By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
One of the questions Akiva Tor is most often asked these days is about the disproportionality of the firepower Israel is using in Gaza in its fight against Hamas.
“A proportionate response would be that for every rocket fired at an Israeli town, we would fire a similar type of rocket into Gaza City, which is something we would not do,” said Tor, Israel’s consul general to the Pacific Northwest. “But if we are to fire at someone, why is that disproportionate? The context is several years of bombs [fired], which has caused Sderot to lose one quarter of its population.”
Tor visited Seattle Tuesday to speak to local media outlets about Israel’s rationale for the Gaza invasion that has, thus far, lasted nearly two weeks.
“Israel had no choice other than acting to protect the southern Negev,” Tor told JTNews. “We need to get to some arrangement to deter Hamas from further rocketing.”
World leaders, including some in the Arab world, have been sympathetic — or at least have in many cases refrained from supporting Hamas.
“For the first time, in the European Union we’re getting understanding of our need to prevail,” Tor said.
The view from the street, however, has been far different. Demonstrations have been held around the world in protest of Israel’s actions, including two in Seattle. Tor, who is based in San Francisco, has seen demonstrations against the operation every day since it began. Many Congressional representatives from around the country have expressed support for Israel, but even in local gatherings where the issue comes up, that support is often attributed to “the Jewish lobby,” as was the case at a Town Hall event on Jan. 4 that featured an author touring in support of a guide about the Middle East.
Reports of mortars fired at a United Nations-sponsored school where approximately 350 Palestinians sought refuge as a safe haven on the same day that Tor came to Seattle are not helping Israel’s cause. Thirty were killed and many more injured in the shelling. Also on Tuesday, the Portland-based Mercy Corps, a worldwide humanitarian organization that has been attempting to distribute food in Gaza, reported that its most recent shipment had been delayed by two days.
“Only a trickle of aid is getting in,” said David Holdridge, Mercy Corps regional program director for the Middle East, in a statement. “Many families in Gaza have been living for more than a week without reliable electricity, heat, food or water.”
Still, despite protests to the contrary, the Israeli government has reported that there have been continual truckloads of food and other aid items through its Kerem Shalom border crossing, including 80 such vehicles on Wednesday. The government also announced three-hour ceasefires, which began Wednesday and will be held every other day, specifically to allow in humanitarian aid. Fighting resumed immediately after the three-hour ceasefire ended, according to the JTA news service.
While much of the world puts the blame for the situation of Gaza’s citizens, a large percentage of whom live in poverty in densely populated areas, on Israel hemming them in, Tor puts the blame squarely on Hamas.
“The thing that we are always talking about is trying to set Gaza free,” he said. That includes “removing all of its settlements, every military base [during the 2005 disengagement], we allowed free movement of goods to our ports. What’s brought about this situation is Hamas coming to power there.”
Following 2006 elections in which Hamas came to power, and then a coup in 2007 in which it took over Gaza’s infrastructure, rocket fire into the Israeli town of Sderot increased.
“If we allow further range to Ashkelon and Beersheva, when there’s a missile threat on three quarters of a million Israelis, you can’t tolerate it,” Tor said.
Tor said that while the strikes have been as surgical as possible in targeting Hamas combatants, and the army has been dropping leaflets and making “tens of thousands” of phone calls to warn residents of impending incursions, he is very troubled by the photos he’s seen of children who have been killed in the fighting.
“That’s a problem. That’s a big problem,” he said. “It’s horrible.”
But the reason there haven’t been the same images from the Israeli side is because, though schools in cities as far away as Ashkelon and Beersheva have been hit by longer range missiles that have been smuggled into Gaza, classes have been cancelled because of the risk of attack. At best, he said, the areas in range are seeing at least 20 rockets a day.
“We can’t keep school out forever,” Tor said. “We can’t have a Beersheva classroom hit by a Grad rocket.”