Weatherman Simon Gear says Israel engagement essential

TALI FEINBERG

“It would be a pity if large institutions made blanket bans on engagement with Israel,” Gear says. “Rather, I’d like to see each case considered in a rational and thoughtful way. It’s probably easier to advocate for better conditions somewhere like Gaza as a partner of Israel than as an enemy.”

Gear was on a tour with other South Africans to explore Israeli innovation and technology. He was joined by academics from the University of the Witwatersrand, University of Cape Town, University of Johannesburg, University of Pretoria, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of the Free State, University of Venda, University of Stellenbosch, and a national government research agency. Those directly connected to the universities haven’t been named because they still have to report back on the trip to their universities and consider options for co-operation.

They went in spite of the current climate surrounding this issue in South Africa, including a motion for an academic boycott of Israel at the University of Cape Town. The tour’s main sponsor was the South African Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was guided by Benji Shulman.

Gear’s opinions on Israel and the fact that he travelled there incurred a bit of a backlash on Twitter, specifically from Iqbal Jasset of the Media Review Network, and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions South Africa. However, he says the response from the South African public has generally been positive.

“The strong response from the anti-Israel lobby was quickly diffused into reasonable and rational discussion, which was an important part of my overall experience,” says Gear. “I’ve been careful to engage in a respectful and thoughtful manner with everyone who has reached out to me.

“That seems to have worked, as people quite quickly responded in kind, regardless of their initial vehemence. The same can’t necessarily be said about the engagement between the two opposing sides on my social media thread.”

To anti-Israel lobby groups that say he shouldn’t have visited Israel, he says, “They have a valid point that needs to be considered. The comparisons with apartheid South Africa, and the sanctions on that regime are also valid. The issues are not identical, but the similarities are inescapable. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is more complex than that faced by pre-democratic South Africa.”

Yet, Gear’s approach is one of engagement with the place and the people instead of boycott and censorship. “I learn best through experience, and speaking to people. I undoubtedly have a better understanding of Israel and Palestine than I had two weeks ago. If the choice is ever between learning from someone or not learning from someone, I believe experiencing other people’s culture should always win,” he says.

“With that comes the responsibility of getting as many perspectives on an issue as possible. It would be morally and ethically wrong to visit Israel and completely ignore the geo-political context of the country.” He therefore thinks that other South Africans should visit Israel, “but in doing so, they have a moral obligation to learn from as wide a range of views as possible”.

Gear says he has “enormous sympathy for both sides of the intractable problem that faces Israelis and Palestinians”. He decided to go on this trip as he has had a life-long fascination with the region. He hadn’t been back to Israel since visiting as a teenager in 1994. “I was keen to return to see how things had changed,” he said.

He was struck by “how much more peaceful and affluent modern Israel feels compared to the country I knew in 1994”.

He spoke of “hardly a piece of litter to be seen”, and said that “Tel Aviv is now a world-class city”.

“The country feels peaceful and prosperous. I’ll be the first to recognise, though, that this peace has come at enormous human-rights cost to the Palestinians, and I do worry that it is, as a result, not sustainable in the long term.”

He enjoyed the opportunity to speak to many successful Israelis, and get their view on a wide range of subjects. “It gave me a nuanced overview of how middle-class, secular, and orthodox Israeli society views itself,” he says.

Gear points out, “The nature of the trip was to speak to tech entrepreneurs and academics and as a result, the people we spoke to were overwhelmingly Jewish Israelis. So, we certainly had an opportunity to get a sense of how this sector of the population viewed the conflict. In our group were a number of people – and I would include myself in this – who were knowledgeable about the conflict, and so we were able to question and explore these views wherever possible.

“It was important to me to learn the role that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] plays in tech development in Israel. [This is] one of the reasons why Israeli Arabs are finding it so hard to break into the sector, because national service often acts as a springboard into tech start-ups.”

He was amazed to realise that the area he thought of as Israel was different to the perceptions in the country. “I’ve always included all territories that are disputed but under Israeli control [including Gaza and the West Bank] as part of Israel. Israelis very clearly exclude those areas from their notion of the country. This is a problem, as it allows Israelis to ignore the Palestinian narrative and condition in any consideration of how the country is doing.

“Palestinians are excluded from statistics, making the region look more successful and prosperous than it actually is. An example of this was asking a water expert if Israel exported water and power to her neighbours. The first two foreign ‘countries’ he mentioned were Gaza and the West Bank.” Gear understands that the Palestinians don’t especially want to be included in Israel either, and is not offering a solution, just an observation.

If some South Africans bow to the pressure of anti-Israel lobby groups, and decide not to go Israel, Gear says, “I think that that’s entirely within their rights. That that choice needs to be respected. If one does go, it’s incumbent to try and explore the issues as deeply as possible, and try and talk to as wide a range of people as possible.”