3:00 AM Saturday morning. An abrasive sound penetrates the sleep. It is the sound of the warning. There is incoming rocket and missile fire. One has 45 seconds at most to get into a security room. A shelter. Simply go far away from a car, lay down and cover your head. Or crush up against a wall. Once again, we are at war. Once again. Waves of planes and waves of opposing rockets and missiles flying. through the once dark skies now lit up by the lights from hell.
45 seconds. To shake oneself from a deep sleep. Orient to where you are and the needs of the moment. Grab your kids. And hope you have remembered to leave water and food in the security room. Some toys for the kids. And close that door. Then to calm one's racing heart and calm the kids - and yourself at the same time.
Put on a show. Nothing to worry about. Even though the older kids know what all this means. It is not a drill; it is the real thing. Again. And the little ones sit there confused. Feeling the tension in the air. grabbed out of bed. It does not bode well. They see mother and father. Heads bowed. Sitting tight against each other. And the memories of all reroot themselves and retrace within the inner vision of all.
Will this seemingly inevitable, unavoidable cycle ever come to a halt? Will we ever reach a time when we can live safely, securely? And have peace. Even if a cold one. What is it that so warps the minds of our self-declared enemies. Who wrote in their charters and constitutions and documents of state as a primary goal to destroy the State of Israel. And then, the rest of Jewry, wherever they reside.
And one wonders. Is this a racial hatred? Is this an ethnic hatred? A religious hatred. A hatred from jealousy? A hatred from embarrassment. How the people of Israel in the harshest circumstances, were able to build. Rebuild. And move forward. Contribute to the world. Nor to resort to threats and terrorism. What is it that so plagues them in the soul that they cannot see their way to peace beneficial to all? Especially themselves. What is it within them? Why does the mother ululate with joy that her child sacrificed himself in the name of hate.
Standing mothering rule number one is to keep one's child out of trouble, out of danger. By word, by voice, by order, by demand, by control. By anything. But these people insist on going against the rule of humanity and send children. Parents. Siblings. Themselves. Into certain harm. Even death. Political and religious evil leaders are fanatic in their hate. They know that as long as they can keep that hate burning, their wrongs perpetrated upon their own people will continue to be unseen, ignored. Thus, their power and its retention, their ostentatious outrageous lifestyles will go unremarked as their people are otherwise engaged.
Thus, once again we are at war. Last time I was there. This time, a week before we were to join with friends and family over there, in celebration and observance of Passover, we are cut off. By oceans. Oceans of water and distance. And oceans of hate. Once again. We are here. To sit and worry from afar. To remain close to sources of news. And to obsessively check them countless times during the days and night. And we leave our siren and warning apps open. Why? Because it is one way. we can share some of it, a tiny modicum of it, with them, our people of our nation.
What upsets me? What upsets me the most? Not so much the pathetic acidic hate they carry within themselves. It eats them up from the inside out as they destroy themselves. No, what upsets me the most is our own people. People who are easily and equally subjected to random acts of terror. Of stabbings, of car ramming, of truck ramming, of bullets. Of home invasion. With aim and goal to kill as many as possible within.
Why do these people bother me? Because they speak out against their nation. They call upon us to deny our history. Even as we are supposed to adhere to a history of a people that never was Instead of being proud of our history. Of our contributions. Of our survival against the worst odds. Against the most horrendous unspeakable plans waged against us. They deny this. They shame us for remembering who we are. Where we came from.
How and why, we find ourselves in this land of Israel. Time and again. Always. This ancient ancestral homeland from which we never resigned nor abandoned. and for which we always prayed. Over 3000 years of exile. Always, the Diaspora had in mind and heart a rebuilding, a return. In the full sense of knowing this, always was and always will be our homeland. Deny it as the rest of the world might find it convenient to do so, we know the truth. And we know the history. How we were exiled. How we came back, time and time again.
I don't know what the matter is with these people. I don't know why they think this way, perhaps hoping to escape the fate of the rest of the Jewish people. That is a fallacious manner of thought and history has proven that to be the case. over and over again. Even if they might see themselves as separate, apart from their people, the rest of the world do not see that as the case. Ever. They consign their own people. their own history to a trash can, to shove it over a cliff someplace, or to deny it.
The most amazing thing is that some of these deniers are otherwise intelligent people. Somehow, they have developed a warped sense of the truth of history. Or they have a deep need for denial of self. A need within to distance themselves from their people. To express hate, contempt, discontent of and from them and claim great gaps between them, never to be bridged. It is these very same people who enable the slaughter to continue, as they encourage the enemy to think that there will be a way in. That they will be able to chisel out that small crack into a gaping hole through which they can come and carry out their worst intentions.
This will not happen. Not ever again. Yes, we can expect constant horror and awful trials in life. Such as October 7. Such as brutality waged against the hostages. With the world keeping silent about it all. As they thrust the truth into deep, dark closets, exchanged for evil lies to be presented before the world, and the world swallows it all.
What's to say?
The same things we have been saying
yesterday,
today.
And most probably tomorrow.
Unless the people on this earth come to a sense of sanity and reality.
And understand
Am Yisrael Chai.
The nation, the people. of Israel live.
Lanetzach.
Forever.
And to remember, for always, that we know we will survive because we have the strongest defender standing by our side.
