Moments in Israel, After October 7th

In the morning and the evening Tel Aviv is still Golden.

The beach is busy with runners, bikers and surfers wading in the water for some of the world’s smallest waves. The sound of balls hitting rackets. But when you take a step closer and look at the faces or ask a question just below the surface you can see all is not well. Actually, nothing is well.

The Nova festival was in an open field with skinny trees. When you are there you realize how naked they were. There was no place to hide. You stand among the makeshift graves and the wind whips and the sand covers it all.

 

It was the end of Succoth. Throughout the Kibbutz the Succah still stands, paper rings garlanded from side to side, wind comes through the bullet holes.

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The hostage families worry the world is forgetting:

-- A man on dialysis has two sons in captivity: “My kidney donors are in Gaza”

-- Another says, “how dare I eat soup or take a nap when my kids haven’t or can’t.”

Another man spoke to his brother on the phone as the terrorist broke into his house: “This is the end,” the brother said.

Once he realized what was happening a partygoer at the Nova festival called his mother to say: “The party is over.”

“This is not my personal story, it’s our story,” a hostage relative said. “We are representative of the problem for the world, the Jewish world.”

            “Israel was a shelter of the Jew, but not anymore.  We are at zero square and can’t do it alone.”

            “Israel and America have the same goal,” another said. “We just do things differently because we are closer to the flame.”

            “Trust in everything is challenged, except the future of the state of Israel.”

Trust in the Land of Confusion

 Trust is not a word you often hear in the Middle East. But many of the people who lived in Israel near the Gaza border trusted their neighbors to the West.

Even the Israeli government was convinced Hamas was deterred and focused on civil and domestic affairs.

But Hamas spent its money on tunnels and weapons, the time was used planning a raid to cause what they hoped would be an uprising from all corners of the Middle East, including the Israeli Arabs. This has not happened.

On the morning of October 7^th there was confusion across Israel. One person said they thought it was thunder, others assumed it was a “typical” siren call.

Most learned of the severity of the problem by seeing a short video on WhatsApp of a truck of terrorists driving through Sderot, a city just a few miles from Gaza.

It was Saturday. It was a holiday. They were inside our borders.

October 7^th broke a pillar of David Ben-Gurion’s philosophy. He said that when Israel fights she must do it in enemy territory to protect civilians and shorten the conflict. He said if they cross into Israel, we lose.

While Israel slept, Hamas rampaged through the streets killing indiscriminately.

“WhatsApp is their Yad Vashem” someone said, indicating that their phones are filled with memories and memorials to that day.

We were unprepared. Perhaps the best illustration is the Mammad.

Since the 1990s every house in Israel is required to have a Mammad, a safe room to protect them from bombs that regularly fall. But these rooms often don’t lock, why should they, they are built to protect against objects from the sky. They never expected a terrorist at their door.

Many Israelis tried saving their families by holding the door of their “safe” room shut.

As usual the citizens of Israel have risen faster than the government. As one Israeli said: “Governments don’t know how to swallow such a situation, civil society has acted faster and worked better. We are very good a reacting.”

And what’s next?

As one man noted: It will take a year to win the fight, ten to rebuild and a generation to de-radicalize.

What Did I Come For?

 

So what did I come for?

I came to Israel to bear witness.

So when the world says these things didn’t happen I can be one of the many to say I saw the scars. I felt the bullet holes in the walls of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, saw the rust on the burned-out cars from the NOVA festival. Saw the videos of Hamas gunning people down in the streets, in their cars, in open fields.

 I can tell them about the fresh plots at the Mt Herzl cemetery filling up fast. Or about the teacher we saw that day telling us about the four students he has buried since October.

To show solidarity with the people. Never have I seen people feel so collectively isolated in a world they thought they knew. I want to tell them that despite what they read in the US papers, or see on the college campuses or hear in the halls of Congress, they have friends. And we are strong.

And to learn. To understand what’s happening on the ground so I can be a better advocate in a world where no one seems to listen.

These are the things I came for.

What else did I get?

“This is a battle of spirit,” an Israeli woman said to me. “Our hearts are sad, but our spirit is strong.”

She tells me this standing over her brother’s grave. He was school teacher and in the reserves. He leaves a wife and four children.

Israeli flags are everywhere, draping the landscape, every window and every door. They wave from cars, offices, and apartments. The only equivalent was being in a foreign country during the World Cup. Their faith in their government is broken, faith in their friends is splintered, but their commitment to each other and their country goes unquestioned.

What did I not get? Good news on how this ends, what the day after looks like, when a lasting peace might come.