SAD, JUST SAD

     I will try to write a bit later on, but at this moment I am just drained, so sad and in despair at what has happened to the boys and their families. Having spoken to family and friends from Israel, I know there is a huge cloud of sadness, grief, despair and anger at the events of the last three weeks.
     A strong reaction will have to be made as the Hamas rockets are still coming thru the air into southern Israel, kids are scared, having gone through this before, and Hamas keeps threatening and knows the world will do nothing. Our future is ripped away from us in the form of dead children and we are supposed to practice restraint!!!! Are we to prove to be superhuman in the control of our grief and anger? Are we to stand by and do nothing?
     If we do nothing, then the Arabs will perceive us as weak, for that is what they understand. Force. Power. Might. The concept of revenge. And yet the thought of all out war again will turn the stomachs of Israelis as they contemplate more of their sons and daughters marching off to their own "poppy fields". But how much is one nation supposed to withstand? How much blood needs to be spilled before the over two dozen Arab and Muslim states realize and ACCEPT that Israel is here to stay?
     I do not understand a nation or religion which raises its children to be jihadists, to die and take others with you as the highest level to be achieved. It is sick, beyond sick and it is time for those Moslems who say that this is not Islam to stand up and be counted, to be strong and brave in the face of opposition. Then, and only then, will there be a chance for world wide peace. No Caliphate. No sectarianism and its bloody fights. No mad persecution against Israel. Peace.
     Today, I am in despair at this happening. We will see what happens after the funeral today of the three boys. The nation is convulsing in its grief. Will they convulse with other emotions and by the way, where the hell is Abbas, the "great" leader. Will he grow a pair and cut Hamas off, or will he chicken out, as usual. You see, the ball at this moment, the tool to stanch the outflow of anger - is ABBAS and his actions or lack thereof. In the meanwhile, join me in mourning three children -

Gilad     Eyal    Naftali
   
May G-d comfort you among the rest of those mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
May you know only happiness from now on.

I am devastated and feel so small as I hear these heroic parents of the slain boys speaking at their respective funerals. I cringe at the pain choked voices of the grandfathers as they eulogize their grandsons and raise their strangled by grief voices in prayer. I tremble in awe at the power of Naftali's mother as in a sob filled voice she talks of her son, her boy, her beloved who is no more with her. I hear the voice of a brother of another slain child reassuring his brother not to worry about Ima and Abba (mother and father) for he and the brothers will be sure to take care of them.
     The streets of Israel are all but empty as were the nightspots last night. This is a national tragedy and should be a world tragedy, a wakeup call to them. Here is an article by Herb Keinon, written in the Jerusalem Post which says it all, much better than I can express.

A national trauma that began 18 days ago ended in the worst possible way in a stony field outside Halhoul Monday evening with the discovery of the bodies of the three teenagers – Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah – who became more than household names in this country, but rather the object of intense hope and millions of prayers.

Their smiling faces – Eyal playing guitar at a youth group function, Naftali and Gil-Ad forming a human pyramid at school – affected and touched the country so deeply because their faces, their smiles, looked so familiar.

They looked so much like the faces of the youth we pass on the street downtown, or on the buses, or in the halls of our apartment buildings, or even in the kitchens of our own homes.

Those children, snatched and later murdered as they were trying to do nothing more than return home from school, could have been anyone’s kids. Which is one of the reasons why we were all so affected.

Part of the world, in its obtuseness, has warned us against “disproportionate” reaction. As if there is a proportionate reaction to three boys stolen and murdered for no other reason than they were Jews. And this in the oh, so enlightened 21st century. What, exactly, would constitute a “proportionate” reaction? Traumas such as these are not easily forgotten, they leave scars – not only for the families, obviously, but for the nation.

This type of brutality leaves a mark on the national psyche. Not only the brutality of the act itself, but also the glee in which so many on the other side greeted the news of the kidnappings, glee grotesquely paraded on Facebook in the form a three-finger salute.

The kidnappings, the murders, the support the kidnappers enjoyed among so many of their own people and the calls for more kidnappings of innocents reveal a hatred we try to avert our eyes from, but which from time to time pops up and serves as a reminder of where we live and what we have to deal with.

And it leaves an impact.

Those abroad who fail to grasp why Israel is not more “forthcoming,” not more willing to “make sacrifices for peace,” or why it builds a security fence, or why it sets up roadblocks, do not understand the degree to which incidents like this leave their mark.

To understand Israel, to understand so much of what the country does, it is necessary to understand the insecurity that gnaws at the psyche after incidents like this: after kidnappings, after rockets randomly fired into living rooms, after bombs blowing up buses. Those incidents sap desire to “take risks for peace.”

This country is no stranger to random acts of cruelty.

What speaks so strongly about the nation’s character, however, is that it is not consumed or subsumed by these acts, but continues on its way – to build, to grow, to develop, to move forward, to get stronger.

That resilient quality was embodied over the last 18 days in the parents of the three boys, parents who throughout the entire ordeal showed a nobility of spirit, and degree of faith, that left many awestruck.

Rachel Fraenkel, at a visit to the Western Wall last week, came across a group of elementary school girls reciting Psalms for the safe return of her son, Naftali, and the other two boys. Her message to them was simple: hope for the best, but no matter what happens, don’t let it break you, don’t lose faith.

At times like these, that’s a relevant message for the entire nation, not just for elementary school girls.