My wife’s family is OK; thanks very much for asking. But yes, missiles are landing and sirens are going off in Tel Aviv, and people there regularly have to use their buildings’ bomb shelters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, the main developments are further south, where at least seven hundred Israelis were murdered or kidnapped and thousands were wounded, in what\u2019s being called \u201cIsrael\u2019s 9\/11\u201d (ironically, I remember 9\/11 itself being called America\u2019s Israel experience). Some back-of-the-envelopes: this weekend, the number of Jews murdered for being Jews was about 12% of the number murdered per day in Auschwitz when it operated at max capacity, and nearly as many as were killed in the entire Six-Day War (most of whom were soldiers). It was also about ten 9\/11’s, if scaled by the Israeli vs. US population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for why this war started, Hamas itself cited, not any desire to improve the miserable conditions of the people under its charge, but a few ultra-Orthodox Jews praying on the Temple Mount \u2014 a theological rationale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is either the worst intelligence and operational failure in Israeli history or the second-worst, after the Yom Kippur War. It\u2019s impossible not to ask whether the total political dysfunction gripping Israel played a central role, whether Netanyahu’s ministers were much more interested in protecting West Bank settlers than in protecting communities near Gaza, and whether Hamas and Iran knowingly capitalized on all this. But there will be investigations afterward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For now, both sides of Israel\u2019s internal conflict \u2014 the secular modernists and the religious nationalist Bibi-ists \u2014 are completely united behind the goal of winning this unasked-for war, with the support of the world\u2019s Jewish diaspora and reasonable people and nations, because what alternative is there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n