Is Raf OK? -- Installment #64
2024-01-03 -- Tel Aviv
Tags: 5 Min Read; Videos
New York Times: No One Home?
"sent scores fleeing" below:
Try one to two million people.
Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide & Terms
As mentioned earlier (In #56 and #57), the term "Genocide" is neither useful nor constructive when discussing Gaza. First because the U.N. definition is broad (broad enough that the public school treatment of Irish immigrants to America seems to qualify). The term can, via bloodshed, apply to five or more events in this region just in the last fifteen years (Saudi Arabia against Yemenis; Asad against his own people [Syrian Civil War]; Isis against Yazidis and other groups; Iraq against the Kurds (for the Nth time); Iran against political dissidents; Various events in Afghanistan; Lebanon's discrimination against Palestinians; Egyptian oppression of Coptic Christians; Palestinian expulsion/replacement of Christians from Bethlehem and other Palestinian controlled areas.)
[The above is a partial list from this region just in the past 15 years.]
I suppose the declared intention of Hamas and Hezbollah to kill every Jew, globally, counts? Even if in recent years they achieved it in only a few places?
In this era, in this place, events such as these are ongoing. Unlike the events above, Israel’s actions in Gaza are not motivated by racism and hate but by necessity (self defense) and logical consequences (dismantle a self declared enemy). Not to mention that the casualty and displacement rate in Gaza is orders of magnitude lower than the incidents mentioned above [which killed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions together and exiled millions to very foreign lands].)
And there is every reason to believe the numbers from Gaza are quite inflated.
What Is Hard?
Politics of division are not limited to the Right Wing. Is this a blindness of the Western Left? The Gaza-driven “dialog” in the Western Left is challenging because specific voices have inserted the politics of division. This is visible in the language: “By Any Means Necessary” “Genocide” “Ethnic Cleansing” “Free Palestine.” If you are Jewish and identify with Jewish history at any level (part of which is the modern State), this language labels and targets you.
Not useful, in my eyes. (Except to fragment the Left.)
A principle of Yiddishkeit ("Jewishness"): Condemn the sin, not the sinner. Want to be an armchair general and critique how the war in Gaza is conducted? Join the club! (Everyone is here months already.) Label the war with dehumanizing language of division?
That is the politics of hate and fragmentation.
(Raf wonders if this is the Left Wing Split that brings fascism to America. It is a dangerous split, fomented by forces that are not friends of liberal democracy.)
& Unification
From The Washington Post recently:
“We have the Haredi community legitimizing the army, the Haredi community lowering their stigma to boys that are enlisting,” said Nechumi Yaffe, a lecturer in the School of Social and Policy Studies at Tel Aviv University. “We have the Haredi community saying yes, it is very important to have an army and I would be more willing to draft myself.”
Yaffe polled Haredim on their attitudes about the military in March 2022 and again after Oct. 7. In 2022, 35 percent strongly agreed that they should contribute to Israel’s defense. After the attacks, that rose to 49 percent.
Podcast: Ezra Klein
The first fifteen minutes have thoughtful framing.
From The Front Lines
Hundreds of Aid Trucks... Stolen by Hamas
A Palestinian boy explains the situation near the welfare offices in Gaza. According to him, most of the aid and food is stored there. The boy says: The residents come to the welfare offices and ask to enter to take some food for their family, but Hamas police officers prevent them from entering. The police beat the residents who come to demand food and even shoot at them.
Why Are Gaza Homes Bombed?
Launching 107 mm rockets from a civilian building in Gaza City - the rockets were placed on blocks in the building to calibrate the launch angle.
The military wing of the Islamic Jihad published a video yesterday in which its men, dressed (as usual) in civilian clothes, are seen placing 107 mm rockets after drilling several holes in the wall of a private house in Gaza City and then launching them at concentrations of Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip.
Later Palestinian activists will ask why Israel attacks "civilian" houses and kills "innocent civilians". [Or the houses in a neighborhood are connected to a tunnel network, so the whole neighborhood is blown up as part of the tunnel demolition—this has happened a number of times.—Raf]
Yoni's Jan 2 Post
Over the last 48 hours I have felt like I am in the eye of a hurricane, as tragedies swirl around me.
In a neighboring division, a larger-than-expected explosion resulting from the destruction of a Hamas tunnel led to several injuries and at least one death. I haven’t seen names yet, but I often play a critical role in such operations in our sector. In that neighboring division, the person in my role must be living a nightmare.
As has been published at this point, my unit is making its way through the homes of the terrorists that attacked and pillaged the Israeli town of Nir Oz, before kidnapping a quarter of its residents. Last week I stood on the road they used to get there; last night a video of their actual drive to Nir Oz was published in the media. And over the past few days we have been finding evidence of Israeli hostages, traces of the brutality of October 7th, in the heart of Gaza.
This afternoon my former battalion - where I served in the reserves before my current role - was attacked deep in Gaza. Twelve injured, six seriously. One dead. No names.
Canine Cam
The IDF spokesman presents: the dog Patrick (of Okets unit) neutralizes a terrorist and saves the lives of soldiers in the Strip.
(Even the woofing dogs wear GoPros… why does this make me feel funny?)
Relief Area
Alef
Bet
From Israel, the university presidents from "the hearing" are seen as simple antisemites in the "European intellectual"/”some of my best friends are Jewish” mold.
A side effect of the way universities handled the Hamas cease fire violation on October 7 is that the universities themselves become combatants. This is, from Raf’s chair, an effect of the penetration of divisive concepts into the vernacular of academia. I don’t recall a university suffering the way Harvard has. Both from its position and its public presentation. The below is satire: The recently resigned head of Harvard on the poster Hezbollah uses to announce deaths in its ranks (Hezbollah has posted 120+ of these since October 7. The subjects are smiling and well groomed.)
(What bugs Raf is that the above is plausible satire. It is one thing when an individual academic takes a position on some edge (Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt). [That is what they are for.] It is another when a premier institution and its public facing leader make themselves so label-able.)
Gimmel
On the occasion of the New Year, Hamas provided hundreds of thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip with a camping trip.
Photo credit: Hani Sha'ar
The week was sunny and warm until today which has had off and on rain. Reservists are starting to rotate out of the army, to wide relief. The Supreme Court came through on some important rulings.
I see there was a Red Alert yesterday at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai. Near Gaza, I visited Yad Mordechai in 1983 and read its account of the War of Independence, "The Six Days of Yad Mordechai" by Margaret Larkin.
While Tel Aviv is mostly rocket-free, multiple areas of the country are rocketed from Gaza every day.
Tonight I have tickets to a performance by the Vertigo “Eco-Dance” Company. Front row!
Stay well,
Raf
(Thanks to A.K. and M.N.)