Two sides of Israel's existential war

In the psychological war against Israel, those on the attacking side up till recently peddled the "nuance" that they were not anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist. As the Israel-Gaza War progressed and physical attacks on Jews became commonplace in Western cities, that "distinction" became less stridently insisted on until, of course, Israel had the temerity to do the unthinkable: attack a real and present existential threat, Iranian nuclear bombs in the making. From that point on, anything Israeli or Jewish was fair game. In this collective losing of the mind, two things stood out for me: denouncing IDF soldiers as "war criminals"; and Western tourists, many non-Jewish, continuing to visit and support her during this war. My wife and I fall into this latter category, having travelled to Israel on 10 June for one week.

Our friends around Israel have been nothing short of amazing, taking much inconvenience upon themselves to make sure not only that we were safe, but that we were comfortable. We appreciate them more than ever, especially as they all have that much more to deal with at this time.

What did surprise us was the appreciation shown us by complete strangers the moment they learnt that we were on holiday in their country. They were demonstrative about it and didn't hold back. Cafés piled on extra portions, market traders added an extra fruit or two. Station personal appeared out of nowhere to help us with our luggage. We were standing by our suitcases on a packed train when an elderly lady offered us her seat and left. We assumed she was alighting at the next stop. When we eventually reached our stop, we found her sitting on the step beside the door. We both felt bad for her. One passenger helped us get our suitcases onto the platform, then leapt back onto the train as the doors were shutting. It wasn't even his stop.

Over this time, we stayed with friends, often for much longer than we had originally been welcomed for. In one instance, two of our friends, without knowing each other, arranged to drive to a town in between to safely hand us over. Neighbours invited us for dinner. We were fully immersed in the generosity of Israelis, while they were under missile attack.

We also saw a darker side. EL AL, gratuitously expensive in the current climate, was the only airline flying by the time we'd had a string of flight cancellations with other airlines. We coughed up. Consolation: they say each plane comes with missile defence and fighter pilot as standard. Nice. Of course, when the Iran phase of the war opened, the airspace was closed, and EL AL cancelled our return flights. When the airspace reopened, EL AL announced their priorities: 1. repatriate Israelis stranded abroad; 2. return tourists stranded in Israel to their countries; and 3. resume ticket sales to the general public. Normal ticketing would resume from 29 June.

On Saturday night 21 June, EL AL invited those with cancelled EL AL return flights to register online, the earliest cancelled flights would leave first, fifty passengers at a time. No need to call us; we'll call you. After several days of life-on-hold and hearing nothing, we started trying to contact EL AL. Short of physically going to the airport, there was nothing that we, and four people helping us, have not tried. All to no avail. By Wednesday, we suddenly started hearing from different sources that the general public have been buying tickets and flying since at least the previous day, while we had still not heard a word from EL AL! We packed our bags and set off for the airport early next morning, Thursday 26 June, hoping to fly to anywhere in Central Europe that day.

At the EL AL ticket desk, we joined a very long queue of passengers all in the same position as ourselves and livid, firstly, that they had all done exactly as EL AL had asked them to do; secondly, that they had not heard a single word from EL AL; thirdly, that the general public was filling up the planes; and fourthly, that they had been reduced to rushing to the airport and joining the end of a four-hour-long queue to be served by two EL AL staff! When our turn finally arrived, famished and exhausted, we learnt that all the flights to reasonable destinations were full. We settled for the earliest flight we could get, which was for Sunday 29 June. To date we are still to hear anything from EL AL, let alone receive an apology or an explanation.

The other horrible experience had been with O Pod Hotel in Tel Aviv. We had booked in for 13-16 June to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. We arrived in Israel 10 June and in Jerusalem on 11 June. On the night of 12 June, still in Jerusalem, the Iran-Israel War broke out, making our onward trip to Tel Aviv impossible.

We contacted the hotel on 13 June to make a new arrangement. They undertook that we could arrange new dates for the three nights. Of course, it was not possible to know when the war will end and besides, TEL AVIV WAS BOMBED EVERY NIGHT, so we could not propose new dates. Only AFTER the war had ended twelve days later, was it possible to suggest new dates for our reservation. Having secured our tickets home on 26 June, we had three nights left in Israel and decided to call in O Pod's undertaking.

