November 15th, 2023: 4th Report

 

November 15^th, 2023

Dear Family and friends,

Report number four.

Family updates: There’s no news to report. The mobilized nephews remain mobilized. There probably aren’t any adult Israeli adults without third-degree acquaintances killed in this war; in my case it’s a number of 2^nd-degree relations. Friends who have lost friends or relatives. The killing and dying continue.

You may recall the unit of reservists who piled into what were essentially stolen tanks and raced into battle on October 7^th, even before they were officially mobilized. I mentioned they did have their battalion commander with them. Lt. Col. Salman Habeka, a 33-year-old Druze career officer, then cobbled his regular unit back into formation, and eventually led the charge into Gaza, where he was killed. My friend Guy, my source, tells me the death of their commander was a real blow. He had been charismatic and popular.

We had a “funny” experience last week. Before we drove down to the weekly visit with the grandchildren, Achikam briefed us on bomb shelter options. Sarah asked what would happen if the siren went off precisely while we were transferring the kids home. Achikam and I both said that wouldn’t happen.  Hamas shoots at Tel Aviv in the early evening, not 4pm. Sarah insisted. Sure enough, at 4pm we picked up Itamar, and just as we were fastening his seatbelt – off went the sirens. Yesterday the siren went off at 5:15, while Sophie was in a gym group. In the turmoil of 50 parents and children streaming into the bomb shelter we lost sight of Itamar – instead of waiting for us he had raced in ahead. Fragments of a rocket that was shot down by Iron Dome landed in a playground a few miles south of us and seriously wounded a man who hadn’t run to shelter.

I recognize that in the grander scheme of things, air-raid sirens going off when you’ve got shelter are not a big thing.

We have roughly 200,000 internal refugees. Thousands of them are survivors of October 7^th. Another 100,000 live far enough from Gaza that no Hamas invaders reached them, but their neighborhoods are under constant rocket barrages. And then we have the 80,000-some civilians along the Lebanese border who’ve left because Hezbollah is shooting at their homes. (These refugees are still under rockets, from Hamas or from the Houthis in Yemen who are shooting at Eilat – but two or four daily sirens are small change). In a country of ten million, each 100,000 is a precent point, which means that at the moment, 3.5% of the population is mobilized and 2% are refugees.

The refugees are in hotels. It first that sounds pretty good, but it turns out that putting entire families in single hotel room for an indefinite period is extremely demoralizing. Uprooted, unemployed, in limbo. Hanging their laundry on the balconies of luxury hotels. My brother-in-law Yossie has volunteered to work with them at one of the hotels. Yesterday he asked me to come by to help him with something. While I was there, he had a brief conversation with a stocky man in in his late 40s with three small children. After they wandered off, Yossie told me there are another three children, teenagers. The man and his wife are in the middle of a divorce, she’s refused to stay in Jerusalem, he’s rootless and helpless, and now he’s also the single father of three small kids who are detached from their home and lives. He looked as lost as you can imagine.

Today I walked by a very fancy, brand-new hotel that was about to open in our neighborhood. It’s full of refugees. They’ve decorated their hotel-room windows with yellow balloons, demanding in solidarity that the hostages come home. (As in “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree”). At the entrance there was a large mourning notice about one of the soldiers who was killed last week. His homeless family is sitting shiva at the hotel.

It could just as easily have been a mourning notice for someone killed on October 7^th, given how the identification of the remains is still ongoing. There are teams of archeologists down near Gaza, sifting through destroyed homes and ashes looking for human remains. Teeth, say, or charred remains of a large bone. They’ve identified at least ten remains, so we know those missing people are dead, not kidnapped. For a while the authorities were using the tracking devices attached to hawks and vultures, to identify fields where they were circling around human remains.

Even if all the hostages eventually come home, dozens of bodies may never be found.

