Life and Death of Civilians Under Attack

The Israel Project
July 8, 2009

http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1336/life-and-death-of-civilians-under-attack

Jennifer Packer: Hello and welcome. My name is Jennifer Packer and I'm senior advisor for media at The Israel Project. On behalf of our entire team, I'm very pleased that all of you could join us on the phone today to hear from Dr. Avi Naiman, president of IDEAS, which is an acronym for Israel Documentary for Education and Scholarship. Avi will discuss his organization's two new documentaries that puts human faces on the statistics of civilian war casualties. We are so happy to have Avi here today with us. After Avi discusses the two films, we'll get to some of the questions that our audience has submitted online. But first allow me to introduce Avi. Dr. Avi Naiman launched IDEAS in 2007 as an educational nonprofit organization with the goal of creating informative documentaries about Israel. Having spent two weeks in Israel during Israel's defensive war against Hezbollah, Avi is a first-hand witness to the havoc wreaked on Israel during this period. To allow Israel's citizens to tell their stories to the world, IDEAS has produced two documentaries, Scorched Summer and Under Fire. Avi holds a Ph.D. in computer science and post-doctoral training in psychology and was an assistant professor in Hong Kong and New York. Now, without further adieu, Avi Naiman, you have the floor.

Avi Naiman: Thank you very much, Jennifer and the entire team at The Israel Project. I wanted to point out for everyone that today is the 16th day of Tamuz in the Hebrew calendar which marks the third anniversary of the beginning of the Second Lebanon War according to the
Hebrew calendar. So, today in Israel, there are memorial services for those who fell during the war and, as we speak as this moment, there's a memorial service for the fallen soldiers as well. Three summers ago for 34 days, 1 1/2 million Israeli's came under rocket attack from Iran backed Hezbollah. There are lots of aspects to the beginning, middle, and end of the story of what the war was about but what I have been focusing on are the stories of the people, the civilians, who came under fire with the intent to share their stories with the world. This is the first time since Israel's War of Independence in 1948 that a significant portion of the population came under attack, approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens, and this changed the very nature of the conflict with Israeli's enemies. At the time the war broke out, I was in the United States and because I have a close connection with many friends and family in Israel was on the phone every day to try to find out what they were going through and to provide what comfort I could from afar. In particular, there's a town in the north of Israel called Nahariya and our community in the northern New Jersey area has a very close relationship with that town. There are about 50,000 residents. It sits on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, approximately five miles from the border with Lebanon. Because I had been so involved with various projects between our
community and Nahariya, I was reaching out to them on a daily basis to try to understand what they were going through and, when the war continued past the first week, I decided that I needed to go there to learn first-hand what was happening. I spent much of that time in Nahariya and also other parts of the north with the intention to learn what happened, both for myself and to be able to relate it back to my community. One of the things I heard by the people who were so grateful to see us coming and sharing solidarity with them is that while you can be outside of Israel and know what's happening in Israel you need to be inside Israel to feel what's going on there. And the sense of what was in the air, the sense of what the people were going through, the palpable feel of people's fear, concern, uncertainty could only be experienced by actually spending time with them. So, when I came back to the United States, I felt that I needed to share their stories. Some of the highlights of the trip that I had spent in Israel were, for example, on the day that I arrived there were recovering from, in Nahariya, they were recovering from a previous day where 54 rockets had landed in the town. I went around with the Homefront Command. The city itself was a ghost city and the Homefront Command was patrolling, finding where the rockets landed, seeing if anyone was hurt, if anyone needed treatment, if there was any debris that needed to be moved out of the way, if there were any fires that had to be put out. I flew on the firefighter's reconnaissance plane and the job of the plane was to track down where rockets fell throughout the north in order to direct the ground crews to put out fires or to search for people who might have been injured. Shortly before we took off, a Katyusha landed to the side of the runway and, while we were in the air, six rockets passed us. Many of you will know the hospital in Nahariya on the 14th day of the war was hit directly with a rocket. Fortunately, all the patients had been moved underground. I was in the hospital that day and had been visiting with the patients underground and understood the vast importance of what it was to have face as scary as the people to be in. I visited around the cities in bomb shelters learning about the fear and the uncertainty that the residents were experiencing. And then I came back to the United States and over the next three months I lectured about the war, perhaps about 100 times relating the stories I had heard and sharing them along with the statistics of the war. 44 Israeli citizens had been killed. Almost half of them were non-Jewish, Muslim, Jews, Christian, over 4,000 civilians had been injured; again, half of them non-Jewish. One million Israelis had hidden underground while another 300,000 to 500,000 had fled to