Hubris takes sides

Everybody is looking at the big picture. There’s a small picture too. We prepared our Friday family night dinner and put it in the car yesterday evening. By the time we got to Raanana – a 12-minute drive – where Haim’s daughter lives, his brother called to say Home Front instructions had changed. As it turned out, they had not yet changed for central Israel.

Haim’s daughter arrived at the same time we did, after picking up her 5^th grader from her weekly Scouts activity. She went to park with the 2-1/2-year-old, and we went upstairs with the food with the 1^st grader and the 5^th grader. I texted a religious friend knowing she might look at her WhatsApp account despite the fact that it was dark and already Shabbat, thinking she might prefer to be forewarned of the circumstances should retaliatory missiles attack during the night.

I told Haim, reporting an abridged version of my message, but bombing Beirut was clear. Suddenly, I saw our almost 10-year-old granddaughter standing by the kitchen with tears streaming down her face. I knew what she was thinking, and she said it. She was worried about her father on reserve duty in northern Israel. I hugged her and assured her these events involved the Air Force and that her father was most likely at this time in a safe place like the ones in our homes. At this point the certainty of the demise of Nasrallah was still a matter of speculation.

Haim’s son and family came for dinner too. Discussion turned to whether the birthday party his 3^rd grade daughter was supposed to attend at the beach the next day would be cancelled. That’s better than talking directly about war with five little girls running around. How much of the week I spent apologizing to the universe that while Israelis in the north were in bomb shelters and safe rooms, I was swimming – with some fears that I would have to make a dive for the side of the pool and run to a safe room. But life goes on amidst this war. So, my boss asked me to meet her at a café more conveniently than in the office.

Another day, I met with two women from the Austrian Embassy regarding an award for a media project conducted by the Israeli-Palestinian organization where I work. They found unsolicited occasions to reiterate their government’s staunch support for Israel. I hear Vienna and think about the concrete block sculpted like a series of shelves filled with books memorializing the city’s Jewish victims of the Nazis. I recall my visit the week before to Kibbutz Be’eri and the homes burned on October 7 with piles of books in disarray on their floors or on semi-fallen shelves at their doorways.

A new order imposed. Hubris of invincibility has its end. Pictures of Lebanese and Syrians celebrating Nasrallah’s death.  Yet a Lebanese news broadcaster identified with Hezbollah chokes over her tears announcing his death. Tons of explosives in 10 seconds. Subsequent attacks following an Israeli knock on the roof operation warning residents to escape before another IDF attack on the area filled with Hezbollah agents. Residents fleeing the Dahieh quarter of Beirut. Still, innocent individuals victimized, displaced, traumatized.

The euphoria of hubris throughout Israel allows me to push aside other thoughts of the last week: frustration knowing my Palestinian colleagues will never accept the legitimacy of an Israeli soldier protecting an Israeli civilian, because they only see an Israeli soldier as the warrior attacking them. Every soldier, off duty, in civilian clothes, is a civilian too. Innocent civilians.  I cannot find any symmetry between terrorists and soldiers, even if I understand that some perceive the former as their legitimate freedom fighters. Should there be symmetry in thinking to cause us to say terrorists off duty in their civilian lives are off limits in a military operation? Can human rights standards guide me to an answer? Will the intellectual and emotional answers be reconcilable?

Since I don’t have answers, I resume listening to analysts without answers to other questions. We have seen where hubris led in the past. If only I could be confident, and I cannot, that Israeli leadership will leverage this new order to ensure a different order and put an end to this war.

Harriet Gimpel, September 28, 2024