Israeli Militants Reject Gaza Abuse Accusations

On Monday, Israeli militants rejected accusations that its soldiers and military committed war crimes and atrocities against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel is claiming that most of the 1300 Palestinians killed in Gaza were “terror operatives” during “Operation Cast Lead.” "Operation Cast Lead" is also known as the Gaza operation, and was the Israel’s operation aimed to stop Palestinians from firing rockets from Gaza in to Israel.

Yet this conclusion contradicts what Israeli soldiers said earlier this month. According to an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, numerous soldiers came forward and admitted that a lot of Palestinian civilian killings and Palestinian property was intentional.

The allegations made by Israeli soldiers in Haaretz were from soldiers that graduated from a pre-military course at an Israeli college. In them, Israeli soldiers said that they were left under the impression by Israeli troops that "inside Gaza you are allowed to do anything you want."

Israel’s top general dismisses the claims though.

"I don't believe that soldiers serving in the IDF hurt civilians in cold blood, but we shall wait for the results of the investigation," Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said last week. Ashkenazi instead blamed Hamas for choosing to fight in heavily populated areas.

"It was a complex atmosphere that includes civilians and we took every measure possible to reduce harm of the innocent," he said, according to an IDF statement.



The conclusions made on Monday by Israeli militants follow a military police investigation that examined claims that were being made from the media and a conference. The claims said that the Israeli army intentionally damaged property and killed innocent civilians during Israel's raid into Gaza in late December and January.

Israeli military supporter General Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit told the press that the stories told by the media about the war “were purposely exaggerated and made extreme, in order to make a point with the participants of the conference."

He also said that a majority of the allegations were based off of rumor and "not supported by the facts as determined by the investigation."
Yet many human rights organizations are condemning the speed that the Israeli military police reached their conclusion.

Human rights organization groups such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Bimkom, B'tselem, Gisha, Hamoked, The Public Committee Against Torture, Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights, and Adalah have all commented on the situation.

Video About the Gaza War Crimes

"The speedy closing of the investigation immediately raises suspicions that the very opening of this investigation was merely the army's attempt to wipe its hands of all blame for illegal activity during Operation Cast Lead," nine human rights groups said in a joint statement.

These human rights groups are also calling for a civilian investigation, which Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has rejected.

"The closing of the Army's own investigation only strengthens the need for the attorney general to allow for an independent non-partisan investigative body to be established in order to look into all Israeli Army activity during Operation Cast Lead," said the organizations.

The human rights groups raise the possibility that acts by the Israeli military towards the people of Gaza are a lot worse than what has been speculated.

Palestinian Impotence, Israeli Insolence

Anyone who is acquainted with recent Palestinian circumstances is certainly aware of the deplorable and inexcusable reality that haunts more than 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip. In conjunction to this horrific reality, Israeli constituents recently held their parliamentary elections, which unsurprisingly resulted in Benjamin Netanyahu coming on top with a victory as the Prime Minister of Israel.

This confronting nexus between two harsh realities, that of Israeli bellicosity versus Palestinian impotence and that of latent arrogance versus manifest defenselessness must surely be noted. It paves way and calls for a more practical change in direction for both sides. Ordinary Palestinians along with their Israeli counterparts need to once and for all come to realize and conclude together, that their incompetent leaders are the ones to be blamed for the current impasse.

Just last Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu addressed his constituents in fiery speech in which he talked about “economic peace”. As part of his predictable campaign ploy, he implicitly reassured us that Israel will not negotiate with Hamas, the official party that is responsible for representing the majority of Palestinians but instead Israel is willing to negotiate with Fatah.

This is indeed yet another provocation and insult to the Palestinians. Such arrant nonsense cannot and should not be tolerated because it only impedes the path that most Israelis and Palestinians desire, the path towards peace.


Israeli constituents cannot sit back and let this play, the need to act and self-integrate themselves in the political process is what is needed at this hour. Netanyahu cannot be given any more credibility than he had back when he served as a Prime Minister in the 90s. Likewise, Hamas must also tone down the harsh rhetoric that characterizes much of what they stand for.

