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Dear Mum: in Israel this year has been indescribably awful. How I wish you were here - by Etgar Keret (copied from The Guardian)

Dear Mum,

It’s been five years since you died, and I’m only now writing. I’m sorry it took me so long, but I was waiting for some good news to share, and there never was any. I could have written to you about the Covid-19 pandemic, or about the messianic rightwing government formed by Benjamin Netanyahu, whom you never could stand.

I could have written about the horrific massacre that took place here on 7 October, about the hundreds of hostages languishing in Gaza, and about how at the same time Netanyahu seemed to be doing everything he could to sabotage a deal and is determined to keep this miserable war going on for ever.

I could also have told you about Alex, the bearded historian from that Polish documentary I was in, who you said was a mensch: he was kidnapped from his home, where we filmed the interviews that day, and he died in Gaza after Netanyahu refused to accept the release of older Israelis instead of women in the hostage deal.

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Or I could have written about the older men and women whom we might have come across in the doctor’s waiting room if you were still alive: they were violently arrested and handcuffed by Itamar Ben-Gvir’s fascist police, as if they were dangerous criminals, only because they dared to remind us that one of the most important Jewish mitzvahs is the redemption of captives. But what would that have achieved? You’re already in a different world – a better one.

So I kept waiting for good news, and I promised myself that I’d write when the hostages came home, or at least when this terrible government collapsed and Bibi took responsibility for the catastrophe instead of blaming the bolstering of Hamas on the army generals, on the supreme court judges, and even on your own sons, who’ve been out on the streets every week, calling for an agreement that would release the kidnapped and end this cursed war, protesting against the starvation of Gazans and the settlers’ pogroms in Palestinian villages in the West Bank.

The past year in Israel has felt a bit like watching a split screen on TV: on one side, the events zoom by at Chaplin speed and epic-movie proportions, depicting an inconceivable massacre in Israel’s southern kibbutzim that led to a firestorm of death and devastation raining down on Gaza. And on the other side of the screen? The picture is frozen.

For one whole year, the prime minister of Israel has not been able to tell his nation or the world how he envisions Gaza looking, once this never-ending war is over, and has not seen fit to admit his culpability in the security failures that resulted in many hundreds of his citizens being murdered. Nor can he explain why, more than a year after dismissing his minister of defence, that minister still has his job. One whole year in which the head of state refuses to give interviews to local media, or form an investigation committee to look into the debacle, or set a date for elections so that the people who, according to polls, have long ago tired of him can have their say.

This has been a year as long as eternity and as barren as a desert, and at the end of it, we find ourselves standing next to a heap of bodies, without an iota of insight or hope. The media feed us updates on plans for the 7 October anniversary memorial. The ceremony, they tell us, will be filmed without an audience, for fear of protests breaking out. It will be pre-recorded, detached from time and from the people, just like the preposterous government that conceived it. A memorial ceremony while there are still hostages in Gaza waiting to be released feels about as incomprehensible as a memorial for Holocaust victims taking place during the second world war, while smoke still rises from the incinerators.

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Candles lit outside the Knesset in Jerusalem in a protest against Benjamin Netanyahu on 7 November 2023, one month on from the 7 October attacks. Photograph: Alexi J Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Houses are burning in the north of Israel, Mom, and in Lebanon, exploding pagers and walkie-talkies were only a prelude to an extensive attack that eliminated much of Hezbollah’s leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah. Oh, and Iran launched another missille attack on Israel, but it sounds worse than it really was. Which reminds me: today, I finally managed to scrounge a good piece of news off the internet, and although it has nothing to do with the country you love so much, I think it’ll make you happy: a new study commissioned by the World Health Organization shows that apparently there is no correlation between frequent mobile phone use and cancer. Remember how you were always telling me, with a slightly anxious smile, that my incessant talking was one thing, but all those long mobile phone calls would end up frying my brain? Well, you can stop worrying – they won’t. Your garrulous son can keep talking and talking on the phone, without losing a single hair.

People on both sides of the Gaza border are dropping like flies: innocent Israeli children and older men and women, young soldiers, and many thousands of Gazan women and babies. But none of them died because they were talking on their phones too much. Mobile phones are probably here for ever. This government, though, does have an expiration date. Let us pray together that it expires before the country itself does, and before the destruction of the Third Temple that Ben-Gvir and his cronies are fantasising about on their path to redemption.

Talking of redemption, I hope it’s nice up there, and that you and Dad are finding a bit of peace and quiet. A lot of Israelis have been saying they’re glad their parents aren’t alive to see what’s become of the country for which they sacrificed so much, but I feel sad every day not to have you. I know that if you were alive, you and Dad would have straightened things out around here, or at least managed, as you always did, to look into the darkness and gloom and find a hopeful path of light.

Love,

Etgar

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