israeli politics

adjusting ads - 29.10.24

Last April we went to an exhibit about breaking boundaries at the Holon Museum.  So much has happened since then, and so many boundaries have been broken, not only the cute sexual ones indicated here:

but the ones in the army in the front.  

The greatest impression on me was the ads for underwear from amputees.  I thought it was so daring, and so imaginative.  What I didn’t realize was that it is real.  Delta, the most popular brand in the country, has an entire line of underwear for women with disabilities:

https://www.delta.co.il/women/collections/10315

This tells you something about daily life here.  You have to scroll through the whole collection in order to understand what the young people of Israel are going through.

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israeli politics

memorial plus - 27.10.24

As if the tragedies told today were not enough for me, I had to join a zoom session about the tunnel escape from Novogroduk in 1942. 

https://www.thetogetherplan.com/tunnel-escape/

https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/novogrudok/nov237.html

Since my aunt was one of the escapees I’ve always been fascinated by this unique life-saving project, so antithetical to the death tunnels in Gaza and Lebanon.

 

 

memorial plus – 27.10.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

Day of Mourning - 27.10.24

With a day that began with a terrible terrorist attack, killing, so far, only one, but injuring over 35, we mourn the losses of the past year.  And while we’re trying to sort this out, two people were injured from a Hizballah drone in an Arab village.  In the past week we’ve had 56 new orphans from soldiers who were fathers but were killed in combat. It is all incredibly confusing.  

 

 

Day of Mourning – 27.10.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

waiting 25.10.24

Most of us don’t want to think about it.  If we’re not in the front or don’t have captured or displaced friends we try to ignore the situation when there are no rockets.  But we always know there are terrible threats around the corner, and any bad news reminds us of that.  I see it in the daily behaviour of people, the little slip-ups, the wrong turns, tiny things forgotten. 

But with all that – we’re still thinking straight and functioning.  We have been roped into a serious war by two major attacks on Israel by Iran – and now we’ve got to stay even-headed.

So we spent the evening helping a grandchild study for a math test of Sunday. Will there be school on sunday?  Will there be a test?

 

 

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israeli politics

More about Shelters - 24.10.24

In 1973, when the Yom Kippur war broke out, we hid in the shelter.  I hadn’t even known that we had one, but there it was, with bunk beds that reminded me of Auschwitz.  We didn’t use it after the first day, when there was no immediate danger any more, and we didn’t think any more of it.  But in the Gulf War, since it was clear most people didn’t have shelters, we were instructed to tape our windows and hide in a room we could seal off from the gas attack we were threatened with.  We spent many long hours in our gas masks in the kitchen,  and I wrote a poem a day, like this one:

CIVIL DEFENSE

January 1991

 

 

Here is your family

gas mask kit.  It will do

good only with

the right gas.  Of course,

with the other gas ‑

that infiltrates the skin ‑

you must stay inside

the nearest third story 

flat you can seal.  You

don’t want to go too high,

however, in case 

of conventional 

bombs.  Because gas 

is heavy, it will invade 

the lower

 

floors and shelters.

But if gas and bombs are used together,

you have what we define as

a problem.

The only instructions I remember were that we were told to drink water.

After the “Desert Storm” war in 1991, however, it became clear that shelter was needed, and a law was enacted to mandate security rooms and/or shelters for new buildings.  Most people use their “security room” for storage, and they were filled with junk.  I tried to get my neighbors to add on a safe room, but no one was interested.  Now they’re too old to run down to the shelter and sit in the hall.  

Our home was built in 1970 and the one thing the builder did right was make a shelter.  Ezi’s father built the home my daughter now lives in in 1947 – no shelter.  

 

more about shelters – 24.10.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

So we’re beginning again.  We’re reading the Bible all over again.  It always feels new, and like a chance to be born over again.  But there’s still me, and you, and the wars that intensify and diminish but never end.  If it’s not Beowulf, it’s Grendel, if it’s not Jabberwock, it’s the Jubjub bird.  So beginning again spiritually gives you a new way to handle it, maybe.  It doesn’t stop Cain from killing Abel, but maybe helps to understand the dangers before us – how our extreme desires can ruin an otherwise perfect world.

Beginning – 10.24.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

Remember Gaza - 23.10.24

In the middle of the evening the siren went off, and we escorted our guests to the shelter.  My friend was speechless from terror, and I didn’t succeed in making her situation easier with my silly attempts at humor.  It made me realize how lightly I’m taking the sirens, and what a terrible thing they are.  As soon as our company left to make their way home (with great trepidation), we turned to the news, and when there was nothing on the Israeli channels we went to CNN.  There we saw the situation in north Gaza, the terrible injuries, the damage, the suffering.   When the news turned away from the middle east, we switched to France, and saw an interview with a man in Beirut who pointed out that the Israeli government  built shelters for its citizens while they were killed on the streets.  

I do indeed bless the shelter we visit frequently, and I complain about it all the time.  How is it that the floor was not finished and I have to wear shoes when i go down there?  The tenants built the shelter in 1970 and didn’t notice then that the contractor had forgotten to even out the concrete floor.  The laws to build shelters with apartment buildings came later, and the government never paid for the shelters.  Why should the Lebanese or the Gazans build shelters?  After all, who would attack them?  

We, on the other hand, have always been under attack, and I can remember different stages of my life in different shelters.  

This doesn’t justify anything.  It just points out some facts.

Gaza is always in my mind.  I will always remember walking the streets there, learning about the orchards, my daughter playing with the children… I will always remember how simply I identified with the people there.  Those days will never come again.

 

remember Gaza – 23.10.24 Read Post »