This article was posted on Jewish.com on Sunday, July 30, 2006. The link is here.

Does the war in the north serve U.S. strategic goals?

Why is the U.S. giving Israel so much leeway in its war against Hezbollah? Why hasn't Condoleezza Rice been pressing for a ceasefire sooner than today's call, which only followed the Israel Defense Forces strike on the Lebanese town of Qana that killed 55? And why has the Bush administration so far blocked every U.N. attempt at condemning Israel for its "disproportionate response?"

Is it simply because this time - unlike during previous Israeli operations against terrorists threatening its home front - America "gets" it? Or is it that Washington's and Israel's interests in dealing a mortal blow to Hezbollah are finally in line?

I think both those points are true, but there's something more going on here. Since 9/11, Israel has valiantly pressed the case that its fight against terror and the global war on jihad are one and the same. That message may finally be getting through.

The U.S. is watching Israel's war with Hezbollah under an intense magnifying glass, but it is relating to it less as a regional struggle and more as a real-life "war game" with true geopolitical implications.

In the book "Blink," researcher Malcolm Gladwell relates a detailed accounting of how the U.S. in 2002 conducted a $250 million Persian Gulf war game, two and a half years in the planning, before actually going into Iraq. The same thing is happening now, except the game has taken six years to plan, will cost the Israeli economy even more, and is anything but virtual: the casualties on both sides are very real.

Center Stage

Israel-Hezbollah is a dress rehearsal for the main event: the U.S. vs. Iran. There's little to distinguish Hezbollah from Iran other than the smaller playing field on which it's conducting its attacks against the Western mini-power of Israel. Nor is Hezbollah's arsenal dissimilar from Iran's; indeed, most of the now 1,600 missiles that Hezbollah has fired into northern Israel came from Iran by way of Syria.

Hezbollah receives its marching orders from Iran; the raison d'etre behind the timing of Hezbollah's attack on the Israeli army convoy and subsequent kidnapping of two soldiers that started this whole conflict 19 days ago was in no small part to distract world leaders at the G-8 Summit from censoring Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

So it is of great interest to the U.S. to see which weapons Hezbollah (read: Iran) will use against Israel (read: the U.S.), what explosives payload they will be carrying, and how effective they are. The U.S. is also watching closely to see how quickly the Israeli army can respond and take out the threat, and how Israel synchronizes its air strikes and ground operations.

Ha'aretz's Avraham Tal put it succinctly last week when he described how much of a proxy Hezbollah is for its Iranian handlers. "Contrary to what the critics are arguing, the IDF is not fighting a small guerrilla organization," Tal wrote. "It is dealing with a trained, skilled, well-organized, highly motivated infantry that is equipped with the cream of the crop of modern weaponry from the arsenals of Syria, Iran, Russia and China."

There is also the question of strategy. If Hezbollah acts like Iran (whether under direct orders or not), it is critical to note the timing and order of missile attacks: Are they fired one at a time against different targets or does Hezbollah prefer a barrage against a single target all at once? At what point will Hezbollah pull out the long-range missiles, like the ones that hit Afula on Friday and that were rumored to be aimed at Netanya or Hadera but that "missed?" Does Hezbollah have the gumption - and ability - to make good on its threat to target Tel Aviv?

And then there's the issue of Jerusalem. Will Hezbollah necessarily spare Israel's capital because of its concentration of Muslim holy sites and heavy Arab population?

After all, it hasn't stopped Hezbollah from hitting Haifa and the Galilee, both of which have high Arab populations and have seen a large number of Arab casualties. Maybe Hezbollah just doesn't care. A martyr is a martyr no matter where the shell fell from.

Stage Set?

All of this, it can be assumed, will be repeated in some form if and when the "mother of all battles" is conducted between Iran and the West. As a result, the U.S. has little incentive to end the battle early. The more data this "war game" can yield, the better prepared the U.S. will be when and if what would surely be called World War III breaks out.

A cynical analysis? Unquestionably. But I'm not the only one talking like this. In an interview with the right-wing WorldNetDaily last week, Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt charged that Tehran is using Hezbollah's confrontation with the Jewish state to test the abilities of Iranian weapons and to observe Israeli military capabilities.

"The Iranians are actually experimenting with different kinds of missiles in Lebanon by shooting them at the Israelis. Iran is using this violence to test certain of (Israel's) abilities," Jumblatt said.

The Jerusalem Post's Herb Keinon writing over the weekend spun the situation more in terms of U.S. interests in Iraq, writing that, "Washington is watching to see how Israel does. The US wants to see Hezbollah weakened badly; it wants to see Damascus weakened badly; it wants to see Iran suffer the loss of a key proxy. This is in their interest. This will help their own efforts in Iraq. A democratic Lebanon, something impossible with a strong Hezbollah and Syrian meddling, will enhance the American status in the region, a status that is declining with each passing Iraqi day."

Ha'aretz analyst Ze'ev Sternhell was more blunt. "Sometimes, it seems as if U.S. President George W. Bush wants Israel both to destroy Lebanon and to sustain painful losses," he wrote last week. "That way, Israel provides him with an excellent alibi for the war in Iraq: The fight against terror is global, the blood price is the same, the methods of operation and the means are identical, and the time needed for victory is long. The Israeli vassal is serving its master no less than the master is providing for its needs."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah came to essentially the same conclusion as Sternhell. In Nasrallah's eyes, Israel has already lost and it is its U.S. patron that is a true warmonger. "The Israelis are ready to halt the aggression because they are afraid of the unknown," he declared. "The one pushing for the continuation of the aggression is the U.S. administration. Israel has been exposed as a slave of the U.S."

Regardless of whether Israel is being given such extraordinary latitude due to "America's determination to smash Iran's strength and positions of influence around the Middle East and the Persian Gulf," as another commentator put it, the support Israel is receiving also plays into its own interests.

For Israel - as I have written before - this is nothing short of an existential battle that will determine the viability of Jewish settlement in the north of Israel, if not the entire state. Israel has no alternative to win and the time to fight is now. If that happens to serve U.S. interests, who's complaining?

"Why did Hezbollah invest so much time and energy in creating a network of rockets and missiles that is the densest in the world (at least in terms of weaponry per square kilometer)?" asked Ha'aretz's Tal last week. He posits a chilling explanation: "This is the basic phase that will prepare the stage for an offensive attack on Israel, supported by Iran, that is intended to liquidate the Jewish state."

And if the war hadn't started now? "Eventually, Hezbollah (installed as Lebanon's formal regime), in collaboration with Iran, would have launched a war of annihilation against Israel. Should the confrontation with Hezbollah have been delayed until Iran had already acquired nuclear weapons?"

Major-General Ya'akov Amidror, former head of the IDF Intelligence Assessment Division, put it another way. Defeating Hezbollah will cost Iran "a key strategic deterrent weapon," he said, "in which it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry, infrastructure, training, command and control in order to "light up' the Middle East."

And so the war goes on, now in its 19th day, with no end in sight. Yes, the fighting is proceeding more slowly than expected. Yes, Hezbollah is better trained and better armed than anticipated. But Israelis remain resolute and despite the events in Qana, it still seems that a U.S.-brokered ceasefire is days, maybe weeks away.

"War game" or not, for Israel this is no virtual reality.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Thursday, July 27, 2006. The link is here.

Does living a normal life including sending your child closer to the border?


For weeks, 12-year-old Merav has been buzzing about summer camp. On Friday, she heads off for her first overnight camping experience - two weeks at the "Kayitz b'Kibbutz" program at Kibbutz Shluchot, just south of Beit Shean in the Jordan Valley.

Much of Merav's excitement has been about what to bring. She's spent hours and not an insignificant number of her parents' shekels buying new gear - pajamas and a new bathing suit, a better sleeping bag, two disposable cameras, bug spray, suntan lotion, snacks for the bus ride, and many more items I've long since lost count of.

She has busily consulted with her friend Shayna, who was a camper the year before, on everything from what to expect on Shabbat to the type of boys she might meet. Together they have looked at pictures posted by the camp on its Web site. By this point, she knows just about all she can before actually getting there.

