I’ve started going out a very little bit. It’s been a few days since we’ve had a siren. I expect more in future, considering the IDF’s plans. If they can finish Hamas, hopefully it will be worth it.
I am confused that it’s been more than two weeks. It feels like five days. It also feels like a month. I feel like I’m sleepwalking through each day. I don’t know how to answer the inevitable question, “Are you okay?” Let’s not even talk about it. I am here. I am getting from day to day. I am luckier than many.
Today, Facebook agreed with me for the first time, as I reported someone for incitement to violence. In a post mourning a murdered teenager, a man waved a Palestinian flag and said we’d be killed next.
I see so many comments of angry, bullying people with aggressive, even violent statements, condemning anyone who posts about Israeli loss. I was trying to cheer myself up by reading posts of celebrities who believe Israelis are real people who don’t deserve to be slaughtered. It’s rarer than one might think.
And I know: never read the comments. But there were so many and they were so ugly. And I got pulled in for a bit. Times like that, I wonder why this deluge of people hate us when they obviously do not know us; when we literally just want to exist, people and country both.
Back to my own Facebook feed. I see so many posts of dead teenagers and young adults in their twenties. So many young people. Almost everyone dead is young. When I see a picture in my feed, it seems like two out of three are the picture of someone murdered. Smiling, sweet faces. A quick summary of their hobbies, or how they died. Often a story of heroism that rivals any fiction. Running into the attack to help people with their medical knowledge. Pretending they live alone, going willingly to their death to save their family hiding within the bomb shelter. Jumping directly onto a grenade to save everyone around them. On and on and on. Heroes, whose last actions were to think of others and to save them.
And I see so, so many posts commenting about the war from people I love and respect, who are unwilling to mention that these murders of Israelis, this modern pogrom is wrong. That kidnapping children or murdering children is wrong. That wholesale massacre targeting civilians is wrong. Why is this so difficult? I don’t ask for anyone to support Israel in full. I don’t ask anyone to stop supporting innocent Palestinians; goodness knows I don’t want anyone innocent to die either.
I ask people to understand Israeli civilians are also innocent and should not be murdered. Should not be raped or tortured. I did not expect this to be complicated, yet I’ve seen countless smart, compassionate people with an ethical block on suffering when the victim is an Israeli. Which makes me wonder whether these friends of mine would shrug their shoulders at my murder as well, and call it justified in the name of freedom. And that makes me wonder why we are friends at all.
How does any of this cruelty and terrorism free Palestine? It doesn’t. How does attacking European and American synagogues free Palestine? It doesn’t. Israelis and Jews across the world only see even clearer that they must have a homeland where they are able to defend themselves from this hatred. It is a matter of life and death. Now no one can claim that is hyperbolic.
There are precious few we can trust to stand at our backs and protect us. So we will stand at each others’ backs, if we must.
The beauty of Israel is that no one else needs to think we’re worthy of protection. That our lives have value. That we are real people who deserve to be safe. It’s enough that we believe we are.
We are not at the mercy of diaspora governments that fail to prioritize our safety and shrug their shoulders when we are targeted, or come up with a political speech to mouth empty words of support. Nor are we at the mercy of those who will never support us. In Israel, we are in charge of our own safety. And I’m sure that makes a lot of people angry, that we have this power over ourselves and our homes.
Angry enough to say many ugly things. But whatever they say, whatever people whom we believed we could trust now say, whatever anyone says, all that matters is what we ourselves say. And we say that we are worthy of existing.
Done. We are the only ones we need consult on that, now that we live in Israel. And that is why we still do.
