An affecting account of four years in Israel and Palestine
I was so moved by Bethan McKernan's article on her time as the Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent over the last four years ('I worried I might start finding it normal. But I never did' – what I learned as the Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent, 29 May). Her experience of feeling a 'maddening cognitive dissonance' in Tel Aviv/Jaffa from seeing people 'out and about, doing pilates, walking their dogs, as if everything was fine – when just 50km down the road, on the same stretch of the Med, was an open-air prison' is exactly how I felt when I first visited Jerusalem in 2018 after spending time in the West Bank.
I had decided to take my young family there to show them where my Palestinian father grew up under the British Mandate and see if we could find the home he'd lost in 1948. But I was also keen to ensure my children had a balanced view and understood the whole story, educating them about what the Jewish people had been through.
I had come from Jordan via Bethlehem and Ramallah and been so touched by the generosity of the Palestinians I met who, despite living under very difficult conditions, were such wonderful hosts, inviting my family in to chat and share delicious home-cooked food. But arriving in lush Jerusalem from the barren West Bank, where Palestinians are treated like cattle, penned in by the wall and multiple checkpoints, was a striking contrast. After walking a few steps through the centre of Jerusalem with its gleaming shops, surrounded by people ostensibly living their best life, I broke down and cried at the injustice of it all.
Growing up in London, people would sometimes tell me they were going on holiday to Israel. 'Have you been?' they would ask. 'It's wonderful.' They didn't know my background, but I was left shocked that they only saw one side of it.
What I loved about Bethan's article is that over the last four years she has immersed herself in life there and deeply felt the positions of both Israelis and Palestinians. If we are going to make progress and reach a fair outcome, we have to put ourselves in each other's shoes and deeply understand each other's experiences.Alexandra LucasLondon
Jonathan Freedland describes Hamas's actions on 7 October 2023 as 'slaughter', while Israel's bombardment of Gaza ever since is just 'killing' Palestinians (A biblical hatred is engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict – and blinding them to reason, 23 May). The difference in outrage portrayed in these words reflects the lack of equivalence between the life of an Israeli and that of a Palestinian which has been at the heart of the conflict since the start.Chris MatthewsLondon
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Metro
an hour ago
- Metro
'How do I know my mum isn't dead in a ditch after Israel arrested her?'
Seren Murphy, 43, was relaxing at home on a Saturday night when she got a message on the WhatsApp family group chat from her mum. She'd been arrested by Israel. Seren's mum, Máire Ní Mhurchú, 70, flew to the occupied West Bank in early May to do what she has done for 20 years – help Palestinians. But no one heard from the mum-of-three, grandmother-of-eight and great-grandmother-of-two for days after she was detained and threatened with deportation on Saturday, an order she is fighting in the courts. Seren, a librarian in Swansea, told Metro: 'How do I know she's not dead in a ditch somewhere? 'When you look at what's happening in Gaza, the fact that they have murdered aid workers and medical staff, what's to stop them from bumping off a little old lady?' As much as Seren's phone has been 'red-hot' recently from her frantically checking it, she knows her mum will be fine. She said: 'My mum is my hero. She's got the biggest heart of anybody I've ever met – Palestine is part of her life and soul.' Almost every autumn, Mhurchú, who goes by D Murphy, goes to the West Bank to help pick olives off the terraced hillsides. But the olives were unharvested when she landed last month. Seren said: 'The joy is disappearing. They're living in fear… Some of the villages she's been to have been bulldozed to the ground. Some people she knows are dead.' One village is Khalet Al-Daba'a in Masafer Yatt, home to 14 families before Israeli forces demolished 90% of the homes and infrastructure. Murphy, from Douglas in Cork, was joined by her friend Susanne Björk on May 28 to volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Björk, 48, told Metro Israeli settlers she filmed 'terrorising' Palestinian villagers stole her phone on May 30. She reported them to the police. But at 6.30am the next day, masked soldiers kicked down their door and gave them 10 seconds to get out. Israeli settlers serving as reservists reportedly told them to leave as they were in a 'military area' before police arrested them. Björk said: 'But the police and soldiers the day before had not mentioned this. How are we to know we were not supposed to be there?' To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Inside the station, they saw two Palestinian boys, aged about 13. Björk recalled: 'An officer told me: 'These are terrorists. If we don't zip-tie them, they'll run.' We were in the middle of an illegal settlement. There was nowhere for them to go.' Israel has classified the area as a military zone since the 1980s, complicating residents' ability to remain. Khalet Al-Daba'a is inactive, according to a 2022 map. At a Sunday hearing in Tel Aviv, the court accused them of being in a military zone and threatening soldiers and police. Björk said: 'Which is a ridiculous thing to say because these are heavily armed people and I'm a 48-year-old woman with a 70-year-old.' After agreeing to board the next available flight, Björk was deported. Murphy is in Givon Prison and was denied counsel on Wednesday, ISM said. Björk said: 'I fear for D. She's a 70-year-old woman in detention – we had to fight to use the toilet.' On Wednesday, Seren's aunt received a call – it was Murphy, saying she had not spoken with her lawyer since Monday. Seren said: 'I'm reassured knowing she's still alive. It's surreal to think that way about your mum. 