Except for one thing, which we haven't had the heart to tell her. We're not sure she should go.

You see, her camp is a two-hour drive north of Jerusalem. Which puts it potentially in Katyusha range of southern Lebanon.

As the war with Hezbollah enters its third week, there seems little indication the missile barrage that has blanketed the north of Israel will let up any time soon. As of Wednesday, an estimated 1,402 missiles have been fired by Hezbollah - with Wednesday being the worst day of all with 119 rockets landing in Israel. Four people were injured, one seriously.

The day before, on Tuesday, some 90 missiles were launched, killing a 15-year-old girl. The Northern District Police's spokesperson reported a total of 19 Israeli civilians have been killed and 1,262 wounded - including 46 who are still hospitalized. Officials in the local authorities estimate that 30-50 percent of northern residents have left their homes over the past week.

Thus far, in Jerusalem we've felt mostly isolated from the fighting, watching the news just like our worried family members back in the "old country." Whether it's because we're out of range of the majority of the terror arsenal, or due to the (misplaced?) assumption that Hezbollah would never fire on Jerusalem with its many Muslim holy sites, we have felt safe here in Israel's capital. We've eaten in our regular cafes, attended jazz and wine festivals and gone about "business as usual."

But Kibbutz Shluchot, where our daughter's camp is situated, is not all that far away from Tiberias, the vacation resort on the Sea of Galilee that has been relentlessly targeted. And although no Katyushas have fallen that far south yet, they have landed in Afula, slightly to the west and nearly as deep into Israel.

And Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that his group's "surprises" are not over. The ambush of elite Israeli army forces in Bint Jbail early Wednesday morning that left eight Golani troops dead and another 22 wounded was just one of a string of unexpected setbacks for Israel in the 16 days this war has raged.

On Wednesday, in a televised statement, Nasrallah fumed that Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon would not stop Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel and that the conflict was moving "to the stage of beyond Haifa." Fuad Dirani, a Hezbollah commander, went one step further and called for the residents of Netanya to evacuate their homes because "soon the range of our rockets will reach 100 kilometers (62 miles) into Israel." After everything else we've experienced, we have no reason not to believe them.

This week, the "Kayitz b'Kibbutz" staff informed worried parents that the camp was taking all precautions, including rerouting day trips that normally include bicycling in the Hula Valley (a few miles from the Lebanese border), a trip to the Banias waterfalls and an outing at the "Luna Gal" water park (in the aforementioned Tiberias).

The kibbutz has bomb shelters and the campers can be expected to be instructed in their use. Which only intensifies the dilemma: The tang of guilt my wife Jody and I have over sending our daughter two hours closer to the front is not the type of worry most parents have when sending their children off to overnight camp for the first time. Less bittersweet and more bitter lemon.

We're not the only ones grappling with questions about coming closer to the "action." On Tuesday, I received an email from my cousins Richard and Dori who live in Toronto. They are supposed to arrive in Israel next week with two of their children. Their plan was to tour the north and Jerusalem before heading south for a few days relaxation in Eilat. Clearly, the vacation in Haifa and the Galilee would have to be cancelled. But what about the rest of the trip?

"We have been agonizing as to whether to come now or not," Richard told me. Their daughter,, Cindy, is worried about the possibility of Tel Aviv getting hit by rockets. "She is saying that even Israelis are telling people not to visit now. It's not like me to cancel out. But do you think we would be taking unnecessary risks by coming now?"

How do you answer a letter like that? On the one hand, I can tell him all about our "normal" life in Jerusalem. I could say that it's not necessarily any safer in Canada. A gang of terrorists was recently arrested for plotting to storm Canada's parliament and behead officials, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

But could Tel Aviv (and Jerusalem) be targeted? Of course, we are at war.

And then there's Marla. Three years ago, our cousin Marla Bennett from San Diego was also agonizing whether to return to her Jewish studies program in Israel after spending a month student teaching in the U.S. This was in February 2002, at the height of the suicide bombing campaign, just prior to the horrific March that concluded with the Pesach massacre at the Park Hotel and the launch of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield.

She, too, sought our counsel. Four months later, she was murdered in the terror attack at Hebrew University on July 31, 2002. So what right do we have to advise anyone about anything when it comes to visiting Israel in time of war?

But giving in to fear also means giving up and giving a victory to our enemies. We received an email this week from the embattled town of Safed in the Upper Galilee. The son of a friend of ours who lives there was driving into the woods as he does every Friday to meditate before the Sabbath. As he got into his car, he encountered an old man who was hitchhiking. The man was going in the opposite direction but when the son tried to refuse, the man had already got into the car and there was no arguing with him.

The man then insisted on making another stop before their final destination; again there was no arguing with him. Eventually, it became too late and the son was forced to give up on his weekly meditation. As he returned to his house to prepare for Shabbat, the son looked out into the woods from the window in his living room and saw that a Katyusha had fallen exactly in the spot in the woods where he usually meditated.

Is the story true? Apocryphal? A miracle? I'm not a particularly religious man, but the son's experience reminds me that not everything is under our control. We can let fear rule our actions and keep our children locked up at home where we hope it's safe. Or we can continue living that "normal life" for which Israelis are so famous, knowing that sometimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes you're not, and there's little one can do about either.

In the current conflict, I'll opt for the latter. Which for us means sending our daughter on Friday off to camp…with Katyushas.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Tuesday, July 25, 2006. The link is here.

Is it too early to give the war in the north a formal name?


What should we call this war? Thus far, we've been using fairly generic names, like the "War with Hezbollah" or the "War in the North." But those seem too pedestrian to capture the essence of what is rapidly shaping up to be one of the most decisive fights in Israel's short but battle-weary history.

A grander name might be the "Israel-Iranian/Syrian Proxy War." Or how about the "War Between the West and Radical Islam?" But those high-flying monikers presuppose we know more than we do about who the ultimate players in the unfolding drama will be and how it will all end up. Most wars don't get named until after they're done. After all, you couldn't know the Six-Day War would be called that on the fourth day of the fighting?

Indeed, maybe what's taking place today along the Lebanese border will eventually be downgraded in the history books from a full-fledged war to a limited "operation," in which case the military code name - "Just Reward" - might just as well be used.

The Knesset debated that very issue earlier today.

MK Menahem Ben-Sasson of Kadima argued that Israel can use "the term 'war' only when the military actions are started by our side." Ben-Sasson expressed concern that calling the current conflict a war would contribute to a negative public image painting as a "hostile aggressor." He preferred the label "military action."

That response infuriated Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav. "Refusing to call this situation by its rightful name, a war, is a completely irresponsible action by the government," Yahav declared. Only by calling it a war can "proper aid be received by citizens of the North."

A definition of war also allows for reparations for real estate damage and provides a security blanket to employees and businesses guaranteeing that both will be compensated for time absent from work, Yahav added.

Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On agreed. "I think it is a clear case of hutzpa by the government not to have declared war the first day," she said "They are trying to save money while people are suffering."

Legal wrangling aside, I think we have enough data to give the war a proper name. My proposal stems not from the war's most likely conclusion, but the mood into which Israelis have fallen at its onset. Yes, there's defiance and resolute steadfastness. But there's something else that's gripped the country.

I say we should call this "The War of Disillusionment."

Not disillusionment in our military or even the government: opinion polls still show a high degree of support for the action in the north.

Rather, this is the war when our dreams of a new Middle East literally went up in smoke. Everything we've strived for since the Oslo Accords has been bombed back to 1967, most critically our hope that things could ever be different in our tough little neighborhood.

When Oslo first emerged on the Israeli political scene some 15 years ago, it was met by both detractors and supporters, but there was an overall mood in the country that, if nothing else, life would not be the same. We had a chance at peace, at treaties, at borders and negotiated resolutions. Some felt Yasser Arafat was going to be rehabilitated and that the PLO would be our partner. Our children would no longer have to serve long years in the army and reserves.

That was quickly followed by the peace treaty with Jordan and the opening of friendly relations with several progressive Arab countries. We even gave our daughter, born in those heady optimistic days, the middle name "Yonit" - meaning little dove of peace.

