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:
military solution, after it has failed so many times. Hizbullah was
created in response to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Hamas
was created in 1987 in response to two decades of military occupation.
What do we think we’ll achieve this time?…
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.