Both sides must take the necessary steps forward and not let this opportunity go to waste. As noted by Roger Cohen in his weekly column in the New York Times, sooner or later Barack Obama will be briefed about what a 12 member council has called "Bipartisan statement on U.S. Middle East peacemaking". The Israeli leadership along with the Palestinian leadership cannot afford to be caught off-guard when the U.S. decides to intervene again.

In 1997, on behalf of the Palestinian people, the late professor Edward Said wrote for Al-Hayat:

We must accept the Jewish experience in all that it entails of horror and fear; but we must require that our experience be given no less attention, or on perhaps another plane of historical actuality. Who would want morally to equate mass extermination with mass dispossession? It would be foolish even to try.”

Here we are more than a decade later and professor Said’s ageless wisdom is more relevant than ever. Throughout his academic career his persistent calling for peace, reconciliation and bases for coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis is what ultimately stood out to me the most. Freedom and equality are both two universal rights for all people in this world, certainly for Palestinians and Israelis as well.

What the Western World Needs to Know About Islam

Islam: What the West Needs to Know

I was assigned to watch the so called documentary "Islam: What the West Needs to Know" for a theology class. And all I have to say is as soon as I watched the first five minutes, I already knew what I was getting myself into by watching this movie. The fact that Robert Spencer and Bat Ye'Or are in it, well that just further proved my theory that this film was going to be prejudiced and filled with convoluted logics.

This documentary’s basic aim is to “investigate” (or rather seek to disprove) the notion that Islam is a peaceful religion by using twisted Islamic “sources” to make the ridiculous claim that Islam is at core a religion driven by violent ideology that inevitably seeks to conquer all opposing religions, governments, and cultures in the world. It features interviews with several so called experts on Islam and they each build their case against a peaceful Islam throughout the film. This movie portrays Islam as an intolerant and destructive ideology rather than the peaceful, yet misrepresented, religion that both Eastern and Western leaders purport it to be.

The film is fundamentally split into six parts. There is a section on the exclusiveness and intolerance of Islam, a section on what”jihad” means and how the term denotes war fought against non-Muslims in order to bring the rule of Islamic law to the world, a section on the expansion of Islam through violence, a section on the mistakes and misrepresentations of Islamist apologists, a section on the totality of Islam, and a final section entitled “The House of War” that establishes that violence is and always has been a part of Islam.

The movie affirms the belief that Islamic violence is an entirely traditional behavior for Muslims and stems directly from the teachings and example of the Prophet Muhammad along with the Qur’an. The film describes Prophet Muhammad as a violent warlord who killed numerous people and that the Qur’an prescribes violence against non-Muslims. This film also touches on how Muhammad’s successors carried his wars to three continents, fighting, enslaving, and massacring countless Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and others. The film also blames the Muslim world for being responsible for the vast majority of conflicts around the world and for almost all international terrorism. This film claims that Islam has a principle of 'religious deception', which enjoins Muslims to deceive non-Muslims in order to advance the cause of Islam. So in other words, Muslim groups in the West will deceive those from the Western world to give the impression that 'Islam is a religion of peace', which according to this film, is fiction.

But to me, what this film does most of all is completely fabricate and twist the facts. It takes the actions of a small percentage of Muslims and judges the entire Muslim population and Islamic religion based off of it. If the bad actions of some members of society are considered to reflect the merits of that entire society as a whole, then wouldn’t Christianity be considered the most evil social and religious system human kind has ever known?

Let me attempt to explain more through example. Catholic priests have continually been proven guilty of child molestation. Does that mean that molestation is a Catholic Christian ritual? Hitler and most of his followers were Christian. So does that mean that Christianity encourages and promotes the acts of genocide? Of course every single one of these imposed questions are stupid and completely extreme, but these generalizations and depictions are very similar to those that this film has made with Islam. It has taken a tiny piece and has created extreme assumptions based off of it, how is that even fair? (One of the interviewees even states resolutely that “there are peaceful and moderate Muslims, but no peaceful and moderate Islam.”)

