Middle East War – What a disgrace, what a catastrophe!

A year ago, the diary notes of the renowned Israeli-American historian Saul Friedländer from the first half of 2023 were published. The title was already dark and foreboding: “Look into the abyss.” Friedländer saw Israel facing dark times and feared “a bigger war.” What then happened five months later, on October 7, 2023, exceeded the worst fears. A day of horror. The particular villainy of Hamas’s unleashed Islamist religious warriors is reflected in the fact that they chose a music festival and a kibbutz that were promoting peace and understanding between peoples as the target of their murderous attack. It acts like a curse on the region.

The second volume of his daily book “Israel at War” begins with horror: “Unbelievable! The country is under attack! Hamas has made massive incursions into southern Israel, along the border with Gaza. Complete surprise and total panic. Apparently no one saw that coming.” These are the first sentences. “The government was asleep, the army was sleeping (…) What a disgrace, especially for the military intelligence service, the Shin Beth and the Mossad.” Little by little, the full extent of the massacre becomes clear: around 1,200 people were murdered, 250 kidnapped as hostages. To date, the fate of around 100 hostages remains uncertain, and the number of deaths in the region is now in the tens of thousands.

The Israeli government has failed its people and no one is taking responsibility. From now on, the Israeli population will be held hostage for armed conflicts that incite further hatred and violence. Even the writer David Grossman speaks of “betrayal.” Friedländer quotes him. The battlefield is vast. Israel is fighting on several fronts.

“The Prime Minister is prepared to sacrifice the country for his own interests.”

Saul Friedlander

The second volume of Friedländer’s diary only lasts until May 22nd of this year. The dimension of “Israel at war” has now expanded. Murderous drones, suffering and devastation now also in Lebanon. Towards the end, the tone of Friedländer’s entries becomes increasingly dark and desperate. The author seems worn down, tired, exhausted. The 91-year-old closely follows the news in his adopted home of the USA, comments, criticizes, pleads, and speculates. He repeatedly speaks out in favor of the two-state solution: “This whole hopeful project may be an illusion, a dream. I’m well aware of that. But the alternative is this endless cycle of violence.”

Friedländer criticizes the radical settler movement: “The settlers’ daily attacks on Palestinians are unbearable.” The historian wrote a chronology of the wars in the past, waged out of “religious passion” and at the same time “world politics by other means.” He mentions the political hopefuls who once campaigned for peace in the region: Yitzchak Rabin, assassinated in November 1995; Anwar as-Sadat, assassinated in October 1981; Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, who were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with Rabin in 1994, died in 2004 and 2016.

Friedländer notes the suffering and the “terrible conditions” under which Palestinians suffer in Gaza today – “it tears your heart apart,” he writes. At the same time, he uses military terms to confuse people when he speaks of “operations,” “surgical strikes,” or “liquidation.” The historian is also concerned about Israel’s increasing isolation “in international public opinion.” He complains again and again about the growing anti-Semitism around the world: worrying in universities in the USA, worrying in Great Britain, worrying in Muslim circles. He points out that American Jews are divided, but strangely he leaves out Germany almost entirely in his notes.

Friedländer too rarely uses language to distinguish between the country and its government, often writes Israel when he means Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, and thus does not make the difference between a right-wing dominated leadership and the population clear enough. This makes things easier for those forces in the public debate who want to nip any criticism of the Israeli government in the bud with accusations of anti-Semitism. As if criticism of a “nationalist, right-wing and, for two years now, right-wing extremist” Israeli government, as the 80-year-old historian Moshe Zimmermann recently judged in an interview with the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit,” had to be anti-Semitic. Friedländer speaks undifferentiatedly about “hatred of Israel” when he talks about reactions abroad that, however, focus on the Israeli government.

As in the first volume of his Israel diary, the author himself also in the second volume criticizes Netanyahu and his combatants, especially the “extremists Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.” Netanyahu is “shameless and despicable,” he writes, “a self-centered fraud,” “a despicable, selfish guy.” He calls Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Minister of National Security, an “evil clown,” a “fanatic” and a “crazy.” Bezalel Smotrich, “our despicable finance minister,” is also a “fanatic” and “crazy.” In the epilogue, Friedländer speaks of an “aimless war” that is intended solely to help Netanyahu “stay in power, whatever the cost to the country.” Under the date May 16, 2024 he notes: “The Prime Minister is ready to sacrifice the country for his own interests. What a disgrace and what a disaster!”

Volume two of the diary does not have the quality of the first part. Friedländer is too far away from the action. He primarily gets his information from the Western media available to him, certainly from reading a variety of newspapers. Ultimately, however, he is at a loss. Of course he is not alone in this. Finally, the only thing that should be noted is that stricter, more careful editing could have limited contradictions and repetitions.

Saul Friedländer: Israel at war. A diary. A.d. English v. Andreas Wirthensohn. C. H. Beck, 204 pages, hardcover, €24.