Week 16: Monday
Can We Win the War, or Have We Already Lost It?
I don’t have much in the way of good news to share on the national front this week. Indeed, at this stage it is not easy to imagine what might constitute good news. As one week gives way to the next, the declared (indeed, originally proclaimed) aims of the war – to bring home the abductees and to eliminate Hamas – seem less and less realistic.
As someone wrote about an earlier round of fighting in Gaza: ‘The public invariably expects the government to continue the battle and “flatten Gaza,” believing that with enough punishment the Hamas regime would collapse. Yet that would only happen if we sent in the army. The casualties would mount: many hundreds on the Israeli side and many thousands on the Palestinian side. Did I really want to tie down the IDF in Gaza for years when we had to deal with Iran and a possible Syrian front? (The someone was Netanyahu, in his autobiography.) Is the country ready for the daily rollcall of fallen soldiers – on a good day, one; on a particularly bad day last week, nine – to continue for years?
Note: It’s now Tuesday morning. When I wrote that last sentence yesterday, my heart sank as I typed ‘nine’. When I came out of shul this morning and caught the news headline, I wept: since last night, 24 reservists have died. Of those 24, 21 were in the process of mining two buildings used by terrorists close to the border, in preparation for their demolition; the buildings suffered a direct hit from an RPG, which triggered the mines, and the buildings collapsed on the soldiers. Is the country ready for this to continue for years? On the other hand, do we have any option? May their memories be for a blessing, and may their deaths prove not to have been in vain.
As for the hostages, the feeling is growing that it is unlikely that they can be brought home. This is a feeling that was for some time unspoken, but now, tellingly, is being articulated in the media as well as on the street. A prominent radio pundit last week baldly stated that it is completely unrealistic to think in terms of an Entebbe-type military rescue. The conditions under which the abductees are undoubtedly being held, the alertness of their captors, and the complexity of the terrain in which they are being held, all confirm what he said.
As for negotiating their return, it now appears that Hamas is not interested in the release of security prisoners (which, if Netanyahu were to agree to it, would probably bring about the collapse of his coalition). Instead, they are looking for a protracted ceasefire – possibly over 50 days – with a staged release of all of the abductees in return for increased humanitarian aid,
These conditions would, of course, allow Hamas to regroup, repair and recruit. Resuming hostilities after such a break would be, for Israel, like starting from square one again, All of our fallen soldiers to that point would have died for nothing. Not resuming hostilities would, of course, make their sacrifice seem even emptier.
Add to all this the fact that a significant number of the abductees are probably already dead, with more liable to succumb with every week that passes. This horrible situation offers no glimmer of hope that I can see.
Meanwhile, on the Northern front, it can be convincingly argued that Hizbollah has already won the war that officially has not started. They have advanced from North of the Litani river (as per international agreement) to the very border with Israel. The buffer zone has now moved from Southern Lebanon to Northern Israel. With almost 100,000 Israelis evacuated from Northern Israel, and with no indication of when, if ever, they might feel able to return, Hizbollah has effectively taken territory from Israel to a depth of several kilometres south of the border.
Can We Start Again?
Before turning my attention to other matters, let me leave you with a flicker of better news. Like the first saplings emerging in a forest ravaged by fire, here and there are signs of a possible direction for Israel’s political future. I heard today on the radio of a grassroots initiative to create a dialogue between religious and secular elements in Israeli society to explore common ground in the hope of being able to agree on a shared vision for Israel. There are, from various directions, calls for entirely fresh faces to enter the political arena: leaders of industry, organisers of voluntary initiatives, social activists.
Meanwhile, on Another Planet…(It Sometimes Seems)
Every now and again some philistine argues that state education should focus on ‘real’ subjects (like sciences and maths), instead of wasting time on ‘soft’ subjects like music and art. This month, the power of the arts has been demonstrated resoundingly in Britain…and Zichron Ya’akov.
Let’s start with the big story. (Those of you who live in Britain can safely skip the next three paragraphs.)
Between 1999 and 2015 an estimated 4,000 branch owner-managers at the Post Office were accused of wrongdoing after faulty IT software showed errors in their accounts. Many were sacked, chased for money, or accused of crimes such as false accounting, fraud or theft. As many as 900 were prosecuted and 236 sent to prison. Others were ordered to pay back substantial sums, leaving them financially ruined. Some of the accused have died without clearing their names, at least four are known to have committed suicide and others have been shunned after being convicted.
