israeli politics

sick, sorry - 21.20.24

It’s embarassing to be sick at a time like this – when there are holidays and there is so much to do, and so much going on.  But sick I am.  It began last week some time when I saw that I was having trouble getting through the park I love so much, a simple park that you could ride through with your tricycle. And then I blamed the olive trees – that are just yielding beautiful fruit.  I wrote about them years ago:

Allergic to olive trees,

I cannot imagine

life without

these ancient friends

twisting their histories

whispering various truths

dropping their fruit

in my hungry

ambivalent lap

But it isn’t just the trees.  I sat at my kitchen table today for half an hour wondering how I would get up.  All my vital signs seem to be okay but when Ezi suggested that I go to the doctor I said, “What?  And have him break his five year record of not touching me?”  I think I’ll take an allergy pill instead. 

I’ll let you know.

Reserve General Ahasan Diksa is been eulogized all day today, and what they say about him overwhelms me – it isn’t about his courage, although he was courageous, it isn’t about his leadership capabilities, although he was a leader – but it is about his character as a human being and his warmth.  I once heard him talking to his men about not losing their sense of morality. 

I hope that the reincarnation the Druze believe in brings us a new generation of people like Ahasan Diksa.

 

sick, sorry – 21.20.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

Best of Times, Worst of Times - 10.19.24

We could have slept well last night, thinking that there is now a chance for the return of the hostages.  But we were awakened at seven with a siren and soon discovered that the Hizbullah were hopping mad.  

So once again I spent the day as close to shelters as I could.  Since yesterday was a day for coffee houses and the day before for parks, it marked a real difference.  And now, instead of thinking of the wonderful possibilities of mutual respect I’m damned worried.

We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.  One thing for sure, we’ll be in our literary sukkah tomorrow at 12 EST (7 p.m. Jerusalem time) reading poems of our literary guests.  I’ve invited Louis Carroll.  The link is here. 

what I have to say about it is here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00144940.1987.9935272

 

But if you don’t have the patience to get the academic language, the idea is that Carroll uses nonsense words for universal meaning.  So Jabberwock is like Sinwar, or, say Hitler, or any evil monster.  And there’s a nameless hero because there’s always a good guy who wins.  But there’s also always another villain waiting the sidelines, even when everything seems totally normal.

  

Best of Times, Worst of Times – 10.19.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

Don't Gloat - 18.10.24

I keep saying this.  If we rejoice at the death of an enemy, we descend to the depths of the enemy.  What we should be concentrating on now is how to get the hostages out, and how to get ourselves out of Gaza and get the reconstruction started.  And we need to make sure that we don’t mess it up, and start reversing the hatred that has been infused into the veins of the Gazans for so many years.

 

Don’t Gloat – 18.10 Read Post »

israeli politics

Sinuar's End

it was an accident. For over a year we’ve been saying that Sinuar has to be killed and then yesterday, as we were leaving the manicured park, with its perfect little paths and planned water ways, the news came. Sinuar has been killed.

The connection we felt to those horrendous moments where the photograph showed his body, mangled from the drone after his hand been shot off – was terrifying.  The picture disappeared from the internet a moment after, but I couldn’t help thinking of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who’d lost an arm in captivity and then was one of the six ‘protecting’ Sinyuar before he was murdered.  Everything seemed connected.

Should we rejoice? Should we despair?  The fact that Sinyuar had money and fake passports with him indicates that he was about the leave the country, to escape, and that would have left us in even more darkness about the hostages.   

And the hostages seem every day to become more and more relatives, loved ones, about whom we know more and more.

We are so involved in all that goes on here with this terrible situation – that it keeps reminding me of the television show I loved in my childhood – Walter Cronkite – who enacted scenes from history as if they were news and ended every program with:

“What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times… and you were there.”

sinuar’s end – 10.18.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

sukkot - 16.11.24

Following the traditions of religion helps to erase the transitoriness of the moment.  We were sitting on the balcony discussing what we put into the ‘go bag’ by the door, and listening to the shofar in the next building.  

And the shofar is so comforting – connecting this moment to eternity.

For a moment I thought the shofar was a siren, and my friend doesn’t have a shelter.  

it’s a relief to come home where i can’t hear the shofar.

sukkot – 16.11.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

Sukkot 14.10.24

How can we feel a holiday?  Rockets are falling on us, hostages are being starved, we are being blamed for fighting against armies that have been harrassing us for years and have been planning to eradicate us for decades.  I know women who don’t skeep at night fearing rape and mutilation.  I know a new mother who holds her baby imagining him in a microwave.  

The nightmares don’t diminish.  they are not over.  

sukkot – 14.10.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

What to Play in Shelter - 10.14.24

You realize that it is desperation that brings me to write about humor in these crazy days.  Today I brought a game to the shelter – rummicup – and we found the playing a relief.  But we hadn’t finished the game before the time was over.  If there’s only one rocket you wait 10 minutes before you can go out.  But the pieces keep falling so it isn’t a good idea to be outside.  We figure that in our home we’re okay.

So the only imperative is to wear something.

 

Anyway I would like advice about a game that can stop in the middle and be continued by others or whoever makes it to the shelter in the future.  Especially since we have people coming in from the street.  sometimes even the construction workers next door.

Maybe a puzzle…

 

What to Play in Shelter – 10.14.24 Read Post »