1 Boring Old Man

The View From Israel: Victors in a Necessary War
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 11, 2009

This is an unwanted war, Israelis say, but it is necessary, and they are winning it. Unlike in 2006, when Israelis grew bitterly split over the war in Lebanon, the invasion of Gaza has produced a rare consensus here. In newspapers and on television, commentators approvingly note that the Israeli military has sown devastation in Gaza without a high toll in Israeli lives. If Palestinians are dying, they say, it is Hamas’s fault.

On the streets of this palm-shaded city, just 40 miles up the coast but a world away in atmosphere from the horrors of Gaza, residents echo that line. "This war’s been very successful. We should have done it four or five years ago," said Menachem Haygani, 47, owner of a juice stand on high-rent, high-fashion Dizengoff Street. "It’s very justified. Sure, people there are suffering, but also people here are suffering."

And in the Israeli news media, the focus is squarely on the latter. While television screens around the world display grisly scenes from Gaza of blood-smeared hospital floors and critically wounded Palestinian children, Israelis are watching a very different war. Here, images from Gaza are relatively scarce, while the plight of Israelis injured or killed during the war is covered around the clock…

I’ve given up ever talking to anyone that cares about that part of the world. All you hear about is the other side’s latest atrocity. I’ve done the same thing you’ve probably done – tried to ask about the fate of the other side. I once asked an Israeli what he thought Israel’s part was in the problem. I’ll never do that again. It just feels like their destiny is endless warfare with fantasies of mutual annihilation. This time, Israel invaded because Hamas was showering it with rockets. Hamas is showering Israel with rockets because Israei Commandos killed six gunmen in a raid into Gaza. And so it goes back to my third grade year.

It does remind me of Northern Ireland a bit. When I moved to England in 1971, the British had just begun internment – essentially jailing up all possible I.R.A. combatants. The battle between the I.R.A. and the Northern Island Protestants/British seemed impossible, just like in Gaza. Pubs blew up regularly after that. Once we were at a Charles Bronson Movie in Dublin and the theater was evacuated because of a bomb threat [we never saw the end of the movie]. I thought the Irish conflict would go on forever, but it didn’t. They now live in some modicum of harmony.

Then there was Yugoslavia, a place we visited – a beautiful place. Since the end of the World War, it had been united as a Communist Bloc country under Tito. When we were there, I thought all the people were "Yugoslavians." Well, when Tito died in 1980, that turned out not to be true. The ethnic groups commenced to try to exterminate each other with a veangance. But now they’ve come to some kind of division and agreement that will hopefully last.