Third Report (update 10/27)

Wartime Routine

          Caring for ourselves is easy.  Medical reconnections with our various doctors.  Reconnections with our fitness regimes.  Happily, my tennis club has reopened even without an air-raid shelter.  The instruction in case of a missile alert siren is to lie on the court and cover your head with your hands.  Easy enough, compared to maneuvering 6 flights of stairs to a bomb shelter.  Sporadic contact from grandchildren in the military.  All safe so far.

          A major wartime development is the massive volunteer effort to house, clothe, and feed the approximately 130,000 Israeli citizens evacuated from border areas near Gaza or near Lebanon.  Tamar has volunteered to use her considerable math teaching skills to occupy one group of 2d, 3^rd, & 4^th grade refugee children.

          My own volunteer project is to continue reporting to friends, family, and colleagues in the U.S. in an effort to assist in Israel’s propaganda war against the Hamas narrative.  In this report, I will relate to Israel’s excruciating dilemmas in coping with the Hamas threat.  And I will communicate an element of Israeli frustration and anger in the wake of global willingness to endorse Hamas’ distorted narrative. 

Why “Liquidate” Hamas?

          The current Israeli goal is to uproot the ruthless Hamas regime from Gaza and thus punish its leaders for their recent crimes against humanity and destroy its military infrastructure.  A main target is the vast network of attack and storage tunnels under Gaza City that includes multi-story rooms and halls housing weaponry, command posts, and troop concentrations.  That goal necessitates a ground invasion and that invasion likely entails a variety of unfortunate costs.  These costs include Israeli casualties in urban combat, further endangerment of almost 230 kidnapped hostages, and additional collateral casualties among the Gazan civilian population along with their distress and hardships as homeless refugees.   

          The dismantling of Hamas is, arguably, an existential necessity for Israel.  The October 7 debacle underlines Israel’s vulnerability in a region full of Iranian-allied terror enclaves – in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Gaza. The prior delusion was that Israel’s intricate system of fences, watchtowers, and electronic sensors precluded invasive assaults and border penetrations.  Yet on October 7, 2023, 2500 Hamas terrorists penetrated in 80 places and precipitated the massacre, wounding, and capture of thousands of Israeli civilians.  And that incursion has now prompted the evacuation of 130,000 Israeli near-border residents.  Will those evacuees be willing to return to their homes, given the newly realized hazards? 

It turns out that what has protected those near-border residents over the years has been the deterrent effect of a threat of massive retaliation against incursions.   The liquidation of Hamas may serve to reconstruct Israel’s shattered deterrence factor, including crtical deterrence of Hezbollah in the North.  But, as noted, destroying Hamas also carries severe costs – to say nothing of the open question of how and by whom Gaza would be administered if Israel successfully dismantles Hamas.

Dispelling the Distorted Hamas Narrative

          In the immediate aftermath of October 7, we in Israel were shocked by the euphoria and celebration greeting Hamas’ perpetration of crimes against humanity — the slaughter and kidnapping of innocent civilians, including children and elderly.  That celebration occurred not just in some Arab lands, but on some University campuses in the U.S.  We are equally shocked by widespread Western acceptance of a perverted portrayal of Hamas’ nature and status.     

In the propaganda war surrounding October 7 events, the Pro-Hamas forces portray Hamas as an agent of understandable Palestinian response to Israeli occupation of Gazan land.  Gaza is referred to as an “open-air prison.”  The contrary historical fact is that Gaza has not been occupied by Israel for 18 years.  Israel left Gaza in 2005 intending and hoping that the Palestinian Authority would govern responsibly and that access to Gaza would be facilitated by development of a new shipping port.  Hamas in 2007 violently overthrew the PA governors and dedicated its resultant control of Gaza not to promotion of the well being of Gazan residents, but rather to destruction of Israel.  Israel has blockaded Gaza to curtail Hamas’ importation of missiles and rockets.  Such a blockade is lawful under international law regarding territory “from which hostile acts are conducted.”

Hamas from its inception has been dedicated not to a peaceful two-state resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but rather to obliteration of Israel.  Hamas deems all of Israel to be “occupied,” not just the West Bank.  Its ruthless onslaught on October 7 serves as a preview of what Yossi Klein Halevi calls Hamas’ “genocidal plan for an Islamist state between the [Jordan] river and the sea.”

