He’s Home! 10/23/23
I suspected that Moti might show up unannounced and he did just that: he caught a ride home this past weekend and was sprawling on the living room couch when we returned home from Knoxville this Sunday. He's a little worse for wear and will be resting up, probably for a couple weeks, before he returns again. Yes, he's going right back to Israel. The kids were so excited to see him, but their full body tackles might not have accelerated his timeline. I know he will write about his experience in his own words, but here are a few highlights from our long debrief on the couch last night:
1. People no longer trust the government and have limited trust of the Army, even though technically, everyone is either an active soldier or reservist. For the first time in Israel history, the administration had filled the cabinet with people who'd never served (don't get me started on that one) and it clearly bore rotten fruit.
2. The country is being run/saved/managed–you pick a verb–by its citizens. Finding supplies, organizing logistics, staffing critical jobs that were vacated by call-ups, tending the fields around the Gaza border that supply Israel with a large percentage of its fresh produce–all of it. Many of the important, unsexy details of being a country have fallen to the citizens and they have taken up the mantle.
3. There is a real fear that the intensity of the attack was to produce a quick response; that they were supposed to retaliate quickly and enter Gaza, but that by doing so, they would trigger a series of other premeditated events. Would it be a dual attack from the North, so Israel is fighting on two fronts? Maybe an unprecedented attack from the center, by Arab Israelis who have turned, or sleeper cells, or Gd knows what else? Or, would it be from the mounting number of Jihadists on Israel's borders that are trying to constrict it? There are tons of theories. All involve Iran and most also include our Russian friend, Volodya.
4. Israel truly appreciated the sincerity of Biden's speech. It looks to the US as a lifeline, not only for direct aid, but for keeping the surrounding countries like Egypt and Turkey from caving to their internal extremists.
5. Everyone is still in survival mode, but the reality of "real life" is seeping back in. Kids aren't going to live school, only on Zoom, so it's a horrible reboot of COVID education, even if temporarily. People are not going to restaurants, tackling new home projects, or starting a new hobby - all the little things that make an actual life. So, there is a fear that small businesses are going to crumble. Think about the ramifications of no business, no income, for two weeks if you're already poor, or a single parent, or a caregiver for someone in your family. Now think about what that will feel like in a month, or in six months, or in a year. Things are going to get real, and soon, for a lot of people.
It feels like we've hit the pause button on the Israel-Hamas war movie, but rest assured, it's still playing. And it will be a long one, so please do not become desensitized. It is a slog to parse through the news, to determine what's true and what's simply clever optics, but it's necessary. We are dealing with a rise in antisemitism unseen since the Holocaust. Jew worldwide are rightfully nervous. I am particularly concerned about France, where Jews are literally immigrating to Israel right now, in the middle of a war, because they feel safer there.
I can tell you that I was scared this weekend. Not worried: I was scared. It angers and embarrasses me to admit it. My daughter and I went on a quick evening stroll to an ice cream shop in Knoxville. It was late, but the street was busy. Unfortunately, about two dozen pro-Hamas protestors from UT were also looking for ice cream. It was just me and my daughter in a sea of 20ish year old men wearing keyfillehs over their Hamas t-shirts, draped in Palestinian flags. What if they'd seen our Magen Davids? For the first time ever, I tucked my daughter’s into her shirt; I didn't waste time instructing her to do it. How could I protect her if the situation went sideways? There were so many of them and they were all male. So, we didn't get ice cream. We pretended to window shop at the closed stationary store next door until they passed, then we retraced our steps back. I can't rail against Knoxville (though I've officially checked that box) or the University of Tennessee, because this nonsense is de rigueur.
It's not the far right that troubles me nowadays, it's this generation that does not know the facts, has neither the time nor the desire to learn the facts, and does evil in the name of doing good. "Woke" might have started off with good intentions, but it is now a perversion of its original intent. Colonial? Apartheid? Those terms are so absurd that I can't believe they are still a part of the narrative. And it is unfathomable to me that the same people that shriek about microaggressions, demand civility, and police pronouns, have opted to not support Israel. Israel is the definition of humane. So they can forget their microaggressions–all of them combined would not equal the violent aggression that happened on October 7th.
Am Yisrael Chai!