The process eventually culminated with the pull-out from Lebanon which, while hasty and ill-planned, still said to the world: "This is an internationally recognized border and you no longer have any basis for calling us 'occupiers.'"

We all know what happened then. In the fall of 2000, following the failed Camp David talks, Arafat and the Palestinian Authority launched a protracted campaign of terror and suicide bombings against civilians inside the 1967 "Green Line" that effectively buried the Oslo process.

Ariel Sharon re-invented himself and his drive to build the separation fence, along with last summer's controversial Disengagement from Gaza, were conscious steps to create a new reality, one where Israelis and Palestinians - and indeed, Israelis and the rest of the Middle East - would be able to co-exist peacefully … just not together.

Giving up the dream of driving to Damascus for falafel was the first disillusionment. Now the War with Hezbollah represents the final one. Because if disengagement posited that we can live in the same crowded piece of real estate, just not in the same building, we were - a year ago - still closing our eyes to the growing reality that the other side wanted us evicted entirely.

We wanted so desperately to believe that all those statements made in Arabic (but not English) about still intending to push the Jews into the sea were just poetic hyperbole that made for good rally chants, but that no one really meant it. That all those who had died in the years of so-called peace had not died in vain.

Now, sadly, Israelis believe what the other side is saying. And the message is this: Nothing has changed since 1967. Since 1948 before that, and maybe all the way back to the Balfour Declaration. The War with Hezbollah tells Israelis that our neighbors don't want us here, not at all.

Lebanon is not a border dispute - Israel pulled out in 2000 and the UN went as far as to recognize the border. The legal definition of the border with Gaza is murkier, but for nine months, the Strip has been judenrein. The attack that killed two soldiers and resulted in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit was on the Israeli side of the border. So what else could all this be, but a continuation of the first Arab-Israeli war?

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday told representatives of the Gaza evacuees living in temporary housing in the Negev community of Nitzan that "we will yet evacuate communities and it is important to me to complete this chapter as soon as possible." He added that he was "convinced that we made the right decision to carry out the disengagement plan."

But will he really be able to implement his realignment plan? Will Israelis, after the "War of Disillusionment," consent to setting the hoped-for new international border to just a few kilometers away from their homes in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv? Hezbollah and the Palestinian government run by Hamas both get their marching orders from Iran and Syria. If Hezbollah can make a 35-kilometer band of land in the north of Israel a living hell, why on earth would Israelis agree to a plan that could potentially put those same missiles under someone's bed in a house down the block, even if it is on the other side of a "fence?"

Let's not forget that "when Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks about destroying Israel, he means exactly that," wrote MK Ephraim Sneh, leader of the Labor Party Knesset faction. "And before he obtains nuclear weapons, he is trying to hammer and weaken Israeli society with various types of rockets and missiles."

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Israeli Prime Minister in their meeting on Monday that it is "time for a new Middle East. It is time to say to those that don't want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail. They will not."

Israelis won't give up. It's not that kind of disillusionment. We won't all pack up and make yerida to New York or Los Angeles. We have no choice but to remain vigilant.

Even if the war is concluded in our favor and Hezbollah is dealt a mortal blow with international peace keepers replacing terrorists in southern Lebanon; and even if Iran is given a bloody nose through the defeat of its proxy and remarkably goes the way of Libya which has purportedly given up its weapons of mass destruction program; even then there's still no turning away from the lessons learned in these hot weeks of July.

"Give peace a chance?" veteran Israel Television journalist Idelle Ross said this week. "Wouldn't we love to? Maybe another time, another place."

Let me suggest, then, perhaps an even better name for everything that's going on: "The War When Reality Finally Sunk In."

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Sunday, July 23, 2006. The link is here.

After years of languishing as a national pariah, Jerusalem is suddenly packing in the tourists.

The War with Hezbollah is, in a paradoxically twisted way, turning out to be one of the best things to happen to Jerusalem tourism in years. The city's cafés are overflowing and museums are packed as overseas tourists, bolstered by residents from the besieged north of Israel, turn their vacation attention on the national's capital.

Tourist spots all across Jerusalem, including the venerable Israel Museum, are offering 50 percent discounts to visitors from both the north and from communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip. Suddenly, the city that has long been branded a national pariah - perceived to be so dangerous that many ordinary Israelis have never visited at all - is the country's new center of culture, the one place in Israel deemed to be out of the range of Hezbollah's and Hamas' Katyushas and Kassams.

And Jerusalem has responded in kind by putting on its best party dress and dancing shoes. The range of events - a large number of which are free - scheduled for the coming weeks is nothing short of overwhelming. Not that this is entirely new: summer in misunderstood Jerusalem is always a non-stop express of outdoor extravaganza; this year just seems even more so given the "situation."

Some examples: there's a free jazz festival every Tuesday evening in southern Jerusalem's German Colony neighborhood and another on Thursdays and Fridays on a picturesque rooftop in historic Yemin Moshe, next to Montefiore's Windmill, overlooking the Old City.

The Tower of David Museum, in the Old City itself, is playing host to a unique series of events featuring musical instruments played by mechanical devices, including a giant, wooden, three-meter-high (that's (nine foot) harp plucked by 29 mechanical fingers, and a four-story tower of steel drums to be beaten by 33 robotic arms.

Nearby at the Khan Theater, the Hazira Dance Troupe is inviting visitors to a free interactive audience-participatory performance next Saturday night, followed by a break and belly dancing party in the theater's historic courtyard.

Israeli rock legends Aviv Gefen and Monika Sex are set to play at a free concert in Independence Park in August, while rapper Segol 59 and Iggy Waxman will be lighting up the new pedestrian triangle between King George and Agrippas Streets downtown. The annual International Crafts Festival in Sultan's Pool promises big name local talent including Tipex and Arkady Duchin. All that's on top of just concluded Jerusalem International Film Festival, which bestowed its Life Achievement Award on visiting director Roman Polanski.

And did we even mention the annual summer Beer Festival, which gets underway this week?

Fleeting Time

As Israelis flock to a happening Jerusalem, it seems light years ago that riding a bus or sitting in one of the city's café were tantamount to publicly proclaiming a death wish. Not that the rest of the country was immune to the terror that reigned unchecked before Operation Defensive Shield effectively silenced many of the most horrific attacks, but Jerusalem had by far the greatest concentration of bombings.

All that's changed, for the moment at least.

Last week, a friend of ours who lives in the center of the country needed to buy clothes for her kids to wear to an upcoming bar mitzvah. As she entered the Ra'anana Mall in a suburb just north of Tel Aviv, three armed guards at the entrance told her she could go in, but she couldn't come out: they were locking the gate behind her. There was a high terror alert throughout the Sharon region (a terrorist on his way to an attack was later apprehended in nearby Hod Hasharon). The mall itself was nearly deserted. All the shopkeepers were talking about the terror alert or the missiles in the north and whether they'd eventually reach as far south as Ra'anana.

The next day, our friend went shopping in Jerusalem and reported that it was "business as usual." Jerusalem was bustling, she said; everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly, as if nothing at all was going a short two hour drive away.

Over Shabbat we hosted the program director for Harvard Hillel. He was in Israel to put the final touches on a program for some 20 Harvard and Yale students who are due to arrive in another two week's time. He wasn't sure what to advise the students…or their worried parents. Would it be safe to come while Israel was in the midst of a full-fledged war, albeit one limited to only certain parts of the country? If the group eschewed travel to the north and stayed primarily in the Jerusalem area, would that be a prudent compromise or a still unnecessary risk? He decided to wait a few more days before making the call.

Northern Exposure

But is the north really so dangerous? Not according to Michael Taslitz, who lives in Har Halutz, a small hilltop community not far from Karmiel and only a few miles from the Lebanese border. His approach to the war surrounding him was nonchalant, even casual, to say the least.

"Yes, we had a Katyusha land within about a kilometer of our house. But the kids aren't terribly anxious about it," he said. "They know if we hear the siren we go to the bomb shelter, which also happens to be our eldest daughter's bedroom. When we moved here, we were told that the bomb shelters were designed to withstand the direct hit of a Katyusha."

