Day 2: Saturday March 23, 2024
Shabbat shalom everyone. Beautiful day in Tel Aviv. We had free time in the morning so the group split up. Chosen activities were a visit to the Dayan Center, a beautiful beach walk on the boardwalk to Jaffa, morning services and visiting family.
We then headed on the bus and drove to use a conference center inside a Hotel/Hostel for our two sessions of the day. The facility has been housing refugees from a kibbutz. The first speaker we met was Or Heller who is a prominent military correspondent for channel 13. Israel has four main channels covering the spectrum of Israeli politics. (Channels 11-14) Channel 13 has a more nuanced and critical view of the war. The discussion started with Heller sharing with us his view of the lead up to the war. He cites an incident in March where a Hezbollah member attacked in the north and made it all the way to the outskirts of the West Bank (Megiddo). He discussed internal politics and the collapse of defense lines as other reasons for the attack. He was on vacation with his family in the North near Lebanon when Hamas attacked on October 7. He had to wake up his family, pack up and drive them home. Having small children, one can imagine how long this took. Yet, with those obstacles, he still beat the IDF when he arrived in the war zone. He has personally been in the tunnels and to Shifa hospital. This is the longest war since the War of Independence and he does not know how it will end. Three ways to frame the war, Radical Islamist war, West vs radical Islam and West vs East. (USA and allies vs Russia, China). We were surprised to learn that the IDF believes that ½ of the remaining hostages are no longer alive. They have had many attempts to save hostages with not much success. The new challenge is that they learned from Hamas detainees, that Hamas fighters are ordered to shoot hostages whenever they hear anything abnormal going on from above the tunnels. He reported that 15K Hamas have been killed which is more than is being reported in the west. He firmly believes that Rafah needs to be captured in order to get rid of Hamas but understands that Israel cannot get rid of the idea of Hamas.
The second session was with Alon Pinkas, former advisor consul general in the US and a foreign affairs analyst. Even though he said he was not going to be political, he was political. He spoke about the fragile Israeli mind and how the television news stations are not covering what is going on in Gaza. (wish he spoke to us first so we could have asked Heller about this claim). October 7th was the worst day for Jews since the Holocaust. Jews felt humiliated, not protected. He is no fan of Bibi. He discussed how Israel, led by Bibi, strengthened Hamas and weakened the PA in order to stop any talk of a two state solution. Bibi is all about diagnosing the problem without coming up with any solutions. He is upset that Bibi is taking no responsibility. While discussing Senator
Schumer comments, he says Bibi has no right to complain about anyone getting into Israeli politics and gave many examples of Bibi getting involved in US politics. He disagrees with Heller about needing to go into Rafah. Wishes war would end soon. Both agreed that a cease fire agreement would essentially end the war. Bibi is going to great lengths to change the narrative in Israel to discuss a two state solution rather than about the war. Pinkas also discussed the American-Israeli relationship and how it was not always such a cozy relationship. The relationship started getting better because of American global political reasons and with the end of America’s reliance on oil, the relationship with Middle East is changing. The US is focusing more on China.
We then drove to Modi’in to the community of Kehillat Yozma for Havdalah and Megillah reading. Rabbi Fersko helped lead the Havdalah service. The Megillah reading was well done. They had many different readers, including two from Stephen Wise. While most of the reading/singing was in Hebrew, Rabbi Nir Barkin did a great job explaining the story in English, especially since some of the readers went off script. It was so much fun watching all the different styles of reading and singing. One of the readers was wearing a Garden State parkway shirt. She was introduced as being from New Jersey, she said “don’t ask me what exit?”
Today was a nice introduction to the week ahead. It is clear that Israelis are not ready to discuss the day after. They are still traumatized by October 7. There had been a lot of debate whether they should celebrate Purim, in the end the show must go on (at least in Tel Aviv) and it was so great to see and participate in the celebrations on the streets of Tel Aviv. .
David Friedman