israeli politics

 

 

It’s been almost two months since the slaughtering of party-goers and farmers in the Gaza corridor, and I am just beginning to collect myself from the shock long enough to wonder why the rest of the world hasn’t noticed that there were mass rapes here.  And then it hit me – we haven’t said how many women were raped and murdered, how many were mutilated, how many were just raped, and so forth.  So I began to look for information, for specific facts.  As a woman who has undergone rape, I found it a more focussed subject than the general slaughter.  Throughout this time, for instance, there have been testimonies and films – often go-pros of the terrorists themselves.  Women gang-raped, women killed in the middle of gang rapes, women mutilated and murdered and raped in front of their children, little girls as well as teen-agers raped. 

I saw a lot on film, but how many actual cases were there?  I could not find evidence.  I wanted to turn to Zaka, the voluntary search and rescue organization which appears wherever there are tragedies, has saved so many lives, and mopped up seas of blood for burial.  But when I got to them, it turned out that the speaker for the organization had just suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. I shouldn’t be surprised – experienced paramedics broke down on television when questioned about what they had seen.

Who else could tell me?  There weren’t enough pathologists to take care of the bodies at the party and it has taken all this time and we’re still working on identifying all of them. In fact, we had to import pathologists from abroad to help out putting the pieces back together. After all, when you only have parts of bodies it’s hard to identify them, much less know if they were raped, alive or dead.

And as far as I know nobody’s asking the freed hostages what happened to them, whatever their ages are.  They have enough trauma to work through.

I assume this information will be put together before too long, and the truth will come out.  But for the time being, nobody seems to be talking. I myself didn’t talk about a much more civilized rape for fifty odd years.

where’s the rape – nov 30, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

The 160 odd people still there.  we’ve got to get them out. The more we hear about the horrors the hostages who were freed went through, the more we wake up to the nature of our enemy.  And how we are becoming like them, As much as we pitied them, we now feel them animals.  How terrible for all of us.

The other day in Ichilov, I was unaware the released hostages were being checked out, but conscious of a mood,  Today it was back to normal – full of old people like me waiting.

I’m okay by the way.

For the moment.

But when my friend comes over, she’ll be full of terrible stories, like everyone else.  And I’ll think of the horrors we’ve experienced, are experiencing, and will soon experience in greater degree.

So I don’t see many friends.

 

 

and now we turn to who’s missing – nov 29, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

It’s very important to remember that we are all human beings.  There are moments when my sense of anger or hatred is as strong as that of the Gazans, but I remember the Gazans I have met, and the danger of behaving like my enemy,  It is so hard to hang on to moral values, so hard to forget what has been committed against helpless people.  And it is just as hard to remember that the game of humanism on the part of the Gazans is as terrifying as the violence it is hiding.

If I have any prayers left, it is not to lose my sense of humanity, knowing all I know, and seeing what I have seen.

 

 

human beings – Nov 28, 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

I know it’s too early to really have a conversation, and we really don’t think Hamas is capable of doing anything but hating us and throwing us into the sea – but there are human beings in Gaza, who could relearn what they’ve learned about us.  There are so many who have worked in Israel and have been able to support their families as a result, and so many who have received medical help from us and whose lives have been saved.  There are Gazans who have traded with us, sold fish and vegetables, and benefitted from us.  These are Gazans who know we too are human beings.  So let’s help them get a government that benefits that beautiful country.

 

let’s talk coexistence Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

All about me – with others as marginal characters. 

Months ago the dermotologist photographed a few of the more interesting of the marks on my body and sent me to Ichilov.  But the holidays and then the war put everything off and my appointment kept changing and moving back and forth.  Today was my day and even though I feel terrible I went, expecting the procedures to last all day.  But the biopsies and the removal of one growth were quick and painless, unlike the instructions I was given, and perhaps if I had felt good to begin with, it would have been almost fun.    

The thing was, the place was overcrowded.  Not for me, because I have gonnections, but for everyone else.  I actually know the hospital well, and have never seen it so full of people.  I wouldn’t have noticed so much if I hadn’t needed to stop so often and rest on the way out.  Not more severely injured people – but with many ambulatory patients.  To my mind many of them had been delaying treatment until the ceasefire.   Or perhaps their doctors were at the front.  But when we finally got to the parking garage we saw the same thing – an unbearable crowd.  It was impossible to get out.  Nevertheless, it is clear there was a quiet and a unity to almost all the contacts that the people made.  

What this means I am not sure.

a little trip to ichilov – Nov 27, 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

As the hostages begin to return, painfully thin and totally traumatized, we think of the those 180 odd hostages who are still there, the men and boys who are not slated for an exchange with prisoners in Israel.  And anyone who thinks of them is traumatized as well.  To be thrown in a dark dungeon is bad enough for these women and babies, but who can imagine what is being done to the soldiers or the old men.  They will have to be rescued some other way.  

Every few days some organization calls me to ask how I am doing – it might be the municipality,or a writers’ organization or one of the philanthropic organizations that takes care of the elderly.  Whatever it is, I am always surprised and think for a moment before I say I’m okay.  After all, I’m functioning, smiling, shopping, etc.   But I make so many little mistakes I never made before – forget to call people, buy the wrong thing, send the wrong letter to the wrong person, mess up friendships, and so on – that I must be much more traumatized than I realize.  Of course I’m addicted to the news, know every facial expression of the Army Press Representative, can identify each hostage, donate something or some time every week to the cause of freeing the hostages or helping out with the terrible financial burden of the evacuees from the north.  But not doing that would be crazy in this environment.

 

 

trauma – nov 26, 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Even though we know how wonderful the gradual release from tension is, we know that we’ll be back to war soon and that Sinwar has some good tricks up his sleeve to drive us mad again. 

We had a wonderful lunch with our cousins and all of them are in complete control of their lives.  They know what they are doing and what the implications are, and it is a pleasure to feel the certainty that the rest of us don’t feel at all.  

It is so tempting to believe that all this horror is a passing event, and that the hatred of Israel that has emerged in the past two months is a passing fantasy, and that we will once again sit on our balconies and sip coffee.  

But I don’t believe it.

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temporary stay of execution – Read Post »

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There is such a difference between what I know and what I see on the foreign TV channels.  The first time I watched a few hostages moving from Hamas to the Red Cross, the mother and daughter waved goodbye to the captors, and it was clear to all that it was staged, that the only way they could not damage the chances of the hostages they were leaving behind was to behave as they were told.  

Today as I was watching the French news, I saw that the “Hamas Fighters” gave us 13 hostages yesterday and it was a wonderful occasion.  Of course no one mentioned that we released almost 100 terrorist prisoners in exchange,  that most of them will return to East Jerusalem and go back to work.   And of course there’s the 200 trucks of food and fuel we sent in today.

Jonathan Pollard has said that the families of the kidnapped people should have been jailed so they wouldn’t get in the way of the negotiations.  But I wouldn’t have had the heart. Would you?  That’s why I – along with hundreds of thousands of Israelis – walk around with a necklace that looks like dogtags and says “bring them back”

here are my dogtags

it may be our greatest weakness before Hamas.  We just can’t bear it.  

Why, you say, don’t we feel that way about the people of Gaza?  We do, or, we would if we weren’t so scared and disgusted with what they’ve done.


Waving to captors – nov 26, 2023 Read Post »