Just back from another funeral, this one a bit up north, so it took most of the day. This will be brief.
And as for the video above, we’ll refer to it at the end.
The headline in the screenshot below reminded me of a conversation that I hadn’t thought about in ages. Many years ago, when our daughter and now son-in-law had just gotten engaged, we were seated around the Shabbat table. He was in the army at the time, fairly high up in the intelligence world. Something or other was going in Israel at the time, and I guess the conversation got a bit heavy. Someone must have said something about “if we survive.”
I don’t remember that comment, but I do remember our son-in-law’s response. They were recently engaged, so he was feeling a bit more comfortable saying what he thought (as in, it was too late to take my daughter back 😜). He listened, and then he said, nicely but clearly:
I actually don’t know what you’re talking about. This sounds like such a Diaspora conversation. What do you mean ‘If we survive’? No one who was not alive during the first days of the Yom Kippur War has ever lived a single moment when Israel’s survival was question.
Intifada? Blow up busses? Blow up restaurants? They can cause unimaginable suffering and grief, but they can’t put boots on the ground. And without boots on the ground, what can they do? You can’t defeat a country by blowing up its buses and cafes.
What made the impression on me, of course, was (a) the remark about a Diaspora mentality, which he rightly suggested we had not yet shed, and (b) the claim that Palestinian terror organizations were a horrible menace, but not an existential one.
Not anymore. See the headline below. Netanyahu, Gantz, Halevi (Chief of Staff), Gallant (Minister of Defense) are all saying it—we’re fighting for our lives.
Pogroms were a Diaspora thing? Now they’re not.
Palestinian terror groups were savages who couldn’t put real boots on the ground?
Now, that’s not true, either. And yes, we’re fighting to stay alive.
Today, we focus on the Home Front, what’s happening away from the battles, because that’s as much of the Israel story today, and it’s what’s being covered in the press much less.
BROTHERS IN ARMS … AGAIN
Remember the “Brothers in Arms”? They were the leaders of the protest movement until a week ago. There were many groups who were part of the movement; “Brothers in Arms” was the group of combat veterans (an enormous group, as you can imagine).
The screenshot from 60 Minutes is only so you’ll recognize their logo.
Now, the video below. At the height of the protest movement, it was a highly tech-led movement, with rapid communications capacity able to instruct protesters as to where to go, whom to protest, etc. They could get people to any intersection in the country in a matter of minutes. They hounded and hounded and largely brought the judicial reform mostly to a halt.
They were accused, of course, of not being patriots. They were accused of being spoiled lefties (by people who had never done a fraction of what they’ve done for the country, of course). They were accused of not being Zionists.
Well, the protests are obviously not happening. But the movement still has the ability to get people places. So, with the government unable to tend to all the families of the 150 or people now held in captivity, and the many more missing-probably-dead, the protest movement has used its reach to create command centers.
Below is one of the centers where a total of some 2000 volunteers are working to address each case, with each family. The audio of the video doesn’t matter (it’s about where to put the chairs). Note the logo on the shirt of the guy at the very end, running the show. Recognize it?
It was fine to disagree about judicial reform. Reasonable minds could and did differ.
What was not fine was to sit in the Diaspora, or even in Israel, and to label these people non-patriots. Or spoiled. Or sore election losers.
Those who wrote that would do well to apologize. Don’t hold your breath.
There are endless lines of people waiting to give blood (it’s a several hour wait, we were told today). There are funerals everywhere. What are we short of? Gravediggers, it turns out.
So what does the Bnai Akiva (religious) youth group have its young, high school aged kids do? They’re helping to dig graves. (Zoom in if you need to.)
Just like high school kids everywhere, right?
THE FACE OF RAW COURAGE
The Home Front was made of something different even during the pogrom, before the war.
This is Inbal Liberman. You can read her story below.
What you’re looking at is the face of raw courage.
She’s 25-years-old. She has been the security coordinator of Kibbutz Nir Am since December 2022. She heard explosions early Shabbat morning, according to Walla News, among other accounts.
The kibbutz is on the Gaza border, not far from Sderot, so she’s heard lots of sounds, and she knows what she knows. She realized that the sounds were different than those heard during the usual rocket attacks on the kibbutz — located near Sderot and a stone’s throw from the Gaza Strip.
So over the objections of the higher-ups, who told her she was over-reacting, she unlocked the arms storage, gave guns to the kibbutz’ kitat konnenut (volunteer security team) and took charge.
She placed her people in specific places around the kibbutz. When the terrorists arrived, this was the kibbutz that was ready. Over the course of a vicious gun battle that lasted hours, the Hebrew press reported, the armed civilians killed more than twenty-five attackers; Inbal, herself, killed five of them.
According to the post above, it was Nir Am, where a 25 year old woman took charge, that was the only kibbutz in the area without casualties.
If you’re just joining us, Israel from the Inside typically posts a written column on Mondays and a podcast on Wednesdays. That is obviously irrelevant for the time being.
We’ve delayed all the podcasts that were ready to go, because the people whose stories they tell deserve to tell them when we all have the bandwidth to hear. Hopefully, that will return some day.
In the interim, we’ll post as possible. Here in Israel, there are non-stop funerals to go to, shiva homes to visit, grandchildren to help care for while sons and daughters are in the army, so we’ll see.
Schedules are the least of our worries.