'But alongside those feelings is also anger at the fact we're in this situation and what is happening every day in Palestine.' Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 people hostage. Israel has killed nearly 54,700 Palestinians, mainly women and children. ISM told Metro: 'Israel labels indigenous Palestinians, their supporters and those who tell the truth about the genocide unfolding in occupied Palestine as criminals, uses force to silence and remove them from occupied Palestine.' More Trending Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told Metro officials are providing consular assistance. It said: 'As with all consular cases, the Department does not comment on the details of individual cases.' The IDF, the Israel Police and Sweden's Ministry for Foreign Affairs have been approached for comment. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Ireland has a US border — it could help travellers nervous about Trump's America MORE: I spent 48 hours in Ireland's rebel city — it's in the midst of a revolution MORE: US suggests Palestinian state should be in the French Riviera
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
The longest division: can Palestinian and Israeli students compete at the International Maths Olympiad?
For six Palestinian teenagers, it could be a 'life-changing opportunity'. The youngsters have been selected for the International Mathematics Olympiad, to be held on Australia's Sunshine Coast in July, but it is unclear whether they will be able to leave Gaza and the West Bank to take part. At the same time the IMO faces calls to suspend Israel's membership and allow its students to compete solely as private entrants. National teams around the world are in training camps for the trip to Australia, being coached by academics as they prepare to compete for medals – and the ticket such prizes offer to just about any university in the world. The Palestine team leader, Samed AlHajajla, says the IMO should be the start of a journey towards a glittering career. 'Having a mind to solve these problems is incredibly rare,' AlHajajla says. 'They are the best in Palestine, they are the top students. Being an IMO competitor, it takes a lot of hard work and talent and gifts and, for them [in training for the IMO] they can exercise that, they can exercise some freedom inside the prison which is Gaza. 'For them [it should be] a life-changing opportunity where they can taste freedom for the first time.' The problem facing AlHajajla and his young Palestinians is logistical and political. Last year, four Palestinians – two from Gaza and two from the West Bank – were selected for the 2024 IMO in Bath, England, but were unable to take part. The closure of the Rafah crossing meant those in Gaza could not leave. Visas and passports for those in the West Bank were approved by British and Israeli authorities, but did not arrive in time. A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Australia says they are 'not aware of any evidence that Israel delayed or refused visas for the Palestinian team at the last IMO, nor do we have information suggesting this will occur now'. Mike Clapper is the interim chief executive of the Australian Mathematics Trust, which is organising the Sunshine Coast event. He says it is 'very much our hope' that the Palestinian team will be able to come in person. 'We are exploring all the avenues that we can to try to make it possible for the Palestinians to participate,' he says. Whether Palestinians can compete is only one part of the IMO's problem. The other is whether Israelis should be allowed to do so. On 6 May a letter signed by more than 700 mathematicians was issued to the IMO under the heading 'Mathematics and Moral Responsibility: the IMO and the Genocide in Gaza'. The letter calls on the IMO to do as it did when it suspended Russia's membership after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine – while allowing its six students to compete remotely as private individuals. Russia remains suspended. Signatories come from a diverse range of countries, universities and career stages: from Australia to Morocco to Switzerland; from Oxford to Stanford to the University of Carthage; from PhD researchers to associate professors to three winners of the Fields medal – the award often referred to as the Nobel prize of maths. The letter – seen by Guardian Australia – has not been published, to protect signatories from harassment. Among them is an Israeli, a former IMO medallist, who asked for their name to be withheld. 'I needed to think about it for a second because of the potential danger,' they say. 'If I would tell this to random people in the street it would be, I would not say controversial, it would be considered a clearcut treasonous thing to do.' But, they say: 'We see what is happening in Gaza: there's war crimes, there's starvation, the genocide. For me it is clearcut. It is the moral thing – it is the obligatory thing to do in this situation.' 