A Balcony Over Jerusalem Read online

  I would soon learn that, as far as the Israeli lobby groups are concerned, there are two phases for Israeli correspondents: before a correspondent arrives in Israel and once they are there. My experience is that once a correspondent is announced by a news organisation, the lobby makes a decision: whether to charm or to attack.

  I was charmed. At a personal level, and as Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, I’d always had good relations with leaders of the Australian Jewish community. But I’d never received as many invitations to lunches or dinners as when I was announced as The Australian’s new Jerusalem-based correspondent.

  One of the officers from the Israeli Embassy in Canberra wanted to meet me for coffee. We met at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney. Then, a few days later, he wanted to meet again at another hotel. It sounded urgent. I arrived, and this time he had reserved the business lounge in the hotel and had an extensive spread of food and drinks for me. The two of us sat in this palatial environment with little to say beyond what we’d said a few days earlier. But this would be a short honeymoon: it would end as soon as I began doing my job.

  In my final weeks in Australia, I contacted various ambassadors. The Iranian Ambassador was very tentative at first, finally agreeing to meet at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney. He was keen to tell me that Iran – despite being an Islamic republic run by clerics – is wonderful for women, and urged me to do stories on higher education in there.

  I met the Lebanese Ambassador in Canberra and he told me that Lebanon would be ‘the last country on earth’ to recognise Israel. The two countries had been bitter enemies ever since Lebanon began harbouring the PLO in the 1970s, leading to the 1982 Lebanon War and an 18-year Israeli occupation of South Lebanon; more recently, powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah had declared war against Israel, resulting in the 2006 Lebanon War.

  I had an amusing exchange with the Syrian Embassy. In 2009 Syria was relatively peaceful and I wanted to be able to take Sylvie and Jack on a trip there, so had applied for visas for all three of us. A few weeks later, the Syrian Embassy called me. ‘Mr Lyons,’ said the officer on the other end of the line. ‘We’re honoured that you want to come to our country. We’re going to give you multiple-entry six-month visas.’

  I was thrilled. But then he told me: ‘The ambassador thinks you’re the best equestrian writer in the world.’

  Equestrian writer? We were so close to having excellent visas, but on the basis that the Syrians thought I was the world’s leading horse writer?

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t write about horses,’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t you the famous John Lyons?’ he asked. ‘We in the Arab world love our horses. They’re so important to us.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ I replied, ‘I’m not the famous one.’

  There was an awkward moment before he said: ‘Because you have been honest, we will give you the visas anyway.’

  As for the Israelis, once the word went out that I was to be the Middle East correspondent of The Australian, based in Jerusalem, the charm offensive went into overdrive. I had one memorable lunch in Canberra with Israel’s Ambassador, Yuval Rotem. As I walked towards the restaurant I noticed security men along the street, and at the front and back of the restaurant. The wine flowed freely; Rotem enjoyed the good life. A few weeks later, he wanted to see me again before I left. He suggested we meet at The Australian’s headquarters in Surry Hills in Sydney. His security detail was a combination of his own staff and Australian Federal Police. As they took up their positions around News Limited, Rotem joked about how he’d recently climbed Uluru and his security detail had insisted on going with him. He laughed at the memory of struggling to get to the top followed by a bunch of security men.

  Seated in the News cafeteria, Rotem turned on the charm. ‘I enjoyed your stories on Captain Chaos!’ he said in reference to a series I’d just written detailing the dysfunction inside the office of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. ‘I read them on the plane and couldn’t stop laughing. You know, the Israeli media is one of the toughest in the world – they’re always running those sorts of articles about their leaders.’ Rotem, as it turned out, would not be as enthusiastic when I was equally tough on Israel.

  But it was his next comment that resonated. ‘The settlers are nutters,’ he told me, referring to Israeli citizens who move to live in the occupied West Bank. It was a fascinating comment from a high-ranking Israeli official. Was he was one of the 20 per cent of Israelis who opposed the settlements?

