An Open Letter to A citizen Of Gaza -- from Yishai (Maariv -- ?? January 2009]

[Comment: I have written to Yishai asking him to join us here. PmR]

An Open Letter to A citizen Of Gaza: I Am the Soldier Who Slept In Your Home
From Yishai G (reserve soldier) ygoldflam@gmail.com
[Originally published in Hebrew in Maariv]
?? January 2009 Hello,

While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away.

I am that someone.

I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home. How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.

I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation. I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say. At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.

I spent many days in your home. You and your family's presence was felt in every corner. I saw your family portraits on the wall, and I thought of my family. I saw your wife's perfume bottles on the bureau, and I thought of my wife. I saw your children's toys and their English language schoolbooks. I saw your personal computer and how you set up the modem and wireless phone next to the screen, just as I do.

I wanted you to know that despite the immense disorder you found in your house that was created during a search for explosives and tunnels (which were indeed found in other homes), we did our best to treat your possessions with respect. When I moved the computer table, I disconnected the cables and lay them down neatly on the floor, as I would do with my own computer. I even covered the computer from dust with a piece of cloth. I tried to put back the clothes that fell when we moved the closet although not the same as you would have done, but at least in such a way that nothing would get lost.

I know that the devastation, the bullet holes in your walls and the destruction of those homes near you place my descriptions in a ridiculous light. Still, I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I decided to write you this letter specifically because I stayed in your home.

I can surmise that you are intelligent and educated and there are those in your household that are university students. Your children learn English, and you are connected to the Internet. You are not ignorant; you know what is going on around you.

Therefore, I am sure you know that Qassam rockets were launched from your neighborhood into Israeli towns and cities.

How could you see these weekly launches and not think that one day we would say "enough"?! Did you ever consider that it is perhaps wrong to launch rockets at innocent civilians trying to lead a normal life, much like you? How long did you think we would sit back without reacting?

I can hear you saying "it's not me, it's Hamas". My intuition tells me you are not their most avid supporter. If you look closely at the sad reality in which your people live, and you do not try to deceive yourself or make excuses about "occupation", you must certainly reach the conclusion that the Hamas is your real enemy.

The reality is so simple, even a seven year old can understand: Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, removing military bases and its citizens from Gush Katif. Nonetheless, we continued to provide you with electricity, water, and goods (and this I know very well as during my reserve duty I guarded the border crossings more than once, and witnessed hundreds of trucks full of goods entering a blockade-free Gaza every day).

Despite all this, for reasons that cannot be understood and with a lack of any rational logic, Hamas launched missiles on Israeli towns. For three years we clenched our teeth and restrained ourselves. In the end, we could not take it anymore and entered the Gaza strip, into your neighborhood, in order to remove those who want to kill us. A reality that is painful but very easy to explain.

As soon as you agree with me that Hamas is your enemy and because of them, your people are miserable, you will also understand that the change must come from within. I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say is easier to write than to do, but I do not see any other way. You, who are connected to the world and concerned about your children's education, must lead, together with your friends, a civil uprising against Hamas.

I swear to you, that if the citizens of Gaza were busy paving roads, building schools, opening factories and cultural institutions instead of dwelling in self pity, arms smuggling and nurturing a hatred to your Israeli neighbors, your homes would not be in ruins right now. If your leaders were not corrupt and motivated by hatred, your home would not have been harmed. If someone would have stood up and shouted that there is no point in launching missiles on innocent civilians, I would not have to stand in your kitchen as a soldier.

You don't have money, you tell me? You have more than you can imagine.

Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, during the time of Yasser Arafat, millions if not billions of dollars donated by the world community to the Palestinians was used for purchasing arms or taken directly to your leaders bank accounts. Gulf States, the emirates - your brothers, your flesh and blood, are some of the richest nations in the world. If there was even a small feeling of solidarity between Arab nations, if these nations had but the smallest interest in reconstructing the Palestinian people - your situation would be very different.

You must be familiar with Singapore. The land mass there is not much larger than the Gaza strip and it is considered to be the second most populated country in the world. Yet, Singapore is a successful, prospering, and well managed country. Why not the same for you?

My friend, I would like to call you by name, but I will not do so publicly. I want you to know that I am 100% at peace with what my country did, what my army did, and what I did. However, I feel your pain. I am sorry for the destruction you are finding in your neighborhood at this moment. On a personal level, I did what I could to minimize the damage to your home as much as possible.

In my opinion, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. I am a civilian, not a soldier, and in my private life I have nothing to do with the military. However, I have an obligation to leave my home, put on a uniform, and protect my family every time we are attacked. I have no desire to be in your home wearing a uniform again and I would be more than happy to sit with you as a guest on your beautiful balcony, drinking sweet tea seasoned with the sage growing in your garden.

