A child's sports shoe left on the run at the entrance to his home. A baby chest that was opened to take out a towel, and left orphaned. A dental clinic, perforated with Kalashnikov bullets, set on fire. House after house that was burned, destroyed and destroyed. Cars are crushed on the sides of the grasses, pierced by bullets. And a horrific smell of death, which cannot be conveyed by camera, and which my senses have never smelled.
Eleven days after hundreds of members of Kibbutz Be'eri were murdered and slaughtered, stung and kidnapped, the heart cannot contain what the eyes see, and the head cannot find words to describe what the heart feels. What was going on? Pogrom? Genocide? The continuation of the Holocaust? And among the memorials the grasses are still green, the trees bloom and the scooters of the veterans stand.
This is what the "kibbutz tour" looked like yesterday in Bari. But in the hellish sites of Bari, and in Kfar Gaza, Nahal Oz and Netiv Ha'asara, there were not only living monuments yesterday. In the places where our brothers and sisters were slaughtered, there are now masses upon masses of IDF soldiers, ready for battle, hungry for victory. Even before the Humvees, tanks, tigers, engineering tools, artillery, missile batteries and other destructive tools in the IDF's arsenal, this is an intensity of motivation – unfortunately at a terrible price – unprecedented.
Barry. Ambassadors and diplomats arrived at the kibbutz to witness the disaster, Photo: Ariel Kahane
The presence in those places where things happened that the imagination did not create is an enormous charge of strength for our soldiers. They don't need any talk of encouragement. The being that surrounds them is better than six million explanations. "We are ready to stay for six months as well, we informed the women at home," one of the soldiers threw at the group of Knesset members and diplomats, led by MK Sharan Haskel.
The soldiers are not interested
What did not interest the soldiers was US President Biden's visit to Israel today. Not that they object, but Air Force One is not on their radar, but only the drones and fighter jets of the Air Force that constantly hovered above us.
Biden will land in Israel this morning at 10, but this arrival will be nothing like the national celebrations remembered from previous presidents' visits. Without ceremonies and without flyovers, Biden will stay in Israel for only five hours. It will move from Ben Gurion Airport directly to the Kirya in Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Herzog will meet with him, and he will probably also attend a meeting of the small cabinet.
Biden may meet with family members of the abductees and martyrs with U.S. citizenship. This meeting is of crucial importance to the main issue that will occupy him here, namely the humanitarian situation inside the Gaza Strip.
Joe Biden (archive), photo: AFP
In other words, Biden comes first and foremost to identify with Israel and strengthen it and the Jewish people. Biden is personally and deeply committed to the Jewish cause. His father raised him on the horrors of the Holocaust. He sent all his children and grandchildren to visit the death camps.
Just a month ago, when he met Netanyahu at the United Nations, he uttered the resounding phrase, "Without Israel, no Jew in the world is safe." He did not come to conduct the campaign for us, nor to give a bear hug, but to back up and support, and not only with words. The dispatch of the two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Gulf, the arms shipments that have already begun, the economic package on the way, and the torpedoing of problematic Security Council resolutions are practical expressions of his approach. Most important of all is the full agreement of the United States to the goal set by the cabinet, which is to erase Hamas from Gaza soil. This is Israel's ultimate goal and therefore it is possible to pay a small price so that the United States will remain committed to it.
The price in question is the American desire to ease the humanitarian situation in the southern Gaza Strip. It is important for the government to show the home Democratic audience that the population, which is not formally involved, does not find itself in extreme situations. Israel, for its part, conditions such relief on progress in our humanitarian catastrophe, namely the 199 abductees held by Hamas.
Anti-Israel demonstrations in Jordan
This will be one of the topics that Biden and Netanyahu will discuss in their conversation today. The Israeli public may not like Biden's concluding statement on this matter, but he too has his political needs. The president was then supposed to fly to Jordan, where hundreds rioted last night and tried to set fire to the Israeli embassy (which has been closed for a week) and hold a conference in Amman with Jordan's King Abdullah and Egyptian President el-Sisi, but it was canceled. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced last night that he would boycott the summit because of the explosion at a hospital in Gaza. At this meeting as well, Biden was expected to concentrate on the humanitarian issue. Still, the main and the essential must not be confused.
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