Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September/October 2006, pages 34-35

Islam and the Near East in the Far East

Israeli Aggression Spreads Alarm and Anger Across Asia

By John Gee

ISRAEL’S ONSLAUGHT against the Gaza Strip and Lebanon caused dismay throughout Southeast and East Asia, and outright anger in many places. Some of it was directed at the U.S., for its role in arming Israel and supporting it diplomatically. When the Prosperous Justice Party, a young but growing religious-based organization, called a demonstration against the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip on July 2, 10,000 people gathered in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, to protest. Because Indonesia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, they marched to the U.S. Embassy: This street protest was followed by others in Jakarta and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia against the Israeli assault on Lebanon.

Meeting on July 24, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi said that their countries were in agreement on Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. They supported an immediate cease-fire and called for U.N. intervention to bring about a resolution of the crisis.

There was disquiet in some normally pro-Washington quarters that the Bush administration held out against calls for an early cease-fire in order to allow time for Israel to perpetrate greater mayhem in furtherance of its goals.

Some people in the region, especially in the Philippines and Thailand, had personal reasons for being anxious about the conflict across the Lebanese border. “My niece and my cousins are in Lebanon,” Ludi Ferreras, a Filipina domestic worker employed in Singapore, told me, as she watched television news reports. “There are a lot of Filipinas from my home region there.”

She worried that the dangers would increase after most of the Westerners who had been trapped in the besieged country were evacuated. I found it hard to be reassuring. 

Those Filipinas working in hospitals were likely to be sorely needed and reluctant to leave. Most of their 30,000 compatriots in Lebanon were domestic workers, and some of them chose—and were able—to leave. Over 200 were brought out during the second week of the Israeli attacks after they’d taken refuge in the church of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in East Beirut, used by the Philippines Embassy as a relocation site. In all, over 1,000 left Lebanon during the first two weeks. Gilbert Asuque, spokesman for the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs, reportedly advised Philippine nationals working in south Lebanon to “pack up and run,” saying that there was a forced evacuation going on. In Lebanon as a whole, however, most Filipina domestic workers stayed put, hoping the crisis would soon pass.

There were also 80,000 Sri Lankans working in Lebanon, few of whom could easily leave even if they chose to do so. Both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, with 10,000 citizens working in Lebanon, appealed for assistance in bringing out their nationals. India managed to evacuate 1,000 of its nationals in the second week of the crisis, and 100 Thais were either brought out safely or took refuge in parts of Lebanon thought to be relatively safe.

For people from the poorer countries, economic considerations sometimes overshadowed worries about personal safety. Many were reluctant to lose income upon which their families rely. Furthermore, they feared being stranded on the way home: even if they were able to reach Damascus or Cyprus, they often did not have the money to pay for their return home and were not confident that their governments would provide flights for them. 

Many of the 25,000 Thais who work on Israeli farms were normally employed in the area where Hezbollah rockets fell. Over 50,000 Filipinos work in Israel: 3,000 were employed in Haifa, struck repeatedly by Hezbollah rockets. 

“The Wall” in Singapore

For two nights in July, Israel’s West Bank wall was brought to Singapore. Al-Kasaba, a Palestinian theater group founded in 1970, wove together stories of how the wall has disrupted the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank. The performers created the stories they told, but they evidently drew heavily upon what they had seen and experienced.

The play was created as a co-production with the Tokyo Arts Festival in 2005. The set, by Japanese designer Noburu Tsubaki, consisted of moveable sections of wall that towered oppressively over the performers.

Even though it is far removed from their own experiences, audiences could grasp most of what “The Wall” was meant to communicate. There clearly were some points, however, at which the distribution of a short explanatory text before the performance would have been advantageous. In one monologue, a performer reminisced about the days when he used to go up onto the walls of the city of Jerusalem, thus inviting comparison with the hideous new wall that cuts East Jerusalem off from the West Bank, but most of the audience probably did not pick up on the distinction.

In Singapore, as in many other countries, there is still much confusion about where Israel has built its wall: broadcasters and writers frequently describe it as a barrier between Israel and the West Bank, failing to grasp that it is being constructed entirely within the West Bank, isolating parts of its territory neighboring Israel or containing most of the settlements from the rest of its area. “The Wall” helped break down that misperception and show how destructive Israel’s “security fence” has been for the Palestinians who live under its shadow.

“If theater is a tribunal, Palestinian director George Ibrahim and his troupe of powerful actors have presented their case eloquently,” wrote Clara Chow in her review of the play for The Straits Times.

Japanese Continent Pulls out of Iraq

Japan joined the exodus of “coalition of the willing” allies leaving Iraq when it withdrew its 550-man contingent from Samawah, in Muthana province, in June.

Like former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, Japan’s Junichiro Koizumi sent troops from his country into Iraq in the face of the opposition of a majority of the Japanese electorate. Unlike Aznar, he got away with it virtually unscathed. None of the members of the force were killed, considerable effort having been put into conciliating locals to ensure that there would be no attacks upon them. Japan repeatedly stressed that their mission was “humanitarian.”

The withdrawal was executed rapidly, without publicity until after it was completed. Koizumi, who is due to step down as prime minister in September, made a farewell trip to Washington—and Graceland—in June, followed by the first visit to Israel by a Japanese premier in over a decade.

A poll published in the Asahi newspaper toward the end of 2005 suggested that 69 percent of Japanese were against their troops remaining in Iraq.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Southeast Asia, and the author of Unequal Enemies: The Palestinians and Israel, available from the AET Book Club.

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