The only person who could make that dream a reality is you. Take responsibility for yourself, your family, your people, and start to take control of your destiny. How? I do not know. Maybe there is something to be learned from the Jewish people who rose up from the most destructive human tragedy of the 20th century, and instead of sinking into self-pity, built a flourishing and prospering country. It is possible, and it is in your hands.

I am ready to be there to provide a shoulder of support and help to you.

But only you can move the wheels of history."

Regards,
Yishai, (Reserve Soldier)

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Permalink Reply by Paul RETI on February 2, 2009 at 9:49am

Here is what I wrote to Yishai:

From: Paul RETI Sent: Monday, 2 February 2009 17:51
To: 'ygoldflam@gmail.com'
Subject: An Open Letter to A citizen Of Gaza -- from Yishai (Maariv -- ?? January 2009]

Hi Yishai,

I received a copy your letter to Maariv and I put a public copy here:
http://www.mepeace.org/forum/topics/an-open-letter-to-a-citizen-of

http://www.mepeace.org/ has over 1700 members from all over the world, including many from Gaza and the West Bank and Israel. Please join us there and try to continue your dialog there.

Be well...
Paul RETI
======================================================
If I am not for myself, who is for me? If I am only
for myself, what am I? If not now, when? (Hillel)
======================================================

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Permalink Reply by Tamar Yaron on February 3, 2009 at 3:48am

Several readers of my "Encounter-EMEM · for Middle East Peace Activists" email list are convinced that the message is a fake, probably written by Public Relations professionals. Whatever the case in that respect, there are some interesting and relevant comments at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Encounter-EMEM/message/9585
and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Encounter-EMEM/message/9591

All the best,
Tamar

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Permalink Reply by Tamar Yaron on February 5, 2009 at 3:27pm

A friend and peace activist, Zalman Amit, wrote an "answer" to the "reservist's" publicized "Letter to a Citizen of Gaza". Zalman's intro and his "answer" are below:

A letter supposedly from an Israeli reserve soldier to the owner of a house
in Gaza which the soldier occupied, was circulating. There was a debate among
members of several peace groups whether the letter was real or fake. One of
the commentators argued that even if the letter was a fake, it does sadly
represent the views and sentiments of the vast majority of the Jewish
citizens of Israel.

I therefore decided to write a response (Daphna Levit edited the piece) from
the imaginary (but realistic) owner of the house in Gaza to whom the
original letter was supposedly addressed.

Both letters appear below, our letter first and followed by
the "Reservist's" letter.
[
I deleted the "reservist's" letter (which can be seen in the first message of this dialog) and did some further mainly grammatical editing on Zalman's letter.
- Tamar
]

I hope you will find it interesting.

Zalman Amit

************************

An Open letter to an Israeli Reserve Soldier

Dear Yishai G.

I received your letter and decided that despite my feelings towards you, I
will read your letter attentively. I even decided to answer you, not because
I think that there is any chance of changing your mind. I am answering you
in the faint hope that you will pay the same amount of attention as I did.

You are quite right. I despise you with every bit of my emotional being and
the events of the last few weeks have made my hatred deeper and more
intense. You see, two of my three boys were killed by one of your country¹s
tank shells during this tragedy that you call "Cast Lead". We tried to heed
the call of the leaflets provided by your air-force, calling us to leave. We
didn't realize that there is nowhere to hide and also that your fellow
soldiers would not hesitate to shoot those who were trying to flee. That is
how my two sons were killed. I really thought that no human being could hate
more intensely than I do. However, when we, what was left of my family,
finally returned home and saw what was left of our house, the filth that you
left behind, the senseless damage that you caused, I realized that my hatred
did in fact grow more intense.

Make no mistake, my hatred of you is not new - it is as old as I am and even
older. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me introduce myself. I am a
second generation refugee. My family comes from a town that doesn't exist
anymore but used to be called Magdal. In its place, there is now a Jewish
town called Ashkelon. You must have heard of it. For all I know, you may be
a resident of that town. You may also be aware that some of the Kassams and
Grads that Palestinians used have fallen on this town.

