The brutality and slaughter of war has always been hateful and horrible. Plus Israelis and Palestinians have been at each other’s throats since the ’60s. So when I heard about the new hostilities a day ago, I went “okay, here we go again.”
But according to N.Y. Times columnist Thomas Friedman, “This is not your usual Hamas-Israel dust-up.”
Israel newspaper columnist Nahum Barnea has told Friedman that “this is the worst day that I can remember in military terms in the history of Israel, including the blunder of the Yom Kippur war, which was terrible.”
Friedman: “This time Israel was invaded in 22 locations outside the 37-mile-long Gaza Strip, including communities as far as 15 miles inside Israel, by a military force belonging to ‘the equivalent of Luxembourg.’ And yet this tiny force not only invaded Israel, overwhelming Israeli border troops; it took Israeli hostages back to Gaza across that same border — a border where Israel had spent roughly $1 billion erecting a barrier that was supposed to be virtually impenetrable. That is a shocking blow to Israel’s deterrent capabilities.”
I’m presuming Quentin Tarantino is back in Tel Aviv, where he lives with his wife Daniella, son Leo and a year-old daughter, and keeping a sharp eye out. Brett Ratner recently emigrated to Israel.