Will they ever return? Are they even alive? Hamas hasn’t offered information, and certainly hasn’t allowed the International Red Cross to visit them, as the laws of war require. But what about our own government? In the first few days after October 7^th our leaders made no secret of their decision to put the destruction of Hamas over saving the children, mothers, seniors, women, men, or any of the IDF soldiers being held in Gaza. Our government has some very callous people, but it was a bit astonishing how they didn’t even try to cloak their decision in political-mumbo-jumbo-speak.

Then the pushback started. You can’t be a government that fails to defend its citizens from genocidal marauders, and then write off the citizens held by the marauders. So now we’re deep into the mumbo-jumbo-speak, and at every opportunity our leadership – government and military – promises they’re going to achieve two contradictory goals. They’re going to destroy Hamas, including thousands of its men and leaders who are hiding in hundreds of miles of tunnels, and they’re going to free hundreds of hostages from the same tunnels. I desperately hope they’ll succeed, but I don’t see how. So my body takes the minimum hours of sleep it needs, and I awake before dawn and think of the horrors.

Some experts say the public clamor for the hostages raises the price of their freedom. The government has proved that, at least initially, it didn’t care. Some American officials say the negotiations are advancing. Some pundits say a temporary ceasefire will enable hostages to be freed; others swear it will allow Hamas to regroup and move them.

We’ve decided to go with our consciences, which means standing with the families. For a while there was a heart-rending display at City Hall. Hundreds of beds, each one unique in how it portrayed the person who abruptly abandoned it. An open book. A teddy bear. A Batman blanket. A baby rocker. Discarded socks. Orphaned reading glasses. One evening Sarah and I went together, and people were singing in two corners of the wide plaza. A group of orthodox young women, singing religious passages. Across from them a mostly secular group, singing the cannon of Israeli songs of mourning. Eventually a young man took a microphone and said this would be the last event where they’d sing; from now on we’re going to be disruptive and angry. Then a women told of her lost family, of her frustration and despair: she, too, told us the time for soulful songs was long past.

The thought of responding to horror with more horror tortures me. A few weeks ago I even published a couple of (Hebrew) op-eds calling for us to incentivize the peace-seeking parts of the Palestinians. But not yet, as even I have come to understand. There really does need to be a violent response to the genocidal Hamas attack.

First, because the frightened and furious Israeli public has to respond with all its might. The only possible response to the Hamas massacre is to rain destruction on it. The damage to the Jewish psyche, given Jewish history, demands it. Zionism was always based on the idea that Jewish helplessness must end. What marks us off from the old Jews is that we fight back and destroy. I cannot over-emphasize how strong this commandment is. If we don’t avenge the blood of October 7^th, we’ll have failed one of our basic reasons for existence. It’s not pretty, but that’s our inheritance. It’s why so many Israelis raced into battle on October 7^th, literally throwing their bodies into the fire. We don’t allow marauders to rampage. We stop them, and we kill them. For what it’s worth, most of the perpetrators of October 7^th are already dead, and the rest soon will be.

But it’s not all vengeance. As I write this Hezbollah has been hovering for 6 weeks around the decision to do what it has always said it would, and attack us with their 150,000 rockets. One reason they’re hesitating is surely those American aircraft carriers. Another is that when they provoked us in 2006 we responded with such force and destruction that they’ve yet to recover. Their leader, Hassan Nassrallah, has lived in a tunnel ever since; after that summer he publicly said he would never have provoked us had he only known. By pulverizing Gaza today we’re telling him, loud and clear, that this time we’ll be far more violent. It remains to see if this message prevails over his other motivations. If so, our ferocity in 2006 will have saved the lives of tens of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese in 2023.

The English word for this is deterrence. Even peace lovers need to recognize its power and importance in human affairs.