One of the quotes that really bothered me was: "Islam did not spread through evangelism or through its natural appeal, but through aggressive wars of conquest." From past history classes, I think it is safe to say that Christianity (and most world religions) spread the same way. Religious violence is hardly a new phenomenon in the history of the world. And Christianity is not exactly a peaceful religion and violence can be traced back to the very beginning of its origins with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (which is the center of their religion). Other examples of violence can be traced to the events of the Crusades, when Constantine declared Christianity official religion and started attacking other states in the name of Jesus Christ, Christians using the scriptures against Native Americans, the Protestant and Catholic revolts in Northern Ireland and much more.

This movie also advocates the fact that Islam encourages violence and destruction of other faiths. Anyone who thinks that Judaism or Christianity doesn’t encourage the same thing or subjugation of other faiths, cultures and systems of government obviously doesn’t know what they are talking about. All world religions encourage this, it’s a known fact.

The author of the book, Walid Shoebat, once said that “Like Nazism and Communism, in Islamism the end justifies the means… the whole idea is to promote their way of thinking and to promote their way of life throughout the world.” But this very same view could also be applied to Christianity: often the very same Christians that have the tendency to bash Muslims have: no tolerance for other people's mode of living, a will to dominate and have everything their own way, and last but not least a sort bent way of interpreting the Bible to their own needs. Whether you’re a Jew, Christian or Muslim doesn't matter much. It's whether you are a moron or not, and let me tell you there are quite a few examples of those with this debate.

This film takes quotes from the Qur’an completely out of context. For example, the film quotes the Qur’an as saying "Jews are apes” but doesn’t attempt to cite the passage or context of it. This passage is in fact from the Muslim version of the book of Exodus, and the passage is made in regards to Jews that practiced idolatry while Moses grabbed the Ten Commandments from the top of mount Sinai. So since the Bible tells the exact same story, according to this film they too are implying that Jews are apes. This quote also shows how people verses in the Qur’an are often taken out of context. This is often seen with anti-Islamic propagandists that take mistranslated hadiths or Qur’an quotes so that they can prove a point but don’t bother to look at the entire passage let alone the historical significance of when and for what reason the specific verse or hadith was said. Even translated versions of the Qur’an are inaccurate so people get the wrong meaning.

Oh and if you don’t think this film is biased, here’s a brief background about a few of the interviewees! Robert Spencer runs the website "Jihadwatch” and also wrote the book ” Religion of Peace: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t”, Serge Trifkovic is a spokesperson for the Republic of Serbia that committed war crimes against thousands of Muslims and is also the author of the book “Defeating the Jihad: How the war on terror may yet be won, in spite of ourselves,” Abdullah Al-Araby is an author that wrote "If Islam Ruled America," and Walid Shoebat is a former PLO member that now passionately supports Israel. Point proven.

I think this movie is absolutely ridiculous. All this film does is add fuel to an already skewed fire and just proves the large misunderstanding that the Western world has about Muslims and Muslim beliefs. The worst part about watching this film was thinking about all of the ignorant people out there that have watched this and actually believe it to be factual. If you don’t know anything about Islamic belief, I would not watch this film. I was completely appalled and utterly disgusted by its inaccuracy, one sided view, biased claims, content that was completely taken out of context, misleading and false “facts,” and the entire propagandist against Islam thrown into this film. The people interviewed tried to make it sound as if the ideology of less than 5% of the Islamic population is held by all Muslims which is completely false. I think this film was poorly researched and the research that was done wasn’t done from an academic standing point. This documentary is for people that have already made up their minds that "Islam is evil" and "Muslims are our enemy" or even terrorists without actually studying a single thing about Islam from an objective point of view. This film is completely Christian and Judaist propaganda, if you don’t believe me, do a little research about those on the production along with all of the interviewees.

"History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated." --De Lacy O'Leary, ISLAM AT THE CROSSROADS, London, 1923, p. 8.

A Sober Assessment of Accountability

Richard Falk

In its March 1st, 2009 issue, the influential French monthly publication Le Monde Diplomatique published a very long account of the Palestinian-Israeli developments in light of the impasse caused by many respected figures in wanting to investigate and charge Israel of "potential accountability" for the 22 day blitzkrieg in the Gaza Strip.

