Check Out This Dumb Fuckin Gentile!!!!

[michael_ital]

Local man on Mideast mission
Visit to Israel spontaneous

Media coverage moves him to help
Aug. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM
SURYA BHATTACHARYA
STAFF REPORTER


Rather than sit at home and wait for news updates on Israel, Michael Newman decided to take matters into his own hands.

Without a word to his wife, children or grandchildren, the 61-year-old boarded a direct flight from Toronto to Tel Aviv last Sunday.

With thousands of Lebanese being evacuated, and Israelis being moved to the south of the country, it's unusual for a man not affiliated with any relief organization to be making his way into the war zone.

"The only way to tell people what is happening here is to be here," Newman said in a phone interview earlier this week from Kahal, 32 kilometres south of the Lebanese border. "I wanted people over here to know that there are people outside who do care about what's going on and to see what I can do to help."

He tries to call his wife and children daily, but with air-raid sirens, shelling and jets providing a noisy backdrop to phone conversations, his family is worried for his safety.

"At this point I would just like to have him home safe and sound," said Dixie Gilles, his wife. "It's a very frightening place for a loved one to be in right now."

Newman was 12 when he emigrated from Hungary in 1956. He grew up in Toronto and runs a real estate company called Interrent Properties, which buys and sells investment properties. The company owns properties in Parkdale, downtown Toronto and around southern Ontario.

He has been married twice and has three children, two stepchildren and five granddaughters, with two more grandchildren on the way.

"He always has been fascinated by war," said son Evan Newman, 31. "He has extensive books and artifact collections pertaining to war."

Michael Newman travelled to Israel a year and a half ago and, according to Evan, pays close attention to current events.

"He has been obsessed with the current conflict in Israel and Lebanon, and expressed dismay in the way the media has been covering the war, being pro-Lebanon," he said.

Newman had talked to Gilles about getting together with his business partners and going over to help with relief efforts in northern Israel.

But his son believes it was her strong opposition that led to Newman's silence about his plans.

Once Newman reached Israel, he called his best friend in Toronto and asked him to tell his wife about the letters he had left at home for her. They explained that he had been growing frustrated, sitting by and watching how the Israeli situation was presented in print and on television.

"I was tired of standing there watching it, swearing and ranting about it. It was not the right thing to do."

He is staying with a retired colonel whose two children are Apache helicopter pilots with the Israeli army. Newman plans to raise funds for families stranded in the war zone. Many were evacuated, but there wasn't room for everyone on the buses, and some residents are too poor to leave.

"I am trying to make sure whatever funds I collect will go to people who need it the most," he said.

Newman has contacted people in Toronto to set up a fund and to make sure the money goes to people who need it, Gilles added. She worries that he could be caught in the crossfire if the situation escalates.

"I understand the situation is pretty dire, of course, but I think he thought this is just what he needed to do," Gilles said.

Until two days ago, Newman was "scrambling to get clean clothes on a daily basis," because Air Canada lost his luggage and refused to deliver to a war zone.

He has promised to come home by Monday, but for now he continues to visit bomb shelters and hospitals, and to meet with soldiers on their way to the border and business owners affected by the conflict.

"I can only tell you that people are hugging and kissing me every time they see me, and I don't even speak Hebrew," Newman said.

He speaks of an old woman he met while touring the border villages. She also hugged and kissed him and said, "You don't know how much your presence means."

"They've had no contact with the outside world, except for a few journalists who've come by. They can't appreciate enough the fact that I've come," Newman said.

"They don't know if the outside world gives a damn."