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Next up, we have a piece by Sarah Michaels Levy of Kvutsat Ogen in Hadera

Educating about Operation Cast Lead, Gaza 2008-9

As a movement educator, the first thing that comes to my mind when war starts is how to translate it to
educate our chanichim in the movement abroad – how to use the central moral principles that we try to
live by daily (preserving sanctity of life, equality, responsibility) to identify trends and develop a stance

regarding the actions of the Israeli government, the IDF, the Palestinian people, Hamas, and all the
large international players taking part in this current conflict. I say ‘current’ conflict, because although
a ceasefire has been reached, it seems clear that the Gaza invasion was one stage in an ongoing struggle
between Israel and Hamas, which is currently far from being resolved. There are a few things that make
it difficult to educate about the political situation in Israel from a distance, such as differences in
background understandings of Middle East history, the fact that the conflict often takes a secondary

place in our daily lives to questions of economic and social gaps within Israel, and the fact that what is
reported by the main news media outlets about Israel in your countries is often different from the way
things are here in Israel, and we’re not always familiar with the intricacies of these differences in time
to help counterbalance them while it’s still relevant. When it comes to the current conflict, the most

difficult educational challenge to overcome, in my opinion, is the different starting point in public opinion
abroad when it comes to viewing the role that Hamas plays with the Palestinian people. We all (Israeli,
European, and English-speaking Habonim Dror) come from democratic countries, wherein citizens
peacefully elect their leaders, and regardless of how ‘messy’ the public discourse becomes, new
ministers/congresspeople make smooth transitions into public office on a specified day and time
following democratic elections. Although all the countries we

come from may contain non-democratic elements that try to
subvert this (perpetrators of campaign/election fraud,
Hebron settlers, etc.), generally speaking the majority of our
societies insist on maintaining democratic societies that

protect each citizen’s life and rights under a common law. We
have grown up understanding that it is this that guarantees
our personal physical safety and that of our fellow citizens,
and appreciating the freedom that this allows, regardless of how critical we may be of the capitalist and
alienating forces in our society that limit our ability to be fully free. However, in order to understand

the reality of what is happening in Israel today, the first step is understanding that just because Hamas
was “democratically elected” in Gaza, this does not mean that there is any semblance between what we in
Westernized countries understand democracy to be, and what took place in the Gaza elections in
January 2006, which gave Hamas a majority, allowing them to violently overthrow the remaining Fatah
leaders in Gaza in February 2007, thereby murderously destroying all opposition. Gadi Taub, an Israeli

historian and commentator who completed his doctorate at Rutgers University in American History (and
subsequently returned to Israel) often writes about differences in Israeli and Western (or American)
understandings of the world, wrote the following in 2004:

“Can the liberties of a nation be secure," Thomas Jefferson asked, "when we have removed a
conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” Jefferson meant to form a civil