Israeli living in Taiwan says education key to ending perennial Israel-Hamas conflicts

居住在臺灣的以色列人表示，教育是結束以色列與哈馬斯長期衝突的關鍵

Israeli says lesson that Taiwan should learn is 'listen to the people who are threatening you,' improve the training of its conscripts


TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — An Israeli citizen living in Taiwan spoke with Taiwan News, offering his perspective on Western media coverage of the Israel-Hamas War, explaining why he believes Israel and Hamas differ, suggesting education is the key to resolving the conflict, and warning Taiwan to take China's threats seriously and better train its troops.

In response to an interview with a Palestinian scholar from Gaza who criticized the Western media for its skewed coverage of the Israel-Hamas War, an Israeli man living in Taiwan contacted Taiwan News to give his point of view on the conflict. The Israeli national, who works as a financial consultant for Taiwan Advanced Sterilization Technology Co. (AST) agreed to a video interview on the condition that his name was not revealed to prevent himself and his family members from being targeted for anti-Semitic hate crimes.

He said that the Israel-Hamas War should not be measured with statistics but rather should be based on "who is doing right and who is doing wrong." He claimed that there is a higher number of casualties on the Palestinian side because Israel has a more powerful military, and Hamas uses Gaza civilians as human shields.

When asked for his opinion on the difference between Israel and Hamas, he said that Israel is a democratic country while he argued that Hamas fits the UN definition of a terrorist organization. He alleged that the official Hamas webpage expresses the goal of killing Jews and Israelis, while he said the Israeli government has never listed the killing of Palestinians as an official goal.

He said that the media has failed to inform the public about the war by overly fixating on the number of deaths for the sake of ratings. He also viewed the root of the problem as those drawn to quick soundbites and not patient enough to follow much longer features on the underlying causes of the conflict.

To resolve the conflict between Israel and Hamas, he said that education is the key to explaining to people how they can prosper together. He said the way that Arabs and Jews get along well is evidence that the two groups can work together, but that the leaders of Hamas first need to "stop trying to kill."

Asked to compare Israel and Taiwan, he said that Taiwanese are much more conservative and introverted than Israelis. However, he said the two countries are similar in that they are political "islands" facing major enemies with little in the way of natural resources and having to rely on brain power to create new technology to build a "start-up nation."

As for lessons Taiwan can learn from this conflict, he warned that Taiwan should "listen to the people who are threatening you" and take the threats from China seriously. He said that Taiwan should greatly improve the training of its conscripts, far beyond the current four-month service period, and follow the Israeli model of molding each troop to be better than 10 enemy soldiers.

He argued that security should be more at the forefront of the political parties. While Israel has become accustomed to dealing with daily missile attacks, he predicted that one missile lobbed from China into Taiwan would put the whole country into a state of shock.

The following are questions and answers in our interview video.

Why do you believe that the Israel-Hamas War should not be measured in casualties?

It's a very fundamental problem in the dispute between Israel and Hamas. I think to understand what's happening, you need to understand the fundamentals. By measuring the score, it's like a sports game. It's not working by score.

It's about who is doing right and who is doing wrong. That is more important than measuring deaths. Yes, Israel is much stronger than Hamas, and thanks for that.

America is the strongest nation in the world and we are not saying that America should have more casualties when they fight terrorism all over the world. Usually, America has fewer casualties.

It's the same idea. It's about who you're standing with and not about who is the strongest. So as long as Hamas is threatening Israeli and Jewish life, Israel has to do everything it can to protect her citizens.

And if Israel is stronger and because Hamas is using human shields to protect itself, there are more casualties on the Palestinian side. It's not the Israelis' fault. It's the Palestinians', Hamas's fault.

Let me remind you, Hamas is the government of Gaza. They are elected by Gaza. This is an official government. Israel left Gaza many years back and let them run the Gaza Strip.

And to make it simple so that people can understand, imagine someone is attacking you and he's shooting at you and shooting at your family. But he's hiding behind kids. If you feel a threat to your life, isn't that your obligation to try to stop this shooting?

Isn't it your obligation to prevent people from dying? And if by mistake, when you try to aim at the person who is shooting, you hurt the people that he used to defend himself, whose fault is it?

Is it the person who used those people to defend himself, or the fault of the guy protecting his life? I think anyone who would be in this situation would 100% try to defend himself and save his and his family's life.

So that's what Israel is doing, but on a bigger scale than what I just described as a family. Israel is a democratic country that fights for freedom.

And at the moment Hamas would give back the people that they kidnapped, and the moment Hamas would put down their weapons and not threaten to kill all Jews and all Israelis, there would be a cease-fire. Israel doesn't want to fight. Israel did not start this violence this time.

What is, in your opinion, the difference between Israel and Hamas?

First things first, Israel is a democratic country that belongs to the world society. Hamas, by any definition, the fact that it's not defined by some news outlets as a terror organization, it's unbelievable because I have here put down the UN definition of a terror organization.

