Day 45: Sunday

I want this week to zoom in on a couple of small details, and also to zoom out to some much more general comments.

“…like a real hero”

Every day, on the morning’s news bulletin, the dreaded words: ‘Approved for publication…’, which always precede the announcement of the name of another one or two or, God forbid, more soldiers that have fallen in the last day.

Every day, in the morning interview programme, at least one item where the presenters speak to a family member who shares details of the fallen soldier.

Every day, details that are both common to so many families and unique to this one grieving family.

From one such interview with a bereaved sister last week: “He was so considerate. When we would go to the beach, and the sand was burning hot to walk on, he would carry his two sisters, one on each arm, like a real hero.”

We yearn for the days when the proof of a big brother’s heroism will only need to be his readiness to carry his sisters across the beach, and not also his readiness to lay down his life defending theirs.

Better than Home!

One reservist we know returned last week to his unit on the Gaza border after a brief home leave, to discover two lorries paying a visit to the unit. One was an initiative we had seen featured earlier on television: an enterprising citizen has fitted a lorry trailer with a row of washing machines and a generator, and is touring army bases offering laundry service (including doing the ironing himself).

However, the other seemed even more surreal. This was a lorry trailer fitted with a generator that heats and aerates a jacuzzi for the reservists to relax in!

Yes, Ma’am!

Let’s play a game. If I say: ‘Israeli army reservist major’, what image comes into your head?

I’m guessing something like the following, an American-Israeli reservist major who watched the events of Black Shabbat unfold, on TV, from his Chicago home, and by Sunday evening was with his unit on the Gaza border.

Well, here’s another Israeli army reservist major, brought to my attention by a good friend:

As I think I mentioned last week, after individual acts of heroism by women in Otef Aza on October 7, and with mixed infantry units now on the ground in Gaza, the question of women combat soldiers will, from now on, no longer be a debating point in Israel. I don’t actually know what unit of the army this major is attached to; if she is a combat officer (which I doubt), then I suspect she trimmed her fingernails and was advised to “Get yer ‘air cut!” before actually going into Gaza. If you want to know what made her as animated as she is in the photo above, listen to what she has to say to the world.

“They did not distinguish between Jews and non-Jews”

It is a truism of the interpretation of Jewish law by rabbinical authorities that it is important to be aware of, and to take account of, the specific circumstances of every case. It is also true that Jewish law, as a general rule, allows for leniency or stringency of interpretation, in light of those specific circumstances.

One of the great failures in Israel’s development in the last decades has been the surrender of religious authority to the ultra-orthodox, who do not always subscribe to this view of religious law. This rigidity is reflected in Israeli state practice regarding such central issues as marriage, kashrut certification, and conversion.

I don’t want to get into the larger debate here, but just to bring one painful instance of the religious authorities showing a level of tone-deafness that, given where the country is at the moment, is almost inconceivable and seems to me totally unforgivable.

21 years ago, Olga Falahati came to Israel from Russia. Her daughter, Alina, grew up in Israel, served in the army, and, during her army service, began the process of conversion to Judaism. Before she could complete the process, while she was enjoying the Nova party on October 7, she was brutally murdered, by Hamas. Her burnt body was identified only last week, and, on the eve of her burial in the family’s hometown of Bet Shean, the rabbinate informed the family that Alina would be buried just outside the Jewish cemetery wall, since she was not Jewish.

The story became public after the funeral, when the matter was raised at a meeting of the Knesset’s Aliyah, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs Committee by the committee chair MK Oded Forer, who stated that he was “ashamed on behalf of the State of Israel that [the family] were treated this way.”. Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weiss, who sits on the rabbinate’s committee for honoring the dead, said he would propose a special representative to find solutions to problems like these, “so that there will not be a great trouble like this.” He added that “they did not distinguish between Jews and non-Jews in the brutal attack. We can do everything in line with Jewish law.”

