A little update from Israel |
Musings on rockets, Bibi, Trump, the mullahs… and everyone and everything else that lately kept me awake nights
Freshly righted, this car was blown through the air by a cluster bomblet that landed around the corner from the writer’s home. (Lawrence Rifkin)
Between February 28 and the cease fire reached a couple of days ago between the United States and Iran, much of life here came to a halt. Greater Tel Aviv saw five or six rocket attacks a day (sometimes more, sometimes less), and they came at all hours, meaning a lot of us were walking around half asleep (and still are).
Gatherings of more than 50 people were forbidden, which ruled out most work and almost all recreation. My painting group and lecture series went on furlough, as did my wife’s volunteer work at the country’s wildlife hospital. We also kept having our theater, concert and guided neighborhood-walk dates postponed, and we were left to wonder about the order in which they would eventually play out.
This is not to say that we ourselves suffered. The 23 civilians in Israel who were killed (read on) and the dozens more who were badly injured certainly did. So did the people who lost homes or other property, as did the parents of young children locked out of school for weeks, and those tending to aged parents or otherwise older adults who could not run to safe spaces easily or at all.
Civilian suffering was certainly a reality anywhere the war was taking place.
MOST OF THOSE HERE WHO ventured into the streets did so to purchase groceries and other necessary goods. They stayed local and moved with determination, and generally had the location of the area’s bomb shelters mapped out in their mind. Those who came under attack while driving were advised to pull to the side and seek shelter, or otherwise get out and lie flat somewhere at least 25 feet from the vehicle, whose gas tank or electric battery could make the danger immeasurably worse.
Rockets occasionally got through our varied array of air defenses. Those tipped with half-ton warheads decimated entire buildings – even when they did not explode. Many had warheads that opened at medium altitude and unleashed up to 70 submunitions, even after the rocket itself had been intercepted. Some of these so-called cluster bomblets carried as much as 10 pounds of explosives, which was enough to upend and heave the family sedan to a distance of 20 feet or more.
There was also plenty of plain metal debris falling from the sky. Some of it was white hot and razor sharp. Other pieces could be the size and weight of a large refrigerator. You did not want to be hit by any of it.
Which reminds me that the war did not stop one of my own volunteer activities. I’m on the municipality’s search and rescue squad. Our training and tools allow us to get under and into rubble to search for survivors or victims. We were called out several times, though the most damage we saw came from those cluster bomblets, which did indeed upend and heave someone’s family sedan while leaving a five-foot-wide and two-foot-deep crater.
Otherwise, my wife and I rarely left the house unless it was for a doctor’s appointment, to go to the butcher, greengrocer or supermarket, or to visit friends nearby who, like us, had a reinforced safe room in the home.
Safe rooms have been mandated by law for all Israeli construction since 1993. Older buildings that were put up starting in the 1950s generally have bomb shelters in the basement, yet fully one-third of the population has to run for public shelters in the neighborhood. This means that many people, especially those who are less mobile, have no proper shelter at all and must make do with a stairwell or interior room.
We ourselves are grateful for what we have, and when the sirens went off outside and on our smart phones, we headed to our safe room, which doubles as a guest room and office.
The walls, ceiling and floor are beefed up with extra concrete and thick rebar. The window has two heavy sheets of steel that must be slid together on tracked wheels and then locked with a hook-and-lever mechanism. The thick blast door, mounted on massive hinges outside the room and lined around its inner edges with a heavy rubber seal, must be lugged inward until it clangs shut.
All of this provides a good level of protection against warheads and submunitions that explode outside. A direct hit would be another story.
We quickly would flip open our laptop computer, which operated 24 hours a day together with the online broadcast of our preferred TV news station. All that was left to do was turn up the sound to get the latest on the rockets heading our way, including where they were from. (We were hit by projectiles launched from Iran and even Yemen, but also from Lebanon, where Hezbollah, the mullahs’ preferred proxy, to this day retains some of its long-range weapons.)
Within a few seconds of the sirens winding down, we’d begin listening for the explosions of interceptions in an attempt to judge the degree to which they were directly overhead. (This part reminded me of the World War II submarine films I’d watch as a kid, in which the crew members silently rode out depth-charge barrages while looking upward in anticipation.)
As happened last June, we progressed to the point where we could differentiate between the sound of an interception and that of explosions from incoming warheads and bomblets, as well as how far away they had hit. On occasion, the interceptors that were sent aloft came from a battery the military had placed near our neighborhood, and the long whooshes from a launch added to the variety of the sounds.
Unless there was a staggered barrage, it took 10 minutes or so for the all-clear. We spent this time tracking down the kids and watching the news, which usually consisted of roundtables with talking heads or, particularly during attacks, inane interviews with people who had taken shelter in the parking garage beneath Tel Aviv’s Habima theater – where waving, pushing and preening bystanders crowded the background in the Israeli version of a mass Hi, Mom moment.