O Pod's response: "Our policy is that you are welcome to come to our hotel, but you will have to pay." We referred them to their undertaking of 13 June, repeated on 14 June, that they would, "If you want, we can change the date for tonight's reservation. Please let us know if so," (email, 13 June). That night, Tel Aviv got heavily bombed and we remained in Jerusalem. The next day, we contacted O Pod again, and they said, "As we wrote yesterday, we can offer new dates for today's reservation," and later "You have to let us know ASAP," (14 June). All three nights were covered by these undertakings.

No amount of arguing could interest them in the fact that it was war and their city, especially, was being bombed every night. They still insisted that we had to comply with their reservations policy, stonewalling with exactly the same words each time and ignoring their undertaking. The increasingly heated conversation ended with my promising that they will regret this. "No problem," they replied.

I did not share with the charming O Pod man the scenario the encounter had brought to mind: a scene in a Nazi concentration camp where all the inmates had to line up outside their barracks for roll call on a freezing morning. One person was not there. The others said that he was on his bunk, too ill to get up. A soldier promptly stormed into the barracks and shot him dead. From that point on, no matter how ill someone was, the others would drag him or her outside and prop them up as best they could to take the roll call, whether they died as a result or not. Rules are rules.

Some may charge that these are the unfair insinuations of an angry woman and they may be right. Well, how about this? Some Western governments have been especially tardy in supporting their citizens stranded in a war zone. They offered the most inconvenient "help" and stopped doing so as soon as they could, offering clearly contemptuous excuses. Some Western people who did get out and had to make new travel arrangements in third countries, ended up treated with the utmost disrespect for having travelled to "that country". Shall I restrict myself to saying only that the O Pod Hotel Tel Aviv took it upon itself to punish us for daring to support Israel?

Yes, war brings out the best and the worst in people; and the worst of Western people plummeted to hitherto-unseen depths today. Imagine a Nuremberg rally. High-up on the stage are British and Irish artists Bob Vylan and Kneecap, thundering across a crowd of 30,000, "Death, Death, Death to the IDF!" and that crowd of 30,000, having first lost their souls, then their minds, now faithfully surrendering what remains of themselves to echo back, "Death, Death, Death to the IDF!" This is actually happening at time of writing, at the Glastonbury music festival in George Orwell's imagined Britain.

Yet, the best souvenir we take home with us is the spirit of the young soldiers we saw everywhere. IDF soldiers, "war criminals" to the mindless West who wish them death, conveyed an air of purpose rare in people so young. Their strong bodies carried heavy bags with ease. Their presence, especially their torso-length rifles, exuded reassurance. Whenever I could, I spoke to them. Their eyes were always bright and filled with life, even if they were sometimes tired. They all appreciated the brief chats, the handshakes and the selfies. None of them ever turned me away, even if they had no English. Somewhere in Israel, a mother, a father, a grandparent, a sibling, a friend, a loved one, worries about each and every one of these young men and women it was such a tremendous honour to engage with, however briefly.

All over Israel, public surfaces are festooned with stickers of fallen soldiers: stations, bridges, lamp posts, electrical boxes, railings, etc., etc., a silent national chorus. It reminded me of the day we arrived. About twenty minutes south of the airport, on the way to our friend's house near Ashkelon, we took a rugged track onto a windswept hill overlooking the utopian village of Neve Shalom. Atop the hill stood a memorial to a remarkable soldier who had died on 7 October. I understand the village objected to the conflict convulsing the nation being acknowledged so close to their idyll. The memorial consisted of a rock inscribed with the following:

In memory of Lieutenant-General Ro'i Levi

1979 - 2023

Commander of the Multidimensional Commando Unit, Hero of Israel. He fell in battle against terrorists on Black Sabbath, 7 October 2023, while leading his troops in battle in Kibbutz Re'im. Ro'i spent most of his military service in the Golani Brigade. He fought in Israel's wars and dangerous missions as Commander of the Reconnaissance Company. He also commanded the Reconnaissance Battalion 'Egoz' Commando Unit and commanded the 300th Brigade. In the [2014 Operation Protective Edge, Miv'tza] Tzuk-Eitan [in Gaza], he was critically wounded and not expected to survive. But he managed to recover and insisted on returning to the army. He loved the Land of Israel, its fields and its soil.

We will always remember you.

Family, friends and loved ones.

