Gaza. Pause and think

  On October 7, I was walking on a sunny Ashdod beach when the rockets struck.  Like everyone in Israel, I was shocked, humiliated, and outraged.  On that day, while Hamas fighters were still killing people, Netanyahu declared "We are at War."  He added that he directed the army to "fight back on a scale and intensity that the enemy has so far not experienced.”  Initially, I welcomed his statement, but in the days that followed, I began to have doubts.  It was difficult to express these doubts while in Israel, and more difficult to do so now that I am back in Oaxaca.  In the eyes of many Israelis, it is inappropriate for me, an outsider, to discuss security matters.  However, perhaps I am allowed to ask questions.  I'll present them in reverse order.

1.  Does the conduct of this war by the IDF, an army that prides itself in innovative thinking and technical knowhow, meet your expectations?

2.  Is the cost of the war, 100 Israeli soldiers, 20,000 Gazan civilians and counting, acceptable to you?

3.  Will a war achieve permanent security for Israel?

4.  Will the war insure the release of all the hostages?

5.  Were you presented with alternatives solutions to war?

If the answer to some of these question is not a clear 'Yes!', ask yourself  'Why?' 

It could be evidence of a leadership failure to think.

I know that Israel's political and military leaders are smart and have good intention, so I will venture to guess some causes for their failure.

a.  Shock.  It is hard to think under attack

b.  They accepted and joined the national urge for revenge.  

c.   A deep personal burden of guilt may cloud rational thinking and drive one to strong violent action.

I am afraid that unless the current leaders are dismissed now, the underperformance will continue.  It is the Israeli voters turn to pause and think.

P.S.  I am often asked  "Then, what do you propose?"  All I wish to say is that I have heard many anecdotes of action that could have been taken or  action that should have been avoided, to prevent the massacre.  Those hypothetical actions are an indication that there are other options.  

Sab'res

There are two ways to contend with summer heat in Israel.  First, do as little as possible; second, ingest cold and sweet foodstuff.  I was sitting outside my brother’s home; doing the first, contemplating the second, when across the lawn I saw Pnina, the attractive next-door neighbor.

“Hi Tsahi, would you like some sab’res?” she asked.

I love rhetorical questions from beautiful women, but what made this offer especially noteworthy, is that Pnina may be the only Jewish person in the Land of Israel that harvests her own prickly pears.

Like most Israelis, I love sab’res.  The chilled fruit is the perfect summer treat.  Although the contradiction of soft flesh and hundreds of hard seed, presents a chewing challenge, the reward is sweet and juicy.  During the middle of summer, the fruit turns an inviting orange color, and is ready to eat.  As children growing up in the semi-rural town of Tivon, we would brave the heat, venture out to the nearby cactus patch, and collect as much as we could of the delicacy.

The procedure sounds easy.  Attach a tin can to a broomstick, use this tool to pluck the ripe sab’res off the plant, peel, chill (Optional step), and eat.  However, by the time you arrive at the site, all the easily-accessible fruit are, most likely, gone, and you will need to penetrate the heart of the patch.  Protective clothing and a careful approach may get you past the long dangerous thorns without suffering too much damage.  Inside, the air is oppressively stagnant and hot. Despite your careful maneuvers, you will disturb the stalks, and launch millions of tiny needles into the air.  These miniature missiles will stick to your sweaty skin, and make your life miserable for hours.  With pride and anticipation, you emerge from the hot inferno, carrying a basketful of the golden bounty.  Prior to peeling, you need to shed the fruit of its remaining thorns by rubbing it in soil, yet despite the vigorous effort, as you peel, some thorns will succeed in lounging themselves in your fingertips.  Finally, it’s time to enjoy.  Most often, we consumed the fruit before it had a chance to reach the refrigerator.

This task, even for us kids, had a dubious pleasure-to-pain ratio.  Thanks to the neighboring Arab village, we were able to have the pleasure, while avoiding the pain.  Each day, an Arab vendor, leading a donkey laden with sab’res, passed on the streets of Tivon.  We would wait for his ringing voice, and run down to meet him.  With grace and precision he would chop off both ends of the fruit, cut a slit down its length, part the slit with his calloused fingers, and let the juicy delicacy roll into our anticipating little hands.  I would look at him with admiration, believing that Arabs are somehow tougher than us, and immune from the thorns.  Immune or not, all across Israel, the sab’res trade remained exclusively in Arab hands.  Many years later, the street vendors disappeared.  Sab’res emerged on supermarket shelves, but their scrumptious flavor was gone.

