“All’s Well That Ends Well.”

 

On the 4th of April 1966 I celebrated the Pesach/Passover Seder at Ein Harod. Earlier in the day I watched the “Cutting of the Omer” ceremony in a field near the kibbutz. Both events have become an integral part of my personal ‘Israeli cultural psyche.’

Our communal Pesach Seder this year included a few innovations, one in particular deserves mention. Chad Gadya or Had Gadya "one little goat, or "one kid” is a playful cumulative song  in Aramaic and Hebrew. It is sung at the end of the Passover Seder.  The melody is thought to have been adopted from  a Mediaeval German folk song.  It first appeared in a Haggadah printed in Prague in 1590, which makes it the most recent inclusion in the traditional Passover Seder liturgy.

This year the song was sung and dramatised on stage in the kibbutz dining room by an enthusiastic group of adults and children replete with appropriate character-part costumes. It was an instant ‘hit’ and received standing ovations.

Had Gadya has inspired graphic artists too.

An exhibition of works by artist Frank Stella just opened at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Stella is not Jewish, but a number of his works have Jewish themes — including his colourful illustrations of “Had Gadya.”  Stella’s work is featured along with his inspiration: the artwork from a Yiddish picture book illustrated by the Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky. 

Stella made his own images after seeing Lissitzky’s 11 “Had Gadya” lithographs at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1981. Lissitzky’s pictures, published in 1919, are highly stylised, incorporating elements of Russian folk art as well as cubism, futurism and constructivism. Yet Lissitzky’s images are still recognisable depictions of the kid, cat, dog and other characters from the “Had Gadya” story.

Not wanting to spoil the festive atmosphere I hesitated before including the next news item. 

 A report in Deutsche Welle (DW) revealed how an Israeli army battalion, ‘Netzah Yehuda,’ may, among other things, be excluded from receiving US financial support. The US has never imposed sanctions on the IDF before.

Numerous media outlets are reporting that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to announce sanctions against a battalion of the IDF. Netzah Yehuda has been accused of human rights violations against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Ahron Bregman, a political scientist and an expert on the Israel-Palestinian conflict at King’s College, London, said -  “The Israelis will fight hard to try and prevent it”.

He noted, however, that even though the Netzah Yehuda is an integral part of the IDF, it is “a unit every army should be ashamed of.”

“My fellow Israelis will hate me saying it but Netzah Yehuda is a sort of an Israeli-style  Wagner Group." Bregman added.

The Netzah Yehuda Battalion went too far on 12 January 2022 when 78-year-old Omar Assad was detained by Netzah Yehuda soldiers and died of a heart attack. His body was later found abandoned at a building site. The problem was that Assad had dual Palestinian-American citizenship – and the US opened up a criminal investigation into the matter.

Israel dismissed two officers over the incident and reprimanded the battalion commander but never opened a criminal investigation. According to prosecutors, there was no link between the errors made by the unit’s soldiers and Assad’s death.

At the end of 2022, the unit was redeployed to the Golan Heights  and later to Gaza .

The threatened US sanction would thus conclude the investigation into Assad’s death.

According to the Associated Press news agency, the US has been investigating five army units for serious human rights violations. These sanctions, however, would only apply to this unit, imposing two restrictions: Firstly, no US military aid would go to Netzah Yehuda; secondly, its participation in training programmes financed by the US would be limited. The Israeli government has already declared that it will oppose the sanctions.

The Netzah Yehuda battalion was established in the late 1990s as a special religious unit, with specific conditions to facilitate military service for ultra-orthodox Jews (Haredim). The men are given time for prayer and religious studies and contact with female soldiers is very limited.

Both Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz held separate talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken late Sunday as they sought to dissuade Washington from going ahead with reported plans to slap sanctions on an Israeli military unit with a problematic rights record, Israeli officials said.

State Department readouts on the calls made no mention of the Israeli concerns, using vague language to portray the talks as the latest in a series of conversations on Gaza and other challenges.

The Axios news site reported  Saturday that following months of deliberations by an internal panel, the US State Department intended to sanction the battalion. The IDF said  it is unaware of such plans.

Two US sources told the Times of Israel on Sunday that Washington is mulling additional sanctions against other Israeli police and military units.

Netzah Yehuda, a Kfir infantry brigade unit set up specifically for religious troops, but which also attracts settler extremists, has been repeatedly embroiled in allegations of abuses against Palestinians.

What came next was a dramatic change of mind.

The United States has opted not to impose sanctions on IDF Netzah Yehuda Battalion, Ynet reported on Wednesday afternoon, citing sources from within Israel.

The decision comes after intense pressure from various segments of the Israeli political spectrum. 

Arutz Sheva Israel National News reported that Israel is cautiously predicting that the US has stopped, at least for now, its intention to impose unprecedented sanctions on the IDF's Netzah Yehuda Battalion.

Itamar Eichner Ynet also reported that Israeli officials are cautiously predicting that the US won’t impose sanctions.

Israel made it clear in talks with the Americans that the state would cooperate and show them that the problematic incidents were resolved.

A moment after I sent last week’s ‘newsletter’ Israel is reported to have launched a drone strike against Iran. The same source claims Israeli officials notified their US counterparts in Washington: an attack was in the works, they said, and without sharing specifics, indicated it would be carried out in the next several days.

It was exactly the message the Biden administration had hoped they wouldn’t receive. Throughout the week, US officials had urged Israel not to retaliate for Iran’s unprecedented attack  five days prior, when hundreds of missiles and drones were fired from inside Iran at Israel.

US officials worried that any Israeli counter-strike could trigger an escalating cycle of direct action between the two nations that could spiral out of control.

“We didn’t endorse Israel’s response a senior official said

The back-and-forth attacks of the past week have left US officials concerned that a barrier that once existed between Israel and Iran has now been breached, leading to a new form of direct confrontation that could be infinitely more volatile and difficult to predict.

How Iran responds will now be a crucial test of whether the two nations have entered the opening stages of direct conflict — or whether both sides can step back from the brink.

There are some signs that the situation may be defusing.

US intelligence has long assessed that neither Iran nor Israel has any appetite for an outright war. Israel’s retaliatory strike appears to have been designed to be limited, striking a single military base about 275 miles from Tehran and leaving untouched two nearby facilities that are an important part of Iran’s nuclear development programme.

A regional intelligence source with knowledge of Iran’s reaction to the attack said that the direct state to state strikes between the two countries were “over.” Iran was not expected to respond.

There’s more good news. The $26 billion US financial aid package to Israel is due to arrive soon.

 

“All’s Well That Ends Well.”

 

Beni,

 

 25th of April, 2024.