The good, the bad, and the horrifying

Before I share with you the inspiring event I attended last night, I want to first update you about my friend Yara from Deir Al Balach. If you’ve been following my posts, you know that she has been almost without food since February, living on bits of rice that her family has been able to pay for despite exorbitant prices. (She always tells me how lucky she feels that her family has some resources, so she is not starving 100%, just like 70-80%.) The good news is that some food trucks started to reach her last week. The bad news is that IDF bombs have reached her as well.

When the IDF talks about “conquering” parts of Gaza, this is what it means. Yara and her family are surrounded by endless bombings and killings with no end in sight. We are killing people. Actual people. Actual human beings. That fact always seems to get lost in public announcements about the war and military “actions” or whatever. The people. We are talking about bombing people and destroying the lives of people.

Every day, dozens of Palestinians in Gaza are killed trying to get food. The IDF and its partners regularly shoot at the starving crowds. And it is now official that Israel has created famine in Gaza.

Israel’s response, rather than take responsibility and commit to change, continues to call the whole world liars and antisemites. It’s the same old diversion tactic. It’s just a knee-jerk PR response, one that we should be deeply shamed about. I feel pretty certain that history will ultimately shame us. I just wish our leaders understood how terrible their own actions and words are, how much damage they are causing not only the Palestinians but also Israelis and Jews. I realize a historic public shaming is not as bad as what the Gazans are going through. Still, it’s just one more item in the list of Netanyahu’s utter lack of empathy and humanity.

Today, the IDF bombed a hospital that also killed five reporters and seven first responders, including this young reporter, Maryam Abu Daqqa. Israel has killed 240 reporters in this war, and Reporters Without Borders describes this war as among the deadliest in recorded history for media workers.

I don’t know how we all continue to go about our daily lives in this reality. A columnist in Ynet wrote today that Israelis are becoming numb to death and killing…. So much…..

I was chatting with Yara via whatsapp on Friday when suddenly she wrote, “I can’t speak now. Stay safe!”

I was thinking, Oh no… YOU stay safe!

I have been very worried about what she is going through.

Finally today she wrote to me that she is okay, more or less, with endless bombing around her, and she had no internet for a while….

When our leaders talk about their own actions using vague, sanitized words like, “military action” or “offensive” or “pushing forward”, they mask the real, underlying human implications of what they are doing.

Death. We are talking about death and killing. We should say those words.

According to the IDF’s own records as reported by +972 Magazine, the IDF knows that 83% of the Palestinians they killed in this war were innocent. They know this. We are doing this.

And there’s more.

Raviv Drucker, one of Israel’s leading investigative journalists, spent months looking at the hostage negotiations since October 7. His team spent thousands of hours examining what went wrong. And what he found — well, we knew a lot of this already but it’s worse. People deep inside Netanyahu’s government, his army chiefs, his top negotiators, American officials, all said the same thing: Bibi Netanyahu is consistently and purposefully sabotaging the hostage negotiations time and again.

Us. Israel. We are the ones keeping the hostages from getting home.

There was a deal on the table on October 10, 2023. Three days in. Netanyahu didn’t even look at it.

In those first months, Hamas was offering a deal of 3 to 1: releasing 3 Hamas prisoners for each hostage. Israel refused.

Months later, the price went up. 20 to 1. 50 to 1. Israel refused.

Today, there are no hostage negotiations happening. Despite 2.5 million Israelis protesting last week demanding an end to all this. Despite millions of protesters around the world demanding the same thing.

Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t care. He never has. He has never cared about the hostages. Just so we understand this. His own people say this on air: Gadi Eizenkot, Yoav Gallant, his negotiating team, they all say the same thing. Bibi Netanyahu did not want to get the hostages back. He just wanted war.

Oh, and another thing the investigation found, which we already knew: Netanyahu lied. Lies. All the time. He says one thing in public and another in private. There is a complete disconnect between what the public is told and what is actually happening. Over and over again. Netanyahu lies like he breathes.

