Thinking of Sasha Troufanov & Gaza On Yom Kippur
And the failure of the Zionist project.
I'm Fasting and Thinking of Alex (Sasha) Troufanov, Hostage, And Gaza
His story is featured in Ha'aretz.
Oct 13
Alex Sasha Troufanov and Sapir Cohen, 28, boyfriend and girlfriend. They were kidnapped from his kibbutz, Nir Oz. She was released in a prisoner exchange. He is still in Gaza or dead, God forbid. Sapir waits in Israel.
I always fasted on Yom Kippur but this year was different.
Fasting one day is not hard but after about 19 hours I started feeling hungry. And lightheaded. And irritable. So I took a nap knowing that in a few hours I’ll eat and all will be back to normal.
But I did it differently this year because I saw the story of Alex (Sasha) Troufanov in Ha’aretz Friday. He is one of the Israeli hostages, kidnapped by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.
Last year he fasted at his kibbutz not knowing that in 13 days he’d be kidnapped to Gaza and be essentially starving for now a full year (if he’s still alive).
The Israeli government has done nothing to get him back, choosing to bomb Palestinians rather than negotiating the hostages’ release. I never imagined that Israel would be so indifferent to the fate of Israelis, civilians, and soldiers.
I doubt any of the hostages did either. Look at the lengths the United States went to to achieve the return of one Jewish American reporter Evan Gershovich and compare it to the Israeli government’s cold indifference to hundreds of Jewish hostages. It stands Zionism on its head.
Nor did I imagine that the Israel I love (Tel Aviv, kibbutzim, pockets of good progressive Israelis throughout the country) would have its very existence endangered by an Israeli government that chose to create and sustain Hamas so that it could avoid establishing peace with the Palestinian people. And now risks the state’s existence by its obsession with achieving a war with Iran that would, ultimately, eradicate Israel, a second Holocaust.
I’m also thinking of the millions of Palestinians and Lebanese who are on a forced fast, at least those who weren’t killed by Israel’s bombs or are buried in the rubble.
I have been pretty much obsessed with the Palestinian victims of Israel for a year, writing about them almost every day, sometimes more than once. Does that do any good? No. But it makes me feel like I’m doing something and, this is vanity, I need everyone I know, and strangers who read this substack too that I’ve been against Israel’s war on Gaza since day one or actually day 2. (It’s like when I’m in Europe finding a way to tell every person I encounter that I hate Trump).
Like that, my fast accomplishes nothing, nor does my endless reading about the horrors Hamas, the other terrorists, and the Israeli government have inflicted on so many innocent people.
But it does give me an insight into what it means to be uncomfortable but, thank God, not submerged in the living hell Palestinians, Israelis, and Lebanese are enduring, unless they are dead. And being hungry focuses my mind on all the victims. Maybe that is the purpose of fasting. Making one focus on the millions whose fast is not broken by a break-the-fast meal.
This year I was grateful to be fasting. Every Jew should fast. Not to alleviate the guilt but to feel the a bit of the pain—and shame. And maybe shed a tear for Sasha, kidnapped by monsters and abandoned by his country and his people.
This is the capital of Israel, Tel Aviv. A wonderful city not dominated by religious nationalists and crazed haters. I am always amused by those who think Jerusalem is Israel. It is not.
It would be there, just as beautiful if Jews had not returned to Palestine and just left Jerusalem to the Palestinians to convert it into a modern city. But Tel Aviv was built by Zionist dreamers as a Jewish city adjacent to the Palestinian city of Jaffa. Secular progressive Tel Aviv represents the other face of Zionism, not the ugly face we see today, but the dream.
And guess what? American Jewish tour groups sponsored by synagogues and other Jewish organizations invariably spend a day or two, if that, in Tel Aviv and a week in Jerusalem. Why? Because what they are selling is not Israel but the occupation. Just as the war is being fought not to defend Israel but to sustain and expand the occupation.
Jerusalem has been forced into the role of symbol of the occupation of the whole West Bank rather than left to be what it is, as much a Muslim city as a Jewish city and hopefully, someday, the the capital for both peoples. In two states or one, whatever gives both people equal security and rights from the sea to the river. (Yes, I intentionally reversed the phrase "from the river to the sea" to avoid triggering anyone.
I have no problem with the original phrase just with many of the people who use it to advance not the dream I favor but an exclusivist nightmare. To be honest my dream is a one-state dream where every person who lives in Israel or Palestine can live in security together, security guaranteed by membership in NATO. It's a dream, yes, but any formulation for peace is a dream these days and in my dreams, I prefer neither a Palestinian state nor a Jewish state but, as is the norm pretty much everywhere else, a state for all the people who live in it with equal rights for every single one.