Dear Mum: in Israel this year has been indescribably awful. How I wish you were here | Etgar Keret

The past year in Israel has felt a bit like watching a split screen on TV: on one side, the events zoom by at Chaplin speed and epic-movie proportions, depicting an inconceivable massacre in Israel ’s southern kibbutzim that led to a firestorm of death and devastation raining down on Gaza .

And on the other side of the screen? The picture is frozen. This has been a year as long as eternity and as barren as a desert, and at the end of it, we find ourselves standing next to a heap of bodies, without an iota of insight or hope.

People on both sides of the Gaza border are dropping like flies, but none of them died because they were talking on their phones too much.

Mobile phones are probably here for ever, but this government does have an expiration date.

Let us pray together that it expires before the country itself does, and before the destruction of the Third Temple that Ben-Gvir and his cronies are fantasising about.