Not something you usually think about when you're buying a house in San Diego.

Aren't you concerned though? How can you sleep at night, I asked the former Southern California resident.

"It's not like we're living in an atmosphere of terror," he assured me. "It's more of an inconvenience. All of the camps are closed down. There's no day care, so one parent has to stay at home." As a result, they decided to get away for a few days, and when I spoke to Taslitz, the family was visiting friends in Jerusalem.

Taslitz admitted it might be different if he lived in Haifa or Nahariya proper, referring to the northern Israeli cities that have borne the brunt of Hezbollah's wrath. Nevertheless, "we're going home after the weekend," he added.

Ironically, Taslitz's wife, Leora, had not visited her sister who lives in the West Bank settlement of Efrat since the violence broke out in 2000. She finally made the trip only a few months ago. I wonder if her sister would visit her in the north today?

"It's all very surreal," another friend who lives in Ra'anana summed up the situation. "No one can believe it's really happening, that someone they know is actually there (in the north) while we're off to the pool to go swimming."

Or in Jerusalem, to sit in a packed café while listening to a jazz band or a tower of steel drums beaten by giant robotic arms.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Friday, July 21, 2006. The link is here.

While tourists are leaving, Lois and Larry Frank head to Haifa.


Fifty percent of tourists who had planned a trip to Israel during July and August have either cancelled their trips or simply not shown up, according to statistics published this week by the Israel Incoming Tour Operator Association. The estimated loss as a result of the war with Hezbollah comes to $400 million according to the association.

But not everyone is staying home. Lois and Larry Frank of the Sandy Springs neighborhood of Atlanta didn't even have a trip to Israel planned. "We spent all of last Saturday discussing it, and on Saturday night, we got on a plane," Lois Frank said.

At a time when so many others are canceling their trips, and when many immigrants already in Israel are being urged by family to "return home," what on earth possessed the Franks to fly to Israel at the height of the war?

"We wanted to show our solidarity with Israel," Frank said. "And we wanted to have a better understanding of the situation, so when we talk to people about what's going on here, we're not just parroting some public statement."

The Franks have not been alone. Upon their arrival, they immediately joined a solidarity mission of 30 North Americans put together by the American Jewish Committee. This week, the group traveled up and down the coast of Israel, from Haifa to Sderot, to get a first-hand look.

"We went to Sderot near the Gaza border and met the mayor. We saw the missile damage in the areas of several schools," Frank said. "We also went to Ramban Hospital in Haifa and met with victims of the railway station attack. We met a family with eight children in Nahariya who's home was hit. Their home was gorgeous."

How did you know it was such a nice home?

"Because we went to go see it. The missile went straight through the roof and dropped into the living room. It was a miracle no one was killed."

Weren't you nervous going to Haifa in the midst of a war?

"There were people on our bus who had a tremendous anxiety level. We were stopped for two hours on the highway. I've never seen Americans so ready to subjugate their Type A personalities in this way, to say - it's OK, this is what we're here for."

The bottom line, Frank said, is that she trusts "the Israeli government to say if you shouldn't go there, to Haifa, and they didn't say that."

What were her impressions of the war zone?

"Haifa was like a ghost town. There wasn't a car moving, not a person walking on the street. Everything was closed down. We had dinner at the Dan Panorama (in Haifa's trendy Carmel district) and several times we had to all go down into the bomb shelter."

Was the feeling in Sderot similar?

"Not at all. Haifa has sirens that give you two minutes to get to a bomb shelter. In Sderot, the warning is only 12 seconds. If a missile had come down on us as we were standing there, I wouldn't have known what to do. There's a tremendous sense of vulnerability in Sderot that you don't have in Haifa."

The Franks are no strangers to Israel, having visited the country over 40 times before - five times alone in 2006. Larry Frank ran a successful manufacturing business in Atlanta; the couple, who have four children, now own a holiday apartment nearby one son Rabbi Adam Frank who lives with his wife Lynne and two children in Jerusalem's Baka neighborhood.

Rabbi Frank, who grew up in Atlanta and attended school in town - from the Hebrew Academy, to Riverwood High School and then Emory University - is now the spiritual leader of Moreshet Avraham, a Conservative congregation in the heart of Jerusalem. He said he wasn't worried about his parents coming at this time.

"I guess I'm good at compartmentalizing things," he said. "I figure they have a greater chance of being injured in a car accident than getting hit by a missile."

Growing up, the Franks were as staunch a Zionist household as you're likely to find anywhere. Larry Frank's mother, Rae Frank, was regional president of the southeast region of Hadassah and Lois is now national chairman of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, as well as being active in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Jewish Committee.

Solidarity with Israel is not just an afterthought for the Franks. Rabbi Frank said he originally moved to Israel at the height of the suicide bombing campaign - davka as Israelis would say, that is, in spite of what would seem to be common sense. "It was during the second intifada and I felt it was just too difficult for me to be in America at that time," Frank said.

Lois and Larry Frank never stopped visiting either, despite the violence that has kept Israel in perpetual headlines. But Lois Frank says that being here during the current war has really opened her eyes.

"In the States, I didn't understand the goals of this operation. The media made it seem like it was collective punishment against the people of Lebanon. But I'm not hearing anyone say 'crush them, punish them.' There's real compassion. That's what you hear from the man on the street. It's not what CNN tells you.

If the Franks willingness to head to Haifa, Sderot and other front lines is inspirational, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities for visitors and residents in Israel alike to help beleaguered communities.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein's International Fellowship for Christians and Jews (IFCJ) has been organizing its members to provide "emergency assistance to cities under attack." And the Livnot U'Lehibanot organization sent out a message to its large mailing list on Thursday asking for volunteers to come to the city of Safed where Livnot staff have been struggling to "prepare and serve meals to as many people as they can who are living in bomb shelters."

Livnot also is asking for volunteers to "help out with elderly citizens who are on their own, play with children and whatever else needs to be done." While Livnot acknowledges that "we cannot guarantee anyone's safety, we can promise that you will play a huge role in serving the people of Safed and all of Am Yisrael in a time of need." A festive Shabbat is planned for this weekend with guest Rabbi Avi Weiss from the Riverdale, New York Hebrew Academy.

Calls to action from organizations like Livnot and the IFCJ only strengthen supporters like Lois Frank who says that, as important as her family's expression of solidarity with Israel may be, what's even more impressive is Israel's internal solidarity. "As self-critical as this society is, they're together on this one. It's tremendously inspiring," Frank said. "This is the ethos of Israel and it makes me very proud."

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The photo displayed on the main blog page for this post is from the "Support Israel" stream on Flickr, maintained by Michael Hoffman, who heads up Hoffman Media Group in Chicago. Add your own photo to Flickr using the tag "supportisrael2006" to support this innovative Israel support group.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Thursday, July 20, 2006. The link is here.

When is the time right for diplomacy vs. ripe for war?

The announcement on Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was coming to the region as early as this coming Sunday was quickly qualified as being "premature." The visit, which was set in motion during the same expletive-tinged presumed-to-be off-microphone comments by President Bush to British Prime Minister Blair at the G-8 Summit earlier in the week, has now been downgraded as a more of a "stop over" on the way to Asia rather than a full-fledged peace-seeking initiative.

Which is good news for Israel: as the war with Hezbollah enters its ninth day, the time is far from right for outside parties to start trying to broker a cease-fire.

How do we know it's too early for a cease-fire? Because Syrian President Bashar Assad is asking for one. So has the European Union.

Because French Prime Minster Chirac has traveled to the region to ask for concessions "from both sides."

And because Hezbollah, despite Israel's continued bombardment of its rocket launchers and fortified bunkers, is showing as Ha'aretz commentator Amos Harel wrote on Thursday, "no signs of breaking."

The difficult days ahead are evident in what one commentator called the "epic battle" between Israeli forces and Hezbollah along the border on Wednesday where two Israeli soldiers were killed.

In addition to stockpiling up to 15,000 missiles of various types and ranges, Hezbollah has apparently taken a page out straight out of Osama Bin Laden's Afghanistan playbook and has been digging and fortifying underground bunkers along the whole of the Israel-Lebanese border.

