Every day Danny Hagari shows another step on the journey to the truth of what happened to the hostages on October 7. Every day it hurts more.
Every day the truth about multiple rapes, tortures, murders and necrophilia emerge. And the college students are still protesting Israeli violence.
proof hurts – nov 19, 2023 Read Post »
With a thousand better things to do I can do nothing. We’re letting oil into Gaza on the condition that it doesn’t get to Hamas, but we know that for Hamas, incubators be damned. The preemies will be shahids and it will be our fault.
And our babies, hostages held who knows where? While women here are donating breast milk to the new orphans of October 7, who is feeding the hostage babies?
So while I can think of a thousand things I have to do I can only think of thousands of babies.
a thousand better things – nov 18, 2023 Read Post »
Just as I was thinking about taking a shower before our guests arrived for dinner, and I was just taking off my clothes, the sirens went off and I had to quickly dress and make it down to the shelter. I had said before that Friday night would be a natural time for them to try to upset us, but I didn’t really pay too much attention to myself.
Never mind. I didn’t burn the dinner.
almost caught – nov 17, 2023 Read Post »
Yorem was interviewing me yesterday and I started talking about all the wars I was in and a phrase of Hilda Doolittle’s opus about London during WWII kept coming back to me:
trembling at a known street-corner, we know not nor are known; the Pythian pronounces — we pass on to another cellar, to another sliced wall where poor utensils show like rare objects in a museum; Pompeii has nothing to teach us, we know crack of volcanic fissure, slow flow of terrible lava, pressure on heart, lungs, the brain about to burst its brittle case (what the skull can endure!): over us, Apocryphal fire, under us, the earth sway, dip of a floor, slope of a pavement
The wrecks of homes they show on the TV as survivors return to what was left of their homes – now an exhibit. A bed, where murdered babies were first conceived, riddled with bullets now, the babies burnt beyond recognition. The lovers themselves may yet be alive, somewhere in Gaza. I focus on the bed – an object – that will be replaced soon. New babies will be made – that’s what helps my skull endure the brain’s pressure.
“The Walls do not Fall” – Nov17, 2023 Read Post »
It is a very slow process, the healing, the incorporation of the facts of what happened to us, what it means, what its implications are, and how it will be possible to achieve a normal life after. For me, it is not that bad – I’ve been through wars before and not that much happened to me any of the times. I’ve never been shot at directly, although sometimes I felt like I had a target on my shirt when I felt the rockets getting closer and closer. I’ve never been in the situation the people in Gaza are in now.
And I’m trying to get to the point that I can actually feel their humanity. Vivian Silver, whose body was found last week, used to meet cancer patients at the Gaza border and take them to the hospital in Israel for treatment. She was a friend of my friends and she really believed in peace.
baby steps – nov 16, 2023 Read Post »
“You don’t call, you don’t write…” my friends complain. “What are you doing?” Anything to survive. Here are a few examples: Our portrait of Kurt Gerron was supposed to be exhibited in the Tel Aviv Museum starting next week, but the museum closed down for the war. Now they’re talking about opening it, I spent the war writing a book about him in Hebrew – with lots of pictures from his films to cover my painfully small vocabulary in Hebrew. It’s at Eli Oren’s now – the guy who does my books when I want to be in complete control, and if I can put it together properly it will be out in 2 weeks which is when I’m praying the exhibit will open.
Secondly, I spend as little time as possible talking to friends about politics and/or the horrors of war. Don’t want to know more than I have to about all my ex-students who were mowed down at a dance party, or friends who will never come home. I prefer talking to old ladies or kids. They don’t pretend to know everything.
And of course we volunteer as much as we can. How wonderful it feels to choose which coat you like best and give the rest away. Last night we went to the distribution center to give away the coats and the kids there were so great – and there were so many coats people have donated. It was so comforting.
Oh yes, and I write.
In every war there is someone I hang on to. In WWII I’m told it was Churchill, but the first one I remember was Walter Cronkite. In this country there was no one I remember in the 1973 war because all the leaders were crazy (remember how Moshe Dayan was sweating and shaking), but it was Nachman Shai in the Gulf War who told us to drink water after every attack…
I don’t think that since Roosevelt did those Fireside Chats on the radio, it’s every been a president who soothes the population in wartime, and our canse is no exception.
But now we have Danny Adari, who not only tells the truth but also shows it, proves it, and summarizes it perfectly. His talks are brief, clear, and no-frills – and when he talked about Shifa Hospital today, the medical aid brought in there, the effort made to communicate calm and clarity in Arabic, and the evidence remaining that Hamas had just cleared out – leaving a lot of evidence behind – I was reassured that the population of Gaza was in good hands.
Not so the Israeli woman hostage who gave birth the other day. If it were me my milk would have dried up in fear and suffering. I would be horrified for the infant that it would grow up under siege. I would have nothing to offer him/her.
Would you?
Danny Hagari – nov 15, 2023 Read Post »
The hostages make me weep – each time I think of them. Each time I see a photo or hear a story or see a display of their photos I think of the coming deal that will bring back some of the hostages but leave the others, but will give Sinwar a chance to escape, I weep. As it is we have a government that barely functions, but I don’t think they should be pushed into a dangerous deal. Let’s find those hostages. Each one – babies and soldiers – must be counted.