safer parts of the country. Life in those 34 days had ground to a halt and it took weeks and months for a recovery to a normal semblance of life. But even to this day, three years later, many Israeli's, particularly the children, suffer from the trauma of the experience that they had three summers ago. But statistics can be pretty dry and any one individual or even a team of individuals can only reach so many listeners in personal appearances relating to stories of the war. Since I had spent time with so many of these people and learnt their stories, I decided that what I needed to do was to try to have them relate this story, try to have them personalize what the war had meant to them. I wanted people of the world over to know the facts and be moved by these stories. And so I turned to filmmaking as a medium in which to try to share their first-hand testimony as well as to try to reach a much wider audience around the world. I started by approaching all the organizations who I knew would have footage and pictures from the war and everybody was very cooperative in sharing those materials, including The Israel Project, and Iwas able to collect about 100 hours of footage and 20,000 photographs. I then interviewed 100 citizens, visitors, and emergency workers, people who are injured, and people who had lived as refugees. And out of those materials, I created two films, two documentaries. The first one is called Scorched Summer, The Second Lebanon War Through Civilian Eyes. It is a 50-minute film that includes interviews and stories of dozen of Israeli's, including the story of Karnit Goldwasser, who's husband Udi was kidnapped and murdered by the Hezbollah. The second film called Under Fire, Personal Stories from the Scorched Summer of 2006 is 1/2 hour film that focuses on four Israeli families, two Arab families, and two Jewish families and it shows that the Arab families in Israel fell victim to the Katyusha fire as often as the Jews did. In both the films, the citizens or their surviving relatives are the ones who tell the stories in their own words. For example, there is the story of Fadia and her two daughters, Sultana and Samira, who were sitting in the yard in Israel near the Lebanonese border when a Katyusha slammed into them killing all three Israeli women. And the story of Andrea Zalinsky, a young immigrant father whose life ended when a rocket killed him as he ran to get a blanket for his four-year-old daughter. Andre's widow, Retmala, tells of emerging from their bomb shelter to find his dismembered body. These are stories that anyone, anywhere can relate to. What would it be like to be a civilian under attack? What would it be like to have a loved one cut down in the
prime of life? What would it be like to live in fear of an attack that can come without any prior warning? Unfortunately, today we know that there may yet be new stories to tell the world. Over the past year, on three different occasions, Katyusha rockets have been fired from Southern
Lebanon into Northern Israel. Just this past February, a rocket landed next to a house in the north injuring three civilians and, in January, a rocket hit an old-age home in Nahariya. While no lives were lost, certainly the fear and uncertainty has returned for many in the north who wonder when the rocket onslaught might begin again. And, since Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah has made quite clear what his intentions are, the uncertainty is well-founded. For example, he has said fighting against Israel is cleaner, purer and more honorable than engaging in politics and the future of Israel is death and perdition. Our martyrs have inscribed in blood, "death to Israel." According to Israeli intelligence reports today, Hezbollah now has some 40,000 rockets stockpiled, twice as many as it had before the beginning of the Second Lebanon War. That's why we, at IDEAS, feel that it is crucial to get these films that we have made seen as widely as possible because the more people who see them now, the more people who will understand the reality of the situation better and will help work towards peace. We are working on getting these films seen as widely as possible, particularly through broadcast media. Under Fire has been accepted now by a few PBS stations for broadcast but there's a network, I'm sorry there are 350 independent PBS stations and so approaching them requires quite a lot of manpower and time and effort. We've already broadcast Under Fire and Scorched Summer on a variety of Jewish and Christian networks and the films will appear again on those networks over the coming months and years. We also have CNN International in London and even Al Jazeera in the Mideast, in Arabic, having expressed an interest in looking at Under Fire and seeing the stories that are human interest and show a side that hasn't been told yet. For those of you who want to see the films online, you can watch them for free in any of nine languages by going to www.underfiredocumentary.com. From there you can have a link to Scorched Summer as well. There's much more work that we need to do to get these films seen and we would encourage any of you who have contacts in the world of broadcast or film to help us reach out to those organizations who might consider screening them or perhaps you want to do a local screening at a synagogue, a community center, a church, a campus or some other location. Through our website, www.ideas-us.org, you can contact us with your suggestions and, on the film website, you can propose screenings or other ways to get the films spread. I want to take this opportunity to thank The Israel Project and the staff there for all that they do in general and for helping with spreading the word about these films in particular but I also encourage you to visit their website and take a look at their press kit that they've created on the third anniversary of the war. Thank you very much, Jennifer. I'd be delighted to take any questions that the audience has.