  As I would soon discover, he had touched on the single most important issue preventing a resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

  CHAPTER 3

  Arriving to a War

  January 2009

  ON THE NIGHT OF FRIDAY, 2 JANUARY 2009, SYLVIE, JACK and I stepped off the plane at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport. We landed at the same time as a planeload of Russians, many of whom had come to do Aliyah – the Hebrew word for ‘Ascent’, or Jewish immigration to Israel. The Russians have given a huge boost to Israel’s scientific and military capability. But, as Bill Clinton once observed, they have also dramatically changed the country.

  The ‘Russian factor’ is a highly sensitive issue in Israel. But Bill Clinton clearly felt it was one he could discuss after his presidency. Clinton placed the blame for the failure to achieve a Palestinian State firmly at the feet of the new Russian immigrants. ‘An increasing number of the young in the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] are the children of Russians and settlers, the hardest-core people against a division of the land,’ he told a discussion group in New York. ‘This presents a staggering problem. It’s a different Israel, 16 per cent of Israelis speak Russian.’1

  Under Israeli law, any person anywhere in the world deemed to be Jewish by a rabbi is entitled to take up Israeli citizenship. Part of Aliya involves the government assisting people with bank accounts, housing and employment. Israelis hope that this will guarantee a true ‘Jewish Homeland’ and defuse what they refer to as the ‘demographic time bomb’ of a growing Palestinian population in Israel and the West Bank. For Israel it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract Jewish migrants: the waves who migrated there in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly from the former Soviet Union, have dried up and most of the 7.8 million Jews who live outside Israel appear to have no urgent desire to move there.

  As I walked through Ben-Gurion Airport that afternoon, I reflected on my own preconceptions about Israel: a military and economic powerhouse in a volatile neighbourhood. Just a week earlier, a six-month truce with Hamas had ended, and, since 27 December, rockets and air strikes had been occurring in Gaza and Israel. The original trigger had been the capture by Hamas of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006, and more recently there had been an escalation in rockets coming from Gaza in response to a long-running Israeli blockade. Speculation had been building that Israel might launch a ground attack. (We would see this pattern every two or so years on average over the period we were there.)

  As Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, I’d had long conversations with Jewish leaders who’d argued strongly that Israel was a victim of unfair media reporting. I’d always found it strange that a country exercising military authority over 2.9 million Palestinians in occupied territory could be a victim. This would make Israel simultaneously an occupier and a victim. Nonetheless, Israel’s lobby groups had convinced the majority of the media to present that perspective, at least in the US and Australia.

  We woke on our first morning in Jerusalem – the Jewish Shabbat – and went to look at Jack’s new school, the French School of Jerusalem. We walked from the Old City through the neighbourhoods of ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim. We walked along HaNevi’im – the Street of the Prophets. A strong, chill wind was blowing. Coming towards us was a Haredi with a long beard. The wind made it part down the middle, like the Red Sea before Moses. ‘Did you see that man?’ Jack asked. ‘He had two beards!’

  We found the school, in the centre of Jerusalem, next to the ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Mea Sh
earim. I didn’t tell Jack that seven years earlier the head of a Palestinian suicide bomber had been blown over the school wall. The Palestinian had dressed as a Haredi Jew, but there had been frequent bomb explosions and everyone was on alert – even the Haredim, who tend to live in their own world. Two real Haredim had noticed the man – an Israeli and a Palestinian can spot each other a mile off – and alerted police.

  The terrorist, wearing a vest packed with explosives, had been heading into crowded Jaffa Street to cause maximum casualties, but when confronted by police had detonated himself, and his head had flown over the school wall. This had all happened at eight o’clock in the morning. An adult in the schoolyard had thrown a jacket over the head so children wouldn’t see it. Many already had.

  As I lifted Jack onto my shoulders to look into his new school, I thought of this incident but decided not to tell him about it. He soon found out anyway; such stories are spoken about openly in Jerusalem.

