israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Every morning the announcement comes of what has been destroyed the night before.  Sometimes it’s 

Every morning the announcement comes of what has been destroyed the night before.  Sometimes it’s a little old folks’ apartment in Ashkelon, sometimes it’s an elegant house, sometimes a part of a hospital, something the yard of a school.  But almost every time, people are not hurt because there have been shelters built into the buildings, or people have been evacuated from the building.  Don’t blame Hamas for the small casualties here.  They have been arranged years ago – and not with cement donated by foreign countries that wound up being used for Hamas tunnels.

morning – oct 8, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

When the hospital in Gaza was bombed on October 24, it took the Gazans minutes to blame Israel and to number the dead at 500.  Soon after it became clear that it was a misfired Jihad rocket that hit the parking lot of the hospital and that the number was more like 50. 

So who can you believe?  I see pictures of kids lining up for water….  but then some of the pictures of injuries and fallen buildings I’ve seen before, and often in other places.  there is a disconnect between the photos in the papers and the subtitles.

So what I can vouch for is the number of times I’ve heard a siren in my neighborhood tonight, the number of booms I’ve heard, or the number of times the building has shook, and the evening is still young. 

 

wish i knew – nov 7, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

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The 240 hostages in Gaza, the stories of survivors, the vegetables harvested by volunteers – I want to tell you about it all – but I can only show you a tiny piece of it.

I suddenly fell apart at a memorial in the military cemetery this afternoon – after buying so many vegetables from the south I had no energy to put away, and visiting the exhibits of families of hostages.  I looked at all the graves of soldiers and saw there was room for so many more….

 

 

what is left – nov 6, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

It has been impossible for me to begin to confront the atrocities committed last month.  A live baby put into an oven and slowly baked.  The image won’t leave me, and I try to avoid the other hundred of horrors that outdo every horror I’ve been told about the holocaust.  How do you overcome that brutality and believe in the possibilities of humanity?

On another part of my disappearance, I have become an expert in predicting the moment before a rocket.  I announce it a minute before the sirens begin, and continue whatever I was doing until the frightening sirens and the booms that accompany them.  And sometimes in the morning I tell Ezi what time they will come.  

But it takes all my energy.  It is like being a medium…

 

where have i been? – nov 5, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

 

We’re still counting bodies,missing people.  One month after the hostages – babies to old people – we are not sure who is a hostage or whose body has been thrown away.  The hundreds who were saved from the party are beginning to talk now.  So many people – Jews and Arabs – went back and forth with their cars, carrying people to safety.  Only now have we time to pay attention to these drivers, these escapees, some of whom are ashamed that they survived the massacre.  Only now are the rescuers beginning to tell of the violence, the parts of bodies they left behind…   

how could anyone in the world approve of the butchering of people?  And how could these murderers be allowed to stay alive? 

counting bodies, collecting phones – nov 5 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv, poetry

 

weeks after the massacre

 

1.

No one tells it yet

Not the whole story

How long would it take you

 to speak of your child

wounded in the chest

but still breathing

when her arm

is sliced off? 

 

Ah, how could you tell

since this was

the last sight you saw

 

before you were slaughtered.

 

  1.  

No one tells it yet

how it was

with the pretty dancer

that a piece of her skull

was discovered

weeks later

after she was paraded

face down, naked

 in a truck

through the streets

of Gaza

 

3.

When you find

a pair of spines

and only DNA reveals

a father and son

in a final embrace

incinerated

alive,

your mouth

cannot form

words

 

 

 

 

poem – Nov 3, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

Skies Over Israel – First of the Month

i love the poems in my article in First of the Month.

Two are by Ronny Someck:

This one is about the decapitation of a young girl:

 

I Am the Severed Head You Do Not Know

My hair is more blond than the sand it rolls over
On my lips crowd words
sharp as the knife
that met my throat.
You who are mesmerized by my eyes,
put a chip on the wheel of fortune
that spins under the eyebrows.
Don’t ask my name and imagine my hands
hugging the body that was so beautiful
beneath my neck
and now cast upon the disgrace of the earth
as if it was no more than a banana peel.

The sun shone, the poet wrote,
and I am barely a model of darkness.
No more.

 

and this is about the clothing Yashar leHayal is collecting and distributing to the local refugees.

 

In the Clothing Donation Depot for Survivors. Expo, Tel Aviv

I sort bras and learn the difference
between the lacy padded one
and one that is soft-lined underwired cotton.
War is a time of shame
and I’m not Charles Bukowski, who surely would have
tried to identify from whom it was removed and on whom
it will be put on.
I just stuff a pile into a used carton
of chocolate bars
and then pass on to the next pile.

(Translated by Karen Alkalay-Gut)

and one by me:

Regenerating

No sex in wartime,
I always say.
Even a touch of foreplay
brings on the rockets
that give it to us all at once.

Afterward,
everyone who can
makes babies
and give them names
in memory of

 

 

rockets and poems – nov 2, 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv,

Ezi thinks that they set the timers for the rockets in our neighborhood on the hour.  I think that if it true that the rockets in our neighborhood fall on the hour it is just because they’re in a rush to set the timers and run away.  

The frequent use of human shields is another sign to me that Hamas is trying to be very careful – of their own lives.  I am watching the filming from Jabalia on BBC – In Israel we can only see the catastrophe from above.  But what we see is an underground tunnel exploded and we can’t see the individuals from so far away.  These are the people who were warned again and again to leave the area and go to the south, but, the BBC says, some left and returned because conditions there were so bad.   Some had told foreign press that they had not been allowed to leave by Hamas.  When they did have choices, they were not good ones. 

I too feel I am at the front, but I feel I am being protected in every way possible.  The sirens, the shelters, the iron dome, the phone calls – all make me aware that there are major efforts made to protect me.  The people on the street at Jabalia make it clear to me that they are shields.  I pray for them – may Allah have mercy.

on the hour – nov 1, 2023 Read Post »