All the studs are with me - there used to be a band by that name. And now it's on my feed: all the studs, all the clear-eyed people, all the brave, all the leaders – they all scroll through me, and they all die. The cream of Israeli society, from all sectors, from all ethnicities, from all faiths, the best are being plucked before our eyes. My heart can't contain it anymore. Until the next day.
And the question arises - why do the good ones go and the bad stay? Why not the soldiers of criminal organizations, the crooks, the sex offenders, the exploiters of the elderly, why don't they adorn the news bulletins, with faces that all there is to say when they are gone is "Blessed is our patron." Why do they sit for sure while exemplary fathers, glorious spouses, people of their height and above, pay the highest price of all?
And the answer is simple. It's not because G-d wants them by His side. To me, this is a particularly bad answer, and if I were G-d I would sue for libel, as is the custom these days. The Creator has no interest in human sacrifices, and certainly does not glorify the feet of the throne of honor with the souls of the best sons and daughters. The real answer is that the good guys go because they're the ones who serve, and they're the ones who volunteer to break through first, and they're the ones who take responsibility and don't impose it on someone else. And it's dangerous. Being good is a decision that comes with a future price tag, and sometimes the future is now.
Only those who were willing to sacrifice and returned home safely know how to find the hero within, Illustration: Moshe Binyamin
Every day I see them in pictures. And I say, I'd love to get to know you, I'd like to be your friend, I'd love to work for you, or you'd work for me. Where have you been? Where are you hiding from me? Why do we meet only in your last photo?
And I understand that with all due respect to all those who serve in the IDF, and there is respect for everyone who wears uniforms, from 8200 to Galatz, only the visceral, those who throw their lives on the other side, who endanger their homes and families and everything they have, deserve to be in the hall of future leadership of this nation. Not because you have to be a fighter, and not because you have to understand security from your feet on the ground, but because of the willingness to sacrifice everything. Only those who were willing to sacrifice and returned home safely, know what sacrifice is intimately, know what fear is and what overcoming is, know how to find the hero within.
The terrible price in blood we pay is the price of years of reducing the fighting force and replacing it with a force whose keyboard is its art. Not underestimating, God forbid. Fortunately, we have enough heroes left to come out victorious. I wish they would stay enough to take the leadership the day after.
Something unrelated
Can something unrelated to the war? Thank you. This week I was on an instructive visit to an Israeli company that is about to change the world. This is Sonovia, you may remember its name from the days of COVID-19, when it created cloth masks that kill viruses as they fly into our noses. The pandemic has passed, and the company has found a new avenue for its technology, and it will change the world.
What is the most polluting industry in the world? Right. Meat industry. And right after it in the table? The clothing industry, especially the denim factories. To have frilling jeans, you have to sweep the world on a scale you don't believe at all.
Each azure trouser has to be painted in nine paint baths, incoming, incoming, outgoing, millions of liters of blue water pouring into Third World rivers, destroying lakes and seas. There has already been a protest movement against the heavy environmental cost of the textile industry, and laws have been passed here and there, and the big manufacturers have realized that very soon they will have to find new ways to dye the white cotton fiber in a color that both turns it blue and reveals its white past if rubbed well.
And that's where Israeli Sonovia comes in. In the ugliest building, on the most neglected street in Ramat Gan, in its laboratories, the company developed a new process for dyeing fabrics, which is not based on endless soaking in color, but by bombarding the fabric with sound waves that insert the dye into the fiber with ultrasonic force. I saw it work. How did I not think of that myself? And not only do machines with the new method already produce small quantities of dyed fabrics, but even the French luxury corporation Kering, the owner of Gucci, has recognized the Israeli genius and is vigorously promoting the integration of the technology in the manufacture of jeans in Milan, Italy. And that means success is already on the way. And unless something unexpected happens, from here, from Ramat Gan, near Snail Street, which is amazing because snails produced the blue of jeans at the beginning, the most important environmental news of this century, so far, will come out.
And why am I telling you all this now, when black fits the description of the situation more than a blue? Because despite everything, the forces of creativity and innovation continue to beat here, and they are our rosy future in the world, and even if we hate passionately, our innovation will not be extinguished, and the world jeans that began with a Jew, Levi Strauss, will now be dyed by Israelis, and all anti-Semites will have to wear our color on their hate-soaked skin, and understand that blue and white is our color.
Was a security officer
A relative left reserve duty in Gaza. I asked - how was it? He said, "There was a security officer!! I said - voila? Is that what you have to say? He said yes. In Operation Protective Edge there wasn't, and there wasn't in Lebanon either, and on Yom Kippur who heard, and on six days who knew. He added that at the end of each operation there was a process of cooperation with the commander, and then with the security officer, whoever wants to do so individually, and whoever is not interested is obligated to do so in a group, with his teammates. After each action. Astonishing.
What a road we have taken. From the time when suffering shell shock was a great shame, which required hiding in the house, sometimes a lifetime without knowing that the soul was broken in front of the mirrors, through the beginning of the hesitant recognition of those who snatched the kaffa to the soul and need help, to the situation today, when anticipating what might happen, and even before the soul takes a heavy toll, the sights, sounds, smells, and reducing the chance of post-trauma later in life are already processed. I don't know if it's in all units, that's what I heard from one soldier.
The IDF learned. As someone who accompanied some of the struggles of post-traumatic stress disorder to consciousness, after encountering a cold shoulder, a suspicious attitude, even criminal neglect, suddenly hearing that a new post-combat doctrine has been created, is nothing short of exciting. It's a pity for all those who didn't win, for all those who paid with their lives for the lack of care they received, but at least we moved forward.
It's good that the fighters are being treated. And the question only arises: what about everyone else, because this event of the shiva created an entire generation of traumatics here, without the parties that survived, the residents of the kibbutzim that survived, the citizens of the southern cities that were kidnapped, the residents of the north who were uprooted, the residents of Judea and Samaria who are always attacked, and every citizen who sent sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers into battle. Some of them are already undergoing treatment, but it seems that the whole country is traumatized by one huge trauma. From this trauma we will not recover as we are used to, just return to normal. This time it's a particularly severe blow to the psyche, a blow that requires broad systemic treatment, treatment of an entire nation.
If we don't take care of it, and I really don't know how to treat the people, when it's over we'll see people here who are even more nervous than before, young people who react without thinking about the reaction, drivers whose system is overreacted by every little stimulus. The mental health system, with its meager powers doing truly sacred work, must build a doctrine of treatment for an entire nation. And maybe when it's over, we'll see discussion groups in community centers and synagogues, parks and salons, where anyone who wants what happened to all of us will work, so that we don't pass on to the next generation what we received from the Holocaust generation. Artist.
avrigilad@gmail.com
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