THE FUTURE OF POLITICS
After days of people accusing the government officials of not visiting hospitals, not visiting families, not being visible, they’ve started to respond. MK Idit Silman (of the Likud Party at present, but she’s hopped around, and she was the MK whose switched loyalties brought down the Lapid-Bennet government) decided to visit Asaf Harofeh Hospital, which is situated between the airport and the Gaza border.
As you can see above, the visit did not go very well.
Behind the massive volunteering efforts and a sense of national resilience you feel everywhere, there is seething rage. The incident at the hospital entrance is but one of many that are being shared on Israeli social media.
At the funeral I attended this morning, the family made a point of noting—more than once—that they had been told that a member of the coalition would be attending. They told the many hundreds of us assembled that they’d told whoever contacted them that under no circumstances would a member of coalition be permitted to attend, and if they did, s/he would be chased out. “They divided this country, they destroyed this country, and now their actions led to these young people’s deaths,” one speaker said.
I’ve been to many, many Israeli funerals over the years. And I’ve never, ever heard politics in eulogies before.
It’s a new era. And that sentiment is the sentiment of more than a few. Prepare for the political earthquake—though what it will look like, no one can possibly know.
Walking up the long dusty road at the kibbutz from the parking lot to the cemetery, which was a decent hike away, the uncontrolled sobbing of a young woman, being comforted by a group of female soldiers, pierced the air. It was heartrending. Everyone could hear it, and everyone wished they couldn’t.
I was walking with a friend, among a crowd of many hundreds, and realized, of course, that similar scenes were unfolding at dozens, if not hundreds, of other places in Israel today. How many funerals to you have a day if you need to bury 1200 people as quickly as possible (though many are not yet ID’s, so it will take time).
There was something different in the crowd today, and something different in the eulogies. (A very, very secular funeral.) Yes, people spoke about protecting the state. But they also spoke about the Jewish people. A lot.
We are burying 1200 people this week not because they were Israelis. We’re burying them because they were Jews.
The babies shot were butchered because they were Jews.
The Holocaust survivors killed were killed because they were Jews.
The grandmother who was shot at point blank range and was lying in a pool of her own blood—when a Hamas terrorist took her phone, video’ed the scene and uploaded it to HER Facebook page, which is how her grandchildren found out what had happened to her—wasn’t killed because she was Israeli.
Everyone here knows that they were killed because they were Jews. The soldiers are now dying because the attack was on Jews.
Somebody sent me this illustration, but I don’t know where he found it.
What Israelis—left and right, religious and secular, young and old, Jewish and Druze, immigrants and native—are saying to the “I’m counting on you” is
Don’t you worry. This time, the outcome is going to be very, very different.
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Mr Gordis, please please please cut out the politics. At this moment in time we do not need to hear about coalitions and parties and heroes of the left and demons of the right . You are continuing to divide your readers into good people and bad people. Yes, believe it or not we are not all Kaplan Force sympathizers. It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to read your blog, which is so slanted. That was barely tolerable when all you wrote about was political battles, but we have real battles to fight now. I have so many young friends being called up to the army and some are in Nahal and already on the Gaza border. Can you please give the attacks on the Likud and the coalition a rest and save your attacks for Hamas? We hope and pray that there will be plenty of time after the war is won to debate where to place blame and fault. For the love of G-d and our soldiers, enough already.
Anyone who has followed Israel from the Inside for any length of time knows that Daniel cares above all about providing a platform for presenting the full range of political, religious, cultural and ethnic voices in Israeli society today. That you fail to see this says more about your political position than Daniel's. I cannot think of any other forum that represents the rich fabric of Israel so fairly and comprehensively.
Please don’t cut out the politics, Mr. Gordis. There is no way to understand what is happening right now without including the domestic realities.
David, I'm sorry you feel that way. I have been subscribing to the blog since its inception and have read his books. At first Gordis was very even-handed, but in the past few months the bias of his personal political stance and choice of guest interviewees has become abundantly clear. I would hardly agree that the blog posts since Netanyahu was re-elected have been balanced. The anti-Bibi sentiment is as evident as the anti-Trump sentiment in the US. I am not saying Gordis does not have a right to have a personal opinion (and I hope you feel that way, too, including as pertains to my opinions). I am saying that there is a time and place for everything but this is not the time for political bickering, including subtle jibes, recriminations, and accusations. We must all unite against the common enemy and leave the politics for another day.
There are some good things in here, but Daniel, you are ruining your brand. You used to report on the politics while staying above it. Now you’ve let yourself become part of the politics. I think you’ll regret it.
I am new to your substack and just subscribed. Long Live Israel!
I just upgraded to paid. I don't have much but what I have I can contribute. Thank you for your work.
Welcome to the community, April.
Thank you !!!
Thank you for your illuminating and heartfelt essays - they are so valuable. I do feel that in the last few days your writing has gone too dark - it is very hard to read these graphic accounts. Please refocus on the wisdom you have and continue to share with your many admiring readers.
Am Yisrael Chai! Keep safe Daniel, you and your entire family and the whole of Israel. And thank you for finally enabling comments from readers on your substack.
Thank you very much for keeping me informed about what is happening with our proverbial brothers and sisters in Israel. My heart aches.
Thanks, trying to understand it all is impossible. My husband, an Israeli, watches Israeli TV and then comes in to explain. He is doing a fairly good job, but your clarification is so helpful. Thank you, again. I have thoroughly enjoyed your visits to Nevada and hope that some day those visits will continue.
I have no idea what this even means. I don't understand the words. Is there a thought here?