PURELY COMMENTARY for openers
Over and Done With!
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n 1917, many an ear caught the bars of “Over There,” a highly patriotic song by George M. Cohan. It was hard to overlook its popularity. It was never considered overdone; however, we can easily make a case for the overuse of “over” in our everyday speech. We are desirous of having roofs over our heads; but to purchase the same, we Sy Manello may get in over our heads. Editorial Assistant Home costs are often over the top. Buying without doing due diligence may find you crying
over spilt milk. Don’t get the gambling bug; lean over backwards to avoid it. It may lead you into a situation where you are asked to fork over what you owe. If you do not, you may get a working over, which could then lead to you being hung over. Have you ever been so surprised by an action that you could be knocked over with a feather? Maybe you were the one someone else put one over on. Well, if it is over and done with, there is no use in losing sleep over it. It is no fun to be taken advantage of; when you realize that you have been run
roughshod over, you know that the party’s over and vow that such a thing will happen again only over your dead body! Do not wait until you are over the hill to fall head over heels in love. It is nice to have someone to make a fuss over. If that someone can skim over your faults rather than chew them over, you will know that your wait is over for the love of your life. Well, it is time to end this set of observations because I hear the pulchritudinous woman warbling. (That means it is over because the fat lady is singing. I do wish you would remain a bit more with it!) Over and out.
essay
Maintaining Our Humanity in War
A
s we enter another week of the war in Ukraine, an imbalanced battle has caused thousands of casualties and refugees. With our media, and especially social media, bursting with news, briefings and personal narratives, I found myself Yiftah Leket struggling with Israel’s emissary to Detroit some of the notions that I have encountered. When thinking about why I am struggling, I finally realized that it stems from my experiences as a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force. It was during an operation in Gaza where I was assigned to fly and attack a military target. In this type of assignment, we had only 30 minutes from when the siren went off to
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when the bomb would hit the target. We were in a rush … it was tense, we were focused … Everything that we did was done for one purpose: hitting the target with maximum accuracy. There was no room for mistakes. One typo of a coordinate, which was 14 digits long, and it’s all over. Warfare today is much more digital. You receive the coordinates, and the rest is almost like a video game. You don’t even have to see the target to hit it. It can be in the pitch black of night. In order to function well in the digital battlefield, there has to be a strong sense of trust in the system that is going with you into battle. As we approached the target, I opened the map-kit we had and looked at the target and its surroundings. The maps showed that not far away from our target was a mosque. I
The author in the IDF
immediately reported this information over the radio and the call was made to head back to the base and to not take the risk of having collateral damage that might affect civilian lives. I remember this moment as something I am proud of. I had, and I still have, trust in the Israeli Defense Forces and their commanders. Despite this situation, if I honestly share what it looks like to be a pilot on the modern battlefield — it can easily go into two paths: The first is the banality of serving. Being in the Air Force, especially when you are on duty at the headquarters, it
can feel like you are just going to work. Of course, it’s more intense than an ordinary job, and you understand the gravity of your work, but with the advancement of technology of warfare came the digitization of these tools. The modern battlefield is built from numbers. You get a list of targets from the Intelligence Corps or from another special unit and the targets are all numbers. You get the coordinates, send them to the airplanes where they are entered into the fire control systems, and from there you attack. The pilot reports that the continued on page 8