Of course, the worst example of Hamas’ exploitation of a distorted narrative to delude world opinion was its October 17 hoax asserting an Israeli bombardment of al-Ahli hospital killing 500 patients.  There had been no bombing of that hospital.  Rather, an Islamic Jihad missile launched toward Israel had misfired and landed in a parking lot adjacent to the hospital.  There were significant casualties, but nowhere near the 500 victims claimed by Hamas.  Mass media immediately headlined a murderous 500-victim Israeli airstrike and the world was outraged.  Even country leaders, like Jordan’s Abdullah and Egypt’s al-Sisi, hastily bought into the hoax and canceled scheduled meetings with President Biden. 

Please be alert to any distortions and exaggerations accompanying the conduct of this ongoing propaganda war.  So far, I’m unaware of any misconduct from the Israeli sources, though army spokespeople have been reluctant to address the issue of civilian casualties in Gaza. 

Oops.  900 words.  Enough burden on “report” readers for now. 

Second Report

        A week has passed since our return to Tel Aviv. Tamar and I have overcome jet lag and restored a measure of normalcy to our lives. She has returned to pilates and I to my fitness center.  We’ve planted flowering plants on our balcony. We’ve had a couple of small family gatherings. 

       Yet the impact of war is everywhere apparent. The temperature is in the low eighties and I would be playing tennis except for the closure of my tennis club because municipal authorities demand an air-raid shelter accommodating 20 or more people. I’m used to the hardship of assembling 4 healthy senior-plus players for doubles.  I’m not accustomed to providing an air-raid shelter for the foursome I’ve cobbled together.

         A propos air-raids, Tamar and I have experienced our first missile siren alerts.  The standard instructions are to race to the nearest reinforced shelter.  In our case, the shelter is in the basement, 6 flights down. Common sense tells us that it’s more dangerous for an 80 year-old to race down 6 flights of stairs than to find an alternative.  Given the tiny odds of our Tel Aviv building being hit, we feel secure enough huddled next to the concrete wall on the stairwell 1 flight down.  From there, we hear the loud booms of missiles being intercepted by Kipat Barzel (anti-missile battery). 

          From this point, I’m shifting this report to a broader Israeli focus.

  Detailing the Atrocities of October 7

                    Documentation of the October 7 disaster continues.  Among the 21 kibbutzim along the border with Gaza, several were completely overrun, plundered, and burned with many of their occupants either murdered or kidnapped.  In kibbutz Beeri, 114 of its 400 residents were massacred – including a row of men lined up and executed by a firing squad and a group of children bound together by rope and burned alive. In my first report, I mentioned the killing of the kite-flying Kotz family at Kibbutz Kfar Aza.  On Wednesday, they were buried in 5 adjacent coffins – parents Livant and Aviv, children Rotem (19), Yonatan (16), and Yiftach (14).   At decimated Kibbutz Nir Oz, it had initially been thought that Carmela Dan (79) and her autistic granddaughter Nava (12) had been taken to Gaza as hostages.  Further scouring of the Nir Oz rubble disclosed their murdered corpses. 

                    Nir Oz did yield dozens of the more than 200 identified kidnapped hostages.  These include Gadi Moses (79), Ofra Katz (69), and Ravid Katz (51).  The 4 and 1/2 year old and 2 and 1/2 year old kidnapped sisters I previously mentioned have now been identified as Roz and Aviv Katz Asher from Ganot Hadar.

Crediting the Heroism and Resourcefulness of Defenders and Rescuers 

         A multitude of courageous acts surrounding October 7 have been documented.  I will touch on a couple of them in this report.  Kibbutz Nir Am withstood the assault and was not penetrated because of the bravery and resourcefulness of Inbal Rubin-Liberman.  Inbal, a 26 year old combat veteran, was the coordinator of the 12 person defense team at Kibbutz Nir Am.  On the fateful morning, she hastily distributed weaponry to her team and deployed them along the kibbutz perimeter.  For 3 hours, they kept 12 to 15 armed terrorists at bay until soldiers arrived and liquidated the attackers.  No losses among the kibbutznikim. 

            Youssef Ziadna is a 47 year old Bedouin who lives in Rahat and works as driver of a 14 passenger minibus.  At 1:00 a.m. on October 7, he dropped his customer, Hadar, and 8 friends at the rave site near kibbutz Re’im and scheduled a pick-up for 3:00 p.m.  At 6:00 a.m., at home, he received a call for help from Hadar and set off immediately.  Along the way he encountered people frantically waving to him to do a U-turn, but he proceeded, dodging bullets, to reach Hadar.  Ultimately, 24 passengers crammed into the minibus and Youssef, having intimate familiarity with the area, maneuvered along dirt roads until they found refuge at Kibbutz Tze’elim along with a couple of hundred other fleeing concert goers.  Among other Bedouin residents of Rahat, 3 were killed and 5 others are missing.  The ethnic cleansing unleashed by Hamas was not confined to Jews.  Thai agricultural workers were also murdered.

