February 12, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-11

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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Small Town

I get a WhatsApp message from a relative at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. She had just gotten a call from another who lives there:

"He had gone to the funeral of a House resident. There, he met someone he knows from our old synagogue. The friend told him that the funeral of a friend will be about half an hour... So, he's staying at the cemetery to go to the second funeral. Talk about a small community."

Solomonic

A court here has issued a ruling that the papers are calling "Solomonic."¹ There's a famous photo of a group of paratroopers from the Six-Day War, over half a century ago. Each of the paratroopers had been named.

A few years ago, though, the family of another paratrooper claimed that he was one of the people in the picture, not the person originally identified.

The two families took it to court. Each claimed, and presented evidence, that their relative was in the picture, and not the other guy. The judge wasn't convinced from either side.

The decision: Each family can claim that their relative was in the photo:

“Both sides have agreed that it is not possible to determine the question of who is in the picture taken by David Rubinger on June 7, 1967, certainly when there is no dispute that the two relevant people [were] brave warriors...

“Both sides agree to put the argument behind them and transmit to the people of Israel a message of unity and reconciliation, in which the court will not be required to decide the question of [who is] photographed in the photo, while both sides will continue to believe in the truth they hold.”

Everyone is reasonably happy. The two families took a picture together in the hallway of the courthouse.

Crossing Lines of Grief

Another journal published a more troubling, tragic, ongoing story.²

The lines delineating the area across the border are kind of arbitrary, as many borders are. From what I understand, they were drawn based on where armies happened to be at the end of a previous conflict. According to my family's research, it looks like a regional railroad had had its tracks along that line long ago, back when a railroad spanning several countries around here was possible.

When the lines were drawn, many families got split up, depending on who happened to be on which side of them at the time.

Amidst the large number of casualties in the current war were people there who had relatives here. Many of the relatives are afraid to mourn visibly for those they had lost, since it might look like they were supporting the enemy. As one woman, whose husband had lost a brother, said:

"From the outside, it's business as usual, and it's forbidden to show anything, lest they think we're Hamas supporters, God forbid. But inside, inside the house, there's a great loss and hard feelings, in a quiet situation."

They have traditions of mourning similar to the Jewish sitting shiva. Some have put together other gatherings. The article describes what several families have done, and how those around them who they let know have reacted.

All Your Data Are Belong to Us

The big story today has been that the Army has found the terrorists' major data center.³ It just happens to be in tunnels directly under a UN agency's data center, and connected to it.

The agency tweeted that it had "no knowledge" of what was underneath it.⁴

Our people tweeted that that was, to put it nicely, poppycock.⁵ It's kind of hard not to notice that someone is digging a deep tunnel under your offices, especially when cameras and gates were tracking who and what came in and out, and when the power cables connect to your own. Conveniently, though, the cameras and recording were missing from the agency building when our Army got there.

I wonder what kind of servers they were using. I also wonder to what degree they were using appropriate encryption, backups, and redundancy, and how long it will take our folks to have all their information. I'll leave it to the experts in data center recovery and resilience among us to give further insight.

Downward, Facing Dog

On my way home, I almost fall down the same steps as last week.

The streetlamp is still out. There's a municipal phone number for such things, but my track record in trying to tell them precise information in Hebrew and to answer their questions in real-time hasn't been good.

As I walk down the path, I pass someone heading the other way. He's using the flashlight on his phone. Good idea. I pause to put mine on.

When I do, I see a large dog at my feet. I'm surprised to see him. He doesn't appear pleased to see me. His human is standing to my right, tapping at his phone. He scoots around me to my left. His leash wraps around my ankles.

I grab the banister and hold on. Fortunately, with the flashlight app on, I know where it is. The human says something to the dog sharply in Hebrew. The dog goes back to him, unwrapping the leash from my feet. The two of them pass me. The human doesn't seem to have noticed me as anything other than an inanimate obstruction.

It takes me a moment to regain my equilibrium, physically and emotionally, before I continue down the steps and back home.

Her Boyfriend's Back

Happy Super Bowl to those who celebrate. May the odds be ever in your favor. I'll catch the half-time show in the morning.

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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.