It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that people (who generally seem to live in the west and have never faced terror or lived in a war zone with neighbors who want you dead and keep trying to make that happen) think Israel shouldn’t be defending itself at all in response to any attacks against its citizens. If we do, we need to make sure that not a single...
I’ve been trying to write about the person I’ve become since October 7th, but the truth is that my thoughts and emotions feel too big for words. Every time I try, including this time, I find myself at a loss regarding how to proceed. The writing below is disjointed – just like my thoughts and emotions… ** To say that I now see the world through a very different lens is an...
Do you remember how, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were those people who “did their own research” and chose to believe dubious “professionals” whose medical advice went completely against what the global medical and scientific communities were saying? Do you remember what you, as an intelligent, rational individual thought of those medical and...
Through my work, I was recently given the opportunity to spend a few hours in the presence of a large group of Israeli 12th graders. On the surface, they seemed like “regular” kids – talking, laughing, leaning into one another with practiced, intimate ease. Sweet, beautiful teens being regular teens. Except that these kids were from the Gaza border communities – survivors of...
For Hamas, dead Jews and Israelis is the goal and dead Palestinians is the strategy. Every action they’ve taken before and since October 7th attests to this. Instead of investing the billions of dollars in international aid they’ve received over the years to create a stable societal infrastructure for Gaza’s civilian population, Hamas has chosen to use those funds to build a...
Leaders around the world (including from Russia, which you’d think would be a joke, but here we are…) are calling for Israeli restraint following Iran’s attack late Saturday night, yet how many of these leaders are also calling for action against Hezbollah, which has been attacking Israel nearly every day since October 8th? More than 100,000 residents of our...
Between the river and the sea… Israel has become a nation of yellow ribbons Woven around our car door handles Wrapped around the trees that line our roads Pinned to our shirts and lapels A constant reminder as we move through our daysAnd chase elusive sleep through our nightsTrying to pretend our lives are normalThat there is no “before” and “after” That our children, our...
Today and every day I’m grateful for allies – my non-Jewish friends who respond to my posts about Jew hatred (and non-Jewish strangers whose support I see here and on other platforms), and especially those who share posts about antisemitism on your own profiles. I see you and I appreciate you, more than words can say. To tell you the truth, whenever I post about...
So we are expected to believe that Hamas, which can somehow conjure up exact numbers of dead and injured within minutes to hours after incidents they immediately blame on Israel (like the blast at Al-Ahli Hospital, which turned out to be a misfired Palestinian rocket that hit the parking lot – not an Israeli airstrike that hit the hospital itself) and regularly publishes...
Today is the 135th day of the war, and if you follow other Israelis or Jews online, you may have seen posts stating things like, “today is October 135th”. For many people, it seems that the brutal Hamas massacre—families burned alive, women and girls violently raped and sexually assaulted, individuals tortured, people abducted—has somehow become an irrelevant footnote...