After the Naqba of 1948, my family decided, sort of, to "bite the bullet"
and stay in Magdal and try to make the best of it. Alas, no, in 1950 (more
than one year after the war) Israeli soldiers came back to Magdal and forced
us to flee to Gaza and become refugees. Following that, every single house
in our town was demolished. I bet you were not aware of this fact. I will
not make this into an academic debate, so I will merely point you to a book
written by your eminent historian, Benny Morris, called Tikun Ta'ut (I do
speak Hebrew, by the way even though I have difficulties mixing my P's and
B¹s). All the details about the demise of my town are there. So you see, my
hatred of you is almost sixty years old and over the years you did your very
best to nourish and reinforce this hatred. I thought I couldn't hate anymore
and then came "Cast Lead", the death of my children and finally the mind
numbing realization that you and your fellow soldiers rummaged through my
wife's underwear. Thus, you can absolutely trust the fact that my hatred and
anger and disgust are going to be channeled in the right direction.

You, quite condescendingly, wondered whether I am educated or just "an
Arab". Rest assured. I have a Master's degree from an American Mid-Western
university and I have been working as a professional for many years.
Therefore, it's possible, isn¹t it, that I am actually more educated than you
are - more worldly, speak more languages and so on. What a surprise.

The reason I started to suspect that you may not be highly educated is
related to the fact that your knowledge of the history, background and facts
related to the century-old conflict between my people and yours is so
terribly limited and distorted as to make it rather lamentable.

You ask whether I was aware of the rockets that were launched from "my
neighborhood" to where? Ashkelon? Yes, I was. And no, I will not sit back
and say that it's not me, it's the Hamas. To paraphrase president Kennedy's
famous words: in the past few years you saw to it that,
"In Gaza, we are all Hamas".

So far so good, but now your lack of knowledge is getting the better of you.
Do you really believe that the "Occupation" is an excuse for a second
generation refugee who was already kicked out of his home once in absolutely
peaceful times? If you were really interested in knowing the truth, before
"Cast Lead", I would have invited you (oops, I forgot, Israelis are not
allowed into Gaza) to be my guest for a few days and experience the
occupation, "up close and personal". There is even a chance that you would
have changed your mind about the occupation. And here you are right, once
again. Our reality is miserable, worse than that, desperate, but no, Hamas
is not our enemy, you are. You are and you were our enemy since 1948 and all
the stages that I, my original town Magdal and my current town, Gaza
underwent since then, are merely worsening stages in the same decade-long
tragedy caused exclusively by you.

If the reality is so simple, why is it that you don't understand, or perhaps
you don't want to understand, that unlike in Hollywood movies, in the real
world people don't really "kiss and make up". You seem to think that
the fact that our armed resistance forced your Prime-Minister (Ariel Sharon)
to unilaterally depart from Gaza, actually ended the occupation! Where did
you live all these years during which you stole our land, stole our water,
stole our tax money and on and on? And, once again, rest assured, this is no
excuse and yes, I experienced these niceties personally. I really have a
surprise for you, the occupation is alive and well all around the boundaries
of Gaza. The only thing that changed is the location of Israeli soldiers,
tanks and artillery.

I am sure that you, living in Israel, have heard otherwise, that the
occupation was over and yet, "These damn Palestinians never have enough".
You do not need to take my word for it. Just go out of your own enclave and
ask the world. Perhaps with the exception of the US, the rest of the world
is convinced that Gaza is still (and this is pre-Cast Lead) under a gruesome
and brutal occupation. Its people, every single one of them, live in a
maximum security, open-air prison.

And please, spare me the stories about your generosity. Yes, the one you
experienced when you were dispensing your duties as our prison guard.
Isn't the mere fact that you were there, a reserve soldier guarding the
non-existent occupation, sufficient proof that your argument is false?

I suspect that at this point in your argument you are starting to feel a bit
unsure of yourself since you are becoming rather theatrical. You are
describing how you clenched your teeth and acted as a model of restraint.
Come now, do you have even the slightest idea how many Gazans you killed
during these three years you are alluding to? Would it surprise you to learn
that you killed more than 1500 people, and many hundreds of them, children?

I bet you had no idea. Are you aware of the fact that in 48 hours after the
abduction (or "arrest", as the term Israel uses when its forces are directed
at Palestinians) of Gilad Shalit you killed over three hundred people?

So no, Hamas is not the enemy, you are. And if Hamas is willing to risk
their lives to fight you, more power to them. But what gives you
the right to tell us how to conduct our lives and who should or should not
rule Gaza? Besides, you are wrong, not surprising given the depth of your
ignorance about what is really going on in the Occupied Territories. I don't
have the slightest doubt that if we did not have you, "our generous
Occupiers" on our back, our life in Gaza and elsewhere would have been
pretty good. Perhaps not as good as your life - after all, when it comes to
Schnor, it is hard to compete with you guys. Given what you get on a yearly
basis from the US and World Jewry, it's kind of hard to compete and yet,
you don't even remember to famous Yiddish saying: "The hat is burning on the
head of the thief". You of all the people in the world are carping about the
millions we got from our brethren? Even this is not enough, you must have
felt in good form because even before the millions we got you are accusing
our leaders of corruption. You? Of all people? Talk of corruption? Your
current Prime-Minister is about to be charged with bribe taking. Your
previous Prime-Minister was also going to be charged with bribe taking
while his Parliament member, son was or is still sitting in jail .
His predecessor, after his electoral defeat, left the country on a lecture tour
based exclusively on his credentials as a failed leader and in that way, collected
many millions of dollars. Would you like me to continue? I could, you know.

