What seems like a lifetime ago, but was, so the calendar tells me, less than two weeks ago, Bernice and I went to see Golda. One of the most powerful moments in the film occurs during a telephone conversation between Golda Meir and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. To understand today’s post, you must first watch this clip.

In the cinema, at that moment, the feeling among the audience of national pride was visceral. You could taste it in your mouth.

I don’t intend to analyse in detail what made the events of Shabbat/Simchat Torah ten days ago possible, but it looks increasingly like a combination of a whole kitbag-ful of elements: a level of planning, training, and secrecy from Hamas that far exceeded anything they had previously displayed; a disproportionate deployment of troops to the West Bank leaving the border with Gaza woefully under-protected; an over-reliance on technology and an accompanying decline in the level of training and discipline of the troops on the ground. Underlying all of these was a mistaken confidence on the part of Israel – its political leadership, its military and security leadership, many of its people.

Ten days ago, the national pride we had tasted in the cinema was exposed as hubris, and the confidence we had felt was revealed to have been complacency.

We have been heartened by the many, many messages of support we have received from family and friends abroad. One such message expressed the hope that “this unrest ends very soon”. I hope that, by now, nobody abroad mistakenly believes that what Israel underwent in the first half of last week was “unrest”. I am not going to post any links to videos from those first days: messages from families trapped in their houses for more than a day and begging for soldiers to come and rescue them; videos of acts of unspeakable atrocity committed by Hamas terrorists and filmed by them on their victims’ phones then uploaded to those victims’ families via social media.

The residents of the towns, kibbutzim and moshavim in Otef Aza – the area inside Israel bordering the Gaza Strip to the North and East – and the thousands attending a music festival in the same area were subjected to a pogrom, or, perhaps even more accurately, an Einsatzgruppen attack. As the details of the full extent and the exact nature of that massacre emerged over Sunday, Israel sank into a mood that it has not known since 1948, and possibly has never known.

As always happens during a war in Israel, the mainstream Israeli broadcaster switched all of its programming to news, analysis and background stories around the situation. For the first two days, these programs all focussed almost exclusively on interviews with survivors of the massacres, or with the families of those either known to be dead or declared missing presumed dead or abducted across the border into Gaza. From Day Two, added to these were interviews with soldiers and civilians who had gone into the towns and settlements that had been massacred, speaking about what they had found. There was an almost exclusive focus on the loss, the deaths, the carnage, the suffering, the anguish.

It is true that the family that is Israel always embraces those grieving, and encourages them to speak of the loved ones they have lost. However, this time the media experience was qualitatively different in two ways. First, the focus was exclusively on the way in which the victims had suffered and died, or been abducted, rather than the usual focus on celebrating the life that had been lived rather than the murder that had been inflicted. Second, the radio station I listen to (Reshet Bet) devoted virtually no time to any story other than those of individual suffering.

Let me offer two statistical comparisons to attempt to put the ‘size’ of the suffering into perspective.

Every day last week, the numbers of total dead announced rose by at least 100. Only a handful of that number were ‘new’ deaths; the remaining 90 or more were bodies that had been discovered over the previous 24 hours, bodies from the carnage of one day, Shabbat/Simchat Torah. On that day, I estimate (at the time of writing) that 1000 or more civilians were murdered. (By the time you read this, that horrendous number may even seem optimistic.) By comparison, in the entire Yom Kippur War, which, until 9 days ago was Israel’s greatest security failure, not a single civilian died.

1000 civilians murdered in a single Einsatzgruppen Hamas action constitute just over 0.001% of the total population of Israel. An equivalent percentage of the population of the UK is 6,750 people; of the US: 33,500. (2,600 died in 9/11.)

Two levels of remove: there cannot be a single family in Israel that does not have a relative, a friend, a work colleague, a fellow-congregant or a near neighbour who does not have a relative who was murdered or abducted or who experienced first hand the terror of the pogrom and survived deeply scarred emotionally, even if physically unharmed.

On a personal note: Bernice and I belong to a shul that has some 50 member-families. Two of those families have, between them, five cousins who are missing (presumed abducted), and our own daughter-in-law narrowly survived, thankfully physically unharmed, the massacre at the music festival. Every shul, every school, every social club in the country could tell the same story.

And even if you don’t know a particular victim personally… Here’s a piece that has been doing the rounds on social media that captures my point eloquently.

Someone asked me if I know anyone who was killed in Israel. I was puzzled by his question.
“I know all of them,” I answered. He was puzzled by my response.
So I wrote this to explain it.
——————————–
I don’t know you, but I saw you at that bar.
I don’t know you, but you took my parking spot.
I don’t know you, but our parents are friends.
I don’t know you, but I can hear you playing matkot on the beach.
I don’t know you, but your smile made me smile.
I don’t know you, but we argued in a WhatsApp group.
I don’t know you, but we ate together at Chabad.
I don’t know you, but you almost ran me over with your korkinet.
I don’t know you, but you were once my waitress.
I don’t know you, but you gave me your seat on the bus.
I don’t know you, but I saved your place in line at the bank, at the post office, and at the grocery store.
I don’t know you, but we loved the same music.
I don’t know you, but we learned Torah together.
I don’t know you, but we shared a joint in Sinai.
I don’t know you, but we stood next to each other at Mount Sinai.
I don’t know you, but we stood next to each other on Kaplan.
I don’t know you, but I know you.
I don’t know you, but I love you.
I don’t know you, but I will always remember you.

The mood in the radio studios was unnaturally subdued over those first few days; radio and TV presenters were sometimes close to tears, and even, occasionally, more than close. There was no sense, as there usually is during a war, of needing, of being able to attempt, to rally national morale. For a couple of days, until Tzahal was seen to be taking control in Otef Aza, the whole country felt powerless. The Prime Minister and the other political (and military) leaders seemed to be missing in action; there were no rousing addresses to the nation. A cartoon depicting all of the Government ministers cowering under the Cabinet table, some clutching their draft sectarian legislation, some wetting themselves, required no caption.

For over two days, we were that little girl hiding in the cellar, and those were the most chilling two days the country has ever experienced.

-o0o-

In the second half of last week, as Otef Aza was gradually cleared of all terrorists, and as 300,000 reservists were called up, some to the Gaza front, and some to the Northern border, there was a distinct and significant change of mood.

However, I want to leave writing about that change of mood until next week. (At this moment, I feel I want to switch back to publishing every week in the current situation.)

For today, I want to leave you with two last thoughts.

As I came downstairs to ask Bernice to read this post (as she always does, and offers her wise advice), I saw that she had lit a yahrzeit light – a memorial candle. She told me that we had all been invited to light a candle at 6PM as a mark of solidarity with Kibbutz Be’eri, a kibbutz less than five kilometres from the Gaza border. At that exact time, on Kibbutz Be’eri, the funerals were being held of 100 members of the kibbutz.

If what happened in Israel last week moved you, if your heart and your mind are with Israel at this dreadful time, please remember what this massacre is really about.

Some people will tell you it’s about removing Israeli control of Gaza. They don’t understand. Some people will tell you it’s about removing Israel from the map. They don’t understand. Some people will tell you it’s about removing Jews from the face of the earth. They don’t understand.

To understand what it’s really about, read and internalise the words of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Zahar, as reported last year by MEMRI: “The entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.”

And please read this week’s post as a dispatch from the world’s canary cage.

As soon as I have published this post, Bernice and I will be setting off for Zichron to visit Raphael. The grandparents of these children are, at this moment, unable to do the same.