First Time Here? Readers suggest starting with #120.
Tags: 4 Min Read; Large Relief Area
Updates: The section below about Rabin Looking Down from Above has a new, long form footnote related to Bibi’s involvement in anti-Rabin incitement (thank you M.T.). The section about a YouTube clip in #128 was expanded after the email went out.
After yoga today, I asked for five falafel balls. "You can have four or six. What'll it be?" says the guy. He shows me that the machine that makes the balls and drops them in the oil makes two at a time.
Fine, make it six.
And it cost twice the Jerusalem rate. (US$3.30)
Tel Aviv...
Help Wanted sign at the falafel shop: Only those who are before or after their army service should apply...
My guess is that they are tired of folks who are post-army but keep getting called up to deploy (over and over). The sign doesn't quite say that (to my eyes), but I suspect it is understood. (Help wanted signs are all over the place.)
Next stop: The the health food store. The clerk asks where I am from. "Seattle? What is going on in America? It's like a movie!"
It is a movie... life imitates....
Sunset by my apartment this week:
Read
"To Move Forward, Israel Must Accept It Lost the War"
Yair Assulin writes (PDF here) that the "need to always win" prevents maturation, and that a key lesson is: You can lose and still survive. A small excerpt (emphasis Raf's):
Those who succeed in facing reality as it truly is also recognize one of the most significant discoveries this war has enabled. We, Israel, the Israelis, can lose and still continue to survive. This is a revolutionary discovery. If until Saturday, October 7 the Israeli ethos was based on the idea that if we don't win every battle, certainly every war, we simply wouldn't survive, then this war shows that even if we lost this round, even if we were caught unprepared, even if our greatest nightmare came true – we're still here.
Postmark
The Gaza Metro... Another Rocket Factory
And its demise:
(Sorry if you had your eye on that milling machine...)
Gaza Metro... Goes on and on...
The Oketz unit (that works with dogs) shares tunnel footage from a "canine cam" (it isn't a "helmet cam," so it's a ______?)
An internal Hamas video was published showing access to a tunnel from within an apartment.
Northern Gaza: Food Truck Arrival
Where Has This Ever Happened?
Part 1:
A Gazan says on Facebook:
Yesterday, a Gazan family living in Bureij in the center of the Gaza Strip received an evacuation warning phone call for their house in Block 1. As a result, they evacuated the house. After two hours, Israeli intelligence called them again and informed them that there were no planes available to attack the house and that they could return until morning. The tenants returned home. Then the morning after, they evacuated a second time and fighter jets attacked the house...
It's from social media. I have no way to verify it. And it is completely characteristic of this part of the world.
Part 2:
(Turn on Automatic Arabic subtitles and then enable Auto Translate to English.)
Documentation of an evacuation conversation carried out by an Israeli officer earlier today with Palestinians from the Farhud Square area in the new camp in Nuseirat in the center of the Gaza Strip (the homes of the Ayash, Makdad and Mabared families were evacuated).
In the conversation, the Israeli officer asks the Gazan citizen to come outside so that he can see him and make sure that this is indeed the right place.
(This is so the Israeli can then say: Yes, this house will be attacked, please evacuate. In what other place in the world is a civilian population contacted like this before an attack?)
IDF Social Media
Part 1:
The IDF published an infographic on July 17 of the leadership of Hamas's military wing - noting which members were eliminated by the IDF in the last nine months of war.
Note that according to the IDF, the commander of Hamas's Rafah Brigade, Muhammad Shabaneh, was not killed in the attack at the beginning of the war.
Also according to the IDF, Raad Saad, the head of production in Hamas's military wing, has not yet been eliminated.
As for Muhammad Deif - some think he should be labeled "awaiting verification" (on the chart he is noted as alive)
Part 2:
The IDF Spokesperson announced that the IDF will begin issuing draft notices to those designated for security service from among the ultra-Orthodox sector on Sunday [July 21].