This was our friend's gentle way of introducing us to post-October 7 Israel. Standing guard over the memorial is the national flag, its mast covered in stickers, something I thought nothing of at the time, but was later to learn is very significant indeed. Each such sticker is a memorial to a soldier who gave his or her life to save not only a country, not only a people, but a civilisation. Simple stickers have turned accessible surfaces everywhere into a national memorial in the humblest way possible. May their memories be forever honoured, not only in Israel, but wherever civilisation breathes air.

My wife and I visited the cemetery in Kochav Yair, where someone very dear to me is laid to rest. Gerschon Simcha Weiss, of Blessed Memory, had set me on the road to Judaism a mere six months before he died, as if he had one last thing to do. Being by his grave was an important closure for me. Afterwards, we visited the corner of the cemetery where the military dead are honoured. Since October 7, the town had lost five young men aged 19 to 33. As we slowly left, two lads turned up and started tending the grave of their friend, one of the graves we had just visited. That was a sight. Tending graves is usually old people's stuff, not something twenty-year-olds do. In Israel, that's what twenty-year-olds do. Here the sun was setting on another day. Where such men are flippantly condemned as "war criminals," and pronounced fair game, it is night all the time.

On our last full day in Israel, we finally got a chance to visit Tel-Aviv properly. To see a huge, gaping hole in an office tower, the result of an Iranian missile strike, so close to the Israeli equivalent of the Pentagon concentrates the mind in a way even a graphic news report cannot. If anyone of any influence in such matters reads this, do not leave that regime standing for they will try again, no matter what deal anyone thinks they have made with them. A deal is offensive to these people. I'm afraid even the greatest dealmaker in the world is a very long way from comprehending this:

During the last few days, I was working on the possible removal of sanctions and other things, which would have given a much better chance to Iran at a full, fast and complete recovery. But instead, I get hit with a statement of anger, hatred and disgust, and immediately dropped all my work on sanction relief and more.

As a man of great faith, he is not supposed to lie [refering to Khamenei's "blatant and foolish" statement, AP]

They are always so angry, hostile and unhappy, and look what its has gotten them: a burnt-out, bombed-up country, with no future, a decimated military, a horrible economy and death all around.

They have no hope, and it will only get worse.

Mr Trump seems unaware of, or wilfully ignores, the fundamental Shi'a ideal alternative outcomes, according to which, if Islam fails to conquer the world, Iran's complete annihilation would be a victory:

Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.

From US Presidents to "coexisting" Israelis, self-righteous stubbornness remains a great leveller. They all are blind to what happens right before their eyes time and time and time again. Disappointment, death and despair for such Israelis/Western diplomacy, on the one hand, and "a burnt-out, bombed-up country, with no future, a decimated military, a horrible economy and death all around," for the Iranian regime. The two sides have their self-righteous stubbornness in common. It is in the nature of what they have in common that they can never understand each other, leaving both sides forever banging their heads. The only sensible ones are those who know that this is a fight to the finish.

Two blocks further, as if to suggest a philosophical underpinning to our experience, we happened upon Yael Frank's The Sleepers, a sculpture of two Tel Aviv street cats sprawled out asleep on a plinth. On project-tlv.info (AI-translated), we read:

“The Sleepers” (הישנים) by sculptor Yael Frank. One cat is sleeping on "yes"and other on "no".

The work humorously and thoughtfully reimagines traditional guardian statues (like lions at civic buildings) as street cats—symbols of indifference and casual rebellion.

The sculptor’s intent: to highlight the vulnerability of decision-making. These “guardians” of yes/no have fallen asleep, suggesting that sometimes our fundamental choices go unchallenged, unexamined, or ignored.

The piece invites reflection:
* What happens when our core choices (yes/no) are not actively upheld?
* How easily can societal dialogue—and the firmness of our convictions—slip into passivity?
* The cats seem to ask: Are we awake enough to defend our values?

In a world where art is increasingly reduced to preaching, ordering and bludgeoning, telling us how we must behave, this was a refreshing work to encounter. Unlike the sickening village of Neve Shalom showing us how we must all love each other and live in peace together, as if we're five-year-olds, and shutting their eyes to the grown-up world of war, deceit and dying, the question is quite simple: are we awake enough to defend our values? The artist leaves the rest to us, whatever that rest might be.