THERE ARE VERY GOOD CHANCES that we here in Israel will see more military conflict with the mullahs. Yet this cannot become a lever for any one individual’s personal or political woes – though we all know that Benjamin Netanyahu is capable of waging wars just to keep his far-right, messianist coalition intact, thus lessening his chances of doing jail time on charges of corruption.
Bibi is certainly under siege. There’s the trial. There’s the way he facilitated the transfer of many, many suitcases with millions upon millions of dollars in cash from Qatar to Hamas, the former a hostile state, the latter an outright enemy. There’s the way he allowed the South to be left unguarded on that fateful October 7, and there’s the way he and members of his government almost literally disappeared in the initial days that followed.
There’s the way he waged the resulting war and the way he has thrown – and continues to throw – billions of scarce shekels at the ultra-Orthodox parties to prop up his coalition (the same ultra-Orthodox people who refuse to send their sons to fill the growing gaps of troops on the battlefield).
There’s also the way he has avoided taking questions from the media, and when he does show up for the rare televised press conference – caked in heavy makeup, his purple-silver comb-over having been meticulously put in place – it’s to crow about his leadership and military prowess.
As the incomparable Sima Kadmon wrote in her April 3 wartime column in Yediot Aharonot, “It’s difficult hearing victory speeches while there appear on the side of the [television] screen the names of locales being targeted, while a third of us have no place to shelter and tens of thousands don’t even have time to seek it out.”
So, yes, I see Netanyahu and his party of airheads and grifters as the lesser choice for our votes in the elections slated to take place no later than this fall.
And from what we can gather here, Bibi is no less despised in the United States.
The general aroma wafting across the US since February 28 seems to be “Israel made us do it.” There apparently is a lot of truth to this in that Netanyahu traveled to Washington on February 10 to see President Donald Trump.
As he prepared to fly home on February 12, the Israeli prime minister issued the following statement:
“I have just concluded a brief but important visit to Washington, speaking with our great friend, President Trump. We share a very close, very genuine, and very candid connection.
“Naturally, the conversations focused on several topics, but primarily on the negotiations with Iran. The president believes that the Iranians have already learned who they are dealing with. He believes that the conditions he is creating, combined with the fact that they surely understand that they made a mistake last time by not reaching an agreement, may create the conditions for achieving a good deal.
“He wanted to hear my opinion. I will not hide from you that I expressed general skepticism regarding the nature of any agreement with Iran. However, I said that if an agreement is indeed reached, it must include the elements that are vital to us, to Israel, and in my opinion, not just to Israel.
“It is not only the nuclear issue; it is also the ballistic missiles and the Iranian proxies. This essentially summarized the conversation….”
I’M NOT SURE TRUMP exactly wanted to hear Netanyahu’s opinion, but it’s clear that what Bibi had to say was not limited to lectures on how to conduct diplomacy. Beyond that – and what much of the media seem to downplay – is how Saudi Arabia and many of the smaller Gulf states were actively lobbying the US leader for war, one that would at least degrade those same Iranian military capabilities and, if possible, also finish off the Iranian regime (or at least degrade that, too).
The unfair (unintentionally or otherwise) play-down on this and the unfair (unintentionally or otherwise) up-play on Bibi’s push for war are certainly having an impact on public opinion, whether within a Democratic Party that long ago soured on Israel, or a Republican Party that lately has been hearing surprisingly strong calls for it to distance itself from the Jewish state or even turn its back entirely.
To be honest, I’m less concerned about the disgust for Netanyahu than I am about the disgust for Israel, but I’m most concerned about the way a lot of this has unleashed negative sentiments toward Jews by both the Right and the Left. By some of those who call themselves Republicans I can understand. But Democrats? That’s a relatively new thing for me, and a lot more troubling.
The same holds true for much of the rest of the world.
At any rate, in Israel, the Iran issue has long been a can kicked down the road. I believe in the idea of a settlement with the Palestinians that entails compromises by both sides (although I’m not expecting any of those soon). Yet even if there were to be a Palestinian state alongside Israel, I don’t think it would be good enough for Iran or any of its proxies, or, for that matter, a lot of college students and other young people today, educated on the Middle East or not.
In the meantime, we’ll just step out into this magnificent spring day for a cup of coffee. I need to make gone the cumulative sleepiness from nighttime missile alerts and – as long as the cease fire holds – gird for the upcoming battle with Bibi and his minions.
Because while we welcome the break, what happened in Iran for the past several weeks has not solved Israel’s problem. It was just another example of what around here has come to be known as mowing the grass. And this grass – whether the mullahs, the Palestinians, or Benjamin Netanyahu himself – just can’t be mown no more.