Uploaded October 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Testimony from a War - First hand impressions from a close friend in Tel Aviv
How do you talk about the horrific brutality and hysterical inhumanity that war unleashes? How do we make sure that the words and arguments, we use don't subtly cover over the atrocities that shatter and obliterate or which over years and decades slowly and remorselessly strangle all hope?
There are of course the safe and undeniable platitudes that are the refuge of every politician. There are the cries of agony and loss that cannot be denied or unheard. But what else?
Is it possible or even right to try to stay calm, to analyse, to try to get beyond reciting the list of atrocities? Sometimes, speaking of such things in the vocabulary of politics and power relations, 'isms' and theories seems to verge on being disrespectfully emotionless. And yet how else is it possible to stay afloat when storms of hurt and hatred break?
I have an old friend who now lives in Tel Aviv. For months we have been talking about what has now erupted. Not in the sense having forseen it but in the more ordinary sense of discussing the broader context and 'knowing' that the actions of bad actors was not, could not ever, lead to any good outcome.
This is the testimony of someone who is not a politician, nor a professional policy expert, but a thoughtful, educated, despairing Israeli. He makes no claims to have answers, nor to have any sort of olympian, or 'objective' over-view
COMMENT AT:
substack.com/profile/126815820-david-malone
instagram.com/hyperlandpodcast
facebook.com/groups/130898253302317
Music by HYPERLAND
Graphics by Caroline Large
Image NASA ID: PIA12348 Secondary Creator Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI
Testimony from a War - First hand impressions from a close friend in Tel Aviv
How do you talk about the horrific brutality and hysterical inhumanity that war unleashes? How do we make sure that the words and arguments, we use don't subtly cover over the atrocities that shatter and obliterate or which over years and decades slowly and remorselessly strangle all hope?
There are of course the safe and undeniable platitudes that are the refuge of every politician. There are the cries of agony and loss that cannot be denied or unheard. But what else?
Is it possible or even right to try to stay calm, to analyse, to try to get beyond reciting the list of atrocities? Sometimes, speaking of such things in the vocabulary of politics and power relations, 'isms' and theories seems to verge on being disrespectfully emotionless. And yet how else is it possible to stay afloat when storms of hurt and hatred break?
I have an old friend who now lives in Tel Aviv. For months we have been talking about what has now erupted. Not in the sense having forseen it but in the more ordinary sense of discussing the broader context and 'knowing' that the actions of bad actors was not, could not ever, lead to any good outcome.
This is the testimony of someone who is not a politician, nor a professional policy expert, but a thoughtful, educated, despairing Israeli. He makes no claims to have answers, nor to have any sort of olympian, or 'objective' over-view
COMMENT AT:
substack.com/profile/126815820-david-malone
instagram.com/hyperlandpodcast
facebook.com/groups/130898253302317
Music by HYPERLAND
Graphics by Caroline Large
Image NASA ID: PIA12348 Secondary Creator Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI
