Day 66, Monday.

This week’s post is aimed more at my friends and family in Chutz La’aretz than at my Israeli readers, who will be very familiar with most of what I have to say.

Tuesday 8:40AM: What’s missing from this week’s post is a reaction to Netanyahu’s statement last night in a Foreign and Security Committee debate that “the Oslo Accord [sic] is a disaster that resulted in the same number of victims as October 7″. I would like to respond to that now, but I didn’t hear of it until half an hour ago, and there isn’t time before the deadline, so I will just have to let it simmer on a low light for another week., and pray that nothing even more egregious and outrageous emerges before then.

Day 66 and counting

Those who have not lived their lives in Israel cannot really understand what that statistic sounds like to Israelis. The Suez Crisis in 1956 lasted ten days. The war in 1967 lasted six days. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 lasted 20 days. Combat during the First Lebanon War in 1982 lasted 20 days. The second Lebanon War in 2006 lasted 34 days. Operation Cast Lead in 2009 lasted 26 days. Operation Protective Edge in 2014 lasted, sporadically, for 50 days.

In other words, Israelis expect a war to be over in about a month. In addition, since Israel’s wars are fought just beyond the state’s formal borders, Israelis expect that their soldier children and spouses will be home for a 24-hour leave every week or two.

None of this has been the case in the current war. Many of those who have been fighting in Gaza presented themselves for service on 7 or 8 October and did not get home again until the ‘pause’ on 24 November – and some not even then. On radio stations, when field officers are being interviewed, parents phone in to ask the interviewers to question the officers as to when their children will be getting leave.

I well remember what happened during my own military service (three-and-a-half weeks of basic training in 1990, since you ask – and 15 years of annual reserve duty after that). The entire intake I served with were immigrants in our thirties or forties. When some were begging the officers to allow them home for Shabbat, one of the Russians I befriended, a veteran of the Soviet–Afghan war, recalled how, immediately following his 18^th birthday, he had been taken 4000 kilometres away from home to the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, where he spent the next three-and-a-half years, having no contact with his family.

As with so much in life, our ability to accept circumstances depends as much on our expectations as on objective realities. The anxieties of parents and spouses are no less intense for being different in scale from those of my Russian comrade-in-arms’ family. And, as every day of those 66 days brings another list of “Approved for publication…” announcements of the names of one, or two, or three, or more, soldiers who fell in the previous day’s fighting, or who succumbed to injuries they suffered earlier, so the days weigh ever more heavily.

Everyone is Someone’s Child

One of the soldiers who fell last week was the brother of a close friend of our niece. Just before Shabbat, we learnt of the son of a close friend whose tank suffered a direct hit; he, thankfully, suffered what are described in these circumstances as very light injuries, but his fellow tank-crew members were not so fortunate. Then, as I was in the middle of writing these paragraphs, a death notice came up on our shul WhatsApp group: the son of a family who used to daven in our shul.

I have, in recent weeks, been davening in the mornings in the shul they moved to, and often pause for a few moments’ conversation with the now bereaved father. We are far from being close friends – we are more acquaintances than friends – but when you have joked and prayed with a family, and when you remember their son as a young boy, even if only vaguely, life is suddenly breathed into the bald statement of a death…and then, of course, you remember, that, for every such death, there are circles of immediate family, less close family, friends, and acquaintances, who all feel the death because they all knew the life.

Instructions to Parents

I offer you a pair of bookends: two sons communicating to their parents what is important to them. I offer this without comment.

The first, which you may well have heard at the time, is a phone conversation between one of the Hamas terrorists and his parents, while he was committing atrocities on October 7. You can hear the recording here.

The second was a ‘will’ left by Reservist Sergeant Major Ben Zussman, who fell a week ago, which he passed on to a friend, to be delivered to his parents in the event of… Here is the complete text:

“I am writing this message to you on the way to the base. If you are reading this, something must have happened to me. As you know me, probably no one is happier than me right now. It was not for nothing that I was on the verge of fulfilling my dream soon. I am happy and grateful for the privilege I will have to defend our beautiful land and the people of Israel.