Jennifer Packer: Avi, thank you so much for that. Before we begin, I'd like to ask you just a couple of questions which is, You were pretty busy before you started making these documentaries and I'm wondering why was it that you decided, what really made you decide to drop all of your other volunteer work and activities to do these documentaries?

Avi Naiman: Thank you. I guess the motivation really was having lived through some of their experiences and having been frustrated coming back to America, not seeing their stories being told in the general media and even in some of the Jewish communities where you would expect that the stories might reach on a wider basis. But, in particular, in the general media, there was about a nine or ten to one relationship between, or ratio, between the stories that were being told about victims of the shelling by Israel in Lebanon and yet I knew what a million and a half Israeli's were going through in Northern Israel and, in fact, the whole aspect of the Israeli civilian population being the target of Hezbollah activities was not being conveyed. What I wanted to show the world and what I decided to drop other projects in order to work on was what these people had gone through. Because without that type of information, it would be very hard for the world to understand why Israel needs to protect its civilians and, without that contact, we really cannot understand activities that Israel needs to take.

Jennifer Packer: Let me ask you just a couple of other things, Avi. Didn't the Israel, and this has been a common accusation, didn't Israel overreact in this war? And how come you didn't show the Lebanonese people who were hurt or the Lebanonese suffering?

Avi Naiman: Well, those are two different questions so we'll take the first one about the overreacting and what's often called disproportionate response. Many people have written and talked about this. One key ingredient here is intent. I believe that every Israeli and every person
around the world feels bad when civilians are injured or killed and that happens in every single war. But the Israeli Army was not targeting the civilians in Lebanon; in fact, the Hezbollah not only was targeting the Israeli civilians but they were embedding themselves amongst the
Lebanonese civilians and in civilian structures, both to dissuade Israeli from attacking them aswell as to be able to use it as a propaganda tool when inadvertent casualties to the Lebanonese civilians were caused by Israel's firing. Now, I'm not an expert on war and I wouldn't want to
weigh in on what is and is not defined as disproportionate but when you have 4,000 rockets falling on 1 1/2 million civilians in a barrage that is constant day in, day out, I think it's incumbent on any government to protect its civilians by attacking those who are launching the attacks
against them. On your second question, you asked why didn't I show what was happening in Lebanon to the Lebanonese civilians and, in fact, I think that if I could have done that, it would have helped tell the story to the world of what civilians go through. And, in one sense, what happened to the civilians in Israel is very similar to what happens to civilians, not only in Lebanon but in other conflicts around the world. I personally am not in a position to go into Lebanon. I was neither a filmmaker before nor was this a career that I was launching into. I was
trying to tell a story through film and the story that I was trying to tell was the one that I was not seeing covered out there in the media. So, because of that, I decided to tell the stories that I knew of in Israel and I have seen other documentaries, both claimed to be totally non-fiction and others which are actually fictionalized documentaries of what was portrayed in Lebanon to have happened to the civilians. So, I know that there is other material out there for those who want to look at that side of the story.

Jennifer Packer: Thank you, Avi. I'm going to move on to questions from the callers on the line. The first one is from George Zobergeld, who is from New Jersey, who asks, Is there a way to present pictures of the wounded without violating the dignity of the victims while at the same
time making the losses real to Americans?

Avi Naiman: Well, that's a real tough one because it's something I struggled with many, many times throughout the work. In addition to interviewing surviving family members, we poured through 20,000 photographs. We had virtually every picture that the police and army
took of every incident of rockets falling in Israel and you can well imagine that there's some horrifying imagery there. I don't know of a direct answer of how one can both provide dignity to those who have died and yet tell the story that, heart-wrenching as it is, needs to get out to
show people what the truth of the situation is. We tried to balance that to the best of our ability and, no doubt, other filmmakers would have made other choices and we certainly would not recommend these films for young children, high school age is probably, 9th grade and above is
probably the point at which we would start recommending that, with the right context and the right speaker accompanying the presentation, it would be appropriate to show. But it's very serious stuff as is any war and any civilian dying in the war.

Jennifer Packer: Our next question comes from Sula Kaffi from Tunisia. Sula says, The sufferings inflicted on Israeli civilians are either caused by Hamas or Hezbollah and nobody denies the fact that Iran provides support to these terrorist groups through arms, supplies, and
money. If we don't cut off the snake's head, could we shield the Israeli civilians from its lethal
and venomous poison?

