The problem with the New York Times is that it has deferred to authority figures on Gaza. Benny Morris, Jeffrey Goldberg, Tom Friedman, Oz or Yehoshua (who can remember?). That's unfortunate. It should be running the pieces of people who are on the ground, who can tell you what Gaza is doing now to Palestinians and to Israelis and to the American Jewish family. That is why this London Review of Books piece by Yonatan Mendel is so important. LRB is alive to this moment as a news organization; its forum on Gaza grows by the day, and it is not interested in bloody status.
Mendel is just a grad student at Queens College, Cambridge, and a former IDF soldier and a journalist in Israel. But in this beautiful piece, he describes the soul-rot that occupation and militarism have produced in Israel and in Jewish identity. It is the best piece I've seen yet on Israeli society in this crisis. Samples:
I have problems speaking to my closest friends and family these days, because I can no longer bear to hear the security establishment’s propaganda coming from their mouths. I cannot bear to hear people justifying the deaths of more than 200 children killed by Israeli soldiers. There is no justification for that, and it’s wrong to try to find one. Usually I feel part of society in Israel. I feel that I am on one side of the political map and other people are on the opposite side. But over the last few days, I feel that I am not part of this society any more. I do not call friends who support the war, and they do not call me. The same with my family. It is a hard thing for me to write, but this is how it is.
Jewish civil war, indeed. I think Philip the Wise has really coined a phrase here, an important one.
Understanding pain:
Yonatan Mendel, I salute you.
And thank you again Eva.
here's more from Yonatan Mendel:
I have a friend whose brother is a pilot in the IDF. I asked to speak to him. I told him what I thought about Israel’s behaviour and he seemed to agree with my general conclusions. He said, however, that a soldier should not ask himself such questions, which should be kept to the political sphere. I can’t agree. But the second thing he told me was more important. He told me that for pilots, a day like the first day of the war, when so many attacks are being made simultaneously, is a day full of excitement, a day you look forward to. If you take these words into account, and bear in mind that in Israel every man is a soldier, either in uniform or in reserve, there is no avoiding the conclusion that there are great pressures for it to act as a military society. Not acting is damaging to the IDF’s status, budget, masculinity, power and happiness, and not only to the IDF’s. This could explain why in Israel the military option is almost never considered second best. It is always the first choice.