Close to home

Itai Roth thought that he would have to celebrate his bar mitzva ceremony without his father present, as his father, Benny, is a reservist combat soldier on active duty in Gaza. However the army was able to release his father for a few hours to surprise his son on this special occasion, before returning to the front.

This is a small bittersweet story in a big war, but aside from the personal joy of this young boy, it's also a story about just how close the front line is to our homes.

Active duty in Israel doesn't mean being sent off to fight in some foreign war on the other side of the world, active duty in Israel means soldiers going off to defend their own homes, sometimes literally a few minutes from the front lines, often only an hour or two away from the war zone.

For many parts of Israel the front lines are close enough that residents are hearing the bombardments from the combat in which their parents, spouses, sons, daughters, neighbours, friends and colleagues are taking part. In most other parts of the country we are at the very least hearing the daily roar of military jets taking part in the fighting.

This proximity means that our soldiers are going in to battle with the knowledge that they are literally defending their families and communities.

It also means that sometimes they are able to take a few hours break from the war to join their loved ones briefly for births, weddings and sadly funerals. And yet even with the frontlines so close to home there are many combat soldiers who have hardly seen their families in many weeks.

I feel like often for friends overseas this is the part people don't understand. Just how small distances are here, the extent to which those going off to war are both a world a way from the relative normality (or at least appearance of relative normality) in much of the home front, and yet physically the distance between the battle zone and their homes is small, sometimes shockingly so.

Make no mistake, there but for the IDF soldiers actively pursuing terrorists and destroying the Hamas terror infrastructure on the ground, and Iron Dome intercepting the majority of the thousands of missiles launched at Israel from Gaza in the air, our home front would much more closely resemble the war zone.

The relatively (emphasis on relatively) routine existence that has to some extent returned to most of Israel's population centre is not because Hamas isn't trying to kill us, but because the IDF is doing all it can to stop them from succeeding.

This is not a story about yoghurt

 

This is not really a story about a fancy jar of yoghurt.

Small anecdote from the war #2343

When you sit down with your daughter to enjoy a special yoghurt and fruit snack and just then the rocket alert on your computer pings and it's for the kibbutz who's dairy makes the yoghurt you are eating right now.

Only you know because you met one of the folks who run the dairy at a "support the refugees" pop-up market a few weeks ago that at the moment the whole kibbutz pretty much has had to be evacuated and the people who run the dairy are currently displaced elsewhere in northern Israel being "hosted" by another dairy so they can keep producing on at least a very limited scale so that their dairy can survive.

A few brave souls have had to stay behind on the kibbutz (with army protection) to care for and milk the cows (who can't be moved) despite the regular bombardment and attempted incursions by Hizballah from southern Lebanon.

In fact the only reason you splurged on this fancy premium yoghurt is because you recognised the label and knew the story behind this kibbutz dairy.

You remember the haggard, harried, exhausted face of the dairyman you met at the pop-up market a few weeks back, worried for his future, worried whether he'd have a home to return to, worried for his fellow kibbutz members who had to stay behind for the cows (whom he also worries about), worried whether he could keep the dairy afloat, worried whether Hizballah was going to try to replicate Hamas October 7th attacks on Israel's northern border, worried whether they had built attack tunnels under the border in to his kibbutz, worried like every other Israeli about what tomorrow would bring.

And the apples you cut up to dip in the yoghurt? From another northern border kibbutz who's residents are also now refugees in their own country. During the brief ceasefire last week the army told the farmers that they could use that limited window of quiet to go back to their orchards, which are right next to the border, to mount a salvage harvest of as much as they could pick while the ceasefire held.

An emergency call went out on all the volunteer groups calling for anyone who could to go up to this northern border kibbutz (with army escort) for this rescue harvest. Farmers in safer parts of the Israel then sold the apples and kiwis on behalf of the displaced farmers.

Suddenly eating yoghurt and apples has become an act of patriotism and support for Israel's bombarded border communities and the northern refugees.

