That Photo....

 I'm going to begin with three paragraphs I wrote at the end of the first week:

"There will be atrocities committed by Israel. Period. They will be dreadful and malevolent. They will challenge everything we ever thought we knew about Israel. They will not be what Hamas just did, and yet everyone we know will tell us that they're worse.

... In moments of rage Israeli soldiers may commit massacres of a dozen civilians, even a few dozen, but there will not be a single night in which 1300 were butchered with complete intention as a public statement of barbarity: everyone from genocide survivors to babies. Israel has cut off all supplies and aid to Gaza. Thousands of wounded may die for lack of medical care and starve for lack of food, but what is Israel supposed to do when Hamas will hoard all the aid and distribute it as rewards for service and compliance? There will be cellphone captures of the murders most brutal, but can anything Israel do be as brutal as a kidnapping one-hundred-fifty people (it turned out to be 240) of all ages with the possible intent to murder them on live television?

And yet friends the world over will push us to draw moral equivalence, and push, and push, until the yelling and the insults start, then the green lines in the sand that everyone crosses."

15,000 dead. I don't know if it's true, but if it is then it's... It's... it's... well it's war, but that doesn't make me any less nauseous. And if that number doesn't make you nauseous too, you've lost what makes you human.

I want to make something very clear: at no point did I say that I supported a ground invasion. A ground invasion was inevitable, and there was no point in strenuously opposing it, but I only supported a ground invasion so long as Netanyahu is gone as Prime Minister. He's not yet, and may never be. If you're going to kill 15,000 people in two months, the end had better be a good one, and no good end is even likely right now.

So far, the best we can hope for is the status quo. Israel goes in once every five years to uproot the latest generation of terror, with all the blood and horror that brings. To do that, you don't need a fifteen year PM aching to exploit a war for a chance to stay in power forever.

Only 19% of Israelis want him to stay, but how do the 81% get rid of him? Bibi doesn't have to call elections until 2026. If elections were held today, Benny Gantz's party would get 1/3rd of the seats and form a governing coalition very easily. Gantz is one of the most decorated soldiers in Israeli history, and no 'Greater Israel' right-winger, but if he leaves the National Unity government, he deserts Israel in its hour of greatest need and his whole appeal goes with him.

Before October 7, Netanyahu was at the head of a very VERY fractious coalition with a slim majority. The way he got it? He was virtually the most left-wing, scrupulous member of his governing coalition. So long as there is no more right wing politician than Bibi capable of putting together a coalition, I see no way Bibi leaves.

Every Jew I know says not to worry, that Bibi's career is over, that Bibi is so hated that the country will get rid of him, but how?

It took a full year to depose Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur War started on her watch (five major Arab countries invaded Israel simultaneously on Yom Kippur, 1973). The difference is that Golda was at the head of the 'Alignment', a coalition of two parties, either of which could bolt. In 1973, there had never been a right wing prime minister, and she could easily have been replaced by Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon or Abba Eban. They were all flawed, many of them had significant roles in the Yom Kippur failure, but they all had the governing experience to do the job. Bibi has switched cabinet ministers so many times that is there even a right wing replacement with the experience to call themself competent?

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I don't think there is a single person who could look at those photos of Gazans in their underwear and not think of Abu Ghraib. We don't know the context of the photo. We don't know who these men are. We don't know what was the security precaution invoked, if any.

We're told they were being taken for mass questioning, but they are at the edge of a small cliff, as though at the precipice of a mass grave. I'm sure others thought of Abu Ghraib, I thought of Srebrenica, a town where 8.500 Bosnian men were killed en masse as a brutal, senseless act of revenge.

It was probably a demoralization tactic. Israel is much too practical to kill men they need for questioning, even Netanyahu's Israel, but these are the sorts of photos and videos that Gaza will start to hemorrhage. They will shake us all, make life more and more difficult for Jews, and make friendships with those who oppose Israel's actions that much harder.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Jewish life, where every action is futile and moral ambiguity sweats from out life's pours.

The goal at the end of all this, the eventuality we most need prevent, the justification for all this striving to survive is....

We'll do it another night. It's late.