Yaacov Lozowick's Gaza War Journal

Israel has reached its nadir – unless it’s only halfway down a slippery slope. That’s the question. It’s been a year since I last wrote, and my relationship to my country is worse than ever, but I’ve yet to give up in spite of the estrangement. So here’s an attempt to explain to myself what’s going on. I’ll write three sections: War under Iranian missiles; Israel’s decay; and the political context which will determine if our decline is, or isn’t, reversible.   We recently spent six weeks under Iranian missiles, while the air forces of Israel and the United States pummeled Iran, we launched yet another ill-thought-out attack on Lebanon and garnered missile attacks also from Hezbollah. At home in Jerusalem, life was weird but actually fun. Millions of Gazans have lost everything except their lives. A million Lebanese fled their homes in face of the IDF. Thousands of Palestinians on the West Bank have fled before settler hoodlums. Many thousands of Iranians feared for their live...

Report number twenty: A year later It’s been a year since I last wrote, and things have largely gotten worse. Not everything, mind you. Iran’s Ring of Fire around us is mostly gone, and that’s good. Yet if our internal strife doesn’t get resolved somehow, I’m no longer convinced our long-term existence is assured. The other day Ronen Bar, the chief of the Shabak, sort of Israel’s counterpart to the FBI, submitted a sworn affidavit to the supreme court explaining why Netanyahu’s attempt to fire him should be blocked, even as Bar admits that he must soon resign because of his failure to warn and protect us on October 7 th . The affidavit may be the most troubling document ever produced by an Israeli official – and I’ve seen tens of thousands of official records. Bar describes how Netanyahu has been trying to subvert Israeli democracy; and use the secret police to harm his political opponents and also to short-circuit his own criminal trial; and hamper freedom of the press; and obstru...

  May 9th, 2024 Dear family and friends, Report number 19: tipping point?   This may be my final installment in this series of reports from Israel during our war with Hamas. I’ve reached a point where I no longer wish to defend Israel to non-Israelis, in English, and need to turn to explaining ourselves to my fellow Israelis, in Hebrew. That’s the point we’ve reached. *             *             * Reuma Kedem is a popular clothes designer, I’m told. She’s also a bereaved mother. Her daughter, son in law, and three grandchildren were all murdered on October 7 th . (You hope they were all murdered in a single hail-fire of bullets, but it was probably worse than that). Today there’s a two-minute film ricocheting around our WhatsApp lists in which she’s sitting on the ground next to Einav Tsangauker, surrounded by other family members of hostages, damning us fo...

  April 14th, 2024 Dear family and friends, Report number 18: Iran   We’re interrupting our usual program for a short news bulletin. April 13 th was Haim Peri’s 80 th birthday. As we stood in the cold Jerusalem evening, his grandson told us about him, about his second children’s book which was to have been published for his birthday but instead will remain in boxes, and about the sadness of marking his 80 th birthday while he’s still a hostage in Gaza. The next speaker mentioned the expected Iranian missile attack, and hoped it wouldn’t push aside the urgency of freeing them. At 11pm the headlines were that Iranian drones were already flying towards us; soon they also told of cruise missiles. The pundits (correctly) estimated that ballistic missiles, which require only minutes to arrive, would be synchronized with the arrival of the drones and cruise missiles. Estimated time of arrival, they said: 2am. At around 1am I deliberated going to bed, but decided to k...