Under the grapevines and figs

After the war, after the war, it's hard to think of a time please God when our lives will be safe and quiet after the war, but today even with the constant boom of (distant) artillery pounding away and a constant soundtrack of assorted military aircraft overhead, even with all that, for the first time in a while I had thoughts of one day, after. When this is over, when we can live here in security again, when the soundtrack to being outdoors in the fields and villages of rural Israel is just birdsong and maybe some sheep bleating or the odd dog barking instead of cannons, rocket interceptions and warplanes, then, right then, I want to go back to the place where I volunteered today, with the friends and strangers I volunteered with today, with my family and yet more friends from around the country, old ones from years ago, new ones I've met in recent weeks, the refugees now temporarily housed in our neighbourhood, people from overseas who were supposed to be visiting this autumn, all of them. I want to take this big crowd of people and sit out in the pretty courtyard and on the scenic terrace and in the tasteful tasting room of the vineyard and winery where we volunteered today. I want there to be so very many of us feeling safe and secure sitting outdoors and indoors, filling every space, far too many of us to need a shelter because we won't need to think about being close to a shelter. I want everyone now at the front to be there, safe and well and whole, all our sons and daughters, husbands, wives, cousins, neighbours - all the hundreds and thousands of Israelis who dropped everything and put on a uniform to protect all our lives, all our homes from a viscious, murderous enemy intent on annihilating us all. And all the people taken hostage from Israel to Gaza, they should be there too, alive, home, free, able once again to laugh and feel the sun on their faces and see the trees and the endless sky. We'll sit around tables enjoying the pastoral views, the fresh air, the calm. Some of us I'm sure will enjoy splurging on the award winning wines produced at this vineyard. Some of us will just go for the platters of delicious cheeses and farm fresh vegetables, maybe a coffee or herbal tea. It won't really matter though, the point will be just to feel the freedom of being able to gather a huge crowd of people together without fear of sirens or terrorists or rockets. Also to help the vintner and farmers recoup some of their huge losses incurred during the war, to give them a hug too. Like the place where we worked today. His usual workers, young strong men, were called up to the army on emergency draft orders. His sons, likewise called up to emergency army service. Overnight he and his wife were left to do all the work alone: the heavy manual labour, the bureaucratic office work, the packing and bottling, caring for the sheep which graze the vineyard and eat the weeds. At the same time he lost much of his income, the corporate events, the Friday wine and cheese tastings, the accounts with wedding halls, hotels and fancy restaurants closed due to the horrific Hamas surprise attack on Israel. Who has time or money for award winning wine in the middle of a war for survival? With the steady rain of rockets over southern Israel he couldn't have even hosted workshops or tastings if he'd had customers interested in such things - the shelter in his nearby home is only big enough for about a dozen people and besides, who would want to be caught out by a rocket attack while driving there? The grapes though won't wait for people or wars. The harvest was just completed before the Hamas invasion on October 7th. Even with all his workers and his sons called to the army the farmer and his wife have to process the grapes to keep their vineyard going and hopefully still have a livelihood left to maintain their farm, keep their home. So they got in touch with the Hashomer Hahadash agricultural organisation which even before the current crisis helped to organise volunteers to assist farmers in need, and that's how a group of us: a teacher, a lawyer, a travel agent, the chef of a well known Jerusalem restaurant (so far closed for the duration) and yours truly, found ourselves on this picturesque moshav village not far from the much bombarded southern Israeli city of Ashdod. Some helped with the physically demanding job of pressing the grapes and repairing fencing. Some did the less intense work of sealing and labelling bottles, packing them in boxes and general maintenance, like washing up the wine making equipment. All the while the air around us reverbrated with the regular boom boom boom of artillery from the fighting in northern Gaza, just a few kilometres down the highway. For one brief surreal moment the same sky was shared by a v-shaped flock of pelicans, a military helicopter and the rumble of warplanes overhead, all at different altitudes. As much as the work we did seemed to be genuinely useful to the vineyard owners we had the impression that just by being there we were helping to lift their morale, to make them realise that they were not alone, that random Israelis from around the country, even from frontline Ashkelon, cared enough to schlep out and lend a hand to someone they had never met, just because when our country is in crisis that is what you do. So one day, one day, when the war is over, when God Willing everyone is home safe and sound and the backdrop to sitting outside in rural Israel is birdsong and not artillery, one day, I hope you will join me in the garden of this winery, right next to the vineyard and its charming flock of sheep and raise a glass of wine (or water or coffee or tea) to the memories of the far too many people we have lost, the children, babies, men, women and elderly massacred on that terrible Shabbat October 7th and the brave soldiers and security forces who gave their lives and their futures so that the rest of Israel could live and have a future in our homeland.

