Last eve I went to the beach. And there, right there! was the "most securely attached dog!" The one I wrote about last week! His name is Malu. His owner doesn't know what I mean when I say he has a “secure attachment” with the dog. Like with everyone else, the dog came to where I was sitting, sat down, and proceeded to receive... Super great.
Seen
Dizengoff Center at night (50 seconds, English subs)
Only Up Close
Appears to be: Thousands of years of documented history? Nuance is in the house. Loads. Often visible only up close. Today's dose of, er, __________?
One million dollar reward posted by a Bedouin family, from a village near Ber Sheva.
For what? The identity and location of a carload of Hamas terrorists.
Because? On Black Saturday, October 7, a car's dashcam documented Hamasnikim ordering Osma Abu Asa, their family member, to strip. Before they tortured and murdered him.
At a bus shelter in Re'im (about six kilometers from Gaza).
As noted in Hebrew below: Blood feuds in Bedouin culture are serious. They don't mind if it takes years.
Volunteers In Action
Prepping strawberry fields.
With A Side of Rockets
The destruction in Gaza City and elsewhere has a reason: Those buildings are rocket launcher sites or workshops. Or tunnel entrances, communications rooms, or family homes of Hamas leadership. Hamas infrastructure is throughout Gaza, especially Gaza City, in schools, mosques, apartment buildings and hospitals.
Served from a Mosque
The IDF revealed rocket launchers pointed at Israel in the northern Gaza Strip. They are buried in a courtyard with an electric cable coming from a mosque.
By The Dozens (from a Youth Center)
The IDF uncovers rocket launchers inside a building belonging to a youth center in the northern Gaza Strip. (At least 50 launch tubes.)
Next To Al-Quds Hospital
A Hamas unit was found barricaded in a building near Al-Quds Hospital. When they were rocketed by the IDF significant secondary explosions testify that Hamas maintained a large weapons warehouse next to the hospital. Raf would estimate many hundreds of pounds of TNT equivalent. Eight seconds.
The first flash is the Israeli bomb. The flashes that come next are Hamas munitions exploding.
From Readers
This week has had more reader feedback than usual (and it's only Tuesday). Most feedback is that these entries "help me feel connected." And....
Hawley
(Responding to my reference to Senator Hawley)
"I was completely and utterly disgusted by Hawley's show, and am going to send something to his office to that extent. He's making cheap political shots at the expense of MY PEOPLE! Of course Majorkas cannot speak about an ongoing employment investigation. And I can assure you that when that staffer is fired, Hawley will try to take credit. Just disgusting."
Relief Area
Alef
Bet
Short on humor today. Much that passes for humor seems to be devolving to LGBTQ community bashing. This community has been (placed itself?) in the middle for some years: Israel would send a set of individuals (often from Jewish, Arab and Bedouin communities) representing this group to speak in America and have the presentations boycotted as “pink washing.” From an Israeli perspective, it is challenging that the LGTBQ community should vilify Israel on this basis, as it is the only place in the region where this community can exist in the open. (I walk by a Trans-Friendly bar almost every day.)
I imagine this goes in the same bucket as: Is the protest about death and U.S. weapons being used in civilian areas, or is the protest about Israel and Jews? In the lead up and early years of the war in Iraq, my mother was on the streets multiple days a week protesting the use of American violence in Iraq. The Iraq war killed between a third and half a million people (directly and indirectly) and cost untold treasure (I have seen estimates of three to seven trillion dollars—all of it deficit spending). For that war, there was vanishingly little protest on U.S. campuses. That war was prosecuted by American soldiers, in the name of America and Americans.
From my subjective perspective, campus protests against apartheid in South Africa were far stronger than those against the Iraq War. The current Gaza War seems to generate far more campus protest than either of those events, or prior incursions of Gaza.
Anyway, I went to the gym and am used up. Here is Shuk HaCarmel this morning (stuff is open, stores are stocked, but it’s empty compared to normal). I often buy vegetables from an Arab vendor. He and I checked in with each other. Neither of us happy.
Raf
(Thank you to A.K., M.N., S.D. and M.T. for content, feedback, corrections and more.)