunity to rebuild and prepare for fresh rounds of violence.<\/p>\n \u201cThey keep saying, \u2018No, that proposal by Israel is not good.\u2026 That\u2019s almost good, but do that, so I can do this,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWhile negotiations are going on, weeks and weeks and weeks, what\u2019s happening on the ground in Gaza is the rebuilding of infrastructure [and] recruiting terrorists. They are just building themselves up because, as far as they are concerned, if they have their way, there will be another Oct. 7 \u2013\u00a0<\/span>because the dispute with Hamas is not a dispute over territory. Hamas does not want Israel anywhere. Their charter says so. They won\u2019t accept a Jewish state \u2013 any non-Muslim state at all, but certainly not a Jewish state.\u201d<\/p>\n Another reason why Hamas feels emboldened, he said, is because the international community, like the European Union, often treats Israel and Hamas as two legitimate actors on an equivalent moral plane.<\/p>\n The role of Qatar, which has been wrongly accepted by world leaders as a legitimate intervenor in the conflict, deserves a far more critical eye, argued Jablinowitz.<\/p>\n Qatar should be on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, he said. \u201cThey are pulling the wool over the eyes of the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Qatar is pretending to be a constructive party, while funding Palestinian terror, providing a haven to terrorists, and flooding the world with jihadist propaganda on social media and through their funding of courses in North American and European universities, Jablinowitz said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This support for propaganda, among other factors, helps explain the world\u2019s approach to the conflict.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not saying Israel is all good, I\u2019m not saying there aren\u2019t innocent Palestinians,\u201d said Jablinowitz. But he takes exception to the widespread expressions of concern around blameless Palestinian civilians.<\/p>\n \u201cI have to tell you, soldiers who have served there, and among the [freed] hostages themselves [in] their testimony, have said, \u2018Don\u2019t give me the \u201ccivilian innocent\u201d business. We were there, we saw the people. There was nobody, nobody, who came to our rescue.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Palestinian kids and other civilians came to see where the hostages are and, Jablinowitz said, \u201cNobody, nobody lifted a finger to do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Relatedly, the pass the world community seems to give the Palestinians is not extended to Israel\u2019s military, even when it goes out of its way to minimize Palestinian casualties.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat other countries say to a terrorist, or to their enemy, \u2018At 4 o\u2019clock Wednesday afternoon, I\u2019m attacking you, and I\u2019m attacking you here\u2019? But that\u2019s what we do in order to keep down the civilian deaths,\u201d he said. \u201cHow does the world report it? What do European and other leaders say? \u2018Oh, Israel is evicting the Palestinians.\u2019 We are trying to save their lives and save our lives at the same time. We are better to Palestinian civilians in Gaza than Hamas is to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n The rebuilding of Gaza, if and when it occurs, must address not only the physical devastation but the indoctrination of kids, who have been taught that \u201cJews are bad people, the Jews were meant to be killed,\u201d said Jablinowitz.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as you\u2019re going to have that education, there\u2019s no point in doing anything,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Jablinowitz acknowledged at least two contesting attitudes toward Israel\u2019s overseas PR battle.<\/p>\n One side, typified in a Jerusalem Post<\/i> op-ed by Alan Baker, Israel\u2019s former ambassador to Canada, is that Israel should ignore global criticism.<\/p>\n \u201cEnough. There is no point,\u201d Jablinowitz summarizes this approach. \u201cWe have to do what we have to do.<\/p>\n \u201cAn alternative opinion is that maybe it\u2019s not the hasbara<\/i> [PR approach] that\u2019s a problem, but the government\u2019s policies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He thinks the answer may be simpler.<\/p>\n \u201cI honestly think that our cause is not as appealing. The Palestinians are so good at it because they are the downtrodden,\u201d said Jablinowitz.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Israel had good PR when they were seen in the world\u2019s eyes as the David to the Arab world\u2019s Goliath.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were doing great in 1967, when \u2026 [it would have been] so easy to just decimate our country,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were popular.\u201d<\/p>\n That changed after Israel won the Six Day War, which remains contested in terms of who started the conflict, since Israel attacked its neighbours as they were preparing an offensive.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why we preempted in 1967,\u201d Jablinowitz said. \u201cYou see what happens when we don\u2019t preempt? Oct. 7 happens when we don\u2019t preempt.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David Jablinowitz, opinion editor for the Jerusalem Post, answers a question at one of his March talks at Congregation Beth Israel. (photo by Pat Johnson) The intensely emotional debate in Israel right now centres on whether the government and military should be negotiating with Hamas for release of the hostages, extending the war or finding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23970,687,4361,23969,4242,4330,22729,20405,2530,23968],"class_list":["post-46462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-david-jablinowitz","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-hasbara","tag-history","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-jerusalem-post","tag-media","tag-pr"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}