           There is currently plenty of heroism on the home front as civilians organize to provide shelter, food, and clothes to the scores of thousands of Israeli refugees evacuated from Israel’s borders along Gaza and Lebanon.  Ironically, one of the major actors in this rescue effort is Achim leNeshek.  Its leaders were instrumental for many months in organizing the massive demonstrations (in which Tamar and I regularly participated) against the Netanyahu regime’s erosion of Israeli democracy by pushing for crippling constraints on the Israeli Supreme Court.  Achim leNeshek seem much more efficient than the bumbling Netanyahu governmental administration – a patchwork of ultra-religious and extreme right ideologues who have been chosen as government ministers because of their loyalty to Netanyahu rather than any talent or professionalism. 

                     That part of the story will have to wait for my next report (hopefully, within days).  In that update, I will begin to relate not just to the fate of 200 hostages and the likely ground invasion, but also to the long-range consequences for Israel likely flowing from the October 7 disaster.  There’s a limit to your patience and tolerance in one sitting.    

First Report

            Tamar and I landed safely in Tel Aviv at 3:00 a.m. on Monday, October 25, after a 27 hour journey from Newark.  That included an 11 hour layover in Munich in order to connect with an El Al flight to Tel Aviv.  We came hurriedly to be closer and more supportive to our 4 grandchildren now serving in the Israeli military either as soldiers or reservists. 

            We are already immersed in the overwhelming shock, horror, anxiety, and dread of the Israeli civilian population.  Newspapers and television are filled with stark reminders of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by Hamas’ border incursion on October 7.  Pictures and heart-rending stories about the many hundreds of civilians murdered or kidnapped.  These include the 260 youngsters massacred while attending an overnight music festival and the 5 members of the Kotz family slaughtered while preparing the annual kite festival at kibbutz Kfar Aza.  Images proliferate of bloody nurseries and bodies of bullet ridden infants.

We hear the desperate pleas by relatives of the 199 people kidnapped and being held hostage in Gaza, presumably underground in the vast tunnel network Hamas has constructed.  These include children like sisters Rose, age 4 and 1/2, and Aviv, age two and 1/2, kidnapped when kibbutz Nir Oz was overrun.  Who will comfort the terrified children, some of whom saw their parents murdered before the kids were hauled off to captivity?

There is overwhelming Israeli civilian uncertainty and dread concerning the likely invasion of Gaza to eliminate the Hamas military apparatus.  The public understands the unavoidable casualties of house to house fighting and of flushing terrorists from their vast tunnel network.  Everyone understands Hamas’ coming exploitation of Gaza’s civilians (and Israeli hostages) as human shields.  Even if Israel succeeds in eliminating the Hamas infrastructure, what will the end-game scenario be?  Will Israel be forced to re-occupy Gaza after having left it in 2005?  Public confidence has been eroded in Israel’s vaunted armed forces after the dreadful intelligence and deployment failures that characterized the October 7 debacle. 

At the same time, there is widespread determination to destroy the Hamas apparatus that for 18 years has hounded the 800,000 Israelis living within rocket range of Gaza.  Over that period, residents of the area periodically had their lives disrupted by rocket barrages, by flaming kites igniting fields and structures, and by an occasional incursion by terrorists from an underground tunnel.  Those disruptions to civilian lives periodically prompted temporary Israeli military invasions of Gaza to punish and deter Hamas.  After various cease-fires and truces, Israeli residents near Gaza were assured that the Israeli military would secure their welfare.  And then, on October 7, hundreds and hundreds of Gaza-area residents were slaughtered or kidnapped.  The Israeli public therefore, with great anxiety and dread, leans to liquidation of Hamas as a solution to the distress of the 800,000 residents near Gaza. President Biden’s scheduled visit to Israel may have an impact on Israeli sentiment and strategy.

That’s my first report upon returning to Tel Aviv. There will be more updates.  I would love to provide good news as well as gloom.  Know at least that there is a massive and heartwarming Israeli civilian effort to supply and support the engaged military forces in a wide variety of ways.  And the dedication and determination of the Israeli military to defend the country against a surrounding existential threat (think Hezbollah) is also impressive.