Israel-Hamas war: Recounting the first two weeks

I’m not sure why I started to write a daily Facebook post when the Gaza war broke out. Maybe it was an attempt to stay sane amid the unbelievably heartbreaking news that was emerging with lightning-fast speed about the atrocities committed by Hamas in the South.

As opposed to assigning or editing stories, or writing my own “official” journalistic prose for The Jerusalem Post, my “war minutes,” as I called them, were totally stream of consciousness, without regard to the conventional constraints of the daily news pages.

Another reason was to try to open a window, to my hundreds of Facebook “friends” living in the US and other locations, to the mood of a country under attack – the shock, the anger, the grief, and the resilience of a people experiencing the worst collective disaster of their lives. And, as part of that window, the daily occurrences that enable us to go on and give us hope that there will be better days.

DAY 2 – OCTOBER 8

What it’s like in Israel, for those kind souls who have been asking.

Driving on a nearly deserted main Jerusalem street this morning (usually filled with traffic) and listening to the radio announcer Alon Velan stoically recite the names and homes of the 26 young soldiers killed yesterday, and not being able to see the road for the tears.

DAY 3 – OCTOBER 9

The buses aren’t running on schedule these days, so I stuck out my thumb to get a ride to the city exit.

In the three-minute ride, Shlomi and I exchanged stories. He told me his daughter and boyfriend were in New York and desperately trying get a flight back so they could join their reserve units.

“I was in the army in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, fighting in Sinai,” he said. “I know what trauma is. What is happening now is a thousand times worse.”

We said our good lucks as we continued to breathe, walk, and try to comprehend.

DAY 5 – OCTOBER 11

Today’s thought. There are a number of liberal Americans who are decrying the loss of life on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides of this four-day war, and suggesting both parties share responsibility.

One politically correct American Jew even wrote that the Hamas massacre of Israelis “wasn’t unprovoked.”

That’s akin to trying to understand and justify the actions of those people who flew into the World Trade Center.

There is no moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas. As the leaders of the “country” called Gaza, they are responsible for the sad fate of their people and of what’s to come.

If you can’t get behind Israel at this point, then you need to look long and hard at your moral compass.

DAY 6 – OCTOBER 12

My son, serving at a base in the North, sends a message to the family WhatsApp that for the first time since he’s been there, a siren alert sounded due to an infiltration by an air glider from Lebanon.

As we were responding with our concerns, the 24-hour news coverage broke in with live reports, showing the glider in the air.

All of this is in another part of the country, but only a 90-minute drive away from our house.

This war is national, local, and personal.

There’s no separation, and there’s little respite.

DAY 8 – OCTOBER 14

Today’s war minute. The mundane, the surreal, and the obscene continue to blur as this war enters its second week.

Today, on the way to visit our son, who got home to Rehovot from his base for 24 hours, the radio alerts warned three separate times of rockets fired in the South. Nothing new there... it’s been happening all week. But with a rocket having fallen in a Rehovot street yesterday, we were paying attention.

As we approached a major army base on the way, the sight was incredible: literally a couple of thousand cars parked on the sides of the roads, the median strips, the hills on the embankment, all reservists who had been called up and left their cars there.

As word came tonight of the IDF plans for a combined air-sea-ground attack against the terrorist government of Gaza, I shivered, wondering if all of those reservists would be coming back to reclaim their cars in a week, a month, or ever.

Let Hamas and Egypt worry about the innocent civilians in Gaza who are going to pay the price of their barbarism. I’m worried about those soldiers.

DAY 10 – OCTOBER 16

Today’s war minute.

Motti, with his back turned to the camera, and two strapping teens – Lotem and Avi – from his community near where I live.

Motti is hiding his face because he has a sensitive security position. His T-shirt reads: “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

Last night, the three of them arrived at the home of a family in my neighborhood who left their apartment because of the war and flew abroad. The family decided to donate all of their appliances and some furniture to families in need because of the Hamas attacks on Israel which have been constant over the past 10 days.

Motti is one of those people you instantly like from the get-go. Bright, warm, confident, he’s the kind of Israeli we would all trust with our lives in a crisis situation.

