Headlines and deadlines

Until midday, I doubted I had anything to write about this week. In an idle moment, the title, “headlines and deadlines,” struck me. They were the only things I had time to consider this week, preoccupied with my own deadline. (I told you, it’s mostly life as usual here in central Israel.)

Headlines flash across my screen when I switch from Word to Excel, sometimes clicked to save for later reading. Headlines alluding to deadlines for deals with Hamas, for saving our hostages, for recruiting soldiers from ultra-Orthodox society against the will of their rabbinic and political leaders. My thoughts divert to my pressing deadline to be met – by Tuesday. But headlines make you think morbidly of unstated times – deadlines for the lives of others.

Hostages for whom a delayed deal and postponed deadline could be critical. I refrain from anything but positive thoughts for the lives of the living because of Efrat, my friend. Her uncle, Gadi Moses is still held hostage. He is 80 years old. He is. When we speak intermittently, or text message over the best copy writing for a phrase translated from Hebrew to English in a publication bearing witness to the massacre at her uncle’s kibbutz, Nir Oz, on October 7, Efrat’s hope is conveyed with conviction. I know, I too, must convey that hope because he must be saved. For all the hostages, everyone, in some little way must pray, or write, publish, protest, whisper to the universe, #BringThemHomeNow.

Innocent people, residents of Gaza, surviving in designated humanitarian aid space must worry us too.

Headlines, even from the week before, with stories still open on my screen, unread. They become old news and I close the tab. Haim and I superficially discuss what I miss reading. Another story about Iran funding the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on US campuses and throughout the world. A US agency gives its report. I get it – or totally don’t – that somebody is trying to tell us in Israel, Americans, the western world, that if Iranian control is not put in check, you will all have to understand yet another message that penetrated my preoccupied mind watching the Friday night news: We can stop calling Hezbollah and the Houthis terrorists. They are the armies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Perhaps Hamas too. It all aligns in my mind, and yet I know that I am also subject to the programming of media outlets I can still choose as my sources. Still.

So, what exactly should I fear? What should I fear most? Asking for a friend.

School dropouts. It takes little imagination to know what happens to dropouts and the societies they live in. When people are evacuated from their homes – because they survived in them when their neighbors burned to death next door, or because of threats of similar circumstances in the north – it takes a while for the education system to reorganize and accommodate. It takes a while to place the kids, most likely not anxious to go to a new school or a temporary school. Parents emotionally drained struggling to function whether their professional occupations and places of employment are still functional or not, struggle to keep their kids on track. It’s summer vacation and the prospects for September are not promising.

Scraps of what I have read, fragments of what I have thought. Presuming I am way off-track whenever I presume to analyze.

Republicans pushing Bibi to keep pushing the deadlines and adding new terms and conditions to closing the deal to release the hostages. In Israel’s interest, or theirs – war, in any case is not in the interest of the sanctity of human life. How many more soldiers will sacrifice their lives?

Once I meet my upcoming deadline, I have another more flexible deadline – to finish translating documents for the Rabin Center website. Some on my desktop await translation, or proofreading – speeches from 1993, 1994, 1995 in Washington, at the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony, in the Knesset. If you read Hebrew, I recommend reading them in the original. His militarism resonates in his message of peace, but it is the latter. It is patronizing at times, but he’s a politician. Through the lens of the current reality and Israeli leadership, most striking is his reasoning. He repeatedly insists that Israel’s hand was always extended in peace, although soldiers had to be trained and armed to protect us when we were met with attack. Despite my acknowledgement of Israeli acts of aggression in the years prior to Rabin’s peace agreements with Jordan and with the PLO, somehow, I could still be convinced that Israel was interested in peace in those years. Yes, mixed messages. You educate for peace but remind people to be on their guard in the face of their enemy. Nevertheless, it seems the balance of that time has long been replaced by another.

Subsequent governments and prime ministers, one in particular, altered those balances and let the tones of the ink that signed the agreements fade. Deadlines redefined. Terrorism and military incursions. Responsibility. Theirs. Ours.

But that was then. Today, Israel allegedly eliminated Mohammed Deif. Not a tear will I shed for him. Yet, again, when it was announced that this was the successful result of an IDF air raid, I could only ask how many innocent Gazan children were killed.

Yes, I heard how many Hamas terrorists were killed with Deif. It happened in a location designated for Gazans uprooted from their homes, for humanitarian aid and protection. That human shield rhetoric and when it is applied. But Deif.

I added in our family WhatsApp group that I wonder about the innocent children. No reaction. What is there to say? It’s just that I wonder if they agree, or refrain from responding to avoid arguing the point with those hollow arguments about wars and their costs. I think about wars and their costs and who decides about others paying them – on both sides.

The news about Deif was immediately followed by media coverage of family members of hostages in Gaza. Nobody is shedding a tear over Deif. They just want the prime minister to assure them this will not lead to yet another setback in negotiations towards the release of hostages.

Of course, that goes with a ceasefire. If Hamas had agreed to relaxing its demands for the terms of the ceasefire, will Deif’s elimination result in a change on that stand? Should we, in central Israel, be prepared for rockets heading our way from Gaza tonight and in the days and nights ahead? And of course, in the region close to Gaza and the northern region under constant attack by Hezbollah, should we expect escalation?

I’ll check the headlines before I go to sleep. I’ll check the headlines when I wake up in the morning. I’ll meet my deadline by the middle of the week. But will soldiers and civilians, hostages, old men who could have years yet to live, children who could yet recover – will they make it to the lines that must be drawn?

Harriet Gimpel, July 13, 2024