1/ Returning to Israel after eight days of travel, tired and heartbroken. I am reading Israeli responses to the Rafah massacres and studying official Israel's plans and predictions (worth mentioning: Israel is looking for "alternative local leadership" as it destroys Gaza). --->
2/ The imperviousness of the Israeli public cuts me to the quick. Support for the war remains a consensus. Soldiers have begun to die again. 100000 Israeli are still displaced. The economy is in tatters. Netanyahu is beginning to gain in most polls. A cosmic vicious circle. --->
3/ Israel's genocide is grim and glum. Many Israelis will tell you that those celebrating are "messianic", and that once the "war" is over we will get our priorities in order and stop funding and protecting settlements in the West Bank. That was our mistake, you see. --->
4/ The "crazy" settlers demanded all of "normal" Israel's attention! Most of the IDF was protecting them and that left no real force for the towns and villages around Gaza! We won't make the same mistake twice. As soon as the "war" is over. When is that? Who knows. --->
5/ That is a typical Israeli progression at the moment. Passionately swept up in tactics, always in possession of various in-house straw men, in complete denial of the very possibility of a future. This is Hamas' fault/ Netanyahu's fault/ the settlers' fault. Not ours. --->
6/ Israelis fight in Gaza to defend a leadership and a government many view as corrupt. But this is actually useful, because as long as it is about "them" (Hamas, Netanyahu, settlers), it isn't about "us". "We" are, at best, reluctant. This doesn't being us joy. --->
7/ This is the systemic evil. It isn't the wicked government (which is wicked indeed). It isn't rhe settlers. It isn't the ultra-orthodox. It isn't even Hamas. It's us. We devoted our lives to the basic fallacy, that democracy can sustain and be sustained by its opposite. --->
8/ We talked about "justice" with the same breath that denied justice to millions. We were a light unto the gentiles just as we institutionalized our supremacy over the Palestinians and everyone else. We upheld a paradox. Now we are a hollow, brittle shell.
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