The routine of war is that there is no routine. Some days feel better than others, but no matter how much work I manage to get done, how many “normal” things I manage to do, there is no escaping the fact that our world is spinning off its axis.
I find that in all of my exchanges, I’m hyper-aware of my choice of words and my use of punctuation marks. Simple questions are no longer simple, and using exclamation points sometimes feels extreme and out of line, regardless of what I’m writing because I don’t want to sound upbeat (which I’m not feeling anyway, about anything). When people ask me how I’m doing, I don’t know how to answer – sometimes I ignore the question and deflect to other subjects. There are no easy answers, and frequently, I don’t have the energy to give the hard answers. It’s complicated.
My Facebook feed is surreal – a seemingly endless, agonizing stream of pictures of beautiful Israelis of all ages who are either missing or dead. A mourning period without an end, interspersed with the occasional “normal” post from someone abroad that catches me by surprise. I’m still in awe of all the people who have reached out to offer support and love and, if I’m being honest, slightly disappointed by those I would have expected to say something but haven’t. I’m not writing this to shame anyone, nor to sound ungrateful, but your Israeli friends and your Jewish friends are not okay. I keep responding to those who write to me by telling them that their kind gesture means so much to me, that I am grateful beyond words (and I know I still owe a few responses – which you will receive). These aren’t just empty platitudes, even as the words begin to sound stale to me because I’ve used them so often. I’ve been brought to tears countless times by the kind words and gestures I’ve seen and received over the past week-and-a-half. I really am that grateful.
But as grateful as I am for all of the love and support I’m witnessing and receiving, I’m saddened and scared by all of the hate I’m seeing online towards Jews and Israel these days. An Israeli friend living in the US shared a post recently that said, “Israel is the only country in the world that has to defend itself for defending itself,” and it felt so accurate. I’m seeing Israelis being attacked in comment sections for having the audacity to share their thoughts (which are not extreme). People who are openly supporting Hamas (as opposed to voicing legitimate and understandable concern for Palestinian civilians). People who write about “problematic staging” as they trip over themselves trying to prove that last week’s Hamas attacks on Israel didn’t happen or that they weren’t as bad as it sounds, or those who claim that the “stories” about decapitated babies have been thoroughly debunked. It’s utterly astonishing to me that people consciously and instinctually choose to believe the unproven words put out by a terror organization over actual, first-hand, eyewitness accounts – that they prefer to believe Hamas, or, at the very least, not to believe us. And of course, I’ve also seen those who believe every word and are celebrating, or, at the very least, justifying, as though girls and women deserve to be raped and tortured and families deserve to be burned alive in their homes, as though such acts are somehow a natural response to the Occupation – or to our very existence as a country.
The online rhetoric has gotten so bad that Facebook has added additional privacy settings for Israelis, enabling functionality that is activated by default on many of our posts with regard to who can comment. I keep seeing disclaimers that state things like, “Liza Rosenberg has limited who can comment on this post” and “Only people who follow this Page/profile for more than 24 hours can comment.” Even on my public posts, I need to manually override commenter permissions, on a post-by-post basis. This is where we are.
It feels like the more Israel and Jews are attacked, the more we are hated – whether we defend ourselves or not. If you’re not Jewish, as much as you support us and empathize, you probably can’t truly fathom what it is like to be one of us. You can’t imagine what it feels like to witness people being gleeful as they hate on you, as they justify attacks on you, as they gaslight you with denial… When even at the best of times, it is deeply ingrained in your DNA as a result of intergenerational trauma to look over your shoulder, to hope that none of your fellow Jews will make a misstep that shadows all of us and makes us even more of a target. And now we’re in the worst of times, and it is equal parts terrifying and depressing, on top of the overwhelming grief that has engulfed us all since the attack. We are all grieving, while at the same time feeling forced to fight and defend ourselves from hate. And, once again, I have no words to adequately convey how exhausting it is to be Jewish and to be Israeli.
