What a Ceasefire Really Means

What does a ceasefire mean to the average Israeli? 

For some it means not getting caught in the shower when missiles are headed their way. 

For me it means I meet a neighbor on the street, a kid that I had sheltered with regularly for 12 days, and we take a moment to talk for the first time, exchange words of hope, some of them in French! 

We both hope the ceasefire lasts forever. 

You know, right, that there's an 8-hour time difference between Chicago and Tel Aviv. Israel 8 hours ahead. But it does not get in the way of love, talking to the people we love with FaceTime or WhatsApp. It all works. Not as great as being physically together, but the next best thing.

My brother and sister-in-law (sister, really) talk and I feel their anxiety, the anxiety of the entire extended family back home.*

Sometimes they call and I'm working because of that time zone thing. I write:

With a patient, will call later.

When I call back I'm under the false assumption that we will be celebrating the ceasefire between Israel and Iran. But no, the reports in the US have successfully polluted my family's interpretation of events. There is pervasive worry that the American bombs did not 'do the job.' The explosion did not take out the uranium, is what I am hearing, appalled. Iranians can still develop their bombs, and worse, they may even have a few nuclear weapons stashed away somewhere in them thar' hills. 

Maxar photo, B2-bombers, 6 holes on the nuclear reactor site

Being a doctor, I am quick to respond. The problem is that you caught a virus, I say.

Iranian propaganda is virulent. What do you guess Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is telling his people? Is he going to tell them that the Americans obliterated their nuclear program? Is he going to say that Iran has effectively lost the war? 

Uh, no. That is not how dictators communicate. Honesty is not their strongpoint. What Khamenei tells his people goes something more like this:

We won! We brought the Israelis to their knees! They begged for a ceasefire. 

LOL. 

Adorable. 

This, as Israeli planes fly overhead in Iran, booming jets piercing their atmosphere. The IAF, the Israel Air Force, still proudly owns Iranian airspace ya' see. Although I hear they left with the ceasefire. So there's that. Victory for Iran, right?

IAF over Iran

The truth is that the mishigas (mish-ih-gahs, craziness, nonsense, Yiddish but also Hebrew) about how American bombs failed their mission is poppycock (come on, people, the USAF unleashed 30 tons of warheads made out of steel, aluminum, radar absorbent metal, tritonal, all kinds of alloys to make things go boom at  that nuclear site). The protest, the lie, is to save face, it is political. Tell the Iranian people that they won. that there is no substantial damage, no set back. Even if they don't believe it, the Americans surely will. 

I tell my family that it is all good, too, because Iran will not want to break the ceasefire, the lie in place. Breaking the ceasefire would mean that they did not win, that they have to keep fighting. But they won, so everyone in the Middle East can shower in peace now.  

They want you to be afraid, I tell D and T. 

In Israel the cultural spirit is courage, not fear. We respect fear but look it in the eye. This is a Zen idea,  too, honor your fear but be ready to pull out your light saber. 

Israelis have done and continue to do what our forefather Jacob (Yacov) did over 3000 years ago. 

Yacov is about to meet up with his brother Esau (Genesis 32:21). Esau a powerful, violent guy most likely intent upon revenge, wanting to kill his younger brother for having grabbed the birthright, finding the nearest camel, and hitting the sand dunes. 

Yacov is afforded lots of time to come up with a three-pronged plan for when he meets up with his brother again. When faced with annihilation, a powerful enemy:

(1) don't forget to placate him with gifts, first,  to soften him up. Everyone likes presents.

(2) but prepare for war

(3) and pray  

We pray, as should everyone, that the war is over, that no more lives are lost (7 Israeli soldiers, only yesterday in Gaza). So no, we are not celebrating, we mourn and we pray for the return of those still in captivity in Gaza, the hostages.

Our dear hostages, you are not forgotten, 22 Israeli, 1 Thai, 1 Nepali

7 gone in Gaza yesterday 

* home for a Jew is Israel, that is our tradition. But we all have second homes, right? Jews are all rich, aren't they? 

Namaste,

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The Lion and the Lamb Idea

 'We slept through,' FD mumbles. It is 515am. We're up. 

At first I think he means we slept through an alarm to shelter downstairs in our miklat (mick-laht) then realized that is impossible. There is no sleeping through an azakah (ah-zah-kah). We slept through only because there was no alarm last night. 

'And the Cubs won,' I mumble back. 

I checked the score after thanking the Old Mighty for returning me to life, the first thing a Jew does each day, Modeh ani (moe-deh-ah-ni). Other cultures might do this, too, but it has extra meaning for Jews, is my guess.  

Last night we watched some of the ballgame on television. What a feeling, mastering the technology of streaming from an iPad to a television. Two doctors figuring out what had previously evaded them. 

This is like getting the Wordle in two. You rise from feeling incompetent and a loser (Wordle in four to six) to brilliant. 

But I'm not feeling great, despite the Cub win, too much news about the war being far from over, too many soundbites about Iran's nuclear capability. 

Last November when patients in the US panicked after Donald Trump's election I prescribed a moratorium on the news. If it upsets you don't listen, don't engage. Don't read. I've followed my own advice for the greater part of this year and I live in Israel! News about fighting a war on multiple fronts has been highly disturbing, gut wrenching, sad. It is existential and surreal that our soldiers, children, are in danger. The Israel Defense Forces are us. They are our relatives, the children of nieces and nephews, grandchildren of cousins, children of friends. 

Now, as civilians we are in danger, too, and it is more and more clear the obscenity of war.  I think of October 11, how Hamas started it with their invasion from Gaza, decapitating, mutilating, raping women, stealing humans. This is so ugly, all of it.

So I take my own advice, only read the headlines. Reading headlines is like reading the title of a graphic comic book, the gravity doesn't sink in. 

זאב עם כלב ירבץ ונמר עם עגל ירבץ The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the calf

To an end to the war, may there be no lives lost today or tomorrow or evermore from war. . 

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