One pomegranate at a time

A quick story before Shabbat, an observation that I've been meaning to share because to my mind it embodies so much the spirit of Israel right now.

It feels like another lifetime, but it was only a few weeks ago. At one of the pomegranate orchards where I volunteered an elderly couple showed up. The wife took the farmer aside and explained that her 89 year-old husband was desperate to do something to help, but he wasn't really up to the task, even though he had agricultural experience.

The farmer helped find them a tree with a lot of low hanging fruit. The elderly man sat on a crate from which he could reach many pomegranates and in the time that the rest of us were clearing whole trees of their fruit he painfully slowly, with what looked like arthritic hands, snipped off the fruits hanging near to him, snipped a couple of fruits, gently put them in a crate, rested a little, drank some water, then cut down one more fruit, and so on until he was clearly exhausted by his efforts and his wife insisted that he go home to rest.

The farmer came and thanked him personally, hugged him and and told him that his careful work had yielded the most beautiful premium pomegranates for market.

So many funerals. So much heartbreak, so much to cry for.

More than anything what punched me in the gut this week was a shiva visit with so many young children in their cute cartoon t-shirts with ripped collars because these sweet young kids were among the mourners sitting shiva (for their father) in accordance with the Jewish custom that the immediate family of the deceased makes a symbolic tear in their shirts at the funeral as a sign of bereavement.  

I'm really grateful for the thousands of people who showed up to support the Jewish community and Israel at the historic rally in Washington D.C. It takes a great deal of courage in these terrible times to stand up and be counted, it means so much to us in Israel.

Right now I honestly don't care if the world thinks I am defective, an outsider or wrong for existing as I am in some way. I don't care if I get to belong or not.

It would just make me feel a bit better right now it if millions and millions of people around the world weren't out calling for me and family to be murdered and my country wiped off the map.

Kind of rubs me up the wrong way when hundreds of my fellow Israelis are massacred, tortured, raped and kidnapped and folks around the world think that is a cause for celebration.

I'm horrified by the wide smiles on the faces of Western college kids as they tear down the posters of kidnapped Israeli civilians or gleefully talk about the brave Hamas freedom fighters butchering kibbutz families in their homes.

I'm sick from the anti-Semitism that denies the right of Jews to have self-determination in their ancient homeland but which is also making life untenable for Jews in so many parts of the world.

I really don't need to be supported, accepted, liked or validated. I'd just like to be allowed to live.

Ethics of War

War, even when fought ethically and within the laws of war, as the IDF is doing, is a horrific situation. There is no such thing as a neat, clean war, and urban warfare is some of the most difficult for precisely this reason.  

In all the conflicts I've researched over the years I have never seen any military as ethical and determined to avoid civilian casualties as the IDF, and I'm not saying this because I'm Israeli, I'm saying they take precautions that I haven't seen any other military take, even to the detriment of their own military goals, and despite that, war is horrific and with a terrorist organisation willfully, intentionally, embedded in a dense, urban, civilian environment, there is no way to defend Israeli civilians without endangering civilians in Gaza.

The IDF gives advanced warning to civilians to evacuate, to the extent of phoning local residents, telling them which buildings are going to be bombed and keeping people on the line and asking them to check that all civilians have been evacuated before a building is bombed. Of course this often allows Hamas leaders and terrorists to escape as well, but the point here is destroying command posts, weapons caches, tunnel entrances, munitions factories and so on. One of the main reasons the IDF takes down taller buildings and towers is that they are often used by Hamas as look out positions or sniper posts. There are tactical reasons certain buildings are the target of IDF strikes.

If the IDF didn't care about minimising civilians casualties they could have literally levelled Gaza and everyone in it in a matter of days and in doing so would probably have saved many Israeli lives, especially those of soldiers, but also civilian lives by ending the massive number of rocket launches at Israel (remember that without Iron Dome Israel would have massive civilian casualties from rockets alone, as it is Iron Dome doesn't give 100% protection and Israelis have been killed and seriously injured by missile strikes)

This isn't about revenge, this is pure and simple about defending Israel from what has become an existential threat to Israel and to Israeli civilians.

The choice is to fight this war and topple Hamas, or to accept the existential threat of a murderous regime which explicitly states its intent to repeat the atrocities of October 7th whenever it gets the chance.

No country can live with that situation. It is Israel's moral and ethical obligation to millions of Israelis to secure their survival.