Horizon was the largest non-military IT system in the world in operation at the time and had been designed to deal with transactions, accounting and stock taking. It covered each of the 20,000 Post Office branches in the UK. From early on, many workers continually reported bugs in the system, with unexplained shortfalls in their accounts, but these were ignored. The Post Office allowed many of these workers to think they were the only one reporting faults.
In 2009, after being contacted by seven postmasters, the website Computer Weekly ran an article detailing their struggles with the system. It led to the formation of a campaign group, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), which began talking to MPs and fighting in the courts. Eventually, the High Court ruled that there were IT problems in the system, the Post Office apologised for the suffering caused, 10% of convictions were quashed and, in 2021, a full public inquiry was initiated.
However, all of this was much too little, and, for many involved, much too late. Despite the very real concerns being in the public domain, the powers-that-be seemed to still be wishing the story would go away, and stalling.
Then, in the first week of January this year, the mainstream TV station ITV aired a four-part dramatization of the postmasters’ struggle for justice, with the title Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Overnight, this changed the entire status of this story. Within days, the Government announced that a new law would be passed “within weeks” to achieve a blanket overturning of convictions, the former Post Office boss returned her CBE (a middle-order rank within the British Honours system), and the public outcry generated new interest in the case on the part of the police, the public inquiry and the press.
There is a long tradition of British television drama exposing injustices. The first prominent example is probably Cathy Come Home, which was a 1966 BBC television play about homelessness, unemployment, and a mother’s right to keep her children, topics that were not until then widely discussed in the media. The play produced a storm of phone calls to the BBC, and discussion in Parliament. For years afterwards Carol White (who played Cathy) was stopped in the street by people pressing money into her hand, convinced she must be actually homeless.
In 1990, the TV film Who Bombed Birmingham raised serious doubts as to the guilt of the Birmingham Six, six Irishmen who had been sentenced to life in prison in 1975 after two IRA bombs went off at pubs in Birmingham, killing 21 people. The film led to their subsequent release after 17 years of wrongful imprisonment. The film discredited the government’s most prominent forensic investigator and went as far as identifying the actual culprits.
Cathy Come Home was watched on its first broadcast by 12 million people, a quarter of the British population. In 1966, when Britain had only two television channels, such an audience size was impressive, but understandable. In 2024, the British public’s home viewing options seem almost infinite. The average viewing figures across the four episodes of Mr Bates vs The Post Office, of over 9.8 million, are therefore arguably even more impressive.
The question I have been asking myself is: How is it that a dramatization that presented no new facts, that did not, essentially, tell the public anything that they did not already know, succeeded in igniting a nation in this way? The answer, it seems to me, is that the sheer scale of the impact of this miscarriage of justice made it more difficult for people to conceptualise. Mr Bates vs The Post Office, as the title suggests, personalised the story. It focussed on an individual story (that of one victim, Jo Hamilton, and one – albeit the central – campaigner, Alan Bates) that served to represent the total picture.
This is, of course, part of the magic of drama: its ability to capture the universal in the particular. Viewers were able to identify with the plight of one victim and extrapolate from that, in a way that the story as reported in the media had failed to make them do.
At a time when funding of the arts in general is under attack in Britain and Israel, this month has given us a timely reminder that a healthy democracy needs a thriving and independent art culture, not least to ensure that stories that need to be heard are heard.
And Closer to Home
On a not dissimilar note, Raphael’s fancy has been taken in recent weeks by a charming book entitled What’s Cooking at 10 Market Street. Each flat in the eponymous brownstone is occupied by a family with a different ethnic cuisine, and each double page of the book visits one family to see what they are cooking, and includes a recipe. Raphael, who, it’s fair to say, is fascinated by food preparation, adores the book. Here is the double-spread devoted to the Pings, and their stir-fried broccoli.
Under the influence of this book, Raphael is now a great fan of broccoli. Such, dear reader, is the power of art.
Meanwhile, Tao seems to be fascinated by a very grand-looking cake at a friend’s recent birthday party, Ollie continues to find the world a really fun place, and Raphael really enjoys his new sponge paints.
