Am Yisrael Chai

Off to Tel Aviv and Tekoa, Sderot and the Dead Sea

Happy 2024! And may it be. I’m going to blow this popsicle stand (aka, New York City in January) for some West Coast sun in a few days, but first! How not-fun is it getting in and out of cities these days? From a text thread with pals…

I find the blockages a form of magical thinking: Show up, sit down (Super Glue optional), march, boom! All right’s with the world. It’s so juvenile as to be hilarious.

Until it’s not. Some of us have been writing and videoing that this is not going to end well - and I’ve seen this story play out before; both players dead now. And did people cheer those deaths, or at least the first one? They did. Okay, I take back the hilarious part. It’s a death cult.

I told a friend this morning, pray for an ice storm that keeps the protesters inside for a time, until their heads are turned by the next thing they do not get their historical facts right about, as they do not in the video from November below. Not my finest moment. Yet I stand by the question: whom do they think they are helping?

There are plenty of people I do think are helping, with their scholarship and questions. I’m binging on Israeli history right now. I’m in the middle of listening to Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations, by Ronen Bergman; the story of the slaughter of Israeli Olympic team members in Munich in 1972 is unbelievably shocking. I’m also partway through Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict, by Oren Kessler, which is excellent and very very readable. Eli Lake is doing the lord’s work over on his podcast…

… and you won’t do better than Noam Dworman in conversation with Michael Moynihan and Coleman Hughes.

Everyone is just hustling hustling hustling, trying to be of use. In that vein, I will be putting one of my two skills (the other involves copious amounts of butter and sugar) to use when I travel to Israel on the 15th to report for several weeks. I’m paying to stay and travel in-country and will be super-appreciative for your paid subscriptions.

Is it so that I am just riding in Mike Pesca’s wake? Yes! Still, I will be bringing you stories from people who survived the massacre, who survived captivity, about those who did not, about those rebuilding and those who were broken, or broken for now. I will very happy if you join me.

Now you tell me: Who do you want to hear from? Hook me up with? What do you find under-covered or covered badly or covered in ways you do not trust? Are you in Tel Aviv? Do you want to join the bar meet-up a few of us are planning toward the end of January? Hit me up here or on WhatsApp, I’m easy to find xx