Continued thanks for the notes of appreciation and support.
Yesterday was Shabbat. No update.
It is One-something PM on Sunday. I am on the train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. The benefit of travel in this direction is that Jerusalem is the end of the line. If you're early, the train is sitting there, waiting to depart. Get on and take a seat. Reasonably convenient.
It is clear now: A hefty number of train routes are not running due to the war. The station coffee shop is open today. The atmosphere is sedate. Public levity is, generally, absent.
There is a haze over Jerusalem. I am surprised to find the same over Tel Aviv. The street scene at the bus hub near my apartment:
Schools start up today. They were to start a few weeks ago. Academic calendars across the board were postponed when the war started. Parents of school age kids have been climbing the walls. Something I saw in Hebrew:
If schools don't open soon, we will consider a ground invasion.
That this war started almost exactly 50 years since the Yom Kippur War is on everyone's mind. Also: The surprise attack this time was much, much worse.
Heard
Around the time of the 2014 Gaza war, I watched a conversation in one of my Seattle neighborhood synagogues. One guy, American, Zionist to the core. The other guy a Israeli, Mizrachi (Sephardic), in Seattle for a two-year job posting. We were all in our forties or early fifties.
Before I relate the conversation, a context digression.
Digression: "Rah Rah Zionists"
I recently caused offense by referring to a Whatsapp group as a bunch of "Rah Rah Zionists." I call them Rah Rahs because it is a stream of "Rah Rah Israel" content. Everything Israel is well and good. Critical content is shut down as "political." Arabs are suspect. From time to time, something crudely racist is posted (and usually taken down when called out).
Patriotism is OK. I think there are two kinds: The kind that celebrates success acknowledging that material imperfections need real work.
And the Rah Rah kind.
The problem Raf has with Rah Rah is that it seems to enable "ends justify means" thinking.
The Conversation
So it is 2014. These guys are talking about Gaza. The topic turns to the tunnels Hamas was known to have in Gaza (we are talking about them now, but they ain't new). At that time it was known that the military command center of Hamas was in tunnels below the main Gaza hospital.
The American: "Blow it all up."
The Israeli: "As an Israeli soldier, I would never aim a weapon at a hospital. You don't understand how war works. I wouldn't do that. My friends wouldn't do that."
Now it is 2023. Tunnels are on the mind. And more information has reached the public ear (some from Arabic sources): The Hamas command center is under the hospital, and the entrances to that center go through the hospital. Where does the command center get its electricity? From the circuit that supplies the emergency room.
Had there been a hospital in one of the towns overrun by Hamas on October 7, what would they have done?
The Israeli guy I heard in 2014: What is his position today on attacking tunnels under the hospital?
Not a pretty situation.
Seen
In and around the Carmel Market today… the guy from the Ivory Coast who makes my shawarma, Some shops. And garlic…
Garlic?
Yes. You see, the garlic on the left is for sale all over Israel. What Raf finds strange is that it is from China. Israel is awash in Chinese garlic. I try to buy Israeli garlic (which you see there on the right). In many shops, the only option is the Chinese garlic. I find it odd that this product can be grown so cheaply as to be commercially feasible (The price there is US$1.50 for four heads of garlic. I estimate the Israeli garlic is within %20 of that price on a per-gram or per-head basis.) The situation leaves a funny taste.
Read
The stuff going on in the English press is troubling. All kinds of "blaming the victim" (blaming Hamas violence on Israel): Grossly reductionist with a smell of antisemitism. We blame bank robberies on bank managers? U.S. mass shootings on the shot?
Corrections, Elaborations and Other
Subtitles
One oversight and one mistake have been fixed in the subtitles in the SNL-style Eretz Nehederet video I feature in #17 (thank you S.D. and __).
Billboard
A couple of days ago, I mentioned a billboard about Bibi (Netanyahu). Today I got the pic!
ביבי - מה אתה עשית
קרעת את העםBibi (Netanyahu) What Have You Done?
You've torn the people apart.-- Brothers in Arms (an advocacy group of military veterans)
Relief Area
Alef
A Soviet Era Joke:
Every day, a guy crosses the border between Czechoslovakia and Poland with a wheelbarrow of sand. Every time, he is stopped and a guard goes through the sand to see what he is smuggling. After a month, the border officer is fed up. He says: We know that you are smuggling something, but we can't figure it out. You win. We won't do anything. Just tell us what you are smuggling?
Wheelbarrows. I am smuggling wheelbarrows.
The moral?
Fifty trucks enter Gaza full of medicine and water. The fuel they smuggle in the truck's fuel tanks.
Bet
The perspective of many Israelis on the American college scene is captured in Bill Maher’s recent monologue (8 minutes)
That is it for the day.
Raf
(Thanks to A.K., R.G. and _ for content.)