Avi Naiman: Well, thank you, Sula. That is, of course, related to a lot of the work that groups like The Israel Project and others are doing to explain to the world how dangerous the situation from Iran is, not just to Israel but to the Western world in general. Our goal with these
films and our organization is to show the world Israel. Now, we are not putting it in the context of political or other context where people might then have an agenda of what they want to do but we certainly believe that by having the right information, people then will be motivated to taking whatever steps they find appropriate and feasible and so groups like The Israel Project, which have very strong connections with the media and are educating the media about Iran, we hope that these films will then put the human face on the suffering that an Iran agenda might cause to the world if it isn't held in check.

Jennifer Packer: Our next question is from Shmul Katz from Florida and he asks, knowing that if the false accusations on Israel stick, people will say that even the Israeli civilians deserve all that they get. How will you be able to integrate educating the population at large about
Israeli's just cause?

Avi Naiman: Well, that's again a tricky question because our goal is to try to get as many people to watch these films as possible. Shmul's making a very valid and interesting point which is that we need to do more than just put a human face on the tragedy. We need to explain, educate the world about what Israeli's history, what its connection is to the land, and that's very valid and valuable but it's not what we are trying to accomplish with these films. We're trying to open up a parallel track of connection to people the world over to basically show them from an emotional perspective what it is that Israel is going through and we see this as complimentary to what many of the fine Hasbara and Israeli organizations that are out there are doing to educate about Israel. So, while we think we're working hand-in-hand with the same end goal, we have slightly different process that we're using to try to reach that goal.

Jennifer Packer: Avi, we have a question from Dennis Kite from California who asks, Is a negotiated peace possible with the Palestinians considering their divided leadership and their stated goal to eliminate Israel?

Avi Naiman: Well, I'm certainly not a political expert and I'm not yet a prophet but I certainly hope that we can achieve peace and not just with the Palestinians but with all of the neighbors that Israel has, both geographically and in remote locations. I believe that if we ever gave up on that hope that would change ourselves and the way that we are as human beings. But that's more my personal feeling. As to whether or not we can actually achieve peace with the current administrations in place, I think there's certainly concern that when there are camps for five-year-old kids to carry guns and shout slogans of death to Israel, we have some grave concerns about what the future holds, not so much in the current leadership but in the coming leadership. But I personally never want to give up the hope that we can find a way to make
peace with everyone.

Jennifer Packer: We have a question from Steven Hughes of Washington State who asks, it's actually a three-part question and he asks, Regarding Operation Cast Lead, the international community for the most part did not perceive the 7,000 missiles hammering Israeli communities from Gaza as war. The IDF is even being charged for war crimes for stopping these missile barrages. What does this mean for the future of Israeli communities? And another part of his question is, How can you deal with the civilian Arab-Palestinians who fully embrace Hamas in reality part and parcel of the Hamas war machine and actively support it in times of war that plant themselves as non-combatants?

Avi Naiman: Okay. I'm not sure I can remember all the parts of that but starting with the last part I think it reflects back to the previous question which is 'Is there a hope for peace if so much of the civilian population perhaps in the Gaza strip is supportive of Hamas?' Again, my hope is that we do find a way to achieve that, but I don't think I can add more to that from this perspective. Going back to the first part of the question, in which I think relates to the Operation Cast Lead situation and how the world perceived it. I think that's exactly why we made these films, because there is not sufficient understanding in the world of what has happened to the Israeli civilian population. Sderot and the surrounding communities, which have been bombarded with 8,000 rockets over eight or nine years, on one hand, there have been relatively few deaths; on the other hand, they are a terrorized population. (And) there are groups like Sderot Media Center and people who are working on films to try to show the world what has happened to the people in that community. A little bit different of what happened in the north was 1 1/2 million civilians were under fire in a very concentrated period of time with 4,000 rockets falling over 34 days and unfortunately, with the way the world news is that if it bleeds, it leads. The focus on the war in the north reached the world much more so than the little bit of rockets that fall here and there but accumulate over time in the south. Our belief is that by creating films like Scorched Summer and Under Fire, by having the world see what the civilians go through, they will understand and be able to appreciate better what Israel needs to do to protect its civilians. And, when I spoke to families and trauma specialists about what happened six months in the south of Israel before and after Operation Cast Lead, I came to learn that the stories that were happening there are identical to the stories we're portraying in the north of Israel and perhaps at some time we'll expand the scope of the film to include stories from the south as well. But, in one sense, while the setting is a different location, the stories are identical and that's why we want these films to get out as much as possible.

