Most people who write daily blogs (are there others?) probably are not, at the same time, babysitting for a 3 year old and an 8 year old at the same time. Why is that? You will find out, I am sure, as you read on…….

OK, I will say it here without equivocation. Israel is on the wrong track and many if not most Israelis know it. Hasn’t psychology shown us that hardened criminals are likely to have had tough childhoods, with violent, overbearing parents or neighbors who slap them around or worse? Why would it be different with nations or peoples?

Netanyahu said yesterday that the fighting in Gaza won’t stop until Hamas is crushed, Gaza demilitarized and Palestinian society deradicalized. Is a three part oxymoron still an oxymoron? How is it possible to crush a movement and demilitarize an area, while at the same time deradicalizing a population? And in fact, there’s a fourth facet to this, which I don’t think Netanyahu mentioned – once these three things are accomplished, there has to be a mechanism to make sure they stay that way.

In the meantime, the killing continues, people die on both sides, and Israel is fighting more sporadically with enemies in Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank. I read this morning that Israel is now engaged in a 7 front war.

Now, I am not there, and I don’t know all the considerations that go into the military decisions being made, and maybe there is a grand, workable plan, but I sure can’t see it from here. 

At the same time, the Hamas leadership is just as reckless. How can a “government” see what is happening to the infrastructure of its territory, what is happening to its population, and what is happening to its armaments, and say “we will fight on”? It shows a complete lack of concern for its population and its territory.

Unfortunately, the governments of both Hamas and Israel think they are engaged in an existential conflict (perhaps they are), and it is their people who suffer in the short run and, I am certain, in the long run.

Enough of that for this morning. I know that, under traditional Jewish law, you don’t mix meat and dairy, and you don’t mix linen and wool, but can you mix war editorializing with a film review? A thorough search through all the Talmudic sources does not reveal a prohibition.

We saw “American Fiction” the other evening and (as opposed to “Maestro”), it’s a first class film. ”American Fiction” is the story of an African American intellectual writer who books are lauded, but don’t sell. So, as a joke, he writes a “Black book”, filled with crime and jargon. At his agent’s suggestion, he published the book not only under a nom de plume, but under a made up identity and personality – a man from a ghetto, serving time in prison for a violent but unnamed crime (“Was it murder?” ”You said it, not me.”). It becomes the novel of the year and primed to be a hit film.

In the meantime, a family drama develops. His mother’s Alzheimers bis worsening, his physician sister suddenly died, his stereotypically gay physician brother proves worthless, and he can’t tell his newly found girl friend that he wrote “the book”.

No spoiler alert here. I have only scratched the surface. See it.