The author is Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University whose analysis here can be regarded as one of the most intimate and complete descriptions of what has been taking place after the conflict in Gaza.

Falk ultimately argues that ever "since the establishment of Israel in 1948", today like never before, the authority is being confronted with serious and much deserved allegations of legit crimes against humanity. With that said, Falk still feels rather skeptical about the "political will" behind these allegations and concurs that it is very likely that Israel will walk away untouched.

Be that as it may, Falk's Le Monde article is quite significant not only because of its peculiar theme but also because it is one of the first post-Gaza conflict accounts of the developments and charges brought upon the Israeli authority.

The Gaza blockade is a direct violation of the fourth Geneva convention that prohibits collective punishment, says Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories.

The article deserves to be translated in many different languages seeing that the most plausible path the Palestinians can now take would have to deal with national legislation and national courts alone initiating prosecution proceedings of war crimes. Falk also notes that such legislation already exists in more than 12 countries or so, including some key EU participants.

In sight of the present crisis still harboring much of the Gaza Strip, it seems rather evident that a great deal of accountability for the horrors of what the Palestinian people endured at the will of Israeli authority was also due to the complacent attitude of the international community. Expecting the Israeli authority to initiate and indulge on the self-critical notion of prosecuting their own officials for war crimes has proven to be futile; the catchy idiom of "beating a dead horse" comes to mind.

According to UN investigator Richard Falk, Israel's refusal to allow civilians any exit route from Gaza as its military rained bombs down on schools and houses appears unprecedented in modern warfare.

We also have to bear in mind that the oppressive political atmosphere in Israel does not allow for any of this to occur. For the innocent, be they Palestinians or Israelis, the future cannot look any bleaker hence it is our collective duty as part of human society to intervene and help resolve the crisis afflicting them with complete detachment and disregard of special interests; these could be political, commercial, religious or military.

Although in comparison to these past few decades it can be argued that progress has been made, the present political climate within the international community still dramatizes the disparity between reality and the media.

In the meantime, exposing the Israeli leadership for who they are and what they have done should not be a priority of the international community - for that is well too evident to most just by analyzing the toll of the 22 day attacks on innocent Palestinians – but ultimately it should be our duty to finally sober up and at least reflect on the importance of holding the state of Israel accountable for any war crimes committed against innocent families. To avoid such an encroaching call for justice is to avoid reality.

Palestinians needs $2.8 billion to rebuild Gaza

Palestinians break up pieces of rubble with hammers to retrieve iron rods and other salvageable materials, in the devastated area east of Jebaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009.

Rival Palestinian governments presented competing plans Wednesday that estimated the total cost for rebuilding war-ravaged Gaza at roughly $2.8 billion in foreign aid.

The moderates, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, believe they can raise the full amount at an international donation conference for Gaza next week in Egypt. The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated earlier that they expect to give about $900 million while Saudi Arabia has already promised $1 billion in contributions.

However, Gaza faces a slight problem when it comes to receiving the aid. Gaza would need both open borders and an internationally accepted government for reconstruction to move forward smoothly. At the moment, Gaza has neither.

Hamas is Gaza’s current government and is widely shunned as a terrorist group. What could hurt Gaza’s progress even more is the fact that Gaza has been cut off from the world since militants seized the territory in June 2007.

In the absence of a unity deal, the rival Palestinian governments have moved ahead with separate plans for rebuilding the remains of Gaza.

In the West Bank, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Wednesday that he cited detailed damaged assessments and would ask donor countries for $2.8 billion in aid for Gaza.

Fayyad has proposed sending construction money directly to the bank accounts of owners of destroyed homes and other Gaza beneficiaries. Fayyad said he will present further details on his reconstruction plan to representatives of 80 donor countries Monday at a convention in Egypt.

"From positive talks with the donors, I expect the donations to exceed the required figures," Fayyad said, but declined to give details.

But Fayyad’s plan wasn’t enough for Hamas because they completed their own reconstruction plan Wednesday. The plan calls for an approximate $2.73 billion in foreign aid. Planning Minister Mohammed Awad of Hamas said the document would be sent to the Arab League along with other potential donors, including international aid agencies.

