Is Raf OK? -- Installment #65
2024-01-04 - Tel Aviv & Jerusalem
Tags: 5 Min Read
A question in yesterday’s ‘fan mail:’ "How can definitions of genocide and ethnic cleansing not include mass graves?"
Raf's answer: It depends on which definition you refer to. There are definitions that include more or less everything an army might do with weapons. The mail posits: "No mass graves means no genocide/ethnic cleansing." From the feeds, including Arabic language feeds, I noticed that Gaza activists made a big show a week or two ago of body bags in a mass grave. Those were bodies Israel delivered of Hamas terrorists killed on October 7.
Talk about Israel able to make no move unpunished….
FAFO
The amplification of exaggeration and falsehood by Palestinian activists makes it hard to listen. An infamous social media star known as FAFO fakes mountains of video clips. Fake injuries. Fake saviors. All fake.
He has a ton of video clips. Sometimes he is bloodied (with ketchup). Sometimes others are in “casts” and “bandages.” It’s all fake.
These people also scream about genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Degrading the concepts for everyone.
Which is the point.
From the Front
Part Two from Yoni
On occasion - usually just after I have written and posted something, but not always - a friend will reach out and say something like ‘I’m thinking of you.’
And often - usually when I have written about something particularly difficult, but not always - that message arrives with some kind of disclaimer. ‘It feels silly to say,’ or ‘I wish I could do something more meaningful,’ or ‘I feel so distant from what is going on.’
That is the reality of war. Especially for those outside of Israel, but even for those who are here in the middle of it: we are not experiencing this war uniformly.
Some of us have lost loved ones. Some of us have loved ones serving. Some of us have been called up. Some of us have been released. Some of us live in leafy suburbs. Some of us are under regular threat of rockets. Some of us are enjoying vacations with hotel spas. Some of us wish we could just take a hot shower and wash away the grime of warfare.
Every war in history has been this way. It’s called the front line for a reason - not everyone is there.
As I have previously written, there are times when I take pride in the fact that so many Israelis - and Jews around the world - can live some semblance of a normal life because I, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers like me, are not. There’s a famous but generally hard to attribute quote, that a friend in the US Army shared with me when I first joined the IDF in 2002: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
And sometimes I feel disconnect. Sometimes I feel the way the war continues while others’ lives go on, and I wonder how much our paths will feel divergent when this is all over. How long will it take us to find each other again? Or will we only then, ‘afterwards,’ begin to realize how far apart our life experiences have carried us?
I don’t have an answer. But as many other units have been sent home, and mine begins to wonder if we will be rotated out of combat soon, it’s been on my mind. I wonder about friends who spent months at war and have recently returned home. Do they feel disconnected from work, from community, from people around them? Do they struggle with the knowledge that they are home, back in old routines, while the daily headlines serve as a constant reminder that the war goes on? Or do they find comfort knowing they came when called, served honorably, and have earned a moment’s respite until they are called again?
And when my time comes - and I can only assume I will be released, if only temporarily, before the guns of battle fall silent - what will I feel?
I don’t know that, either.
But there are things I do know.
I know that is impossible for someone who wasn’t called up to understand what it has been like to be a soldier in this war. But if you feel that disconnect, let it not manifest in silence. Say something. Tell a soldier you are thinking of them. Tell someone who has come home that you know you cannot understand what they experienced but you appreciate and respect it no less for that.
I know that the loss of family or friends, the experience of horrors firsthand, the reality of having been called up to war - these change a person. We will need time to process. To find our way back to normal, or to establish a new normal. Do not assume we are unchanged, or force us back into our old box, until we have figured out who we are after all of this, and figured out how to incorporate this new version into our lives post-war.
But do not be silent. Be there. Be a presence in the lives of those you were close with before the war, even if they are different afterwards. Offer your thoughts and your words, even if they feel ignorant, to those whose experience of this war has been so different from your own. Because the alternative - silence - feels like a chasm. Like an insurmountable gap in understanding just how different our experiences have been for the last 90 days.
A friend asked me how I felt about the solidarity missions that have started to arrive. The hundreds or thousands of people who are strolling through the burnt remnants of towns my unit endangered themselves to make safe again.
I reserve the right to feel mixed. But I think it comes down to the purpose of the mission.
Does it come from a personal need to lay claim to some of the loss that has occurred? Or is there respect for the enormity of sorrow and a drive to take action in response?
Is there a sense that coming to Israel during a time of war grants a complete picture of what it has been like to be here since October 7th? Or an understanding that no one can fully ‘get it’ without living it, alongside a desire to nonetheless demonstrate that Israel is not alone and those who love us will not wait to visit again ‘until it’s safe?’
Offer your thoughts. Come on your missions. But do not stop there.
Show understanding, even if it is that you cannot understand. Respect those who have lost so much, even if you have lost nothing.
Take action, in whatever way you can, in the interests of bringing our paths back together. Finding our way back to community. Establishing the same sense of unity we felt on October 7th - but instead of from fear, from a place of love, understanding, and strength.
Relief Area
Alef: Nasrallah (yemach shemo) Speech Summary
(Nasrallah is the chief of Hezbollah in Lebanon, he just gave a big speech in the past few days, by video as usual. He has been in hiding for years.)
Today was a nice day in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. We drove up for meetings and shopping. I see the U.S. Embassy here has downgraded their travel advisory. Oh, I misspoke recently. I said three airlines are running out of Ben Gurion, making it empty and fast (because there are usually 15 or more airlines operating). There are four airlines operating. The three Israeli airlines and… FlyDubai.
Do that math.
Stay well,
Raf
(Thank you A.K and D.B.)