Finally, there’s the matter of intentions and abilities. There are strands of the Palestinian people who will always wish us evil, no matter what, and will strive to end our existence. Irrespective of the policies we chose. (For decades we’ve been choosing bad ones). The only possible way of dealing with those impulses is by neutering their practical power. If they preach hate in some of the mosques, we may have to live with it. If they arm themselves, we have no choice but to disarm them. Violently, if necessary. All Israelis have always known this, but too many of us, myself included, haven’t prioritized it enough. This was a fatal mistake. Right now there really isn’t any alternative to destroying Hamas’ capability to harm us, unless it be that we give up and leave. So: No alternative.

I once wrote a whole book about jus ad bellum, and jus in bello. The justification for going to war, and the way of waging a just war. This war is a justified as they come. Are we waging it justly, given how Hamas has embedded itself within the populace? Many Israelis don’t give a damn at the moment, or so they claim, but the army says it does. And at times of national crises and full mobilization, the army is the people. It’s not a separate entity.

I wish I was convinced of the answer.

The IDF has surprised us. Rather than charge into Gaza and bloody urban combat – the most lethal form of warfare ever invented – they’ve been slow, methodical and careful. They encouraged a million Palestinian civilians to move south, and in recent days they’ve been defending the laggards who still want to leave, from the fire of Hamas who doesn’t want them to. Even the BBC – the BBC, for crying out loud – has been reporting about Arabic-speaking Israeli officers phoning Gazan residents and staying on the line until they’re certain the last civilians have left buildings that are about to be attacked. The leaders of hospitals have been having long negotiations with IDF officers. The IDF is determined to take the hospitals and show the world what’s under them – but not until they’re almost empty. This is an army worried about collateral damage.

Yet there’s another side to the story. I previously recommended a chapter from a New York Times podcast, where Sabrina Tavernese talked to a man who defended his family in Beeri. Since then, she’s done some more podcasts about our war. She’s not an antisemite, nor an enemy of Israel. She’s a journalist, and her output is professional and reasonable, including the parts I disagree with. Yesterday I forced myself to listen to every minute of her talks with hospital doctors in Gaza. It was devastating. The desperation in their voices, the exhaustion, and the hopelessness. You can hear the screams in the background, including the six-year-old girl whose foot needs to be amputated. Itamar will be six in a few weeks, so I know about six-year-olds. They’ve got a new medical category, WCNSF: Wounded Child No Surviving Family. Some of these WCNSFs are too young to know the names of their family, so even if they still have relatives, they’ll never be found. Not in the chaos that is Gaza right now.

Are the doctors dissimulating? Don’t they know that Hamas is holding innocent Israeli hostages, including children, under their hospital, surrounded by Hamas fighters and leaders? Don’t they see the armed Hamas men in the corridors, and haven’t they heard how Hamas is using violence to prevent the evacuation of civilians and of the hospitals themselves? Don’t any of them have Hamas members among their own social circles or even families?

But you see, that’s all irrelevant. Actually, according to the laws of war, it’s very relevant, because putting military forces into hospitals (or schools, or mosques, or homes) makes those places legitimate targets. That’s the law. But what has the law got to do with the six-year-old in agony, or the ten-year-old who couldn’t be saved because the hole in his skull was too big, or the many WCNSFs?

Some of Gaza’s traumatized young children will live another 80 years, or 90, at least the ones who survive all the future rounds of violence. Can Israel glean any conceivable advantage from today’s traumas surviving all the way into the next century?

I apologize for the moral whiplash.  Reality demands the ability to hold totally irreconcilable thoughts simultaneously, even if this is unpopular in top universities.

As this long and meandering report nears its end, I’ll note parts of the tale I’m leaving for possible future chapters. Our post-war reckonings. The possibilities for the future. Israel’s relations with the rest of the Jews.