What looked to Israel's eyes in the sky to be abandoned bunkers turned out to be filled with Hezbollah troops laying in wait to ambush the Israeli ground troops as they approached. The battle for the bunkers is still raging today and far from over. Along with the attack on an Israeli naval ship off the Lebanese coast by an Iranian-made missile that Israel didn't know Hezbollah had, this may be one of the "surprises" Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has promised Israel.

All this underscores the need for Israel to be given the time it needs to complete its goal of significantly weakening - if not outright destroying - Hezbollah. A visit by Secretary Rice too soon would serve as a sign for Israel and the region that the window of opportunity to act military was closing.

The White House apparently agrees. "A ceasefire that will leave the status quo ante intact is unacceptable," White House spokesman Tony Snow said on Tuesday. Rice echoed those statements. "We all want a cessation of violence," she said. "We all want the protection of civilians, but we have to make certain that anything we do will be of lasting value."

The contrast in international attitude with 2002's Operation Defensive Shield is striking. In April 2002, after a month that saw hundreds of Israelis killed in suicide bombs nearly every day - including the horrific Passover massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya - Israel sent forces into the West Bank, Jenin in particular, to crush the terrorist infrastructure.

It was only a few days into the operation that President Bush demanded that Israel "withdraw without delay. I don't expect them to ignore [the message], I expect them to heed the call." Israel ultimately managed to significantly reduce the success rate of the suicide bombers, bringing the country several years of relative calm.

Why the difference in approach? Perhaps it is easier to give broader latitude to actions of "self defense" in a war against an enemy firing missiles at a civilian population than it is to fight back against terrorists blowing themselves up on buses and in cafes. While the two have the same goal - to destroy "normal" life among the general population - the spin on the latter tends to portray suicide bombing as "inevitable" and sometimes even "justifiable" by a downtrodden and hopeless population. Hezbollah, on the other hand, with its fortifications and massive munitions stores, seems anything but weak.

As Israeli novelist Etgar Keret wrote in Tuesday's New York Times, there has been almost an "unconscious breath of relief" in the current situation. "It's not that we Israelis long for war or death or grief…we long for a real war to take the place of all those exhausting years of intifada when there was no black or white, only gray, when we were confronted not by armed forces, but by resolute young people wearing explosive belts…"

When this war is over, Hamas may be perceived to have made a fatal strategic error. By launching Kassam rockets and not suicide bombers from Gaza into Sderot and Ashkelon, there no longer seems any difference between the home-grown Palestinian terror group and Hezbollah. And the response by the Israeli army is looking pretty much the same on both fronts.

All of this is not to say that diplomacy does not have a role. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told a U.N. negotiating team that arrived in the region Tuesday that in fact "the time for diplomacy has arrived." But the start of the diplomatic process did not mean the end of military operations, Livni added, rather the two would run in parallel.

"The military objectives are to hit Hezbullah's infrastructure and physical strength," Livni said. "The diplomatic process is not intended to reduce the time available for the IDF's operations but as an extension of it in order to avoid the need for additional operations in the future."

In the end, both sides know that this military conflict must be resolved through diplomatic means. The only question is when. David Horowitz, writing in the Jerusalem Post this week, speculates that Hezbollah won't be forced into "any kind of public surrender, but rather it will be battered sufficiently to enable its demise as a military force to be formalized by the diplomats."

At this point, it appears the war with Hezbollah has at least another week, and probably more, to run before those diplomats will be sitting down to formalize anything.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Thursday, July 20, 2006. The link is here.

The war with Hezbollah is one that Israel cannot afford to lose.


As war enters its eighth day and the north of Israel continues to be pounded by Hezbollah missiles, while Haifa braces for further attempts at hitting the strategic oil refinery along its Mediterranean coast, Israelis are standing solidly behind their government's actions, a new poll revealed.

The Dahaf Institute, which conducts surveys for the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, found that 81 percent of the public favors a continuation of the fighting in the north, and that 58 percent of Israelis believe that fighting should continue until Hezbollah is completely destroyed. The latter number spikes to 69 percent among those living in the north.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert summarized the situation bluntly in a speech before the Knesset on Monday: "Citizens of Israel, there are moments in the life of a nation, when it is compelled to look directly into the face of reality and say: no more."

The Israeli consensus behind the war is critical but not surprising given the stakes involved. This is not Lebanon II as some commentators have said. Make no mistake, the war that has been thrust upon Israel, unprovoked and unwelcome, is as existential a threat as the Six-Day War in 1967 and the War of Independence before it in 1948.

This is not a "border skirmish" and it is not "simply" terrorism. The entire north of Israel — as far south now as Haifa, Tiberias and Afula — is essentially off limits to tourists and residents alike. Even if a ceasefire were declared tomorrow, a nearly 40 kilometer swath of the country would be essentially uninhabitable, with the threat of more missiles raining down at any time.

On Monday, Israel reported that it destroyed an Iranian-made "Zelzal" missile that had a long enough range that it could hit Tel Aviv. While that news item mysteriously vanished by the morning papers, the implication remains: if Israel does not win this war, the entire country is in Hezbollah missile range and, as we now so painfully know, the possibility of Hezbollah using its missiles now or in the future is not just in the realm of the doomsayers' imagination.

Henry Kissinger once said at the height of the Vietnam era that, "the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win." If Hezbollah is not stopped once and for all, it will have won — in the eyes of its supporters and in the actions of copycats around the world — and Israel, in a very real sense, will not be able to limp along as a viable state for much longer in the face of such a loss.

Moreover, the war with Hezbollah is not limited to Lebanon and the north of Israel. It is a regional war whose outcome may have the power to reshape the entire Middle East. The U.S., say some commentators, is looking to Israel to do its dirty work, to send a message to Iran that its proxy army in Lebanon cannot succeed against unrestrained Western might. The thinking goes that if Hezbollah — and Syria by extension either diplomatically or in the field — is dealt a crushing blow, Iran may step back from its unbridled bellicosity against the West.

Former general Wesley Clark minced no words. In an interview with the Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly on Monday night, he expressed the hope that Israeli action in Lebanon would "reshape the region in favor of democracy" without U.S. troops having to lift a finger.

The U.S., for now, at least, has given Israel nearly carte blanche to clean up the mess. Perfunctory calls for Israel to "act with restraint" and Condoleezza Rice's proposed visit to the region aside, U.S. President Bush's true opinions on where real responsibility for the current war lies came out loud and clear during Monday's inadvertent on-microphone comments to Tony Blair at the G-8 Summit when he said "What they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s--- and it's over." For Syria: read Iran as well.

Even political doves like Ha'aretz's Yoel Marcus, who are loathe to approve of anything the Israeli government does, have come out in favor of Israel's current action. On Tuesday, Marcus wrote "we should be grateful to Hezbollah for giving us this 'window of opportunity' to launch an offensive that will change the rules of the game and break down the "balance of fear.' All Israeli governments have resigned themselves to Hezbollah's extra-territorial standing as almost a state within a state, supported and stage-managed by Iran, which keeps it stocked with weapons and military instructors."

Marcus reflects the Israeli consensus when he said, "we're looking at one of Israel's most justified wars. With the whole arsenal that Hezbollah has amassed, it was clearly gearing up for a large-scale attack on northern Israel at some future date."

If Israel can deal a fatal blow to Hezbollah, can Hamas be far away? Israel's actions in Gaza haven't gotten as much airplay of late, but the fighting has continued — as have the Kassams raining down on the outskirts of Ashkelon. Although we may see what's happening in the south of the country as smaller potatoes, try telling that to the residents of Sderot who have suffered rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip nearly non-stop for months now.

How long will this clean up operation take? Deputy IDF Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinski said on Tuesday that the offensive against Hezbullah would reach its completion "in a matter of weeks." Will Israel have that kind of time before the international consensus of support breaks down? And what about internal Israeli dissension? Already today, Israeli government officials seem to be floating trial balloons aimed at gauging public opinion.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni hinted Tuesday morning that Israel would not object to a temporary international force in south Lebanon, despite earlier outright Israeli rejection of such a plan which stated that an outside force would hinder Israeli action, and in any case, if it didn't work the last time, why should we have any expectation for different results now? Livni quickly added that her tentative diplomatic overtures were not meant to shorten the IDF operation but to ensure implementation of UN Resolution 1559, which was supposed to have eliminated the Hezbollah threat when Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago.