Even if something happens to me, I don’t allow you to sink into sadness. I had the privilege of fulfilling my dream and vocation and you can be sure that I am looking down on you and smiling hugely. I will probably be sitting next to grandpa and we will catching up; each of us will talk about his experiences and the way things were different in the different wars. Maybe we’ll also talk a little politics, ask him what he thinks.

If God forbid you’re sitting shiva, make it a week of friends, family and fun. Let there be food, meat of course, beers, soft drinks, seeds, tea and, of course, of course, mum’s biscuits. Crack jokes, listen to stories, meet all my other friends you haven’t seen yet. Wow! I envy you. I would like to sit there and see them all.

Another very, very important point. If, God forbid, I fall into captivity, alive or dead. I am not ready for one soldier or citizen to be harmed because of some deal for my release. I don’t allow you to conduct a campaign or struggle or anything like that. I’m not prepared for terrorists to be released for me. in no way, shape or deal. Don’t go against my word, please.

I’ll say it again, I left the house without even being called to the reserves. I am full of pride and a sense of mission and I have always said that if I have to die, may it be in defence of others and the country. “Jerusalem, I have placed guards,” May it be that the day will come when I will be one of them.” [Ed Note: This is a reference to Isaiah 62 v 6. Ben follows here the interpretation that the guards are angels watching over Jerusalem until such time as the Temple is rebuilt.]

The heart-wrenching decisions

One of the conditions of the ‘pause’ was that Israel would suspend its aerial observation of Gaza. Agreeing to that condition contributed to the safe release of the children and women that were released.

Agreeing to that condition also enabled Hamas to make preparations for when the fighting would be renewed. Today the deaths were announced of seven soldiers, including five who were killed in the explosion from a device concealed near a school, and probably detonated remotely on a signal received by a concealed spotter watching from a nearby building. It seems likely that this device was placed during the observation blackout imposed throughout the ‘pause’.

Nobody could envy the Israeli authorities the decision-making this inhuman enemy confronts them with.

Conflicting Voices

A large number of the families of the abductees have, since October 6, been working together to ensure that their voice is heard. Their message has been that the safe return of all the abductees must be the authorities’ first priority, and that they must do all they can to bring it about. They are also demanding that the Government bring them home now.

It is, of course, impossible to criticise these families. What they are suffering is unimaginable, and their fears for the well-being of the abductees are completely realistic. They are reacting in ways that are totally understandable. It is, indeed, hard to imagine any parent, or child, or spouse, or sibling, reacting differently.

And yet… I fail to see what response they want to their demand that the Government bring back the abductees. What, in practical terms, do the families want the Government to do that it is not doing?

It seemed for a long time that this message was one that all the families wished to convey. However, it has become increasingly clear that there are at least some families who feel differently, and who felt until recently that their voice was not being heard sufficiently. We are now hearing more from families who accept the Government’s statement that the safety of the abductees is top priority at face value, and who are expressing their trust in the authorities to make the right decisions to maximise the chance of achieving the outcome we all want.

It occurs to me that the more the families confront the authorities, and the more they demonstrate against what they perceive as the Government’s inaction, the more they strengthen Hamas’ resolve not to release abductees. This is a cruel thing to say, but it seems to me that, if the families were publicly expressing faith in the authorities, this would lead Hamas to question whether releasing more abductees might be a tactically more sound move.

And this is the point at which I begin to suspect that I am overthinking everything, and, not for the first time, I come up against the realization that bargaining with the devil is not easy, and may not even be possible.

In a simpler, and more innocent, universe, our grandsons are at peace: both the one we will be seeing, God willing, tomorrow, and the ones we will be seeing. God willing, in just under two weeks (!)