Earlier today I went for a shiva visit with the family of Eliyahu Binyamin Elmakais, a soldier from France who immigrated alone. His parents came for the Shiva. When I walked in, they were conversing with Rubi Rivlin, who was our previous President, and remains popular. In his most famous speech, in 2015, he bemoaned how we split into four tribes: Secular, Ultra-orthodox, Modern-orthodox (those are the ideological settlers), and Arabs. Perhaps I should have added a fifth, he mused this morning: World Jewry. Almost 300,000 Jews demonstrating in Washington DC, he said – that’s an important tribe, and we must re-connect with them.

Israel is poised to change dramatically; Rivlin is correct the process needs to include the cousins who’ve been drifting apart.

****

The Library and the Tent: A Metaphor

The library: More than 20 years ago the folks at the National Library began a process of re-invention and renewal. The culmination of their efforts was supposed to take place last month, with the public opening of their spanking-new building, which is across the street from the Knesset, down the hill from the Supreme Court, a block away from the Prime Minister’s Office – and also, right next to the Ministry of Finance. The Israel Museum is across another street, and the line between the Shrine of the Book, which houses the world’s oldest copies of the Bible, and the new National Library, is a few hundred feet. The view from the windows is of the Hebrew University.

Not every major architectural project ends satisfactorily. You can spend $100M on a white elephant. I sat on the Library’s Public Council when they chose the architect (Herzog and De Meuron of Zurich), and had my doubts. Well, I was wrong. The building is beautiful. It’s impressive. It makes you want to sit and study, to stand and discuss, or to wander and think. The gala opening ceremonies, scheduled for October, were all canceled, but a friend who’s been sitting there since it opened said to me simply: Wow! Magnificent!

Jerusalem is a richer place because of its new library. (It was already rich).

The tent: Last week a small group of people who’ve just lost family set up a tent across from the Knesset. Their intention is to apply the model of Motti Ashkenazi, a young captain who returned from the battles of 1973, set in front of Golda Meir’s office in February 1974, and refused to move until her government fell in May. Along the way he gathered around him ever-growing numbers of protestors, until there were many thousands. The protestors of 2023 say they will stay until Netanyahu is gone.

When I visited them the other day, a few dozen people were milling around. Some were constructing a plank floor under the tent, so as not to lie on the pavement when the rainy season starts. (Yesterday). Some grandmothers were knitting wool hats for the soldiers who will be out in the rain. Organizers were organizing. Some of us sat around and argued: Is it was too soon for the masses to join, given the missing 5.5% of the populace, or maybe we can’t afford to wait a single day. I’m of the we-need-to-wait-a-moment-camp – but there I was, at the tent of the we’re-finished-waiting-camp.

After an hour or so I wandered back to the new library – a 90-second walk. The center of the building is a gigantic open space, five or six stories high, around which are thousands of books and hundreds of tables, light by the largest skylight window you’ve ever seen. Since the previous time I’d been there, last week, the staff had placed hundreds of chairs in circles around the space, each with a name, age and picture of a hostage. On most of the chairs they’d placed books, books somehow relevant to the missing individual. A book about a football club on the chair of someone who looks likely to be a football fan. An adventure story on the chair of a 21-year-old man. A famous biography on the chair of an elderly woman. The children’s book Yael’s House on the chair of three-year-old Yahel Shoham. A cardboard-paged story of Pluto the Dog, a classic all Israeli children have loved, on the high-chair of 9-month-old Kfir Bibas. It’s impossible to look without weeping – at least internally if you’re a stoic grown-up.

And the metaphor: I think it’s obvious. There are the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls, among the oldest documents in the world. In the next room are some of the oldest codex books in the world, including one that was owned by Maimonides himself 850 years ago.  They’re all in Hebrew, they were all written within 200 miles of Jerusalem, and now they’re in the Israel Museum. Across the street there’s a super-modern 21^st Century library, the national library of the people of the book. Next to them both is a tent of angry survivors, reeling from the worst massacre of Jews in almost 80 years; the library itself has a heart-rending display of agony.

In the long term, the scrolls and the library will remain. The tent and the despair will pass into the books.

Yaacov