Yesterday (Saturday, 7 Oct 2023), my wife woke me at about 6:30 am - "Wake up, there are booms outside" [booms in this context is the sound and pressure wave of a missile falling to the ground]. We turned on the television and saw the unpleasant and automatic messages from the Home Guard, showing where missiles were falling and where inhabitants had to get to air raid shelters or their internal security room. At first the locations were only settlements near the Gaza border, but slowly more and more targets appeared, further and further away from the border. As our bedroom doubles as the security room, we stayed where we were, but I closed the steel shutters to the window.
We saw that the locations were getting closer and closer to where we live and eventually the local sirens went off. At the same time, the list of locations included Jerusalem, a location that one would not expect to be targeted (what would happen should a missile fall on East Jerusalem, or worse, on one of the holy sites?). I have no idea of how much damage the 1,500 rockets fired at Israel caused, although I suspect that it was relatively little and that the barrage was more like covering fire.
By this time, the television news company had got its act together and had started broadcasting properly with correspondents situated at various locations. It was then that we heard that the enemy had overrun and occupied at least two kibbutzim near the border. The residents - my spiritual brothers and sisters - were all sitting tight in their security rooms, but this was an event that had not occurred since 1948 when a few kibbutzim were similarly overrun during the war of independence. There were some heartbreaking conversations between the television anchor and frightened kibbutz members hiding in their houses and playing possum. Each kibbutz has a primary reaction force composed of members, and these were trying to engage the enemy, with varying degress of success.
At the same time, filtering in were the first reports about an outdoor festival (what the British would call a rave) that inexplicably had been situated in the same general area. The enemy had arrived at this site and were shooting people; the festival participants had all run away, trying to get away from the enemy and in the hope of finding some shelter. Some survived, some were killed and some were taken prisoner.
Videos (filmed by the enemy) began to be shown of how they managed to breach the border wall, how they were strutting down the streets of Sderot and Ofakim (towns situated about 30 km from the border) and most painful of all, a Palestinian news reporter giving a summary whilst standing in a kibbutz; behind him could be seen enemies looting houses and storage areas, taking anything that came to hand.
All this time, more and more missiles were raining down on the south of Israel. The number of deaths began to rise and rise - 10 dead, 20 dead, 50 dead, 100 dead - along with an even greater number of injured people. One number that was never shown, primarily because of its negative affect on morale but also because it was simply unknown, was the number of prisoners - both soldiers and civilians - taken.
By nightfall, the situation had changed somewhat. There were very few rocket launches after about 4pm, but at 8pm - primary news time - again a huge barrage was fired, causing damage in cities around Tel Aviv. The air force had got its act together and was shooting at enemies trying to return to the Gaza strip along with the more familiar site of tall buildings (that house enemy headquarters) in Gaza being destroyed. Reserves had been called up and deployed at various locations, trying to free hostages and remove enemy forces.
Inevitably comparisons have been made between now and 50 years ago, the Yom Kippur war. Staring us in the face is the complete surprise and lack of intelligence; as the commentators say, this concerted and coordinated attack must have been planned and rehearsed for months, if not years, yet Israel "was caught with her trousers down". On the other hand, there is no comparison at all: then the battlefields were nowhere near civilian locations (especially in the south), and whilst some settlements were threatened on the northern front, the civilian population was never at risk. Yesterday the battlefields were kibbutzim and towns, with rockets raining down on the civilian population.
In the late afternoon, we heard about approaches made by the leaders of the two major opposition parties in the Knesset to join forces with the Likud party and form a time limited emergency government that could make rational and professional decisions about running this war. One leader indicated that the more extreme members of the government would have to leave (mentioning no names but we all know who he was talking about) whereas the other did not mention this. All other legislation would be put aside for the time being. Netanyahu cannot refuse.
The colossal damage that extremist politicans have caused in the past nine months may have given our enemies the impression that Israel has been torn apart by internal forces and that she is weaker, but in times of war, we are all united.
It is now 7:52 am on Sunday morning, 8 Oct 2023. I have just received a much-copied WhatsApp message saying that General No'am Tibon [a son of Tzora - NN] aged 62, an anarchist who demonstrates every weekend in Tel Aviv, drove from Tel Aviv in order to rescue his grandchildren who have been hiding without movement for 10 hours in Kibbutz Nahal Oz [a border kibbutz]. On his way, he picked up four soldiers, formed a squad, then staged a battle with five terrorists who were in the home [presumably where his grandchildren were]. He freed the children then drove home. A privileged person. [A fuller and more accurate version of this story, albeit in Hebrew, can be found here.]
This last sentence is extremely sarcastic as one of the epithets hurled at the opponents of the destruction of the judicial system is "Privileged person" - those who had life easy by growing up in a kibbutz and having doors opened for them in later life because they are white and educated... and ignoring the fact that almost all such privileged people served in the army and many reached high ranks. These are the true patriots.
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | Bar mitzva | Bar mitzva | |
| 205 | The girl who played with fire | Literature, Steig Larsson | |
| 292 | Misinformation | ERP | |
| 890 | How the mind works | Psychology, David Lodge | |
| 1429 | DBA: Pilot study 2 | DBA |
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