Eventually, the fence separating Alina from the cemetery was removed, leaving only a low fence similar to many other internal fences in the cemetery. In a functioning country, this is what would have been done, discreetly, on the evening before the funeral, with no attention being drawn to the internal discussion that would have preceded the adoption of this halachically acceptable solution.

The People of the Book, Part 1

The National Library of Israel moved into its new, spectacular, building just a couple of weeks after October 7. I had planned to devote an entire blog post to this breathtaking edifice (which we were privileged to enjoy a private tour of, a couple of months ago, courtesy of another good friend, who just happens to be the civil engineer attached to the project). I still hope to do so, and, meanwhile, I urge any of you who are in or around Jerusalem to take advantage of the free 90-minute guided tour.

I mention the library here because of an extraordinary display they have created.

This view down into the main library reading hall gives you a sense of the sweep of the architecture. You will also notice the seats arranged in an arc of three rows, including adult seats and little children’s chairs. On each seat has been placed a picture of one of the 237 abductees, together with a book selected by the library, from its shelves, on the basis of information gleaned from the media and the families about that particular abductee.

Thus, for example, quoting from the library’s website: “We chose the book The Kiss That Got Lost for 3-year-old Avigail Idan, who is likely missing the hugs and kisses of her parents Smadar and Roy, who did not survive the attack by Hamas.”

Each book also contains a personal library card, each one marked with a return date – NOW.

The People of the Book, Part 2

In the good old days before Amazon axed it, most Israeli Anglo bibliophiles ordered books from Book Depository, because of the range it offered, the user-friendliness of its website, its excellent customer service and (perhaps above all) its FREE DELIVERY WORLDWIDE! Since then, we have all, largely unsuccessfully, been hunting for a viable alternative. Adapting to the new reality, Bernice and I have joined a local bookswap WhatsApp group, which works very simply and quite effectively. Members post photos of books they are happy to part with. Other members fire back a message – “Finnegan’s Wake, please”, for example – and whoever is quickest on the draw gets a free book.

The other day someone posted a message on this group informing us that an army unit was currently located not far from us, and was desperately looking for books. “Isn’t it wonderful!” I thought to myself. “These guys have been fighting in Gaza for weeks and, as soon as they get the chance, the first thing they want is a good read! Shortly afterwards, someone else posted, pointing out that a closer examination of the original message revealed that they were actually looking not for sefarim (books), but for something that is (in unvowelled Hebrew) a homograph: saparim (barbers). What they were actually desperate for was a haircut!

Not the ugliest of things

As the weeks go on, the resolve within Israel to continue the war in Gaza until its ends are achieved seems as strong as ever. In the last couple of weeks, the conversation has turned more and more to questioning what the elimination of Hamas actually means, whether it is achievable, and what will happen the day after the war ends. However, certainly at the moment, and, I am confident in saying, until the abductees are returned safely, Israelis are not discussing ending the war.

At the same time, we know very well that this is not true in the rest of the world, even among some of our friends abroad. It is therefore to them that I offer the following words, written by John Stuart Mill in a magazine article published during the American Civil War, but no less relevant today than they were 160 years ago:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

Fault Lines

In many respects, the sense of national cohesion remains as it has been since the day our world changed. However, as the weeks go by, the chasm between the people and the government gapes ever wider.

There are some good reasons for this. One of the most prominent ones is Netanyahu’s continued refusal to take responsibility for the failures on October 7, and his insistence that all such discussions must wait until after the war. This leaves a wound that is, with time, only festering.

Another target for people’s expressions of disappointment with the authorities is that even now, over six weeks since October 7, many desperately needed mechanisms are not in place or not functioning smoothly. Here are a couple of examples. The Government has agreed to offer financial compensation to some businesses and some self-employed whose income has been drastically affected by the war. As of this morning, the website on which candidates for the compensation have to register their application was not yet up and running. It is difficult to escape the feeling that, at the same time as civilian volunteers in their thousands are working around the clock to provide support and care, civil servants in government departments are working their usual 9 to 5.