Also Tuesday, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said that Israel may have to consider the possibility of negotiating over Lebanese prisoners to end the current crisis. Were Dichter and Livni speaking for Prime Minister's office, or as happens too often in this land of oversized egos, shooting their mouths off without a license?

What is clear is that, whether international forces are deployed or whether Israel ultimately returns to the negotiating table, the war is far from over. Hezbollah may have more surprises for Israel, and Syria may still join the hostilities. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are safe for now, but for how long?

Religious pundits have already begun to speak of this being eventually labeled the "War of the Three Weeks." The war in the north opened on the fast of the 17th of Tammuz, the beginning of the three-week period of mourning leading up to Tisha b'Av — the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. That day has been traditionally one for remembering great destructions in Jewish history — from the first and second temples to the Holocaust — and is commemorated through fasting and prayer.

If this war were to end — successfully — in a matter of weeks, Tisha B'Av could be transformed from a day of sadness to one of jubilation. The converse — another Jewish tragedy to add to an already long list — is unthinkable.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Wednesday, July 18, 2006. The link is here.

How Israelis go on with "normal" life while war rages all around them


It's been almost three years since I started writing "This Normal Life." The goal when I launched the blog in August 2003 was to describe how Israelis — and my own family in particular — could go about their so-called "normal" life while suicide bombs were blowing up in cafes and buses on a nearly daily basis.

For the past two years, though, the "normal" part of this blog has seemed almost an afterthought. With terror attacks vastly reduced by the Israeli army's aggressive actions and never-ending vigilance, and with tourists returning to our shores and cafes in sometimes startling numbers, there was very little irony left to mine

All that has changed now.

With war raging on two fronts — in Gaza in the south and from Hezbollah in the north, the irony that was the modus operandi behind This "Normal" Life has, regrettably and inescapably, returned. Soldiers have been killed and abducted on both borders. Thousands of missiles have rained down, unprovoked, on innocent Israeli communities.

So, in the midst of all the fighting, my wife Jody and I did what any good Israelis would do.

We went to a Wine Festival.

For several years, the Israel Museum, the country's largest and most prestigious art center, has held a Wine Festival over several warm Jerusalem summer nights. The main outdoor passageway leading from the parking lot to the different pavilions of the museum is dotted with tens of wineries — a veritable who's who of both mainstream and boutique vineyards in Israel.

For only NIS 8 (about $1.75) more than a regular ticket to the museum, festival revelers receive a large wine glass, which they take from stand to stand, refilling and tasting different vintages. Buckets are provided to wash out your cup between tastings.

Wineries present on the night we went included the biggies like Galil and Golan and a range of smaller boutique shops, from Binyamina and Tishbi to ones I'd never heard of like Noah and Yogav. At the end of the passageway stood a large food pavilion selling everything from duck and goose liver pate sandwiches, to sushi and gourmet cheese platters.

It was a magical night, and other than the rather mediocre Chinese noodles we mistakenly chose to order, there was nothing to bar the carefree abandon in which Israelis so expertly partake.

Except for the missiles, of course.

While we were getting tipsy on our third glass of Zinfandel, missiles hit Haifa for the first time. Earlier in the day, Safed, where I lived and first fell in love with Israel 22 years ago, was bombed. By the time we got home from the Festival, 1.2 million Israelis were under threat of missile attack and cities like Nahariya and Kyriat Shemona were fast becoming ghost towns.

What right did we have to be enjoying ourselves — at something as licentious as a wine festival no less — in the midst of a war of this growing magnitude, I wondered?

It didn't seem to be bothering the hundreds of wine aficionados strolling the museum grounds, a glass of Merlot-Sauvignon or chilled Shiraz in hand. People had come in from as far away as Tel Aviv to enjoy the six kinds of cheese and modern art that this once a year event so seamlessly mixes.

Didn't anyone care about the devastation being wreaked little more than a two-hour drive away? Sure, we lived through years of suicide bombs, but missiles — these seem somehow qualitatively different. Shouldn't we be sitting at home, glued to the news, somehow supporting our brothers in this time of need through … well, what could we do actually?

Jerusalem doesn't seem to be in any danger, at least at this point (the irony of Jerusalem suddenly being one of the safest places in the country has not been lost on me). Watching the news might be engrossing but other than provide fodder for the water cooler, not a lot of help. The army is telling people to get out of the north, so volunteering is out of the question. The Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel is trying to set up home hospitality in the center of the country for those displaced from the north. Some people might say now is the time for intensified prayer.

I think the best thing to do, actually, would be to go a Wine Festival. Davka. In spite of everything. That's the most classic time-tested Israeli response of all, isn't it? To continue on with your "normal" life — whether that's going to school or work, heading out to eat for dinner, riding the bus, or…not canceling an opportunity to drink a bit and soak in the atmosphere that makes Israel unlike anywhere else.

No, not that Wine Festivals are unique to Israel. But that Wine Festivals taking place in the midst of a war are part of how Israelis cope with the never-ending matzav — the situation — that is unwillingly thrust upon us every few years.

When suicide bombers were blowing themselves up with near impunity on the streets and buses of Jerusalem, did the residents of the north stop going about their daily activities in solidarity with the beleaguered citizens of this capital city? Not at all, nor should they have. Nor, for that matter, did we. That's what living a "normal" life is all about. It's one of the things that I have learned the most living in Israel these past twelve years.

When rockets were landing in the Negev and minister Shimon Peres berated the residents of Sderot with "Kassams Shmamams, quit your whining," I thought his insensitivity was completely unjustified. I still do. But at least now I understand a bit more. The holy mix of concern, resolve and resilience under fire is part and parcel of Israeli nature. It can drive you crazy. But it can also be the greatest support.

Someone ought to paint a picture of last week's Wine Festival to hang in the main hall of the Israel Museum. I can already give it a title: "Still Live, With Missiles."

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Tuesday, July 17, 2006. The link is here.

Hotels and beds and breakfasts across the north of Israel are empty and Macaulay Culkin and his girlfriend, Mila Kunis, have left Israel, but many tourists, campers and birthright groups are remaining in Israel despite the war raging across much of the country.

To be sure, if the events of the last few days turn into a protracted conflict or if the barrage of missiles on Haifa of the past few days is not controlled, it could bring about the collapse of the tourism industry in Israel, which had been looking to a record year in 2006.

"We are experienced people," Rafi Farber, vice president of the Israel Hoteliers Association said, "but if the fighting is not time-limited, it could bring about a catastrophe.

"As long as the missiles were falling in places that tourists had never heard of, it was OK," added Kurt Kaufman, CEO of Genesis-Kelly Tours.

Not so when Haifa and Tiberius came into range — let alone the threat that the northern suburbs of greater Tel Aviv could be hit.

Most Jewish organizations bringing teenagers and young adults to Israel have decided to stick it out. Groups such as the Conservative Movement's United Synagogue Youth and the Reform Movement's NIFTY program have overhauled their itineraries to avoid the north (cities like Sderot and Ashkelon in the south aren't generally on the tour agendas), but plan to go ahead as scheduled with their other tours.

Three of USY's "Classic Israel Pilgrimage" tour groups were in the north of the country when the violence broke out; now they are all in Jerusalem. "At first, they just canceled certain trips like going to Rosh Hanikra," said Stephanie Mazur, a group leader of one of the USY groups. "Now pretty much the rule is: nowhere north of Tel Aviv."

The Machach Ba'aretz program is keeping all of its campers south of Beit Shean, which is itself just south of Tiberius. Camp director Steve Frankel said he would follow the advice of the Ministry of Education and that for now, "there is still plenty to do in Israel and plenty of places to be."

The "Kayitz b'Kibbutz" camp at Kibbutz Shluchot, also located near Beit Shean in the northern Jordan Valley, which appeals primarily to overseas teenage campers, is going strong and has not cancelled second session, due to start in another week. USY's NATIV and OTZMA programs also have not reported any dropouts yet.