The UN defines terrorism: "Terrorism can be broadly understood as a method that utilizes or threatens violence in order to spread fear and attain political or ideological goals." Isn't that exactly what Hamas is doing? Isn't that exactly what they did in the last attack, trying to spread fear and trying to get into the world media by killing, raping, and kidnapping?

People are comparing a terror organization to a democratic state. Does Israel try to spread its politics by killing people? Never.

There is no such thing as a soldier who would get an order from the Israeli government or his commander to kill innocent people. Never had been, never will be because this is a democratic country.

If anyone would even think to give such an order, he would go to prison immediately. And it happened before. There are trials in Israel that have been putting people into prison for things that are less severe than killing. Even things that are not as bad as killing, but still people went to jail for that.

So the comparison between Hamas and Israel, it's like comparing darkness to light. By the way, now we are celebrating Hanukkah for Jewish people all over the world.

I don't know if you know, but this is the symbol of Hanukkah. We are spreading the light because Hanukkah was a few thousand years ago, was the idea that light would win over darkness, and Israel throughout history would try with the values that everybody in the Western world appreciates, the values of the Bible, the values that we are all being brought up to, don't kill, etc.

We all know the Ten Commandments. So we are doing those values. We don't kill if nobody is threatening us. We don't do those kinds of things. But the attack of the seventh of October was a brutal attack, that killed citizens and killed women and killed babies.

It's really unbelievable that people can ignore that. Human rights. All over the world. The UN... women's rights. Where are they when women got raped? Where is the voice of those people who support their rights?

There are many, many leaders. Most of the Western world's leaders are supporting Israel and the narrative of the fight against evil. But I think there is a problem with the demonstrations that you see all over the world calling for genocide, basically.

When you say Palestine from the river to the sea, many people don't know what it means. But, some people know what it means and are still saying from the river to the sea. That means the territory of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That's the territory of Israel.

Palestine, from the river to the sea, means genocide of all Israelis, and all Jews means no more Jewish people in that area. And at the same time, Israelis do not call to kill all Palestinian people.

There are some people calling for Israel, saying that they're doing genocide. But it's such a ridiculous claim that's so easy to disprove.

We just said, how strong is Israel? Israel has the technology and the power to kill Gaza in a second. Seriously, it's like a decision of a second that they can do that.

But instead of that, they're sending troops. To go into tunnels, to go into houses, to risk their own life. And troops are dying because of this method. They're trying to do their best not to kill uninvolved citizens.

So the comparison between a terror organization, which it's very important that we call Hamas a terror organization because that's what they are. It's the definition. It's the method. It's their declaration.

I went to the Hamas webpage. There they are saying that their goals on their official webpage, their goal is to kill all Jews and Israelis. So, it's very hard to compare.

You'll never see an official declaration of government, a policy of the Israeli government saying to kill Palestinians. So it's a difference between people who try to survive, to protect themselves, and people whose ideology is so different that they want to, just in the name of religion, kill all Jews and all Israelis.

How do you feel that the media has failed to inform the public about the war?

The media is an issue that I wish we could solve. You as a journalist and me as a citizen. But it's a very, very deep problem that today, the way we consume everything is by one second.

It's partially the fault of the media, and it's a big fault of the consumers of the media. So again, we're going by the score of how many people died. That gives lots of ratings. That is just the title.

You put 10 compared to 100. It looks very attractive. People would click and watch this ad, but in order to actually understand what is going on, people need to educate themselves to go deeper, to understand.

That needs education, that requires more than one second. If you really want to understand the situation, forget about people who are spending their whole life to study the Middle East.

I'm talking about just the basics to be at a level that we can discuss it, and not just throwing phrases at one another, yelling at one another, to actually discuss the issue. You need a few hours to understand what you're talking about.

Now, the problem is nobody is willing to take those few hours, but then everybody is expressing their opinion without any knowledge, which is creating those people who are yelling Palestine from the river to the sea and they don't even know on the map where is the river, where is the sea?

But they go to demonstrate and you'll see thousands of people, and you ask them which river, which sea, they don't know.

So it's partially the media's fault, but it's actually the consumer. So I don't think we can solve it by saying something that you as a journalist can do or anyone can do.

How would you recommend resolving the conflict between Israel and Hamas?

I was all my life fighting for human rights, and for not only human rights, but all people are equal. That race doesn't matter if you are Arab, if you are Jewish, if you are Christian, whatever religions that you are.

I was always fighting that you should not be discriminated against. And I think that's the fundamental problem in this fighting that education should be, in a way, and Israel has some people who would be racist against Arabs.

But I think you cannot compare how many Muslims in Gaza are yelling death to Israel, yelling death to every Jewish person in the world. So it has to be the education of people to understand that we can prosper together.

You can see the Arabs in Israel. You know, many people are not really understanding. Again, it's because of a lack of knowledge.

There are many Israelis with the passport of Israel who are Arab and they identify themselves as Arab, and they live so much better than in Gaza and in the West Bank. And if you ask them if they would want to be under the government of Hamas, they would refuse because they know that a democratic country is much better for them.

