Arab-Israeli Dialogue, of a Kind, in Blogs, Pranks and Robocalls

As Matt Weaver points out today on The Guardian’s Newsblog, Israelis and Palestinians are taking to the Web to broadcast their perspectives on the fighting in Gaza.

Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian from Gaza who is now living in Durham, N.C., is using her blog mainly to relay the experiences of her parents in Gaza City, which she hears about through telephone and Skype conversations with her father, Moussa El-Haddad, a retired physician. Given his limited access to media reports from Gaza, where electricity is intermittent, Mr. El-Haddad has also been calling his daughter in North Carolina to ask her help in piecing together what the various sights and sounds outside his home might mean. As Ms. El-Haddad wrote on Sunday:

I call them every hour; sometimes every few minutes when I see renewed bombardment on my television. Sometimes he calls me for assurance:

“What’s going on? what’s going ?” he repeats in a weary, hypnotic tone.

“It just felt like they bombed our street from the inside out. I can’t see anything. I don’t know what’s happening. What’s the news saying?” he asks frantically, desperate for any morsel of information that can make sense of the terror being wrought upon them.

Ms. El-Haddad’s blogging has led to reports by CNN and WUNC, a public radio station in North Carolina, featuring interviews with her father.

From the other side of the divide, the American-born mother of an Israeli soldier involved in “Operation Cast Lead,” wrote this morning on her blog, A Soldier’s Mother, about sending her son text messages, in a blog post interwoven with reports of Hamas rocket fire:

I’m afraid to call Elie. I don’t want to interrupt what he is doing. I won’t write what his task is, but it is an important one and while doing what he does, he commands the others in his unit. So, I don’t call but rather will wait for him to call when he can.

“Three rockets fell Monday near Ashdod, Kiryat Malachi, and Yavneh. The rockets fell in open areas.”

What I am doing, is sending him SMS messages, text messages that signal someone has sent him a note. If his phone is off now, when he turns it on, he’ll get the messages. If he’s available, he’ll take a moment and read them and either call or at least know that I am thinking about him.

“One mortar shell was also launched at the Sha’ar Hanegev region.”

It’s an interesting concept, something that wasn’t available to mothers in most of Israel’s wars. My friend tells me how her husband went off to war 20 years ago and she had no idea where he was, when, or if, he’d be back. I was in the dark for only about 36 hours when the army took the soldiers’ phones to make sure the security of the ground operation they were about to begin was not compromised. That was enough for me to taste what it was like to be so blind, to not know where or how your son is. It is not something I relish feeling ever again, though sadly, I have little doubt, perhaps even in this war, that it will happen again.

“Two Kassam rockets landed in the Sdot Negev Kibbutz Monday morning.”

Perhaps that’s why I don’t want to call him. If his phone is closed, it will be confirmation that I can’t call him. Now I can delude myself into thinking I can, but choose to wait for him to call me. So, I send him messages. I wish him a good night and a good day. I tell him to be careful and hope he is getting some rest and that he should be careful.

Both Ms. El-Haddad and the anonymous Soldier’s Mother take comments on their blogs, and seem to have readers who come from the opposite side of the conflict.

On A Soldier’s Mother, the first comment following her description of texting her son Elie (who is pictured on the blog) was posted about three hours later by a reader named Mahmood, who wrote:

I wish your cute son find a good girl, make a happy family, and stop killing innocent people.

After the post Ms. El-Haddad wrote yesterday about speaking with her father in Gaza City, she got the following comment from a reader named Moshe in Jersusalem:

Dear Laila,

War is ugly and destructive, war means death and hatred. Both of us Israelis and Palestinians are victims of our leaders who failed to solve the conflict in the Middle East with non violence means.
Every side has it’s own truth every side blames the other. It is time for peace for compromise for mutual disclamation.

I’m reading your blog and my heart is with your family and people who suffer in Gaza as well as with the people of Sderot, Ashdod and Ashkelon who suffer from Hamas rocket attacks.

Your Father and me share the same name he is Moussa and I Moshe. Let us hope we’ll share one day peace in our area.

On her blog, Ms. El-Haddad also points to another attempt at dialogue, of a sort, between the Israeli military and the people of Gaza: flyers and automated phone calls asking the civilian population of Gaza to help the Israel Defense Forces target Hamas militants by calling a tip line the Israelis have set up.

We’ve heard about the flyers the Israeli army is littering Gaza with-telling people Hamas is to blame for their woes, not their F-16s and cluster bombs.

Now, they have taken to robo-calling the citizens of Gaza a la Hilary Clinton, at all times of the night and day.

My father has received a number of calls - including one as we … were on Skype. He tried to put the phone on speaker for me. The rough translation[s]:

“urgent message: warning to the citizens of Gaza. Hamas is using you as human shields. Do not listen to them. Hamas has abandoned you and are hiding in their shelters. Give up now.”

Ms. El-Haddad also describes, approvingly, a stunt the Web site The Electronic Intifada claims to have staged in response to one of these flyers: a prank phone call one of their editors in Chicago made to the Israeli tip line. In an article on their site called “Israel collaborator recruiter punked,” Electronic Intifada posts a copy of one of the Israeli flyers and what they say is the Arabic-language audio and an English translation of their long back and forth with an Israeli officer, which builds to this punch line:

EI: I have some information for you on members of terrorist groups that are in Gaza.

Israeli officer: Oh I hope so…

EI: We’re on the same side against terrorism … I have names for you too, if that will help you at all.

Israeli officer: Of course that will be helpful. …

EI: Ok, the first one …

Israeli officer: You mean to tell me they’re all from Hamas?

EI: All of them are people … you’ll see. The first one, his name is Ehud Barak [Israeli minister of defense].

NYT