Hamas' strongman from Gaza Mahmoud Zahar

The authors add the warning that all timetables in the plan are "based on opening the borders."

Even though more than five weeks have passed since the end of the war, most Gazans are homeless and are still scrambling for basic necessities.

Amid the number of homes demolished by Israeli armies are people that line up every day for handouts of blankets, tea kettles, toothbrushes and other necessities. Most have rented temporary apartments with money given to them by the Hamas government or U.N. agencies, while others have squeezed into relatives' homes.

Palestinians stand outside a destroyed house in the devastated area east of Jebaliya in the northern of Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009.

Yet prospects for getting sufficient supplies into Gaza appear dim as well. International donors have not come up with an agreed plan, and it's not clear who would lead the reconstruction effort.

Israel is not allowing cement, steel and pipes into Gaza because it fears that Hamas militants will use those materials to build bunkers and rockets. Once reconstruction begins, Israel has proposed to work directly with international agencies on various projects to make sure each shipment is accounted for.

Hamas Rival Fayyad Wants Aid to go Directly to Citizens

Salam Fayyad, Palestine’s Prime Minister, encourages international donors everywhere to send Gaza money to help rebuild the city and people. But rather than send it through an organization, Fayyad has created a plan to send it directly to property owners and offers a way that effectively bypasses Hamas.

Fayyad’s suggestion of bypassing Hammas territory comes as no surprise since Hamas is Fayyad’s political rivals and the two share very little in common- especially when it comes to Gaza.

When it comes to aid for Gazans, Hamas wants a say over how the money is distributed. However, Fayyad sees that the international community is highly unlikely to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to the Islamic militants that are still shunned by most of the world. Whether Hamas was elected as the Palestinian government or not, the United States and the European Union consider Hamas to be a terrorist group.

Fayyad proposes a plan that will send hundreds of millions of dollars in aid directly to the people of Gaza, along with the homes that were damaged or destroyed in the Israeli offensive.

Israeli missiles flattened the American School in Gaza. Prior to Israel's destruction of the school it was attacked twice by “religious fundamentalist groups,” the same groups that Israel purports to eliminate. Ironically, it took Israeli missiles, and not religious fundamentalists, to eliminate the best school in all of Gaza. As Director of the American School, Ribhi Salem, stated, "Israel wants us to live in the dark ages...where all we do is wait in line for gas and bread."

Citizens would get the money directly because Fayyad will have donors either send the money through his government or deal directly with Gaza's banks. The people of Gaza would then apply for reconstruction money, get it through the banks, and then work under the supervision of independent inspectors.

Fayyad said he expects to sign a memorandum of understanding with Gaza banks Thursday and said he has also briefed donors, who seemed to like the idea.

Under Fayyad's plan, even roads would be fixed by private contractors.

Fayyad's detailed proposal will be presented on March 2 at a donor pledging conference in Egypt for rebuilding Gaza after Israel's devastating offensive against Hamas last month.

So far, about 80 countries and organizations will participate in the conference in Egypt. Some of the people expected to attend are French President Nicholas Sarkozy along with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will attend. Hamas and Israel will not be represented.

The demand for aid to the people of Gaza is due to Israel's offensive that has caused an estimated $2 billion in damage and nearly 1,300 Palestinians dead. The assault was launched to halt years of Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel.

With the backdrop of mounds of rubble and tents was another man, praying, on a piece of tarp. While the Israelis had taken away everything else of his, they did not take away his God, and to this, he bowed his head in gratitude.

When asked during an interview Wednesday whether he was trying to bypass Hamas, Fayyad said, "It's a bypass of delays… There are a lot of people in Gaza who are homeless, displaced and we really need to move fast to ensure that they have the housing they need as quickly as possible," he said.

But Hamas sees the situation along with Fayyad’s remarks differently. Hamas has accused Fayyad of trying to hijack reform for political gain.

"This is an attempt to politicize the project of reconstruction in Gaza, which contradicts all the Arab, international and Palestinian intentions to neutralize this project," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman.

