Underground parking lots and soiled snow

Fleeting sensations, categorized between intolerable and distasteful, include soiled snow on a sunny, winter day, or suffocatingly rancid underground parking lots on a warm and humid summer day. When we parked one day this week on minus 4, walking from the car to the elevator, considering holding my nose, I almost began crying, scolding myself for my selfish, momentary, and mild discomfort. You’re not material for survival in a Hamas tunnel, I told myself. And my soul slipped down several levels below the lowest, while approaching the spot where the press of a button would bring the elevator in which another press of a button would lead to an air-conditioned lobby, where yet other choices would await me.

But my mind began scanning the names most familiar to me of the 101 hostages remaining in Hamas captivity: small children, women, elderly men, middle-aged men. Who is alive? Who, last year, was not written in the Book of Life? (As Jewish tradition would term it, it is between the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and through Succot, that the Book of Life is sealed for another year.)

The image of the soiled snow might sound refreshing in comparison to the humidity in the near, pitch darkness of the parking lot. I think not of the exhaust from cars staining the snow, but yellowed stains from passing dogs. Associations. Thoughts roaming to the IDF Spokesman’s video clip this week of the tunnel where the bodies of 6 hostages were rescued the week before, a day or two after Hamas murdered them. Not the blood stains. The plastic bottles filled with urine.

Enough. I tell myself to reroute my thoughts.

I tell myself not to forget the conditions of the people of Gaza. Not to forget what Hamas does with the humanitarian aid intended for hungry, innocent people in makeshift camps to which they have been evacuated from a previous camp. Israeli rationalization, if it bothers, of the deaths of innocent Gazans while attempting to bring down Hamas. Moments when my empathy becomes so stretched, that I do reroute my thoughts because there is no bandwidth left to sustain them.

Can’t imagine being evacuated from my home for over 11 months, with no projected date of return, watching countless attacks by Hezbollah from Lebanon, landing in my city or neighboring towns. Northern Israel. Ghost towns. My thoughts, superficial. Displaced adolescents. Reality. Drugs. Unemployed parents. Coping methods. Hotel accommodations long-term. Alternatives. Slipping down emotional spirals. Transparent. Or mirrored two-way. Israeli society.

West Bank. Palestinians. Locked down. Another terrorist incident, another village closure. Argue the point that this closure is better than another terrorist escaping these villages and attacking Israelis. Argue. I have counter arguments. Conventional ones about fueling Palestinian frustration, unemployment, dejection, fear, and other ingredients to exacerbate hate. Sentiments likely leading people to seek redress. The means may not be gentle and peaceful in such hopeless and helpless time and space.

Yet another swatch for my argument. Perspective: In 2017, I traveled with colleagues to Brussels for a workshop and meetings. At a dinner, informal conversation, a former Israeli diplomat nonchalantly commented that just as there will also be murderers, rapists, thieves, there will always be terrorists. Obviously. No comment on a Prime Minister who fixed on eliminating at least one terrorist organization.

Just imagine if locking down Palestinian cities and towns following a terrorist attack is your chosen measure of prevention, or certainly collective punishment of the uninvolved, if it were your chosen response to every murder. Whether motivated by nationalist aspirations, organized crime, or temporary insanity, murder is murder. Loss to loved ones is a tragedy. Crime control but civil lockdowns?

Crime and prevention. Now there’s a subject for a double standard. It all depends on where you live in Israel: a Jewish municipality, an Arab town, an Arab neighborhood in a mixed city, along the fading lines of separation. Police that do their job, and police that interpret their job as civil servants to be agents in the mission of a racist, Jewish supremacist, villainous government minister with a portfolio that includes the police. If Minister Ben Gvir were concerned about National Security of Israel, it peculiarly seems to me that this should include all citizens of Israel. That he should understand that security of Jewish citizens requires the same security for Arabs, Palestinian citizens of Israel. That if the police were running this show as it should, discussion of bringing the General Security Services into the picture would not have reached the table.

I know my gut feeling on that. I understand the arguments for and against are complex. They have consequences. There are issues of human rights. It is reminiscent of arguments regarding enforcement of Covid lockdowns. Protecting human rights and limiting them for public safety. Complexity, I said.

I am frightened, but that’s an easy reroute-my-thoughts path. I am concerned. Hostages. Gaza. Deal? Ceasefire? Unresolved. Questionable motives of leaders with the power to resolve. Unresolved. Northern Israel. An imminent battlefront, because 100,000 evacuees and daily UAVs launched by Hezbollah as Israelis witness their evacuated homes under fire, and Israel retaliates in Lebanon and Syria – that is not yet a war.

Thought reroute. West Bank.  Unchecked threats and terrifying actions by extremist Jewish settlers with hopes of inducing Palestinians to evacuate their homes and never return, or Israeli policy of checkpoints limiting mobility when not placing Palestinians under lockdown, attacks on terror cells which indiscriminately result in loss of innocent lives in the process, dwindling merchandise to meet basic needs, diminished employment opportunities and growing poverty. West Bank. Expecting Palestinians to defy growing sentiments in their community to militantly resist Israeli occupation?

Voices of criticism. Voices of cynicism. Some of the media broadcasts those voices. A flicker of hope amidst despair. Crystal clear attempts by the police to deter civilians from protesting any government policy. Police exercising professional judgement handcuff civilians distributing flyers with photos of Israeli hostages in Gaza, demanding their return, protesting apparent government prioritization of something other than getting the hostages home now.

Worried. A fragile relationship – or lack thereof – among the players in the judicial system from the Minister of Justice to the Supreme Court and the Attorney General. Knowing things can get worse.

Opinion polls not indicating public views influenced by economic implications of the current circumstances. Maybe they need to feel those implications a little more acutely?

Apprehensive. Things could get worse. Hopeful that voices of criticism, despite attempts to silence them, will rise above the evil. Painful to think how the narrative will unfold, what the next generation will tell itself. I wish that were now the problem. The end of the war. Healing and processing.

Oops, Haim warned me. Don’t get repetitive. The truth is we repetitively face variations on the same, and my thoughts struggle with the complexity. If at times my reflections seem at odds with themselves, so it is containing complexity. My mother of blessed memory was the most frequent to comment that she could not follow me in a conversation when I would say one thing, immediately followed by another claim to the contrary. The best defense I could offer was that I think two conflicting thoughts simultaneously and confront the limitation of only being able to express one at a time.

Worried. Repetitive reflections. Variations on reality. Concluding, concerned as I am every week, that developments after this is posted, may render all my thoughts inconsequential. May that only be good news!

• Harriet Gimpel, September 14, 2024