  We went home after our day of exploring to our short-term rental accommodation in Yemin Moshe, a picturesque old suburb with a windmill, just outside the walls of the Old City. I told Sylvie I was going to make sure we had everything organised before I began writing stories. Because I’d already been a foreign correspondent, I knew the importance of organising yourself. I told Sylvie that I’d spend the first few days trying to obtain a rental car, apartment, mobile phone and internet before I began filing stories.

  My plans quickly collapsed. That night, I turned on CNN to discover that Israel had launched a ground invasion of Gaza. A period of heightened violence had just turned into a full-blown conflict, which would become known as Operation Cast Lead.

  Suddenly I had a war to cover.

  How do you cover a war? Firstly, you need to work out how to get as close to the front line as possible. Israeli journalists are never allowed into Gaza, but most of the time foreign journalists are. However, during Operation Cast Lead the Israeli Army decided not to allow foreign journalists to cross from Israel into Gaza. Israel would later regret the decision, as it meant the foreign media were largely reliant on journalists in Gaza – most of whom were Palestinian.

  The war continued for another two weeks, most of which time I spent on the border between Israel and Gaza – on the Israeli side. I travelled to Bethlehem in the West Bank, where the information from Gaza was filtering through via videos and online means. Huge banners showing pictures of dead children had been hung in the public square. Most Israelis and Palestinians only see one perspective, but by travelling along the border I started to understand how the two sides’ reactions to the war are so different.

  Three of the main spokespeople for the Israeli side were Australian: Mark Regev, chief spokesman for the Prime Minister, and Benji Rutland and Guy Spigelman, spokesmen for the army. Regev was from Melbourne like me, and we got on very well. He, Rutland and Spigelman were always accessible, and Regev and Rutland gave me daily updates.

  The Palestinian side was harder to get; I didn’t have a fixer in Gaza yet, having only just arrived. But I was able to get information about deaths and injuries from Palestinian spokesmen in the West Bank and aid organisations or the UN in Gaza. I also monitored the Palestinian media, such as Maan News Agency, which carried regular updates from the Red Crescent ambulance service. Sometimes I looked at Jordanian newspapers or other Arab-language newspapers from other places. Agencies like Reuters and Agence France Press tended to be much more down the middle than the Israeli or Palestinian media.

  But not being in Gaza, I wasn’t able to confirm information I was being given. My solution was to report as ‘the Israelis claimed’ and ‘the Palestinians claimed’. The he-said-she-said form of journalism is not ideal but preferable to stating facts you can’t verify.

  In Israel, I could feel the mood change on both sides. Parents at Jack’s school started to get nervous. In shopping centres people would stand around television screens watching the war. We’d be in a sports store trying to find some shoes for Jack, or buying meat at the butcher’s, and people around us would be saying, ‘The Israelis are doing well. Let’s get in there and clean out Hamas.’ And, ‘Our boys are doing what they need to do.’

  As a foreign journalist, you learn very quickly not to take sides. I’d often be asked: ‘What do you think of the situation in Gaza?’ And I always used to give the same answer, whether it was a Palestinian or an Israeli asking the question: ‘Look, I’m not there. I can’t tell.’

  As frustrating as it was to cover a war from the outside, it gave me insight into the ‘bubble’ many Israelis lived in. At the Malha Mall in Jerusalem, I walked into a newsagency. Media from France, Britain and Germany carried photographs from Gaza: pictures of dead babies, deformed children and bodies half buried in rubble after Israeli air strikes. The material had come from Palestinian photographers and journalists in Gaza. The Israeli newspapers next to them showed pictures of Israeli soldiers fighting their enemies.

  The contrast could not have been stronger. One newsagency, two different wars.

