israeli politics

In Habima Square they placed 240 empty beds for the hostages, to remind us of their existence.  In fact, there are reminders everywhere – posters on columns, on walls, on the backs of motorcyclists, wherever there is space.  We’re responsible for each citizen, and we take this responsibility seriously.

My grandson goes down south to pick vegetables left by dead farmers.  My daughter does counseling for survivors of the massacre, my other grandson sorts clothing people have donated for the refugees.  Every family has volunteers.  

Only our government has been busy squirreling away more allotments for yeshivot instead of providing for survivors.

 

240 hostages – where do they sleep? Nov 9, 2023 Read Post »

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 »