Yaacov Lozowick's Gaza War Journal

  April 3rd, 2024 Dear family and friends, Report number 17: Famine   I’ve been circling around this report for weeks. I’ve started writing it at least four times, only to discard whatever I’ve written a day or two later. This will be my last try. If I can’t write this report, I’ll have to end this whole series. Israel is doing bad things in Gaza, and it’s the obligation of a thinking patriot to admit it. I’m no bleeding heart or pacifist. From 18 to 21 I served in the IDF. Until age 40 I cumulatively spent another two years on reserve duty. I know about weapons, and soldiers, and armies. And service, and duty. I went to war three weeks after our wedding, with nary a second thought. I know Israel would long ago have been destroyed were it not for its strong army, and its tenacious and determined soldiers. This is a simple fact. Now more than ever. We’re facing an evil foe. Back in October there was a discussion as to whether October 7 th had been like the Shoah or...

  March 4th, 2024 Dear family and friends, Report number 16: wartime protests Last week a large crowd of Gazans swarmed a food convoy. There was a melee, nearby IDF troops opened fire, and more than 100 civilians were killed. Israel claimed most died in the stampede, not from our fire. French President Emanuel Macron angrily condemned us.   Most of the world (those paying attention, that is) blame us. The Israeli consensus is that we’re blameless. There’s very little willingness among Israelis these days even to recognize what we’re doing to the Gazan population, much less to understand how the world sees it. We’ve convinced ourselves most of the world is antisemitic, so we’re aggrieved and defiant. We’ve got no patience for talk about starvation in Gaza. There are good reasons for this Israeli mood. Our insistence on focusing on our aggrievement and not on the results of our actions may be explicable and human, but it’s still very dark. For months now I’ve been circli...

  February 27 th , 2024 Dear family and friends, Report number 15 : Protests, first round Our next door neighbor Rivka has been waiting for months for her daughter, an intelligence career officer, to give birth. On Sunday morning her first grandchild, a boy, was born. At precisely the same time her youngest brother Moshe, a commando career officer, was critically wounded in Gaza. Given our magnificent medical system, he may eventually be alright. When I was young, we used to hope that new-born boys wouldn’t need to serve in the army. That was before her brother was even born. We’ve stopped. *             *             * We’re almost five months into this ugly war, and we’re not where we thought we’d be.   I ought to write about Israel’s war aims. Whatever they were, the case can now be made that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for personal gain. The polls all...

  February 11 th , 2024 Dear family and friends, Report number 14: political camps For the first time since October 7 th , all three of my mobilized nephews are de-mobilized. It’s only temporary, because soon they’ll start second rounds. This is an emerging serious issue, and maybe I’ll write about it someday. Part of our gradual return to a semblance of (very strange) normalcy is that I’ve gone back to writing. At the moment I’ve got four active projects. In addition, I just spent a chunk of time at Yad Vashem, which I left in 2007. I’ve been trying to help the new bosses figure out what they have an archive for, and what they should be doing with it. The slowing pace of these reports is because of all this, not because they’re nothing left to tell. Today I’m taking a shortcut. The other day I wrote a Hebrew-language column about our political camps, and it occurs to me it could fit in here. Here’s an English version. *         ...