Just so we understand.

And one more thing: The American diplomats that Drucker interviewed also expressed extreme frustration with Netanyahu. But also, they admitted that they never really pushed him. They admitted that they never went to Hamas with their own proposals. The only proposals they ever offered were ones that Netanyahu had already approved, which was very limiting. And even more limiting considering how often he would then move the goalposts. All the time.

Gadi Eizenkot, who eventually broke with Netanyahu over all this, said something really interesting. He said that the problem here is that America doesn’t have a Kissinger — that is, someone who is willing to go running back and forth between the sides to try to get them to agree to something that he is putting forward. The Americans never did that. They never pushed Netanyahu (or Hamas, apparently) beyond their comfort zones. They never came up with their own plan and pressured all parties. They were always bound by Bibi.

And here we are.

I thought that explained a lot.

Anyway, if your Hebrew is good enough, or if you have the ability to create English subtitles, I highly recommend watching this program.

Even though, I would add that the program is entirely from an Israeli perspective. Drucker also uses very sanitized language about the war, accepting army narratives about military “goals” without ever addressing the implications of those decisions on Gazans. So there’s that…

Tellingly, every single person interviewed for Drucker’s story, as well as every single person involved with the decision making around the war — on ALL sides, including Israel, Hamas, Qatar, Egypt, and the United States — they all have one thing in common.

They are all men.

Only men.

The people making the same stupid decisions are exclusively men. Stupid, inhuman, and ineffective decisions time and again.

It continues to astound me how much men in power seem to prefer their seats to doing the right thing.

Not all, of course. Eizenkot walked away, for example…

Still, I’m looking at all these people, all these men with fancy titles and big platforms and cameras shining on them, and I’m thinking to myself, “You’re all failures.”

All these men. All these arrogant, big-shot, big-salaried men who have failed all of us. Big fat failures. They are still running things. Still collecting their checks and sitting in their big seats and still calling the shots. Still, despite all their ignorant, abhorrant cruelty.

And here we are.

Some days, I feel like I’m losing my mind.

I had this experience yesterday. Bear with me for a sec. I was riding the bus in Tel Aviv, and for the entire ride, the man in the seat in front of me was talking to the woman he was with. I would like to say that they were having a conversation, but in reality he did 98% of the talking. His back was to me, but the woman was facing me, and I could see her nodding along politely, even though this guy did not stop talking. Not for one second. He didn’t ask her a question. He didn’t take any interest in her at all. He was just rambling on and on about whatever came into his brain. An endless spray of meaningless brain poop. And I was thinking to myself, “Why doesn’t she tell him the truth? Why doesn’t she say to him, ‘Hey, bud, do you mind shutting up because I am losing my mind from sheer boredom? Can you please just stop talking?” Had my ride been a few minutes longer, there is a chance I would have said that myself.

And that’s when I realized. We all do this. The women of the world collectively do this all the time. We smile politely at men saying stupid shit, all the time. We do it because we were taught to be polite, to not rock the boat or make a scene, to not make other people feel bad. We were trained since the moment we could talk to not talk too much or too loud or take up too much space. Give respect. Look sweet. Be perky. And never, ever, ever let them see you get mad. NEVER! The worst thing a woman can do is be mad.

How many times have I been told to change my tone because people don’t like my so-called tone? It doesn’t matter what I’m saying. If I don’t say it with a gentle sweet perkiness, there will always be someone telling me I’m talking wrong. They’ll say they can’t hear me if I am too loud, too aggressive, too knowledgable, too authoritative? If I dare “sound” angry even if I’m NOT angry. When I speak from a place of knowledge, I get called out for sounding “angry”.

“If you want people to be able to hear you, you need to change your tone.”

HOW MANY TIMES in my life have I been told that? I was even told that recently in a room full of women because I stood up before I spoke and offered knowledge, experience, and authority. One of the younger women in the meeting said, “It’s a shame that all the women here sound like men when they talk.” That actually just happened, a few weeks ago, in a room full of women. (Yeah, I know….)

