As I sit here trying to gather my thoughts, a television journalist reporting from one of the kibbutzim that was attacked asks an investigator about the worst thing he’s seen while going through the ruins. “We entered one house, and it was obvious that the home had been set on fire, and that many shots were fired. The family managed to escape, but were found by terrorists outside as they crouched together in hiding – two parents and three young children. It was clear that as the parents tried to protect their children, the entire family was shot repeatedly, at close range. Mowed down and killed.” Somehow, he managed to hold it together while he was speaking, but only barely.
When everything started one week ago and the sheer, incomprehensible magnitude of the loss began to reveal itself, in addition to the overwhelming horror and despair, two thoughts kept spinning around in my mind – “perhaps our loss is great enough this time that there will be more sympathy for us and our losses”, and “how long do we have before people start to blame us and try to imply that what happened needed context”, as though anything could possibly justify intentionally murdering entire families, burning people to death, raping girls, kidnapping Holocaust survivors and toddlers…
Less than a week, apparently, as I’ve already begun to see people voicing such sentiments (even though the sense is that there are more people standing with us now). Israel is responding – how could we not? More than a thousand terrorists crossed the border and perpetrated a massacre. A pogrom. Acts of unprecedented violent depravity. And once again, while we are reeling as we bury more than 1,000 of our people, we have somehow become the aggressors for having the audacity to react, and we are excoriated for a perceived disproportionate response. What exactly is a proportionate response when 1,300 of your citizens are murdered by terrorists? Hamas chose to open the gates of hell, and I don’t understand how people can be shocked when fire is released in return.
Why are you more angry at Israel than at Hamas, who clearly couldn’t care less about Palestinian civilians? I mean seriously. What would you expect Israel to be doing right now instead? And those of you who know me, you know my politics, my feelings about the Occupation, my support for a two-state solution. You know that I don’t shy away from criticizing the Israeli government or its policies vis a vis Palestine. That I’m saddened by the loss of innocent Palestinian lives.
But you know what? While it still saddens me when innocent people lose their lives, it pains me to say that this time, in light of the horrors that precipitated our response, my ability to actively feel guilt for what they’re going through is completely absent. This is on their leaders, 100%. Leaders who don’t give a shit about them, who tell them to stay in their homes when we beg them to leave, just so that there will be more dead Palestinian civilians. I’m sorry that their leaders suck and I don’t want innocent people to die. Truly. But these leaders choose to put their funding into building up a terror infrastructure instead of building a nation. These leaders convince their followers that they can somehow destroy Israel (not going to happen), and that it is more noble and righteous to focus their energies on trying to hurt and kill us than to create a stable life for their own people.
So where does that leave us now? My capacity to own any emotion beyond agonizing sadness has grown to incorporate fury. And I have so much fierce anger. At Hamas – not only for last week’s utterly horrific attacks that destroyed so many Israeli lives and changed our country forever, but also for doing something so utterly diabolical, knowing that our response was likely to be far harsher than anything we’ve done until now. For doing something so atrocious that I find myself unable to feel bad that we are responding in such a way. I don’t want innocent people to die, but this time, I feel like it’s not our fault when they do. I’ll add that I’m not 100% comfortable with feeling that way, but I’m owning that I do.
And then there are the leaders here in Israel – our incompetent, bumbling, egotistical coalition members, led by a man who lied about receiving early warnings about a possible attack – who don’t give a shit about us either. Politicians who have spent the past 10 months inciting to civil war and weakening our society… People who have gone silent this week, except on social media, where they are loudly proclaiming how we will win together (people who have referred to so many of our citizens as traitors and anarchists since January, if not before) and trying to make us think that they’re actually doing something, or that they care about us. Our military leaders fucked up too, dismissing activities along the border as merely being a drill instead of an actual impending attack. At least they’re acknowledging that grave errors were made, but still.
How can we claim that Israel is a safe home for the Jews when our government, our military leaders, and our intelligence community can’t prevent a terror attack of such epic proportions, that they don’t have the resources to minimize the damage once it starts? Israel will never be the same.
Also, I’m not looking for arguments or exchanges about ideology or political beliefs now, so there’s a good chance that if you try, I’ll either ignore you or shut you down, depending on my mood. I’m putting my feelings out there, but don’t have the energy or the desire to defend them. If yours are different, feel free to write your own post on your own wall. Thanks for understanding.