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The following year in Braunschweig, Germany, he won silver, rubbing shoulders and making lifelong connections with teenagers who would go on to become some of the world's most influential people. Ranked No 1 in the world in 1988, for the second year running, was Nicuşor Dan, who won a second consecutive gold medal with his second perfect score. In May, he emerged from Romania's political crisis as its new president. At that same IMO the Australian prime minister, Bob Hawke, presented a gold medal to an even younger prodigy, a 12-year-old Australian called Terence Tao. Tao remains the youngest ever IMO gold medallist and is now regarded by many as the greatest living mathematician. A more recent example of the IMO's power to transform lives is Ihor Pylaiev. Pylaiev was plucked from war-ravaged Kharkiv in 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine to continue his studies in Paris. He won his second gold medal in Oslo, this time with a perfect score and the top world ranking. 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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Starving Palestinians fear being shot dead for a bag of lentils as Gaza aid points close
Starving Palestinians fear 'being killed while trying to get a bag of lentils', aid workers warned as the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) closed aid centres for the second time in a week. Aid agencies told The Independent that the GHF is already failing at providing aid to the enclave's starving population. The GHF, run by a private group of US military contractors and endorsed by the Israeli military, announced on Friday that all of its distribution centres in Gaza would close until further notice. The US-backed organisation had already urged Palestinians to stay away from all of its three centres for safety reasons following a series of deadly shootings earlier this week. Dozens of people were shot dead near the GHF's Rafah site over three consecutive days in scenes described as 'appalling' by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The GHF said that a reopening date would be announced later on Friday, with the closures sparking further concern that the organisation is ill-equipped to deal with the dire humanitarian situation in the enclave. The UN has warned that most of Gaza's 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave ended last month. 'These are not humanitarians, they are people with guns,' said James Elder, a spokesperson for Unicef who arrived in Rafah two days ago. 'Without a doubt, [the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] is unsustainable because it's politicised and militarised.' Since he arrived in Gaza, he says 'nothing has been open', despite claims by the GHF that they fed an additional 1.4 million meals from two sites in the Tal Sultan and Saudi neighbourhoods in Rafah on Thursday. They say they have distributed more than eight million meals in total. When approached by The Independent over these claims, the GHF said it had delivered almost 8.5 million meals and would 'look at additional improvements' to its aid operation. Salma Altaweel, an aid worker for the Norwegian Refugee Council based in Gaza City in the north, where there are currently no GHF distribution centres, told The Independent she could 'see desperation on people's faces'. 'The food situation has reached a desperate point,' she says. 'The new distribution mechanism has failed to meet people's basic needs. 'People here talk about how they fear getting killed while trying to receive a bag of lentils. Here in the north, I have seen no aid come in, only more people displaced by Israel's repeated relocation orders.' On Thursday, the GHF said it was working on 'operational plans' to open additional distribution sites, including in northern Gaza. Mr Elder said he had spoken to one 23-year-old woman in hospital who had travelled miles to one of the distribution points earlier this week only to be nearly killed as the Israelis opened fire. She was squashed up against the wire fence running up to the aid area, cutting her leg and arm. The woman ended up leaving with no food. Asked if she would go back despite the dangers posed by the trip, Mr Elder said she replied quickly: 'Yes, because I have no food'. He said that with parents being forced to leave their children to go to these distribution centres, or face bringing them on round-trips that can be as long as a marathon and involve moving into combat zones where civilians are being killed, the GHF operations were adding 'another layer of risk'. 'I spoke to dozens of adults who said they would rather risk hunger than have their children die when they're not there,' he said, adding that the bombardment of Israeli missiles is 'as intense as ever'. The GHF had already been accused of lacking neutrality given its backing by the US and Israeli government. Under their plan, Palestinians must travel into militarized zones miles away from their homes to access vital aid. Jake Wood, the former head of the GHF, resigned two weeks ago after admitting the group would not be able to fulfil the principles of 'humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence'. Sara Hashash, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Middle East and North Africa, said the GHF is the 'wrong response' to the chronic food shortages in Gaza. 'Israel's newly established militarised humanitarian aid scheme, run by the GHF is the wrong response to Gaza's manmade humanitarian disaster,' she said. 'The scheme is gravely at odds with humanitarian imperatives and international humanitarian law. It actively puts the lives of Palestinians at risk and woefully fails to provide effective humanitarian relief.'
