perhaps to be expected, but just the same ...
	... some thoughts on our "situation". It's from a different holiday, but: וכאשר יענו אותו כן ירבה וכן יפרוץ ve-kha'asher ya'anu otto ken yirbeh ve'khen yifrotz It's can't be that difficult to realize, from our own experience, that bombing your enemy into submission just doesn't work. But it seems that as simple a lesson as that should be, we continually refuse to learn it. This doesn't mean that we were in a particularly tolerable situation - we weren't. The Palestinian leadership in Gaza doesn't simply want us to leave Gaza - after all, we've already done that. It doesn't simply want us to permit humanitarian aid into the area - for the most part this has been allowed almost without interruption. (Most of the Israeli population views the idea of cutting off their water and electricity not as legitimate "punishment" but as unacceptable collective punishment, and it also sees those who suggest these ideas as crazies ... until we find ourselves in the untenable situation that we're in now.) We're in a very real bind of having to accept the fact that even when we'll reach some sort of cease fire, our enemy will still view this as a strategic decision on its part, and still hopes/intends to totally get rid of us some time in the future. And yet, it should be obvious that after a few days, or perhaps more, of continued bombing and killing, some sort of cease fire is going to be reached which is going to be incredibly similar to the cease fire that we had only a couple of weeks ago. And then we'll have to ask ourselves both whether this was worth it, but also whether it was justified. I don't see how there's any other conclusion that can be reached other than that it wasn't. Tzippi wrote earlier today about Hila's reaction this morning. I got home around 17:00 and she was visiting a friend in our neighborhood. That friend has a secured room in her family's apartment, but I didn't get the feeling that this was why Hila was there rather than by us. A bit later I walker her, and three friends, over to a friend's apartment for a birthday party - listening to them talk along the way. They were (to me) surprisingly calm, aware of the situation, and though not pleased with it, clearly understanding that there wasn't much that they could do other than carry on as they normally do. I had the strange feeling of their behaving considerably more maturely than I would have wanted them to. (I haven't seen the boys today - they got up after I left for work, and they went out this evening, before I came home, with the other high school kids, for an evening on the town - NORTH - of us.) While I'm writing, the evening television news is on in the background. There's hardly anything new to report (and the "evening" news continued from where the "afternoon" news left off, which in turn was only a continuation of the "morning" news - later this evening there will probably be about two hours of non-news programming that will let us relax a bit. (Last week I noticed, while watching a late evening program, that in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen I was getting a flashing announcement that at that moment there was an alert in Sderot - more business as usual.) On this evenings news the community next door was "featured" - as Tzippi reported, a rocket had landed just by where her car had broken down two weeks ago, a five minute drive from us. And of course I've wondered in writing in the past whether there can be such a thing as an innocent bystander. Love, Jay
posted: December 28, 2009
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