It was 19th-century British novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton who allegedly said that the pen was mightier than the sword. But writing from Jerusalem during the Israeli-American war against Iran as many thousands have been called up for reserve duty, I am doubtful that is true. Yet the pen is what I do, and during weeks like these, as history plays out before our eyes, writing is both demanding and a privilege.
One challenge is finding words that do justice to this moment. Another is that while my professional responsibility is to provide geopolitical insights and explanation, I often just want to pull a blanket over my head or focus on getting through the day while looking after two young children. Analysts offer online soundbites and hot takes, while I eat too much junk food and struggle to carry out basic tasks.
I remain struck by the contrasting arguments – both of which sound reasonable – of whether the war is going incredibly well or heading towards strategic disaster. Some point to soaring oil prices and global energy instability, Trump’s unrealistic demand for unconditional surrender, the seeming impossibility of toppling any regime solely from the air, the apparent strengthening of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps within Iran, and the claim that the regime only need to survive in order to claim victory (and likely possesses greater staying power than Trump does patience). For the United States, the war thus far ‘appears a military success but a political failure,’ writes Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment Karim Sadjapour. ‘The campaign has effectively degraded the regime’s malign capacities, but as of now it has seemingly strengthened the regime’s cohesion and not changed its character.’ ‘Instead of producing an Iran’s Delcy Rodriguez’ Sadjadpour adds, ‘the war has for now produced a budding Iranian Kim Jong Un.’
Others talk of Israel’s decapitation strikes – in which 40 Iranian senior leaders, including the Supreme Leader, were killed in 40 seconds – as a historic success to be studied for decades; believe control over the skies of Tehran will allow the significant degrading of Iran’s military and governmental capacities; and argue that even absent regime change, a stuttering, weakened Islamic Republic – already suffering from water and electricity shortages, a debilitating currency crisis, and popular discontent and anger – will be unable to threaten its neighbours, and might be overthrown in the future. While the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader might indeed indicate more North Korea than Venezuela, surely the fact he is yet to be seen or heard from is better reflective of regime weakness than strength.
Ultimately, no one knows how or when this will end.
The siren – that we jokingly describe as an elephant’s trumpet – is now preceded by an ear splitting pre-warning. Missiles from the Arrow defence system stationed nearby provide an additional whoosh once we are in our safe room, the children’s bedroom. Despite the orchestra of noises and our frayed nerves, they are generally relaxed, and sleep through the night sirens. We have hosted their friends, played football in the garden, made beads, and listened to audio books. We feel secure and relatively untraumatised.
Following time in other shelters – including reading the Purim megillah scroll – and with close friends in Tel Aviv, I am aware of how lucky we are. One Tel Avivian father told me he is getting by hour by hour. Another summarised a weekend full of sirens in one word. Brutal.
Having spent the first day of the war cooped up, I left the house on Saturday night to get food. Azza Street was deathly quiet, cafés closed. One lone pizza shop a few minutes away was still open – essential workers, we joked to one another. Some Israelis sang and danced over the Purim festival, celebrating both the festival and Israel’s achievements against an existential enemy. Weddings have reportedly taken place in large underground car parks. Some shelters have been filled with a celebratory atmosphere. As the classic idiom states, the eternal people is unafraid of the long road. We are resilient, possess endurance, and are full of faith in the face of adversity.
And yet it is also incredibly hard – to focus and work; when the children argue (as siblings inevitably do); when I reflect on how wildly abnormal this situation of cluster bombs and ballistic missiles is.
Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot’s Guy Morad drew a cartoon of a public underground car park that doubles as a public shelter. As one group dances to a popular song about how ‘God loves me’ and life will ‘be better, and better, and better,’ an unshaven man sits on a plastic chair eating pickles (chamutzim, sour-ness in Hebrew).
Too many of us are just trying to get through each day.
Traditionally, Purim represented God’s hidden hand in saving the Jewish people from destruction. The sages explained that every time the word king appeared in the megillah without it preceding Persian King Ahasuerus, it referred to the heavenly King of Kings. But a simple reading of the text shows God entirely absent. Ahasuerus had few qualms about approving a genocidal plan against the Jews, a plan that almost succeeded. The lesson we might learn is not that God always redeems but that God does not (and has not) always saved us. The line between deliverance and destruction is perhaps more blurry than we may like to imagine. As Rabbi Yitz Greenberg has written, by the end of the megillah, the Jews of Persia now know ‘that destruction can take place, that the sea will not be split for them, that the Divine has self-limited and they have additional responsibilities.’
Purim as a Persian word means lots, chance. While often framed as a redemptive story, the Jews of Persia recognised their vulnerability, and how it could have ended differently. Understood this way, Jews have been celebrating an annual festival of luck, recognising life as a lottery. Those of us hearing the sound of missiles falling need no reminders.
Regardless of whether the Iranian regime falls or survives, these last weeks have indelibly changed the Middle East. The relationship between the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Iran has likely altered for generations. I worry the narrative that Jews and Israel have pushed the United States into (another) ‘forever war’ will strengthen on both sides of the political aisle.
When I struggle to find words for life in historic times, the best option is to search in Yehuda Amichai, Israel’s unofficial poet laureate.
This is from his poem ‘Miracles’:
From a distance everything looks like a miracle
but up close even a miracle doesn’t look like that.
Even someone who crossed the Red Sea when it split
saw only the sweating back
of the man in front of him
and the swaying of his big thighs,
or at best, in a hasty glance to one side,
fish in a riot of colours inside the wall of water,
as in a marine observatory behind panels of glass.
From a distance these times will look historic. But up close, even living in (miraculously?) historic times does not always appear so. Everyday life is prosaic, mundane. It is also often exceedingly hard. For Amichai, the real miracles happen ‘at the next table of a restaurant in Albuquerque’, where two women are sitting ‘and the other said, “I kept it together and didn’t cry.”’ For us, they happen when Israelis run with children to shelters at 4.10 am, or sleep in metro stations. They occur when millions wake up after a disturbed sleep and look after their children, when citizens (who have heard preciously little from their government) consistently show resilience against the odds, when citizens do not panic (and sometimes panic) even when they want to scream.
Like the Albuquerque women, maybe miracles take place when Israelis just keep it together.
From up close, perhaps historic times simply appear like lots of unshaven cheeks and sweating backs, of exhausted people sitting on yellow plastic chairs struggling to maintain mental health, feeling vulnerable, and attempting not lose their temper with their children.