Jennifer Packer: So, speaking of which, Rory Steiner from California asks, What festivals have your films been entered into and will you list the theatrical releases?

Avi Naiman: So, festivals I presume refers to film festivals and that's one way to get films, especially documentaries, to gain some attention. We have been working at submitting particularly Under Fire, to, I think, we're up to 30 or 40 film festivals. So far, we've heard of a lot of rejections, which is par for the course for any film. We're still waiting for a film festival of some note to pick it up. We were somewhat saddened that the Jerusalem International Film Festival did not accept it; although, it did so fictionalize the account of what happened in Beirut made by a French-Lebanonese filmmaker. However, we're plugging away at it and submitting it to more festivals and we hope that, at some point, it will receive the attention that we feel it deserves. We do not expect to be doing theatrical releases, both because of the lengths of the films which are really too short and because we don't really have the finances to launch a marketing PR campaign to try to bring it to theatres even if we combined the two films together, let's say, to make an hour film. We are, however, trying to get it broadcast as much as possible through the various cable networks, public broadcasting systems, etc., as I said before. And because Under Fire is in nine languages, we're also approaching broadcast television in France, Germany, Russia, China, elsewhere hoping that they might pick it up as well.

Jennifer Packer: We also have a question from Robert Breslauer from Wisconsin who asks, Why can't we get the message out? If the Palestinians stop the violence, there will be no violence.

Avi Naiman: Well, that's certainly part of our view from the Israeli and pro-Israeli side but it falls under the category of an intellectual debate and you have to have people who are willing to listen and engage in that debate and The Israel Project and many other organizations are working very hard at getting those messages out and The Israel Project has had many speakers who come from Arab-Muslim backgrounds who speak about this as well. We don't see that as our role in IDEAS. Our role in IDEAS is to work more at the emotional level and, in fact, in the new films we're creating we're trying to touch the passions that people have around the world on various topics and show then how there are Israelis who share those passions and try to create a connection on more of an emotional level. Once we start dealing with, well, if only this side would do this or that side would do that, then we've fallen back on more of an intellectual and even political argument and, while there are many organizations working on that front, that's not what IDEAS is all about.

Jennifer Packer: Thank you, Avi. I'd like to also take the moderator's prerogative and ask a couple of questions that I think would be important to elaborate on. During the war, Hasan Nasrallah told the Israeli Arabs to leave the north so that they wouldn't be killed. Given that, how
can we ever have peace?

Avi Naiman: Well, it's interesting if you watch Under Fire, you'll see Arab families and the mayor of an Arab district talking about being under fire from other Arabs and especially the mayor railing against Hasan Nasrallah saying these are my civilians, these are my citizens. We're Israeli's, Israel is here forever. Why are you shooting at us? And you have an Arab woman whose brother was killed in Haifa and she's talking about why can't we have peace. I'm an Arab, I'm an Israeli. We're here forever; we've been here for generations. Why isn't there going to be peace? So, I think that question is not only a question Israeli Jews and others ask around the world but even some Israeli Arabs and that's part of the message of showing what it's like for civilians to be under fire when civilians want to get on with their lives. So, while I don'thave a good answer to that question, these films help provide the context of discussing that issue.

Jennifer Packer: Another question I have is, If Arabs make up 20 percent of Israel's population, why were 50 percent of the killed and injured Israeli civilians during the war Arabs?

Avi Naiman: Well, that's perhaps a combination of a number of factors. First of all, though it's true that across the country the Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel's population, they're not spread out equally throughout the country and there are parts of Israeli's northern region which has dense populations of Israeli Arabs. I think the Yericho area has even more than 50 percent of the residents are Arabic and I know that the hospital in Nahariya, which serves about 450,000 residents of the Western Galilee region, has about half of its patients are Arabs. So, in one sense, the numbers reflect simply the population in the north. There was also the interesting aspect, for example, that there were Jewish communities in the north which are somewhat in the neighborhood of large populations of Arabs and which felt fairly protected because they felt that Hezbollah would never fire on these constellations of Arab communities even though there was a Jewish community amongst them. But rockets did fall in Haifa, rockets did fall in Nazareth, and rockets fell in Akko and these are places where the Arab population was significant that they would come under fire and it is probably also the case that the Arabs either didn't sense as much of an urgency or didn't have the same access to protect its environment as some of the Jewish communities. And, while it's certainly not a perfect world of Arab citizenry in Israel, I think we hear through the testimony of the Arabs who are struggling for peace and wanting to get on with their lives that it is a country that they still call home.