"Context" Oriented Relief
Alef
Yitzhak Rabin looks down from above at how the politicians of the Likud and Itamar Ben Gvir are warning how incitement can lead to an attack on the Prime Minister.
[When it was exactly those the political movements such as Ben Gvir’s that agitated the most for political violence.] [1]
Bet
(The IDF has attempted to kill Mohammad Dief several times over many years. He is called the man of nine lives. It is thought that due to injuries sustained in prior attempts, he has been unable to stay in tunnels for extended periods and spent periods above ground, thought to include the morning of July 13 when the IDF tried again.)
Gimmel: Day of Ashura
The traditional (for Shias) burning of the tent on the eve of the "Day of Ashura"--an important holiday on the Shiite calendar.
The mourning ceremony simulates the burning of the tent of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in the battle of Karbala, where he met his death.
Above is what the ceremony looked like today in the city of Qazvin in Iran.
Note the difference between how Sunnis and Shias interpret this day in the first two paragraphs of the relevant Wikipedia page.
Actual Relief Area
Alef
Cartoonist: Bob TheMisanthrope
Bet
Gimmel: What JVP & River To The Sea Wish Israel Would Do?
Dalet
Hey
This post is the 300th entry I have made to this substack. (Then again, the dvar torah goes back a few years at this point.) Thank you again for your emails, questions, content and corrections!
Stay well,
Raf
(Thank you A.K., M.T.)
Footnote-1
To what degree Bibi is culpable in the matter of incitement is difficult to untangle. Certainly, on the Israeli Left, it is “accepted wisdom” that Bibi was explicitly or implicitly part of the agitation. Two examples of this are:
From “Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman” by Itamar Rabinovich
…an incident in March 1994, near the town of Ra’anana, north of Tel Aviv, where a protest march was organized by extremist Kahane Chai. The hard-line Israeli militant group advocates for the expulsion of Arabs from the biblical Land of Israel. Netanyahu was seen in front of the Kahane Chai protest; behind him, a coffin was carried inscribed with the words, “Rabin is causing the death of Zionism.” (In the book, Rabinovich translates the coffin’s inscription as “Zionism’s Murderer.”)
and
Then on October 5, 1995, the day of the Knesset vote on Oslo II, Likud’s leadership organized a mass 100,000-strong rally in Jerusalem’s Zion Square. The rally turned into a mob scene and the crowd chanted, “death to Rabin,” says Rabinovich. By failing to rein in the crowd, he asserts, Netanyahu in no uncertain terms endorsed their ecstatic, violent, messianic euphoria.
However, a journalist I admire, Anshel Pfeffer, in his biography of Netanyahu: Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, says:
In a vital passage of what is in general a cool and just assessment of Netanyahu, his biographer Anshel Pfeffer notes that “the charge that he led the incitement [against Rabin] has become accepted truth.” Pfeffer then thoroughly dismantles the Israeli left’s charge that Netanyahu’s rhetoric somehow brought about the assassination.
On the contrary, Netanyahu had confronted the seething crowds who had called Rabin a traitor for making peace with Arafat. “He’s not a traitor, [but] he’s making a big mistake,” he said to those crowds. “We are dealing with political rivals, not enemies. We are one nation.”
The thing is, from the material cited above, it seems that blame-on-Bibi for Rabin’s murder didn’t evolve over time. Rather, it was present as soon as the murder occurred. This indicates, to Raf’s eyes, that in spite of whatever reasonableness Bibi may have demonstrated (before or after), that he had placed himself, or was seen to have placed himself, deeply among those who were explicitly and repeatedly calling for violence.
Given Bibi’s long time political alignment with Israeli movements that explicitly elevate “the land” over any government or people, I find it difficult to say that the he is innocent of incitement. His party was radicalized and he was a senior leader of that party. However much he pushed back at the time wasn’t enough that it was acknowledged by his rivals in the aftermath. (Based on my readings so far.)