This is merely the tip of the iceberg of the corruption going on in your
country.

As I was reading your letter and the gradual increase in its fervor, an
uneasy feeling started to develop in my gut. I saw that there are still two
pages left in your letter and I suspected that the inevitable was about to
happen. I was going to get a little sermon about the Holocaust from you and
how you flourished and prospered despite it. Even though this is really
beneath contempt, I will only say, we, the Palestinians did not cause you,
the Jews, any harm. We did not participate in the atrocities that were
committed against you. Therefore, we do not want to pay the price of
something we had nothing to do with. In fact, I always had difficulties
understanding why instead of coveting our poor little corner of the world,
you didn't demand that Germany cedes Bavaria to you. After all, they are the
cause of your misery, not us.

In conclusion, I do thank you for wishing us all the good things you wish us
but I will have to decline your advice. Aside from anything else, it is
condescending and people tend to refuse offers that are given in
condescension. Besides, what we do and how we conduct our life is really
none of your business. But do I sense also a hidden threat? You will do as
I say or we will show you what else we can do to you? That makes much more
sense knowing your past track record.

No matter how I turn this discussion between us I come back to the
conclusion that you are the enemy. You are the source of most, if not all, our
problems. If you really wanted us to improve our life, you simply had to
remove yourselves from its midst. I promise you one thing though, you will
not defeat us. You cause us untold amount of pain and suffering, yes, you
have the power to do so. But you will not defeat us. In the end you will
have to eat "humble pie" and come and talk to us. You will also have to
apologize for all the terrible things you have done.

Until then you are the enemy and I hate you with all my heart.

Sincerely,

A. F. (A resident of occupied Gaza)

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Permalink Reply by Paul RETI on February 5, 2009 at 11:18pm

Hi Tamar,

The imaginary response is also well written and emotional and touching.

Let's just focus on this for now: "Let me introduce myself. I am a second generation refugee. My family comes from a town that doesn't exist any more."

I am a descendant of refugees. Are you Tamar?

Am I a second generation refugee? Are you Tamar?

My family comes from a town that exists now. How about yours Tamar?

How many people (or groups of people) are there in this world whose parents were refugees? How many of those people (or groups of people) are refugees now?

Be well...
== Paul R

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Permalink Reply by Yigal D. Kahana on February 6, 2009 at 1:30am

How typically arrogant of western leftists to feel the need to speak on behalf of Palestinians, even while actual Palestinians are here and perfectly capable of speaaking for themselves!

There are so many problems with this letter that to critize them all would take even more space than the letter itself.
(Which is already very long...)

One really obvious mistake:
"My family comes from a town that doesn't exist anymore but used to be called Magdal.
In its place, there is now a Jewish town called Ashkelon."

Ashkelon is not just a recent Jewish development. It was an Egyptian town 3000 years ago, a Phoenician town 1000 years ago, a Crusader town 800 years ago, and had a healthy Jewish community 400 years ago.
Why under Egyptian and Ottoman rule it went from a major city to a nearly uninhabited waste is perhaps a better subject for your studies.

Let's contrast this counterfeit letter with a letter from someone who actually lives in Gaza.

I'm from Gaza & I can describe hamas in few sentences :
They are criminals.
They are backwords.
They are ideal professionals that can manipulate and utilize the religion for personal interest. NO ONE ALIKE.
They had done real war crimes in Gaza along the same as Isreal had done.
They had contributed to grieve the poeple of Gaza by their unresponsible actions.

They destroyed everything in the life in Gaza; killed the people of Fateh just because they're Fateh, kill the children of Fateh's men just because their fathers are Fateh, kill the wifes' of Fateh men just because they're Fateh.
They are behind the loss of our main issue Palestine.

Remember This: Yesterday we were fighting , struggling & negotiating for our rights, return of refugees, Jerusalm and many thing. Now when militia of Hamas took the power, we are fighting , struggling & negotiating just for different kinds of fruits, oil and home gas.

This's the fact of Hamas"

This real Gazan does not hate Israel with all of his heart.
He does, however, consider Hamas his true enemy.

In my humble opinion, he belongs on this PEACE site more
than someone who advocates and defends and brings us this hate.