Jennifer Packer: Another question, Avi, is, frankly, why should the rest of the world care what happens to Israel especially given that there are so many people out there who consider Israel the occupier?

Avi Naiman: Well, there are lots of different answers to that. I think it's, we have from one end of the spectrum the feeling that Israel contributes a lot to the world. In some ways, that's somewhat patronizing that just because it contributes a lot to the world, it should have a right to exist. What we're trying to do is go from the other end of the spectrum and show the world that Israel and Israeli's are just like the rest of the Western democratic world and the films that we can make that can highlight that to the world we want to make somebody in America or France or Russia or China feel that Israeli's are not really any different from themselves, that they share the same conscience, the same interests. And, while we also have to provide the context and the explanations of the actions that Israel must take to protect itself, I think that as we can build up a bigger repertoire of understanding throughout the world of what Israel and Israeli's are like, we will achieve better the sense that they're not simply trying to put down their enemies and we need to get that truth out and these films do it from the perspective of the
civilians who were under fire, which is a story that I believe the world hasn't been shown.

Jennifer Packer: That brings me to another question that comes from Shmul Katz of
Florida who asks, How much exposure do you get in the international media with your film?

Avi Naiman: Well, we have been fortunate enough to start getting some exposure of organizations who are looking at the films. I mentioned that CNN International, they have a program called, "World's Untold Stories," and they have requested to look at it. We have through some of the Christian networks, we've already broadcast worldwide both interviews and excerpts and, in some cases, the entire film throughout the world and we have people from the Philippines and others who have seen the films and written to us. We haven't yet gotten CNN or a large PBS station to broadcast the films and we're still working on that very aggressively but the fact that several big PBS stations are looking at it, that CNN has asked for it, that even now Al Jazeera, which was told about the film by one of the Israeli families in the film, then contacted
us and asked to evaluate it and they are still looking at it and deciding whether they will show it, gives us hope that we will get a much wider audience than we have until now.

Jennifer Packer: The last question here is, What can we do to help Israel now or in a future
time crisis?

Avi Naiman: Well, I'm a Jew and I know that Jews around the world who feel a connection to Israel, historically, religiously, culturally, always try to find ways to express that connection and many others like Christian Zionists and people of good will around the world to understand the situation of Israel do so as well and there are many organizations where people express that, whether it's through political activity, whether it's through financing projects, etc. in Israel. Our goal, our push is to distribute information about Israel that's honest and accurate and shows what Israel's about. So, from the perspective of IDEAS, what we would love people to do is be in touch with us with their suggestions of how to help get these films and the new films we're making out into the world. Perhaps people who want to collaborate with us or have expertise in PR or other domains that can help make this a success. And we believe that with more people knowing about what Israel is all about, they will then be able to take their advocacy to a new level.

Jennifer Packer: Avi, as we wrap up this call, I'd like to ask you, and you've done such a beautiful job of elucidating so many important issues that came out of the Hezbollah Israel war, which is now three years ago, July 12, is there anything that you'd like to add to what you said
so far?

Avi Naiman: Well, it's my hope and, I think, the hope of a vast majority of Israeli's, both Jews and non-Jews, that there will be peace forever. I don't know that anybody can really paint a picture that that's going to happen very soon. I'd like to believe and I really do believe that many Arabs in the Gaza Strip in the West Bank would like nothing more to have no more conflict. I don't know whether we can get that message through to their leadership, whether we have to wait for a change in regime, I don't know what the right solution is on the political or geo-political front. But I hope that we can all work toward peace in the various ways we understand it and collectively we can achieve that sooner rather than later.

Jennifer Packer: Avi, thank you so much for taking time to join us and thanks to all of our guests who participated in today's conference call. For more information about Israel's security threats and the dangers of a nuclear Iran, please be sure to visit www.theisraelproject.org and take advantage of our online Iran press kit as well as our online, as Avi mentioned, Hezbollah Israel war anniversary press kit, which is also on the website. As always, if there's anything The Israel Project can do to help you get the facts and sources you need to cover Israel, please
don't hesitate to contact us. Thanks to all of you and thanks to Dr. Avi Naiman for this call.

Avi Naiman: Thank you very much, Jennifer. Take care.

Jennifer Packer: You, too.

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