So the idea is to create prosperity. But if whenever you meet the other side, their basic rule is that they don't want you, they want to kill you, it's very hard to help them with the economy.

First, you want to defend yourself. So that's what's happening through all the years that Israel is trying to promote peace. But the first thing is we are afraid for our children.

We are afraid for our women. We are afraid for everybody. We don't want to risk letting them in, and they are still, even now they are talking about letting people come to work in Israel, even under fire.

Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to let Palestinians come into Israel to work because we know how important it is to have money and food and prosperity.

But again, if those people that would come in would bring a knife or would bring a gun and would kill Israelis, and that's the exact cause of this terror attack, they don't want peace. They exactly did this terror attack to stop the peace with Saudi Arabia, which is one of the most influential Arab nations.

They wanted to stop this peace progress and this terror attack did exactly what they wanted because they wanted Israel to go to war. They knew that this kind of behavior Israel could not just keep on going, even though for years they have, almost every week, stabbed some Israelis in Israel, they are shooting at some Israelis.

They are doing so many things, but Israel is such a crazy country that that's become normal. We don't even react in war anymore for that.

So they needed to upgrade their terror in order to create a reaction. That's how people are saying Israel is committing genocide, but Israel is already accepting the killing of Jews inside Israel, which is something that we should never accept again.

I think the idea that someone can come and kill citizens and kids and women and get away with this cannot come again. So education is very, very important to start telling them you can live better.

Look at your brothers inside Israel, those Arabs in Israel, they are working. They can provide for their family, they can have dreams, and have a good life. But first, you need to stop trying to kill. Then we can start talking and make the area prosper.

Would you say there are similarities between Israel and Taiwan?

I think culturally we are quite different. I think Taiwanese are more introverted and Israelis are very outgoing, and much more easily express themselves.

That's why maybe Israel is a stubborn nation because we don't have the fear of failure. We just keep going and going.

But at the same time, we have many, many things that are very, very similar, like, I think Israel is an island in a way, a political island, but we're actually, the same as Taiwan. We are a very small country like Taiwan with very few people.

From our border there is no trade, there is not much trade. Both Taiwan and Israel lack natural resources. So both of our nations prosper from the human brain, which is very amazing.

We do high tech, we do technology, we do things that overcome our lack of oil, our lack of gold, our lack of other resources that some other country has and can make money from that. We are using the brain.

In the same way, Taiwan made itself a start-up nation. I think Taiwan is the same as Israel, it's a start-up nation.

Both countries have very friendly people. I think the human values of appreciation of life and family are similar between Taiwan and Israel. We have a similar ideology about what is important in life.

What lessons can Taiwan learn about this conflict?

That is a very sad part, and again, I don't know if anyone from the government would deal with this, the government of Taiwan. I think the first lesson that Taiwan should learn is listen to the people who are threatening you. Listen to them.

It's very important if China for many, many years keeps saying, we're going to take the island by force or by peace, but we're going to do it. We don't know if it's tomorrow or in 10 years, but we're going to do it. But it seems like there is a huge dissonance between the way that Taiwan is living, and especially the youth.

Maybe the old generation still remembers the war, but the youth I doubt. I'm saying it very sadly because I live in Taiwan and I love Taiwan, but I doubt that the youth can fight a war and be totally dependent on other countries. Look at the Israel situation and that's where you can learn.

Look at the Ukraine situation. You cannot depend on other countries to do the work for you. If the youths are doing four months of military training it's a joke.

It's a joke when you have an enemy with a million soldiers. Israel is similar to Taiwan in the number of people, actually an even smaller population, and we have just like Taiwan a huge enemy.

But, in order to compensate for our lack of men, we bring technology to the army, and every soldier needs to be 10 times better than the soldier of the enemy. So one soldier equals 10 soldiers of the enemy and that's how we overcome. So a soldier needs to spend a long time in the army.

The Israelis are some of the best soldiers in the world. That's why such a small army can overtake all the Arab nations together because every soldier is so much better.

The way that Taiwan is acting with the four months of military service and the whole idea that people are not looking at that and trying to only look at the present and the priority of the present, every election is dealing with other issues. Security should be more at the forefront for the political parties.

They should talk about security because this threat has existed for so many years. But they just focus on the quality of life, and I think the new generation doesn't understand how quickly and how fast cruelty can come.

We saw it on the seventh of October in Israel. One second people are partying at a party and dancing, and suddenly they are slaughtered.

I think in Israel we know this, even though we are trying to go back to normal life, we know this. I think in Taiwan, you don't even have this idea and they would be shocked.

Israel gets thousands of missiles, sometimes in a week. I think one missile to Taiwan would put the whole island into a state of shock.

Nobody would even be able to react and nobody would be able to go back to normal life. It would just stop society from existing. I think just one missile that did not even result in casualties, just from the fear factor.

So I think Taiwan's education needs to immediately catch up with the threat that is being said very clearly.