4 | APRIL 7 • 2022 

for openers
Over and Done With! 
I

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 
may get in over our heads. 
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 hap-
pen 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 obser-
vations because I hear the pulchritudi-
nous 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. 

Sy Manello
Editorial 
Assistant

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay
Maintaining Our 
Humanity in War 
A

s we enter another 
week of the war in 
Ukraine, an imbal-
anced battle has caused 
thousands of casualties and 
refugees. With our media, and 
especially social 
media, bursting 
with news, brief-
ings and per-
sonal narratives, 
I found myself 
struggling with 
some of the 
notions that 
I have encountered. When 
thinking about why I am 
struggling, I finally realized 
that it stems from my experi-
ences 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 tar-
get. In this type of assignment, 
we had only 30 minutes from 
when the siren went off to 

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 coor-
dinates, 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 bat-
tlefield, 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 

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 dam-
age 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 grav-
ity of your work, but with the 
advancement of technology of 
warfare came the digitization 
of these tools. The modern bat-
tlefield 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 

Yiftah Leket
Israel’s emis-
sary to Detroit 

continued on page 8

The author 
in the IDF

