During the initial weeks and months after the war began, I had trouble collecting my thoughts. My feelings and emotions were too raw and overwhelming to put into words, and I often felt like I was simply unable to adequately convey the depth of what felt like a runaway train endlessly careening around inside my head.
Our lives have changed forever. There is before October 7th and there is after, and while similarities can be found in the shredded remains of our daily routines, nothing will ever be the same. We carry our hostages, our soldiers, our wounded, our survivors, and our fallen in our hearts every single minute of every single day, and, in the event that it somehow slips our mind, the unwanted souvenirs from that day and the 473 days since are scattered all around us. Here in Israel, our collective, profound grief is no less deep than it was on October 7th and the days, weeks, and months that followed. Here in Israel and for Jews everywhere, it is still October 7th.
Yet somehow, 15 months have passed since our world turned upside down and inside out, and on Sunday afternoon, as I watched three of our stolen people returned to us in the most harrowing manner from what must surely have been the depths of hell, I found myself once again struggling with the intensity of having so many feelings at once. For even as I felt a sense of joy and relief that elicited a stream of tears from my eyes, in the same breath, I also felt anger. Anger at Hamas and the Red Cross for allowing Doron, Romi, and Emily to be terrified and tortured until their very last moments as hostages – for not even attempting to create an atmosphere that wasn’t filled with chaos or designed to instill fear in these women who had already experienced and survived so much. Anger at the Red Cross for making a mockery of their very own raison d’etre by doing nothing more than serving as a taxi service while innocent civilians were tortured and killed on their watch.
But that’s not the only reason why I was angry. As I sat there watching Hamas act exactly like the terror organization that every Israeli and every Jew who hasn’t been brainwashed by the likes of JVP or SJP knows them to be, I found myself growing even more furious with those who have granted them legitimacy during these past 15 months – people who have taken them at their word, who have willfully chosen to believe the tales they’ve spun for western consumption. Hordes of armed Hamas terrorists filled my television screen, wearing clean uniforms that they had purposely not worn while they battled and tried to kill our soldiers so they’d blend in with the local population and maximize Palestinian civilian casualties. A sea of terrorists and their supporters (none of whom, it should be noted, looked like victims of genocide or famine) pushing and crowding around three Israeli young women.
And this was after they violated the ceasefire before it even went into effect, providing the names of the hostages scheduled to be released that day 18-and-a-half hours (!) after they were required to do so as stipulated in the agreement. Did you believe them when they claimed they were unable to give us the names on time due to “technical reasons”? Do you actually believe that the organization that claims to know precisely how many Palestinians (Hamas always claims they’re all civilians, and you always believe them) have been killed almost immediately after an explosion (the cause of which, they are, inevitably, also able to immediately determine – spoiler alert: they always blame Israel, and the west always believes this as well) was somehow unable to give us three names? The next group of hostages is scheduled to be released this Saturday (again, as stipulated in the ceasefire agreement), though apparently, one Hamas official claimed that they would be unable to carry out the release as scheduled, and that it would take place on Sunday instead.
The organization has since confirmed that the release, will, indeed, take place on Saturday, but is anyone really surprised that these are the types of things that happen when you are forced to make a horrific deal with the devil because you have no other choice? Is anyone shocked that Hamas is saying and doing whatever it can to inflict as much psychological torture on Israelis as possible? If you’re shocked, it’s because you haven’t been paying attention when Hamas has been showing you exactly who they are, and I desperately want to scream, “Do you get it now? Do you see who we’re dealing with? Do you finally understand that these are monsters?”
And then I wonder if you believe us yet. If you’ll stop gaslighting us. If you’ll stop minimizing and ignoring the Jew hatred that’s spiraled out of control because far too many people believe it’s somehow acceptable to attack Jews wherever they are under the guise of hatred for Israel, while far too few non-Jews are calling it out. Or maybe it’s just easier to turn a blind eye because you’re not the ones being targeted with hatred…
15 months after thousands of Hamas terrorists started a war by brutally attacking our people and committing the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, we now have a ceasefire. The terms are terrible, and while three of our stolen sisters are finally home, only 30 out of the remaining 94 hostages are scheduled to be released in an unbearable, nerve-wracking trickle over the next six weeks. The fate of those who didn’t make the cut is still to be determined.
Frankly, I will be amazed if Hamas chooses to fulfill all of its obligations during this first phase, let alone the second and third phases. As I mentioned above, they like to torture us – to psychologically smack us around. And make no mistake – they want us dead. With the ink barely dry on the ceasefire agreement, they were already making statements about how they will keep attacking us until they get rid of us. It’s not something they’ve ever tried to hide – quite the opposite, in fact. Every single successful hostage release will be nothing short of a miracle, and as my emotions threaten to engulf my sanity, I may need to be reminded to breathe.
And if your response to all of this is to begin a sentence with, “But Israel…” If you try to convince me that you somehow understand any aspect of this situation better than I do, or if you attempt to engage in whataboutism, then I will know that you have made your choice about who to believe. And as one of my acquaintances said earlier this week after watching the scenes in Gaza during the release, “You’ve been duped.”