One program for overseas students that has been directly in the line of fire is the Livnot U'Lehibanot program in the Old City of Safed. All of its students have been moved to the group's Jerusalem campus, along with much of its faculty. The students "left in a hurry," a Livnot spokesperson told us.

Livnot founder Aharon Botzer said in that the organization's Safed campus is fine, although "some of the rockets did come close to us." The Israel Defense Forces is now using the Livnot buildings for some of its officers since Hezbollah is targeting the army's main base in Safed.

As of Sunday, birthright was continuing to land, though flights from the former Soviet Union and New York city reportedly had 25 percent of their participants back out over the weekend (a birthright flight from Budapest apparently had only a single cancellation). A birthright spokesman commented that of course "groups will not go any place where it is within the range of danger."

Hebrew University also said that only one of its 350 international students has decided to return home as of now. The Jerusalem-based institution will be housing 140 foreign students from the University of Haifa.

Other organizations are also trying to place displaced northerners. The Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel (AACI) sent an email newsletter to more than 6,000 of its members asking for help to provide temporary housing for families seeking refuge.

The U.K.-based United Jewish Israel Appeal, which represents Jews from Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has been raising money to buy toys for families in the north and to send children to day camps in communities out of range of the rockets. UJIA has sister city relationships with several communities in the north of Israel, including Shlomi, Merom Hagalil and Ma'aleh Yosef through the Jewish Agency's Partnership 2000 campaign.

Mevasseret Zion, a bedroom community just west of Jerusalem, has also offered to host citizens from the north. The city's local council is working with the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel to organize day camps for children from northern cities

Will current events affect aliyah? Not according to Nefesh b'Nefesh, the organization that has some seven planeloads of North Americans and French immigrating to Israel this summer. Nefesh b"Nefesh said there have been no cancellations, though they did advise immigrants who intended to move to the north to be housed elsewhere until the situation calms down.

Several concerts and events have been postponed including the "Vaia Con Dios" concert in Haifa, and a dance festival in the northern town of Carmiel. There is also concern that the summer's biggest rock show featuring overseas talent, 80s new wave superstars Depeche Mode, set for Aug. 3, may be cancelled. The show's promoter, Shuki Weiss, said "There is a foreboding feeling in our stomachs because you can never know what is really going to happen. But the whole industry in Israel is hoping for the best."

About the only high-profile dropout from Israel due to the war so far has been former child film star Macauly Culkin who made an early departure from Israel, where he was vacationing with girlfriend Mila Kunis who plays Jackie on "That 70s Show." Is Culkin still traumatized by having been left "home alone" too many times during his hit films? Girlfriend Kunis said she wasn't pleased with the decision. On the flight back to London, she told a flight attendant that Culkin was acting like "a drama queen."

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Tuesday, July 17, 2006. The link is here.


In the fifth day of the 2006 Lebanese War, Hezbollah missiles killed eight in a strike on the Israeli port city of Haifa while the Israeli air force pounded more targets in Beirut and the south of its northern neighbor. With no end in sight, voices are growing stronger for Israel to take ever-stronger action, perhaps against Syria…or even Iran. Is either option realistic? Is this just Middle East saber rattling, or an opportunity to permanently change the balance of power in the Middle East?

Clearly, it was no coincidence that the Hezbollah attack on an Israeli army convoy last week that killed eight soldiers and led to the kidnapping of two more occurred shortly after Israel began stepping up its operations against in Gaza. That operation in Gaza was also launched following a cross-border attack that resulted in several dead and another kidnapped soldier.

Iran and Syria call the shots for both Hamas and Hezbollah, and when it looked like things might ultimately go badly in Gaza (or perhaps as an even more cynical tactic to distract world attention from Iran's nuclear intentions at this week's G-8 Summit in Russia), Hezbollah's handlers in Tehran ordered the opening of a second front.

And what a front it's been. The flash point of both conflicts – the kidnapping of soldiers – has been mostly buried under the terror unleashed from the skies. The Israeli response has rapidly evolved from a relatively modest goal of putting pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah to "return our boys" to a full-scale flushing out of the "true hands" of Israel's most implacable terrorist opponents – along with a not so thinly veiled intention to reshuffle the deck.

Some Success

In that respect, both Israeli operations have been, ironically, wildly successful so far – at least concerning the first goal. First to Gaza: Hamas has demonstrated that it can hit deep inside Israeli territory as far as Ashkelon where a number of strategic Israeli installations are located. Forcing Hamas to demonstrate this capability has helped unite Israeli – and perhaps even world – opinion in terms of enabling a tough response to take out the terrorist infrastructure.

Less than a year after Israel's controversial disengagement plan, it is unlikely that many Israelis on either the right or left would now oppose the Israel Defense Forces retaking a swath of land in Gaza to use as a buffer zone. The irony of the IDF returning to some of the very settlements evacuated in August 2005 has not been lost on Israeli public consensus.

The same is happening in the north. For years, we have lived with a kind of hush-hush detente, where we knew what Hezbollah had, but pretended otherwise as we visited the bed and breakfasts in the north while hiking through the picturesque hills of the Galilee and Golan Heights. Now that Hezbollah has been forced to show how far its missiles can reach – to Haifa, Tiberias, perhaps even further – the terrorist group has essentially played its cards, too, and Israel can point to full justification for taking out that infrastructure.

It's as if Iraq had actually deployed weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. operation. In Lebanon's case, what we hope is our worst-case scenario has become real and we have the right – backed at least for a few days by much of the world – to defend ourselves.

But how? Going after Hezbollah and Hamas seem the most prudent and immediate moves, but will they make a difference in the long term? The smuggling border with Egypt is still as porous as they come, and despite Israeli bombing of the main highway from Damascus to Beirut – not to mention Lebanon's sole international airport – there are numerous other ways to transfer weapons technology from Syria to its proxies in Lebanon.

The Syrian Card

Would Israel be better served by attacking Syria directly? And what about Iran? Has the time come when Israel's long-rumored contingency plan to take out the Iranian nuclear threat is given the green light? Would there be any better time down the road?

While no one is talking publicly about a direct Iranian option, a Syrian attack has already been denied by Israel. Which makes it much more likely to occur. Over the weekend, the London-based Al Hayat newspaper reported that Israel had issued an ultimatum to Syrian President Bashar Assad according to which a regional war would erupt within 72 hours if Damascus does not prevent Hezbollah attacks. In the article, a Pentagon source is quoted as saying that Israel has warned Syria it would bomb essential installations in the country if Damascus did not try to influence Hezbollah.

The IDF has denied Syria is on Israel's agenda, saying "it won't be right to bring Syria into the campaign." However, Syrian officials are clearly sounding worried. "Any aggression against Syria will be met with a firm and direct response whose timing and methods are unlimited," Syria's official news agency quoted Information Minister Mohsen Bilal as saying.

Bringing Syria into the conflict directly could force the Damascus regime to play its hand, too. Although the prospect of long-range missiles being fired at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with chemical weapons would be an escalation of devastating proportions and certainly not one that Israel would want to encourage, it, too, would bring out the worst-case scenarios and potentially allow for a reshaping of the Middle East. As unlikely as this scenario probably is, it is undoubtedly weighing heavily on the planners in the Tel Aviv kiryiah war room.

The war so far is being fought primarily from the air. An Israeli ground invasion into Lebanon, as has happened on a limited scale in Gaza, may still occur, and the losses associated with this type of fighting could change the current Israeli and international consensus that the IDF briefly enjoys. That window will gradually close in any case, so the next few days will be crucial in terms of laying all of Israel's enemy's cards on the table and determining if there is any way to reshuffle the deck conclusively so that Israel's future does not hang under the constant threat of uncertainty and fear.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Monday, July 16, 2006. The link is here.

Residents in center of Israel comfortable, but apprehensive as war in north and south rages.