A volunteer on the radio this morning described how suitcase donations from abroad of goods requested by frontline soldiers have been held up by Israeli customs officials, because one or two individual items infringe import laws (medications, for example). The officials have not been prepared to isolate these items and release the rest of the consignment, and the independent storage company that is holding the consignments at the airport is now demanding payment for storage before releasing the consignments. The storage charges in some cases exceed the value of the consignment.

I understand that it is impossible to ride roughshod over the law of the land. However, this volunteer described how she is wasting days being referred from one office to another, and nobody in authority has seen fit to act on their own initiative, recognise the need here, and expedite this process.

The level of contempt for Netanyahu particularly is very high. A long-running gently satirical TV show has launched a new season to cover the war. The troupe who present the show began as young lions, and are now in their 70s. Their show pokes wry fun at the situation, and they also include two nostalgic, tender songs in every programme.

In fairly stark contrast to this gentle attempt to bring a smile to a traumatized nation’s lips, and to offer a moment’s balm, is the line they take when satirizing Netanyahu. This is not a gentle joshing, but an unsmiling attack on his authority. Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe that Netanyahu deserves every poisoned dart they aim at him, and more. However, I still find myself surprised that they feel their approach is what the country needs, at this particular time, at this stage of the war, given that nothing anyone says will lead Netanyahu to resign now. There is a sense in which their approach seems to me counter-productive, although I know that they would argue (and it is a reasonable line to take) that it is as patriotic as it could possibly be.

Which brings me back to the hardest, the saddest, the most painful, the most complex, of this week’s stories: the continuing story of the families of the abductees. Depressingly, this seems to be yet another area where the government’s behaviour has fallen woefully short. The government seems to have decided that it wants to avoid having anything to do with the families, while the families (or at least a sizeable number of them) have spent the last seven weeks demanding to be updated by the authorities.

Let me say first that every action taken and every word spoken by any of the abductees’ family members is completely understandable. They will naturally do all they can to ensure the safe return of their loved ones, and it would be inhuman to criticize them for the decisions they have made. I believe some of their words and actions may have been counter-productive, but I cannot fault them for what they said and did.

As I write these lines on Sunday evening, there are reports that a deal including a partial release of abductees is imminent. Rumour has it that 50 abductees – children and women – will be released at the rate of ten a day over five days. For those five days, there will be a suspension of hostilities, and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza, including fuel. In addition, Israel will release 100 security prisoners, including women and children,  

Let me offer a number of observations, not necessarily internally consistent, certainly not building to a coherent case for a particular line of action, but each, I believe, worthy of serious thought.

Deciding what information to share with the families will involve the government making a decision as to the reliability of statements conveyed to Israel, through the mediators, ostensibly stating Hamas’s stand. How does the government decide what to believe?

The very act of sharing any information with the families of the abductees will add an additional dimension to the government’s process of decision-making over any exchange deal. This dimension will be complex, since there will be no unanimity of response from the families, and its existence will inefficiently complicate the process. How would the government factor the families’ multiple stands into its decision-making process?

It is inconceivable that Israel would agree to the safe passage out of Gaza of the Hamas leadership. If the leadership is indeed trapped in Gaza, then there is, for Israel, only one way this ends: with the destruction of Hamas’s capabilities and the death of its leaders. In that case, what can Israel give Hamas that Hamas wants, in exchange for the release of abductees?

As weeks turn to months and the abductees are not returned, the frustration in Israel at our inability to achieve their return will only grow, hardening into resentment at the government’s inability. Already, the tension between the families and the government led today to a screaming match in the Knesset. I can only imagine the glee with which this was watched by the Hamas leadership. What can we offer Hamas that will be worth more to them than to see Israeli society once again falling into disunity?

Which is why my expectations of a return of all of the abductees is low. I pray I am wrong, but everything we have seen from Hamas in the last 15 years tells me I am not.

You will, I am sure, believe me when I say that I would far rather end on an optimistic note. However, I can only call it as I see it, and this is how I see it at this moment. I pray that, by the time you read these words, I will have been proven wrong.