December 22, 2023

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2023-12-21

Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. Here we go...

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I don't get much information from eavesdropping in the hall. The rocket sirens have stopped. We're getting organized for the afternoon prayers. It's hard to tell who is talking about what. The words for "falling" -- n'filah -- and "prayer" -- t'filah -- are related, and sound pretty much the same.

The booms seem louder and closer than before. The news sites soon report that shrapnel has landed in our city. Tweeted photos show large chunks, like the lower segments of streetlamp poles. ¹

Official word never says exactly where they hit, but conversations on social media recognize a spot downtown, within a couple of blocks of the Great Synagogue and the Heart of the City. No wonder the booms were so loud.

It looks like more fell a few blocks southeast, near the bus stop after our city's downtown nexus. One of my relatives went to middle school there. Gaggles of girls, in skirts, stockings, and long sleeves, get on the bus there or wander downtown after classes.

Shrapnel also hits a kindergarten in a nearby town. All the children and staff are in their shelter. No one is hurt. The local news site shows photos of a shattered adobe roof and of something complicated, made of metal, still sitting where it landed on a child's chair.²

The Ministry of Agriculture tells us to brace ourselves. Winter is coming. Due to the war, we may have significant shortages of tomatoes and onions. Wars and viruses notwithstanding, our society may not be able to stand running low on ingredients for shakshuka.³

More information comes in about the three hostages who our Army accidentally killed. As usual, it doesn't reach us in the order that it happened.

It appears that the Army had sent a dog with an audio recorder into a house where they suspected that terrorists were hiding. The terrorists killed the dog. The army killed the terrorists.⁴

Days later, after the hostages died, the Army retrieved the dog's body and the recorder. They discovered that it had recorded the voice of at least one of the hostages calling for help.

The hostages had apparently been held by the terrorists, who killed the dog and were killed. (This is sounding a bit like "Chad Gadya."⁵) They carefully moved around the area looking for help.

Some troops had seen the signs that the hostages had hung on a building. It looks like they used food materials to write them on white cloth. But word didn't get to the right people that the troops had spotted signs in Hebrew.⁶

The hostages encountered the Army and died about a kilometer from where they had been recorded.

Some of these stories of the flow of information, as well as about the flow and failure of information before the war, remind me of issues of resilience in computer emergencies.

My friend Matt Davis⁷, an expert in these issues (and a stellar musician), notes in a Facebook comment:

"in fact a great deal of human factors and safety systems are directly related to the military. DARPA has funded full research programs on human resilience in socio-technical systems. Gary Klein's work with Naturalistic Decision Making is a great resource."⁸

The official national X account has tweeted a letter from the mother of the drummer who was killed to the troops that shot him. Here it is, in its entirety:⁹

"Hello to the Bislach Brigade, battalion 17, this is Iris Haim, I'm Yotam's mother.

"I wanted to tell you that I love you very much and I embrace you from afar. I know that everything that happened is completely not your fault, it's nobody's fault - except the Hamas, may their name and memory be wiped off the face of the earth.

"We invite you to come visit us at the earliest opportunity, whoever is willing, we want to see you with our own eyes and embrace you and tell you that what you have done - as painful as it is to say, and as sad as it is - was likely the right thing to do at that moment, and none of us are judging you or angry with you. Not me, not my husband Raviv, not my daughter Noya, not Yotam, of blessed memory, and not Tuval, Yotam's brother.

"We love you very much, and that's that".

After the sirens in our town, things quickly return to the current sense of "normal." A relative at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers doesn't get to take her daily nap, but she never does after sirens.

The afternoon prayers proceed as usual. Since our weekend starts tonight, we wish each other a good Shabbat as we go back to our respective offices.

Later, the boss comes around with cookies.

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Here’s an archive of past newsletters.

You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.

The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me there, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)

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L'hitraot.