Am Yisrael Chai---The People of Israel Live

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Our day started at noon with a meeting with an educator named Scott Copland.  He spent an hour with us putting the founding of the State of Israel in historical perspective and discussing the relationship of diaspora Jewry with the people of Israel.  It was a very worthwhile discussion.

In the mid-afternoon we traveled to Tel Aviv, and began with a visit to a neighborhood called Florentine after Solomon Florentin, a Greek Jew, who purchased much of the land in the 1920s.  It’s an eclectic neighborhood with lots of cafes and artists’ workshops, but the reason for our visit is that it has become a center for graffiti art, and the art has been especially powerful since the Hamas invasion of October 7.  The first piece we saw was this powerful sarcastic protest against the inept response of the IDF to the attacks:

We have an anguished Superman and the title, “Don’t Panic…the IDF protects us.”

This artist has lost three, and then four, friends:

As we walked the neighborhood, we passed a house which had been destroyed by a Hamas rocket:

We were told that Tel Aviv is far enough from the launch area that they have a full 90 seconds to get safe after the sirens sound.  The Iron Dome is 90-95% effective, but not 100%.  The residents of this house were not harmed—they had time to get safe before the rocket hit.

Perhaps the most poignant graffiti art was a series of paintings for the abducted children who are now hostages, some of which showed the child doing one of their favorite activities.  They wrap around a very large building, and we walked around it.  I’ll share three which were heartbreaking:

Our next stop was at a small square in front of the Tel Aviv Art Museum which has been named “Hostage Square.”

 Every Saturday evening there is a vigil for the hostages.  There are tents, tables, performers, and in one spot a Havdalah service (the service which ends Shabbat):

A very moving part of the vigil was a Shabbat dinner table with a place setting for each of the hostages, and a used (and rough and dirty) place setting for each of them who has been released (near ground):

There are signs and flags everywhere:

We walked from here a couple of blocks to another square where every Saturday night there is a “Democracy demonstration” against Netanyahu.  The crowd there was enormous, and there were speeches and the singing of the national anthem, Hatikvah:

From there we went to dinner, and after dinner I went to the airport for a flight home just after midnight—Sunday morning.

How to process this time in Israel?  There are so many feelings and images.  First and foremost is the sense of resiliency and shared purpose.  The sense that despite all of the political division, the underlying commitment to community, that “we are all in this together”, is phenomenally strong.  The Hamas attacks of October 5 killed, proportionally, fifteen times more people relative to Israel’s population than 9/11 did in the USA, and the entire country has been affected.

In addition, the entire country has been touched by the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.  Everyone has a family member, friend, or co-worker who has been impacted directly.  The visible signs of support are everywhere—photos of those murdered or who were taken hostage, yellow ribbons, an enormous display of Israeli flags.  There is a shared mourning for those lost on October 7 and since, in the attacks on Hamas and the defense of the country.  We saw, directly, some of the 200,000 people who have been displaced from their homes near Gaza or the Lebanon border; many families are living in our hotel, trying their hardest to maintain a sense of normality for their children, but it’s very difficult.

I was overwhelmed at the preparation and care for those injured, either physically or psychologically, in the conflict.  The country has poured resources into the physical and emotional care of its citizens.  We could learn a great lesson from these activities.

There is a complete lack of understanding of the inhumanity of the Hamas invaders.  How could it be?  The wanton murder of families, including children, the sexual assaults, the hate.  We have long known of the possibility of the normalization of hate and assault—remember the song from “South Pacific”?  You have to be carefully taught to hate.  How do you process the fact that small children are taught arithmetic by being given the problem, “If you kill three Jews and your friend kills two Jews, how many Jews were killed?”  How can murder be made so mundane?

The war against Hamas has had horrible consequences for the civilian population of Gaza.  A good portion of the blame for this rests on Hamas, whose cynicism cannot be overestimated.  Examples include placing ammunition depots under and in schools and mosques, building command and control facilities under United Nations facilities and even drawing electricity from the UN building to power its functioning.  Imagine what all the labor and materiel needed to build 500 miles of concrete reinforced tunnels could have done if they were devoted to schools and hospitals.  Hamas has had considerable support from the civilian population, despite their being put into harm’s way.  The celebrations in Gaza after the October 7 attacks were enormous.  And remember the story of the grandmother taken hostage who had to be protected by her abductors from the crowd wanting to harm her.

There is great division over how to proceed right now.  Everyone understands Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas, an organization whose charter demands the destruction of Israel and the killing of the Jews.  They are an organization of hate, cynicism, and inhumanity.  And yet…  Everyone also is sympathetic, and feels kinship with, the hostage families who want the government to do anything to bring the hostages home.  The two goals seem incompatible and represent an enormous problem and divide.  At this point, the only leverage that Hamas seems to have is the hostages.

Yet, the country is functioning.  Not in an ordinary manner, but it is, and there is determination and grit and resilience.  The economy has shrunk, and there are places where workers are desperately needed as the daily influx of Palestinian workers has ended, and many reservists have been called up.  The enormous political issues have been set aside for now, but they remain.  But the creativity and innovation continue at a great pace.  The commitment to a shared purpose is greater than ever. 

If you have not looked at the web site which maps and describes the Hamas attack of October 7, I urge you to do so.  It’s here: https://oct7map.com/

And so, I come home with such a mixture of emotions, from sadness, extreme sympathy, and a sense of horror at what happened, along with pride and confidence in Israel’s future.  Israel has survived much; it will survive this.

Am Yisrael Chai.  The people of Israel live.

Victor