However, it wasn’t made clear whether or not Hamas would try to stop the flow of aid to the people of Gaza and risk a backlash at home.

This Palestinian boy sits upon the rubble of his former home. He comes every other day and sits under the sun on the ruins that used to be his home.

Palestinian Despair Deepens with Israeli Election

“My eyes stung, I was coughing, my nose was running,” Ben Wedeman, CNN senior correspondent in Jerusalem describes his encounter with tear gas. It wasn’t “for the first time last Friday -- during a day-long clash between Palestinian kids and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank town of Na'alin, on the West Bank,” Wedeman says.

Wedeman and his crew had gone to Na’alin, Jerusalem to monitor the Palestinian view of Tuesday's Israeli elections- which ended in a near draw.



Both front runners, Tzipi Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu, fell well short of a majority vote with Livni's party winning 28 Knesset seats and Netanyahu's party winning 27 seats out of a big 120-seat Knesset.

As they sheltered from tear gas behind a house, Na'alin resident Hani Khawaja told Wedeman, "I don't expect anything to come out of the elections that will please the Palestinians. Just killings, expulsions and land confiscations."

Out of all of the towns and villages, Wedeman chose an Na’alin because he thought it would be “the perfect place to see what Palestinians were thinking” and what he heard “was universal pessimism”.

Na'alin is an old town in the West Bank that is in the forefront of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. But in recent years, neighboring Israeli settlements have increasingly intruded on Na'alin's farmland, and Israel, on grounds of security, has built its security barrier around the town which creates a deep hostility between both the Israelies and Palestinians.

“I've covered almost every Israeli election since 1996,” Wedeman says, “with each election, the Palestinian feeling of despair and hopelessness only deepens.”
When talking to people in Na’alin, Wedeman says that “no one I spoke with expressed the slightest hope that any of the leading candidates --Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, Kadima's Tzipi Livni, Israel Beitenu's Avigdor Lieberman and Labour's Ehud Barak -- would do anything to remove the settlements that are slowly closing in on Na'alin.”

But according to Wedeman, one man, Ayub Srour, had a slightly different approach. He’d rather Israeli leaders be honest about their intentions, and not raise hopes only to crush them later. He wants the Likud leader and long-time hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu to win. "At least he's honest. He says he'll expel us, and he will expel us. He says he's slaughter us, and he will slaughter us."

Since the last election in the spring of 2006, Palestinians have seen Israel and Hezbollah go to war, West Bank settlements continue to expand, Hamas and Fatah fight it out in Gaza with Hamas taking control in June 2007.

They've also seen a series of Israeli incursions into Gaza, culminating recently in the 22-day Israeli offensive that left large parts of the strip in ruins.
Meanwhile many Palestinians say their leadership, described as moderate and pro-western, in Ramallah is incapable of reversing the trend of settlement expansion.

The same leadership hasn’t been able to convince Israel to remove few of the hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints that make travelling around the West Bank a test of patience and endurance.

When Palestinians look back over the last 15 years since the Oslo Accords were signed, they've seen their land go from bad to worse which has made many Palestinians consider a one-state solution.

The one-state solution is outrageous to many Israelis. One of Israel’s biggest concerns is that the rate of Palestinian births are so high that Palestinians could well become a majority within a generation.

Israel's current caretaker prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned in November 2007 that if Israel doesn't move quickly to achieve a two-state solution that it will be in a similar circumstance like that of South Africa during the apartheid area where the minority, like the Israeli Jews, rule over the majority, in this case the Palestinians, by means of force, repression and discriminatory laws.

Yet many Palestinians will argue that this is already the case in Israel, citing Israeli restrictions on movement, residence, and work.



But back in Na'alin, there is some cooperation occurring. Kids are seen throwing stones at Israeli troops while Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas at them. But it’s not only young Palestinians protesting but young Israelis, self-described anarachists that take part in the protests as well.

Although cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis exists, it’s still an increasingly rare commodity. And this election probably won't do anything to bridge the growing gap between the two -- the curious friendship in Na'alin despite.