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Nov. 16, 2012
Defining Israel’s future
Analyst speaks to a diverse group in Nelson, B.C.
JAN LEE
Thousands of years of shifting borders, diverse cultural landscapes and equally disparate political outlooks make Middle East geography a difficult topic to discuss in the course of an extended dialogue, let alone one evening’s presentation. The Nov. 4 lecture by independent strategic analyst Avi Melamed in Nelson, B.C., however, provided a concise, if somewhat chilling, overview of why Middle Eastern politics and geography play such a crucial role in the question of Israel’s future.
Hosted jointly by the Kootenay Jewish Association and Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, Melamed’s talk, entitled Winds of Change and Quicksand: The Arab Awakening, Israel and the Region, offered a country-by-country overview of the Middle East’s most powerful players, and their individual relationships to Israel. Approximately 45 people from the Nelson area turned out for the talk, which had been organized as part of the JFC-UIA’s 2012 fundraising campaign.
Melamed, who is a fourth-generation Sabra of Sephardi heritage, is well known in Israeli circles as an authority on Middle Eastern and Arab affairs. Trained in counterintelligence and a graduate of the International Program for Conflict Resolution at the Leonard Davies Institute and George Mason University, he served as senior advisor on Jerusalemite Arab affairs to Jerusalem mayors Teddy Kollek and Ehud Olmert, before turning his skills to teaching and private enterprise. He is the founder of IDAN, a nonprofit initiative that is directed toward empowering Israeli educators, and the trilingual website feenjan.com, which serves as “a platform for Israeli Jews and Arabs to create a community based on mutual interests and goals.”
According to Melamed, “the Arab Awakening – the events that rocked this region in Egypt, Tunisia, Nigeria, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon … is not about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is a volcano that has been smoking for a long time, and it is now erupting. This is the volcano of the challenges of the people of the Arab world.”
What has often been referred to in the West as the Arab Spring, said Melamed, is more correctly referred to now in the Arab world as the Arab “Awakening.” Understanding the takeaway message of those events and how they will eventually affect other situations in the region is crucial if one wants to understand Israel’s ability for “strategic containment,” and where the Middle East is ultimately heading, he told those gathered.
It is also important for the West to understand what Melamed sees as the true issue at risk: Israel’s survival.
“For many people in the West, it is difficult … to understand that some of the entities in the region are not arguing what size should be the state of Israel, they are arguing whether there should be any state of Israel, or whether there should not be a state of Israel.”
A key factor in Melamed’s ability to interpret and comprehend the effect of the Arab Awakening is his fluent knowledge of Arabic, a skill he said that not only allows him to access data and research in the language of the region, but to understand and appreciate some of the barriers that stand between Arab and Western cultures.
“Many people in the Arab Middle East don’t speak English. I’m not talking about technically, I am talking about the sets of values and norms [relevant to the culture],” he said. “That understanding is enormously important.... The difference of the mindset, the thought processes, is sometimes inconceivable” for Westerners. According to Melamed, understanding and respecting the cultural distinctions and history of each part of the region is crucial to its understanding as a whole.
Daniel Stern, who serves as the director of the annual campaign and regional services for the JFC-UIA, said that Melamed’s presentation fit in well with the agency’s cross-country tour of regional communities, which has hosted talks from journalists and other independent authorities on Israel affairs as part of its annual campaign.
“Avi really bases everything on data and information, and I feel it is a chance not only to bring Jewish communities together everywhere we go, but to inform the community,” he said. The talk was attended by members of both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.
Melamed, who had already made stops on the Atlantic seaboard and the Prairie provinces, was scheduled next to speak in Kelowna before heading on to Kamloops and Vancouver Island. The JFC-UIA’s regional services provide outreach support and services for some of Canada’s smallest Jewish communities, many of which are based in British Columbia.
Stern noted that the tour is an important part of its yearly fundraising. “I think the campaign is certainly necessary, and we are hopeful that more and more people out West here will support that campaign. It gives us a reason to return, but also gives us an opportunity to provide a program,” Stern said.
Jan Lee’s articles on Jewish culture and traditions have been published in B’nai B’rith Magazine, Voices of Conservative and Masorti Judaism, and on Suite101.com. She is also a contributing writer for TheDailyRabbi.com. Her blog is multiculturaljew.blogspot.ca.
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