He heard about a policeman living in the southern city of Ashkelon whose home was destroyed by a rocket from Gaza. The family had been relocated to the farther south city of Eilat but were given a completely empty apartment.

Neither Motti nor the family with the belongings know the cop or family personally, but last night I met them with the keys to the apartment, and he and the two boys spent two hours lugging a fridge, washing machine, couch, bed, and other items from a narrow second-floor entrance to their flatbed trailer.

Before they drove off, we said our goodbyes, and Motti, whom I had just met two hours before, embraced me and said with a steady voice and a smile. “These are difficult days, but you don’t need to worry. The country and its people are strong, and we will win.”

With all my heart, I want to believe him.

DAY 12 – OCTOBER 18

Today’s war minute... nothing poignant or slice of life. Just extreme frustration and despair that the world has turned Israel into the bad guys in a matter of days.

A rocket hits a hospital in Gaza with many casualties, Hamas blames Israel, and the media takes terrorists at their word instead of waiting for the facts to come out. The facts being that Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired the rocket that landed on the hospital.

But it doesn’t matter. The damage is done, and the glee of blaming Israel has been unleashed.

How to prevent a humanitarian crisis? Very easy.

1. Step one – Hamas releases the 200 Israeli children, elderly, women, and men held hostage in Gaza.
2. Step two – Hamas surrenders, and frees the citizens of Gaza.

Leaving this with Golda Meir, who said something like “If I had to choose between an Israel that the world pities and expresses sympathy for our dead, and a safe Israel that the world disdains, I’ll take the latter.”

DAY 13 – OCTOBER 19

Our synagogue in Jerusalem has been organizing activities every day for the children of the neighborhood, who have been home, with schools and after-school activities only functioning in part.

Today, my daughter Sarit, is bringing super dog Pablo to hold sessions with different age groups, providing therapy and comfort and laughter to the kids who have been in and out of bomb shelters and targeted by Hamas rockets.

Not all heroes wear capes... and some drool.

DAY 14 – OCTOBER 20

Hard to believe that tomorrow it will have been two weeks since we woke up in disbelief to the unfolding horrors and crimes against humanity that Palestinians were unleashing on innocent Israeli children, women, grandparents, and babies.

Those two weeks have gone by in agony-like slow motion as more gruesome details emerge. And in other ways, it seems like a year has passed since we woke up with mundane concerns and all the joy and boredom that “normal” life carries.

People’s lives have changed forever in the last two weeks.

Tonight, and tomorrow – the Jewish Sabbath – we’ll gather with our children who are here, enjoy my wife, Shelley’s, amazing food and each other’s company, and savor just being together.

We’ll light a candle for the 200 Israelis held captive in Gaza, for the 1,400 butchered by Hamas, and the thousands of wounded suffering in hospitals, maybe never to recover.

We’ll hold each other close and count our blessings because any time now – today, next week – the real war will start, and the country’s young people will enter Gaza to retrieve those hostages and attempt to ensure that another massacre of Israelis will never occur again.

But tonight we’ll recite our blessings, drink our wine, eat our challah, and, amid the uncertainty and anguish, embrace a few minutes of grace and tranquility.

Shabbat shalom.

DAY 15 – OCTOBER 21

Despite the 200 hostages being held in Gaza (with no human rights organizations allowed to see them), despite the rockets still being fired by Hamas indiscriminately on Israeli civilians, despite the deadly second front on our northern border, and despite the anticipation throughout Israel as its sons and daughters prepare to enter Gaza to remove the Hamas threat, life goes on.

Every-day things happen, small pleasures are taken, and dates are marked.

In Jerusalem today, we gathered for the eighth birthday party of Daniel, a remarkable boy with a spirit that can’t be extinguished.

Despite his being 120 miles (190 km.) from his home on the northern border (because his family had to temporarily relocate due to daily Hezbollah rockets and infiltration attempts), family and friends, old and new, played games, climbed on Ninja extreme challenge installations, sang songs, lifted Daniel up in a chair nine times (once for good luck), and ate birthday cake.

His excitement infected all of us worried and fatigued adults, and together we celebrated life and light. That’s the best way to respond to darkness and evil. 