Dov is Hebrew for bear

We were visiting friends of my wife in Amstelveen. An older couple, retirees like us.
Both came from poor working class homes. The husband had started his working life as an assistant to a watchmaker. The wife had started work in a hat store after leaving school.

They had worked themselves up the career ladder. He had become an adviser (for what I do not know) with the Dutch Ministry of Education. She was the craft teacher at the primary school where my wife had also worked.

They were loyal lifelong supporters of the Dutch Labour Party. The husband was (he died later of bowel cancer) the dominant half. It was such dominance that I mused about the possibility of kinky sexual behaviour.
That probably says more about me than about them.

He was sitting on the couch smoking his pipe, a glass of whisky in one hand, listening to some avant-garde cacophony of sounds. That was conform the image he always tried to project.
We were sitting around a table with my wife's girlfriend. She had drunk a bit too much wine and was in a happy mood.

My wife told her that my name Dov is Hebrew for bear and then proceeded to tell the story of the first time she saw me on my kibbutz:
She was sunbathing near the swimming pool with her travelling companion. The swimming pool, like the rest of the kibbutz, was built on strategically higher ground. They looked down and saw a big cloud of sand approaching.
What is it?
At a certain moment the cloud started to fade and the surrounding air began to shimmer, like it does in the desert.

The first thing they saw emerging from the shimmering air was me, riding without a saddle and stirrups on a black Arabian horse. I was only wearing shorts and sandals.
Behind me was a large flock of sheep.

They looked at each other and said, “I want him”. They made a bet about it.
My wife ends the story with, “I won”, and I usually smile sheepishly.

After my wife had finished the story, her girlfriend turned towards me wide-eyed.
She pointed at me, shouted “you?” and burst out laughing.

It must have been some 45 years ago that I met Gidon again. He said he had spoken to Shmuel (who later became some kind of guru in Australia) who had mentioned me.
I asked, what did he say?
Gidon replied, he said he had heard you had become a Dutch teddy bear.

A moral stain that taints us all

When I was in the Israeli paratroopers there were restful periods when we had lessons.

The lessons were about strategy and the values of the IDF. I remember one lesson on how we should treat prisoners.
In my time the Palestinians did not exist, and Israel's enemies were the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. They were also existential enemies.

We were told to treat prisoners in a humane manner.
One of the reasons was: we were not the German army. As we were the first generation after the Holocaust, that was a good enough reason for us.
At that time we were expected to live up to the values of the Jewish state. The values of the prophets and the Declaration of Independence.
It was not about right-wing or left-wing. These were shared values, a clear moral compass.

Nowadays it is different.
Where was the Israeli government's clear and unequivocal condemnation of the settler rampage in Arab villages? They beat up random Arabs, torched cars and houses and ripped up Muslim holy books.

Yet the language of government disapproval was euphemistic. Two parties in the government were full of understanding for these actions. One minister even called the thugs, "sweet boys".

Corbyn could never condemn antisemitism without condemning all forms of racism. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu could not condemn the settler rampage without condemning Druze protests and civil disobedience against the government-proposed judicial overhaul.
Everybody must obey the law, he said.
Hedging his bets, not taking a clear, moral position. Comparing violent, pogrom type attacks to civil disobedience by his political enemies because they were both unlawful.

There were some positives. The heads of the army, Shin Bet and police did unequivocally condemn the rampages, that they called terrorism.
A government minister was so incensed with this condemnation, that she (initially) compared the non-political heads of security to the Wagner Group.

Netanyahu once again hedged his bets. He objected to the minister's criticism of the security heads.
However, he also added that he had ordered an investigation into “allegations of the use of excessive force by the security forces” against settlers in the West Bank.

Eventually there did come a clear moral message - from a settler rabbi.
Rabbi Mosheh Lichtenstein, the co-head of the prestigious Har Etzion religious seminary in the Alon Shvut settlement in the West Bank, issued a vehement condemnation of the settler attacks.

He called their actions “a moral stain that taints us all.”