Pnina, bucking the cultural trend, learned the art of picking sab’res with impunity. She routinely harvested the cacti that grew on her lot.  Her offer of peeled and chilled fruit was an act of great generosity.  Unfortunately, in my rush to devour, I forgot my duty as a blogger, and neglected to ask how she acquired this rare skill.

Can an oak tree smile?

My parents built their home on a wooded hillside, in the newly-founded town of Tivon (House of Nature).  They placed the house under the shade of an old oak tree which they loved and respected.  For my brother Gini and me, the tree was a dear childhood friend, yet as we matured, it slowly receded from our lives.  After my parents’ death, Gini moved into the house, and family life shifted away from the tree, and to the air-conditioned living room.  The old oak became an unobserved presence.  On my infrequent visits to Tivon, I would walk beside it without taking notice.  Until a story told by a neighbor prompted me to visit my giant friend.

I approached the tree, and to my surprise, despite the many years that passed, it still boasted the same healthy canopy that I held in my memories. Irrationally, I expected the tree to decline in parallel to my own aging body.  I walked around it, and casually rested my hand on its thick trunk.  An oak tree is not pleasant to the touch.  The deeply corrugated bark is hard, and the ridges are as sharp as a knife.  Yet as I touched the rough surface, childhood memories flooded my consciousness.  Usually, I need Gini to help me recreate past events.  Now, I could clearly see myself as a young boy, leaning my arms against the tree trunk.  I could sense the tough bark biting into my skin while, with my eyes tightly shut, I was loudly counting to ten.  The other kids were scrambling to find a hiding spot.  I felt the anticipation of the hunt as I set out to search for my concealed friends.

If trees like company, summer was the oak’s best season.   Friends would come over, and the lawn under its wide protective shade became the stage for our imagination.  The tree itself was an active participant in our games.  We played Hide and Seek, Cowboys and Indians, and many other adventures of our own invention.  During the summer our relatives would come to Tivon to seek refuge from the heat and humidity of Tel Aviv.  Suddenly, my stomach cramped with guilt as I remembered my cousin Neta, a girl my age.  It was here on this lawn that, in a moment of childish anger, I punched her in the stomach.  I was shocked as she doubled-over with pain.  Eventually, she stopped crying, and we resumed our play, but the sensation in my gut persisted for several days.  Summer must have been the setting for my first SMB experience.  As told by Pnina, our next door neighbor, in a voice that was an intriguing mixture of reproach and delight, Gini and I tied her to the tree and turned the sprinkler on.  The tree had company all day long.  On summer evenings, when the house was still too hot for comfort, my mother would set up a table under a bare bulb which hung from a horizontal branch.  Insects of all shapes gathered around that bulb, while my father carefully diced vegetables, ripened to perfection in his garden.  He would then add salt and oil to prepare the salad we all craved.

I looked up and recalled the dozens, maybe hundreds of times I climbed this tree.  I climbed it for thrill, for solitude, but mainly, to live my dream of becoming a pilot.  I climbed high, to where the branches were barely thick enough to support my weight.  There, a forking branch provided a comfortable seat, two extrusions acted as foot pedals, and as if by design, a vertical branch extended between my thighs to serve as a control stick.  With blue sky directly above, the ground, obscured by the foliage below, and a deep valley in front, I was flying.  The breeze swayed the thin branches in exact response to my aileron commands as I engaged a German Messerschmitt in a fierce dogfight.  In later years, I upgraded from the Spitfire into the Mystere jet, and the arena moved from the skies over Britain to the Sinai.  I did not become an air force pilot, and the tree would remain unclimbed, until it was discovered by my physically-gifted son Ofer.  From an early age, to the horror of my father, he would scramble effortlessly up the tree, and disappear from sight.  Worse still, he would come down swinging Tarzan-style from limb to limb.  Inevitably, he grew up, and the tree remained alone again.

Now, fifty years later, neuro-muscular synapses re-formed, and I could feel my body tensing in sync with the movements required to climb the tree.  Hop, pull up, bare foot there, twist, swing, and reaching the first fork, take a rest.  After the difficult first stage, it was only a matter of a careful ladder-like climb to the top.  My body craved to climb the tree, yet the thin skin on my hands and feet, cringed at the thought of scraping against the rough bark.  I also noticed that the lowest horizontal branch, which served as the launching point for the climb, was missing.  I suspect that my father sawed it off, in a futile attempt to deter his agile grandson from endangering his life.  I did not climb.  Instead, I told my story to Yair, Gini’s son.  He was energized, and being taller and younger, he promptly made his way up.

From above, Yair smiled triumphantly, and I could swear that the oak tree was smiling too.