The recent violence in Gaza is an emotional issue, one with many opinions and many complications. Some of those opinions were heard Wednesday in the Harper Center.
Gershon Kedar, Deputy Consul General of Israel, was invited to speak at Creighton by the Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization and the Creighton Students’ Jewish Organization. He spoke as part of an open forum about the current situation in Israel and the war in Gaza.
Kedar spoke for about 20 minutes to open the forum. He started by saying that the conflict represents a new paradigm.
“In essence, the Gaza conflict is not an Israeli-Arab conflict,” he said. “[It’s] part of a newer paradigm, which is a paradigm of moderates against extremists.”
Kedar said Hamas is trying to spin the narrative of the conflict to say that Israel killed over 1,000 civilians, but he said 75 percent of the casualties in the fighting were combatants.
“That means that, yes, there were more than 200, 300 non-combatants killed, maybe more,” he said. “Everybody grieves about killing innocent civilians, but when your enemy picks the battleground — the rules of law, the international law, makes it quite clear that a military target stays a military target, even if the enemy exploits civilian installations.”
After he finished, the forum was opened to a question-and-answer session that verged on hostile. Most of the questions came from people who supported Palestine. They asked questions on a variety of topics, including why Israel maintains a fence around Gaza and the disproportionate numbers of Palestinians killed to Israelis killed in the conflict.
Many people accused Kedar of spinning the facts. At times, the people asking the questions received rounds of applause, but Kedar also received applause when he parried with counter-arguments.
The forum was scheduled to last an hour, but several people stayed an extra 45 minutes and continued asking questions.
“There was a lot of things I didn’t agree with,” said Arts & Sciences senior Hoda Sana, “and I think he put a lot of twist on some of the main issues.” Sana was part of a group of 12 protesters outside the Harper Center who held signs opposing violence against Palestinians.
Another protestors was Creighton associate professor of Pharmacy Naser Alsharif. He stood up during the forum and said Isreal has created 4.7 million Palestinian refugees and Israeal should claim responsibilty.
“I guess the issue in terms of simplifying it in terms of moderates and extremists, it’s very unfortunate coming from a righteous Jewish person that knows how important it is to go back to your homeland,” Alsharif said. “It’s very important when you think about this particular conflict to talk about the human aspect of what Israel has caused.”
Kedar responded by saying Palestinian leadership should learn from its mistakes and work with Israel to create a Palestinian state. He said he wouldn’t accept responsibility for Palestinian refugees who left of their own accord after Israel won its war of Independence in 1948.
Toward the end, Kedar said he was speaking on behalf of Isreal and that he was happy the forum was open for debate.
“I really don’t think that even if I was 1,000 times better speaking — I would [not] convince anyone who feels so passionately about it from the other side. On the other hand, I’m very happy that I’m not in a situation here what’s called ‘preaching to the choir.'”