John Lyons, Middle East correspondent | January 10, 2009
FOR a boy from Bondi who has spent most of his life in Sydney's eastern suburbs, Benjamin Rutland slips very easily into the language of a country at war.
He talks almost casually about how the Israeli Defence Forces managed to take out two Hamas fighters who were firing rockets into Israel.
Captain Rutland, 34, born in Paddington and raised in Bondi and who studied arts-law at University of NSW, is one of the public faces of Israel's war in Gaza.
In a country that strictly manages comments about any war, he has become extremely influential. Apart from having access to some of Israel's most sensitive military information, the comments he makes run on news outlets around the world.
Captain Rutland is head of the European and Pacific desks at the IDF. This means he must try to put the best possible spin to an audience around the world on a war that is winning Israel few friends around the world given the high civilian toll. As many as 670 Palestinians have been killed in the 14-day offensive, a large number of them civilians.
He has spent much of this week explaining Israel's actions in firing on a UN school in Gaza, killing 40 people.
When The Weekend Australian visited Captain Rutland in his office in Jerusalem yesterday, he was at his desk watching the BBC to monitor its take on the war and receiving a text message from a friend in Australia who had just seen him on television.
How hard is it to sell a war when so many civilians are being killed? "For me it is extremely disturbing when civilians are killed, whether in Israel or Gaza," he said.
"But as part of my job I have met and liked thousands of Israeli soldiers and officers and I know that the vast majority of them are quite simply very good people who do the maximum to minimise injuries to civilians and I'm convinced that the IDF is a moral and just body which makes it easy for me to sell it."
How does he feel when he hears, as he did this week, about the 40 deaths at a UN school in Gaza hit by Israeli tanks.
"When that first came in we didn't have much information," he said.
"There was a sense of horror. But as information filtered in that Hamas fighters had been in there, that changed.
"If rockets were being fired at Sydney, Canberra or Melbourne, the Australian Government would respond."
Captain Rutland had spent time in Israel over the past 10 years but moved there permanently three years ago. "I want to be at the centre of Jewish history," he said. "In this job I certainly feel that that is where I'm at."
Captain Rutland is part of what he calls "an Australian mafia" who are prominent in selling the war, along with friend Guy Spigelman, an Israeli reservist also in the public affairs unit of the army.
Then there's Mark Regev, Israel's face to the world who moved to Israel from Melbourne. Mr Regev has been spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert since December 2007.
FOR a boy from Bondi who has spent most of his life in Sydney's eastern suburbs, Benjamin Rutland slips very easily into the language of a country at war.
He talks almost casually about how the Israeli Defence Forces managed to take out two Hamas fighters who were firing rockets into Israel.
Captain Rutland, 34, born in Paddington and raised in Bondi and who studied arts-law at University of NSW, is one of the public faces of Israel's war in Gaza.
In a country that strictly manages comments about any war, he has become extremely influential. Apart from having access to some of Israel's most sensitive military information, the comments he makes run on news outlets around the world.
Captain Rutland is head of the European and Pacific desks at the IDF. This means he must try to put the best possible spin to an audience around the world on a war that is winning Israel few friends around the world given the high civilian toll. As many as 670 Palestinians have been killed in the 14-day offensive, a large number of them civilians.
He has spent much of this week explaining Israel's actions in firing on a UN school in Gaza, killing 40 people.
When The Weekend Australian visited Captain Rutland in his office in Jerusalem yesterday, he was at his desk watching the BBC to monitor its take on the war and receiving a text message from a friend in Australia who had just seen him on television.
How hard is it to sell a war when so many civilians are being killed? "For me it is extremely disturbing when civilians are killed, whether in Israel or Gaza," he said.
"But as part of my job I have met and liked thousands of Israeli soldiers and officers and I know that the vast majority of them are quite simply very good people who do the maximum to minimise injuries to civilians and I'm convinced that the IDF is a moral and just body which makes it easy for me to sell it."
How does he feel when he hears, as he did this week, about the 40 deaths at a UN school in Gaza hit by Israeli tanks.
"When that first came in we didn't have much information," he said.
"There was a sense of horror. But as information filtered in that Hamas fighters had been in there, that changed.
"If rockets were being fired at Sydney, Canberra or Melbourne, the Australian Government would respond."
Captain Rutland had spent time in Israel over the past 10 years but moved there permanently three years ago. "I want to be at the centre of Jewish history," he said. "In this job I certainly feel that that is where I'm at."
Captain Rutland is part of what he calls "an Australian mafia" who are prominent in selling the war, along with friend Guy Spigelman, an Israeli reservist also in the public affairs unit of the army.
Then there's Mark Regev, Israel's face to the world who moved to Israel from Melbourne. Mr Regev has been spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert since December 2007.
Source: The Australian
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