January 14, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-13

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. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...

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A worshiper at the synagogue inside the House of a Hundred Grandmothers returned for Shabbat services this morning. He had been sitting shiva. His son had been killed in combat across the border.

My family told me about this when I came over this afternoon. It's the closest, in terms of degrees of separation, that the war casualties have come to us, so far.

We discussed how the upcoming year looks for us. It doesn't necessarily look great. There have been gradual increases in attacks and unrest on each of the fronts, declared or undeclared. The Red Sea is becoming increasingly hazardous, and shipping is getting rerouted. One thing they mentioned is that the Suez Canal is even more critical now that the Panama Canal is drying up.¹

They pointed me to a very good news blog run by the Institute for the Study of War.² It looks at the war and related conflict from the angle of strategy and tactics, apart from other aspects.

The Institute's analysis is that what they call the "Axis of Resistance," backed by Iran, are working to draw our Army's assets and resources away from our declared war. They want to erode our will and ability for current and future ground operations there. They're working to set up conditions to fight a multi-front regional war.

We talked about contingencies depending on how bad things would get. I'm in relatively good shape, since I'm quite mobile and have a steady and supportive job. Other members of the family have to deal with oxygen supplies, medications, using wheelchairs, eating difficulties, and the like. They're much more dependent on utilities and supply chains.

Fortunately, the House protects them somewhat. It's a solid and caring organization, with good planning and support from the city.

It looks like the usual oligarchs, cabals, and conglomerates are finding excuses to raise prices, because they can. They're blaming it on "the security situation."³

The government is proposing huge budget cuts. They're also blaming it on the war. It looks, from this article, like they're coming for the usual things that self-involved rich people say are too expensive and aren't needed.⁴ Google Translate says:

"The plan document details hundreds of budget items that will be cut in government ministries, as well as structural measures such as closing the chief scientist units in government ministries, privatizing companies and services, stopping programs and reducing support for non-profit organizations. It apparently means the dismissal of hundreds of employees in the civil service, damage to development plans and vulnerable populations, damage to public services and stagnation in the development of new infrastructures."

It's worth going further into the article. It's jaw-dropping.

Local councils are not pleased.⁵

I do see that our Defense Minister just stomped out of a War Cabinet meeting after arguing with the Prime Minister over whose aideas could be in the meeting.⁶ So it goes.

On my way home after the Havdalah ceremony, a friendly dog in the park wandered up to me. I stood still. It sniffed and licked my hand, then walked away. The human at the other end of the leash looked up at me, smiled, said "Hi," then looked back at her phone.

Closer to my house, at the end of the pedestrian street, a woman was doling up scoops of dry cat food. Some seven cats had gathered around her. She looked startled when I said, "Good evening." I got the sense that she doesn't speak with people very much.

At home, I tried clearing out some of my browser tabs, one at a time. Something went wrong, and blew away all of them, including the pinned tabs. So much for the news that I had tagged to post here today. It wasn't much, though, mostly analyses of ongoing things. Nothing seems to have happened in The Hague since yesterday.

Those on the US East Coast can apparently look forward to sinking into the ocean at some point.⁷ Indicators are pointing to somewhere between "Miami 2017"⁸ and "Here Comes the Flood."⁹

I just heard several odd bursts of rain, fiercer than usual, but each lasting less than a minute. I should probably wind this up and post it before my internet connection goes out again.

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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 at that Las Vegas address, 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.