Day Three of the War with Hamas

 

October 9^th 2023

Dear Family and friends,

Since the beginning of Hamas’ attack on Israel I’ve been asked by many of you for some sort of report. In the old days I would have been furiously blogging. But I’ve stopped blogging, I don’t do Twitter or any other social media, and I’ve purposefully refrained from publishing almost anything in the five years since I left the civil service and became free to say whatever I wish. I’ve published a series of articles in Haaretz, in Hebrew, for consumption by Israelis. So I’m now back to the 1990s: I’ll write something and send by email.

I have no intention of competing with the myriad other news sources you have. The point here will be to tell of various interesting aspects.

Family: On Pini’s side, two of his three sons/sons-in-law have been mobilized. (Ran and Avi). On Sylvia’s side, our nephew Tomer returned to Israel on Saturday and was mobilized. In our own family, Nechama was mobilized Saturday afternoon to Magen David Adom, and since then she’s running a large blood-donation site. Our grandchildren have moved into our apartment, which has a modern bomb-shelter-room, unlike their place near Tel Aviv. Idit is working more or less around the clock at the hospital. Achikam is with us and his kids. Earlier this evening I corresponded with all the nephews, and they all reported boredom. May they stay bored.

Numbers: Three days in, the number of civilians murdered is still unknown. No fewer than 900, probably more than 1,000. In 9/11 it was 2,700 from 300 million. We’re 10 million. In the Yom Kippur War, the only vaguely comparable event in our history, 2,700 Israelis died in 18 days, almost all soldiers. In the 2^nd Intifada 1,000 Israelis were killed, mostly civilians, but that took three years. This time it took a day. And there are still lots of terrible days ahead of us.

Our ghastly prime minister gave another one of his lie-packed speeches this evening. He spoke of the victory that lies ahead. There will be no victory. There can’t be a victory after the past three days. It’s a conceptual impossibility.

Nazis: The scenes and testimonies and videos that have been coming out of the slaughter fields are physically sickening. I’ve done my best not to watch the films, but one sprung on me unbidden: a six-year-old Israeli child surrounded by Gazan children tormenting him. The staging and filming were by adults. I know better than to use the Nazi analogy, but some of the malice and sadistic joy of the Hamas murderers deserve the term. You can write entire books about all the things Israel has done wrong over the generations – I’m writing one myself these days – and no, the Palestinian hatred of us isn’t merely inexplicable antisemitism, as too many of us like to tell ourselves (and would have the world believe). Having said that, we must stay focused on the intensity of horror too many Palestinians are willing to inflict. Someday we must make peace with them, but it won’t be like making peace with Norwegians.

Failures: This is not the time to enumerate them, but clearly there were many, widely spread over multiple layers of government, the military and society in general.  Quite a number of them are still in place. Once the war is over there will be an official committee of inquiry. Netanyahu will fight its creation tooth and nail, and will use all the tricks he knows, precisely because of the potency of such a report following a terrible war. He’ll fail, and sometime in 2024 the report will come out and be widely read and accepted. This evening I wish to write about two immediate responses to the failures.

Heroism: The IDF failed on October 7^th. (And long before that). In the first hours, the enormous vacuum was partially filled by heroes. The military rank and file and fighting-level officers fought heroically, as did local armed citizens. Too many of them were killed trying to do their best.

Rachel, a simple woman in Ofakim, suddenly had 3-4 terrorists in her apartment, who took her hostage along with her husband whose 68^th birthday it was. She treated them like a good Moroccan grandmother would, cooking for them and talking about their families and lives. Lulled by her hospitality, they didn’t see the SWAT team that broke in thru the bathroom and shot them in front of her. The wags have been suggesting the IDF set up a brigade of Moroccan grandmothers under Rachel and send them into Gaza.

Noam Tibon, Israel Ziv and Yair Golan, three retired generals, each took one look at the chaos, donned their fatigues, took their automatic rifles, and went down to the battlefields. Once there they started dealing with the chaos and rescuing people. They collected solders and junior officers who were dazed by the events and created their own, totally unofficial but lethally effective commandoes. Tibon’s primary goal was to save his son (the journalist Amir Tibon) along with his family, but even before getting to his kibbutz he was engaged in three or four battles in different places. Apparently, he killed dozens of Hamas fighters. Yair Golan was once a single step away from becoming Chief of Staff, until he gave a public speech warning of fascist tendencies in Israeli society; he spent the next 6-7 years as one of the prime targets of the right-wing hate machine. He was depicted as a Lefty, a self-hating Jew, obviously a traitor, and various other compliments. On Saturday he built himself a rapid-response commando, and as the day wore on and people figured out what he was doing, he collected anguish-stricken calls for help and went off to save folks, leaving a trail of dead Hamas fighters along the way.

Efficiency: my final story for this evening is about the protest movement. Having spent nine months running the largest protest movement in Israel’s history, around noon on Saturday the movement turned on a dime. The reservists who had been refusing to serve an emerging non-democratic government, reported to duty. The organizations we’ve built re-purposed before evening. One of the central characteristics of our colossal failure has been the near-total collapse of our systems of government, almost all across the board. As is customary in Israel, when there’s no government the citizens step forward. The awesome managerial capabilities of the protest leaders are now directed at filling as many government-abdicated gaps as possible. Thousands (literally) of volunteers have come forward to do whatever is needed for the homeless and bereft citizens in the south and the dismayed soldiers whose system is near breaking; to transport civilians and soldiers who can’t get where they need to be because the transportation system is useless; they set up a system of collecting information about separated families and are doing their best to connect them or at least to give them information; and on and on and on. At the center is an entire logistics hub on the edge of Tel Aviv that didn’t exist three days ago. Many of the volunteers down south are conspicuously wearing their Brothers in Arms t-shirts, a symbol of the protest movements. The citizenry is noticing who is giving service while the government isn’t.

 

Yaacov