  The war the Israeli public saw was one in which it was defending itself against its aggressive neighbours. The one the international community saw involved enormous civilian casualties in Gaza. It helped me understand the genuine perplexity Israelis feel when others gather in the streets of London or Sydney and protest against the Israeli Government’s actions. Israelis, not having seen any of the images that have fired these protests, dismiss them as anti-Semitic. As Aluf Benn, Editor of Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has written: ‘Israel’s image problem abroad is down to one issue: the stark and growing difference between how Israelis view their country and how it is seen from outside. This explains the anger and insult that Israelis feel when they watch themselves on the BBC or CNN. It can’t possibly be us, they protest, the networks must be biased and pro-Arab.’2

  In times of war most of the Israeli media adopt a clear policy: any criticism of Israel is held off until the war is over, and instead the media swing behind the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The Palestinian media do the same: they only highlight their own victims. In wartime, both sides seem to have an inability to see the other one as human.

  There is also a strong commercial imperative determining what material is shown: in general, Israelis do not want material critical of their army, given that it is a conscript army and most of their children at some point are part of it.

  According to Arad Nir, Foreign News Editor of Israel’s Channel 2:

  The Israeli media allows itself to be controlled by its consumers. In Protective Edge [the 2014 Gaza War], out of the 15 hours of straight news coverage per day showing what happened in this war, there were only 10 or 15 minutes dedicated to what happened on the other side …

  I have some news for you. Even the decision-makers in Israel … wanted us to show what was happening on the other side – they were under the impression that the public doesn’t understand how much they were doing or how hard they were hitting the other side. So they complained to us. It’s not that we are serving the regime, the government – we are serving the consumerist regime, and those are not necessarily the same interests.

  But sometimes Israelis do become angry about their media. ‘During all the wars we covered on Channel 2 News, during our post-mortem meetings there were many times that we made a mea culpa and admitted that perhaps the public’s feelings of bitterness in the wake of the war were because we did not show what was happening on the other side. That is, we didn’t show the public the blood spilled in its name on the other side.’3

  Significant stories by the Israeli media about the IDF must be cleared by the military censor, which can ban publication. According to the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalisation, from 2011 to 2016, between 13,000 and 14,000 items were submitted each year to the IDF censor for review before publication. The centre found that from 2011 to 2013 between 20 and 22 per cent of items submitted were redacted either in part or in full.

  Over three weeks, two different wars had
occurred: one that Israelis watched and one that the rest of the world watched. As soon as the war was over, I wanted to get into Gaza to work out which war actually happened.

  Despite being one of the world’s best locations, right on the Mediterranean, Gaza is one of the world’s most tragic places. Gaza has been bombed so many times that when you are there it sometimes appears to be one large rubble pile with a few buildings in between. Electricity often doesn’t work for days on end, water doesn’t run. There’s a huge refugee population and hardly any economic activity relating to the outside world. The biggest industry by far is United Nations welfare; 60 per cent of the population is on the UN payroll.

  Former British Prime Minister David Cameron called Gaza ‘an open-air prison’. About 1.8 million Palestinians are squeezed into a sliver of land that’s 40 kilometres long and, at some points, just six kilometres wide.

  From Israel, the only way for journalists to enter Gaza is through Erez Crossing, a 90-minute taxi ride south from Jerusalem. It’s a facility the size of an airport terminal, with state-of-the-art security, including cameras filming your every move. As you walk through the first section, a voice gives instructions: ‘Turn left’, ‘Go straight’, ‘Hold your arms in the air’, ‘Open your bag’. The person voicing instructions guesses what language you will understand from what you look like on the wall of monitors in the control room. The instructions are usually in English or Arabic. If you don’t understand, the voice speaks louder. It’s like having a cameo role in a bad science-fiction movie.

  At the end of this first section, a massive concrete door opens, and you begin a long and eerie walk along a caged metal corridor. I never got used to it. Here you are, walking between Israel, one of the wealthiest nations in the Middle East, and Gaza, one of the most bombed places on earth, and you barely see a single human.