At about 5 p.m. every Shabbat afternoon, the parks in the comfortable Tel Aviv suburb of Modi'in start to fill up with families. The little kids head for the slides and swings in the sandbox, parents kick around a ball with their older offspring, while pockets of adults getting together to review the week's events spontaneously form on and off. Usually, the chat among the adults centers on sports, entertainment, kids' schools and camps and – this being Israel – naturally just a tad on politics and current events.

This weekend in Modi'in, though, there was only one subject under discussion: the war in Gaza and the north of Israel. And the discussion was surreal to say the least.

Here were a bunch of 30- and 40-something Saturday afternoon quarterbacks, lounging under the palm and pine trees that the well appointed city of Modi'in has planted everywhere, feeling perfectly safe and relaxing on what otherwise would seem to be an entirely ordinary afternoon, while all the while trying to second guess what Israel should do next in an all out war blazing less than a two-hour drive away.

"We need to just pound Lebanon," a 40-something man named Paul said. "Show them who's got the upper hand."

"But what's the end-game?" Eliot, another of the park's pontificators, pronounced. "What are we trying to achieve?"

"We need to rearrange the players," Johnny, a third member of the contingent, said. "Get international supervision in to buffer the border."

"And block the supply channels from Syria and Iran," someone else added. "They'll eventually run out of missiles."

"That's a lot of missiles," Eliot said, referring to estimates that Hezbollah has some 15,000 rockets of varying strengths and distances.

About half-way through the discussion, someone arrived who had overheard the news. "They hit Tiberias," she said breathlessly.

Everyone stood shocked for a moment. Tiberias is some 35 kilometers from the Lebanese border – a different kind of missile must have been used.

"It's not any farther than Haifa," Johnny said finally, breaking the silence and trying to downplay some of the surprise factor that a hit on the ancient Roman fishing village on the shores of the Sea of Galilee represented.

"My kid is supposed to be going to camp near Beit Shean," someone else added as the crowd began to grow. Beit Shean is just south of Tiberias at the northern end of the Jordan Valley. Would it now be in range? What about Tel Aviv…or Modi'in?

"We had reservations for next weekend at Kfar Tavor," said Yvan dispassionately. "I guess we'll be changing those plans." Several people nodded grimly.

"We need to go after Iran," Paul stated emphatically. "That's where it's all coming from. Hezbollah, Hamas, they all act on orders from Tehran."

"Syria should be targeted, too," added Johnny. "This is an opportunity. And we'll only have a few days before the international community condemns us for 'disproportionate use of force.'"

"They already have," Eliot said. "Didn't you see the front page of the International Herald Tribune?"

The IHT's banner headline called out "Israel hits targets in Lebanon." A subhead read "Lebanese brace for long siege." Any mention of the kidnapping and audacious Hezbollah attack on an Israeli army patrol that killed eight soldiers was by now buried five paragraphs in.

And any connection between what was happening in Gaza and the north was also hard, if not impossible, to find. Those who are familiar with the way things have a habit of playing out in this part of the world know that it's only a matter of time before Israel will be blamed for being the "sole aggressor" in another war to "displace innocent civilians."

Yet despite the tough talk, no one in the park in Modi'in – which is only a few minutes from Ben Gurion international airport with its flights to presumably safer shores – was thinking of going anywhere.

"What for?" Eliot said in response to a question on whether he is feeling anxious about the situation. ""Modi'in is probably the safest place in the country. Next to Jerusalem that is."

Now, that's got to be one of the greatest ironies of this new war. For years, tourists and Israelis alike wouldn't go anywhere near Jerusalem – the center of the suicide bombing campaign. Now, it's one of the few places out of range of the Katuyshas from Lebanon and the Kassams from Gaza.

"We used to go to vacation at the Holiday Inn in Ashkelon," Yvan mused, still thinking of alternatives to his trip to Kfar Tavor in the North. But when Ashkelon was hit by Kassams from Hamas following the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit two weeks ago, tourism dried up there as well.

Eventually, the conversation turned to more trivial matters. England's defeat in the World Cup still weighed heavily on some members of Israel's expatriate Jewish community. And then there's synagogue politics, a topic to rival even the most intense war talk. No gathering in Israel could be complete without a blow by blow of who said what to whom in shul.

The sun started to go down. The kids were getting hungry. There wasn't much anyone in the park could do on a Shabbat afternoon about events in the North and the South of the country. But they could feed their kids. They could tuck them into bed and give them a good night kiss and tell them that everything was gong to be just fine.

Johnny and Paul and Eliot and Yvan all headed indoors where, once their impressionable youngsters were safely asleep, they undoubtedly turned on their radios and televisions and picked up the phones to engage in more Saturday afternoon quarterbacking.

You may have been wondering why I haven't blogged the war that has been raging in Israel. I have...but not here on This Normal Life...yet.

I've been hired by Jewish Renaissance Media to provide daily posts on the war on its sites: Jewish.com, the Detroit Jewish News and the Atlana Jewish News. Those reports began appearing today and I will provide links direct to Jewish.com from my main blog site. Please visit Jewish.com for complete coverage.

Don't worry, This Normal Life isn't going away. This temporary change of format will help ensure that JRM can provide the best coverage to its readers, which in turn helps compensate me for increasing my output from weekly to daily reporting.

It is my sincere prayer - for all of us here in Israel and abroad - that this war, which was thrust upon us unprovoked and unwelcomed, will be concluded swiftly, but most important, successfully. Make no mistake about it, this is no less than a battle for our existence, one that Israel cannot afford to lose.

-- Brian

My recent post on “The Royal Mikveh” generated more than the usual amount of response. Not since I was branded a “settler” for living in West Jerusalem have I received so much feedback on a blog article. So I wanted to share a little of what readers have told me.

If you haven’t read the piece, the link is here. A quick summary: my wife Jody and I found ourselves at the Dead Sea for a romantic night away without the kids, but to make the evening truly special, we needed a mikveh in a hurry. The only mikveh in town – at the Royal Hotel – cost a pretty penny and didn’t even include a “mikveh lady.” So, as the dutiful husband, I was pressed into what some who wrote in called dubious service.

One reader said that what we did was plainly “non-halachic” – forbidden by Jewish law. Another chastised me for talking so openly about our activities while at the same time criticizing in the article the lack of discretion displayed by the hotel staff.

My fourteen-year-old son Amir predicted I’d lose half my readers for such a display of openness and subsequently pronounced that he’d never be able to look me in the eye anymore. My friend Bob put it more succinctly: "TMI" - short for "too much information."

But the overwhelming majority of comments on the post were positive. One reader wrote that he and his wife had experienced the exact same problem at the Dead Sea and suggested there might be a mikveh at a nearby kibbutz that could serve as an alternative to the lavish and overpriced one at the Royal Hotel.

Several other readers questioned why we didn’t go farther – making the mikveh experience truly coed.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, a leading figure in Modern Orthodoxy, once proposed that men and women ought to go into the mikveh together, wrote in one reader. There should even be a small room next to the mikveh with flowers and scented candles where the post-mikveh couple could retire for a short time afterwards, Greenberg suggested.

Greenberg's proposal was apparently made in 1969. Since then Modern Orthodoxy has become decidedly less liberal.

But that hasn’t stopped my friend Haviva Ner-David, who recently made headlines when she received ordination from a respected Orthodox Rabbi in Jerusalem, from devising her own coed mikveh tradition (she's writing about it for an upcoming book, so I shouldn't worry that I'm spilling any overly personal beans, Haviva assured me).

On mikveh night, she and her husband Jacob steal away to a nearby spring in the Jerusalem Hills, park the car and hike into a valley where a swimming hole awaits (see picture at left). There they take turns dunking in this natural mikveh, followed by some romantic skinny-dipping together. It can get a little uncomfortable if there are other visitors, Haviva admitted, but most of the time they’re alone – in no small part because the water isn’t exactly heated like a Jacuzzi.

Haviva is now doing a home renovation and is planning to build a private mikveh into her basement – “for the winter months when it’s just too cold,” she says. She is also eaching classes to recently engaged and newly married couples, and I imagine her private mikveh may play a starring role.

“Didn’t you think about going in the mikveh at the Royal Hotel too,” Haviva asked me as we discussed the responses I’d received.

“I never said I didn’t,” I replied with a wink.