Don’t sound angry. Don’t rock the boat. Be nice. be polite.

And if I’ve been told that, I’m sure millions of other women have, too.

And yesteday it all just hit me: We have been giving men free pass to speak shit and run the world based on their shitty ideas because we are afraid of sounding angry and then therefore not being heard.

But here’s the kicker: THEY ARE NOT LISTENING TO US ANYWAY!

The powerful men of the world making all these terrible decisions are not listening to women anyway, whether we are super-polite or super-impolite.

So might as well speak your truth.

I’m angry. I’m SO ANGRY. About this war. About the killing. About the political exploitation. About men with power doing terrible things in the world. SO VERY VERY VERY VERY ANGRY.

I decided yesterday, after getting off that annoying bus where the dumb guy wouldn’t shut up and the nice woman kept nodding politely:
NO MORE. I’m not hiding my anger anymore.

Actually, maybe I arrived here a while ago.

Sorry if you can’t hear me anymore over my anger. Well, sorry not sorry…

But I am sorry if you are a man and offended by my comments here. Obviously #notallmen. Obviously there are some nice men in the world. They are just not the ones in charge of making the most important decisions right now about life, death, and humanity….. But if you happen to be a good man with some position of power, I would urge you to use your power to pressure the men that you know to make better decisions for humanity….

Anyhoo…..

Nevertheless she persisted.

Interestingly, the reason I was on the bus to begin with was to attend an event that was incredibly beautiful and inspiring and left me with hope for the future. The event was a book launch of the anthology by Ghadir Hani, Women Write Hope, that came out this week in English. I interviewed Ghadir for my podcast recently. Ghadir is a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Akko, and a leading peace activist in Israel. She is on the leadership of Standing Together that hosted last night’s event, as well as of Women Wage Peace.

Ghadir was very good friends with Vivian Silver who was killed on October 7 in her home in Beeri. (I also recently interviewed Vivian’s son, Yonatan Zeiger, on my podcast.)

So last night was the book launch at “The Purple House”, the Standing Together center in Tel Aviv. The speakers, along with Ghadir, were Rula Daood, co-director of Standing Together, and Adina Bar Shalom, daughter of the late Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and herself a peace activist.

I had the great privilege of speaking with Adina Bar Shalom and Ghadir Hani before the event. They are good friends and do some wonderful work together. Adina shared, for example, that at her father’s memorial service in the haredi town of Elad, she brought 50 haredi women peace activists and 50 Muslim women peace activists where they sat together and talked. She is very committed to peace and shared society.

Adina Bar Shalom told me this story: She said that the reason why she became a peace activist was because of what happened in 1994 when her father, the late Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and founder of Shas, decided to vote in favor of the Oslo Accords. As a result of him voting in favor, she said, the religious Zionist community made her family’s lives miserable. They camped out around her family house day and night, and she said they did really ugly things, like pouring fake blood on the stairs and calling her father a murderer. And she says that her mother was sick at the time. Her mother was 67 years old and she had a weak heart, and begged these religious Zionist activists-terrorists to stop. But they wouldn't. The family explained that the mother had a weak heart and this was hurting her. But they didn't. And in fact, during these events, she had a heart attack and died a few months later as a result. "I don't forgive them," Adina Bar Shalom said. She says that the religious zionist zealots around her house killed her mother. And it was that event that she says made her decide to become a peace advocate. Like her father, she says.

I asked Adina Bar Shalom, given that backdrop, what she thinks of religious Zionism today. "It's not religious and it's not Zionism," she said.....

In this clip, she explains that shared society is a Jewish value. We, Jews, were never intended to torture and oppress the people who live here. We were told 36 times to treat the people living here with humanity, dignity, and respect -- the same way we want to be treated.

And so she dedicates her life to peace and shared society. Along with her friend Ghadir Hani.

I was like, wow....

Where there’s life there’s hope. Ghadir Hani and Adina Bar Shalom give me hope.

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