What is keeping me up at night these days? Oh, it is a long list....

When people ask me how I'm doing, I can't really answer. It changes day by day. Hour by hour. Minute by minute. This is the new Israel. It's not pretty. And we'll be here for a while.

Over the past few weeks, it seems that every time I have sat down to collect my thoughts and write, I have been interrupted by the booms. Not memories of booms from that October 7 morning that haunt me when I lie down in bed. But actual booms. It’s just a constant background noise. My husband and I joke that we can tell by which windows rattle where the rockets were headed for — Lod, Rishon, or perhaps Yishpru, the shopping center just 3 kilometers away. We happened to be in the park one day with our grandchildren when the Iron Dome station that is a mere 250 meters from our house was operated. It sounds like a plane taking off in our yard. That day, no sirens went off, and before we could even process what was happening, we heard the massive explosion overhead. It was a rocket headed for Yishpru, and Iron Dome caught it. We didn’t even have enough time to register what was happening until it was over. And then, once we did, we quickly said goodbye to the park and ran home.

Here in Modi’in, that has rarely happened. But elsewhere, it has been incessant. The booms, even as we make a mental note and then go about our day, are a reminder that the entire country is still living in this big mess. In my daughter’s home of Ashkelon, they have had thousands of rockets, many of which have landed — including two direct hits on her street. She told me that 24 people have died in Ashkelon from rockets in the past three weeks.

I’m so grateful to be able to look after my kids and their kids as much as possible, offering them a safe refuge and support and childcare. So, so, so grateful. I’m grateful for Iron Dome. Grateful for my home and four walls. Grateful to have my family in tact, not…. you know…. going through one of the many horrors that landed on us on that fateful day……I don’t even want to say….

Grateful for the daily partnership with my spouse who seems to roll with the punches better than I do.

His mother called the other day to see how we are and I overheard him say, “We’re not affected too much.” I was like, not affected too much?! Okay.

I think he meant to say that we are basically safe. As I said, in tact, which means so much right now.… The shelves in the local supermarket are mostly stocked (mostly, most days). We have four kids/kids-in-law currently serving in the army, but thus far none is in combat (thank God), though that may change.

Still, despite my husband’s assessment (or just reassuring his worried Mum?), on the most basic level, we’re only a degree or two away from all that. We have lots of friends whose kids are already fighting in Gaza, lots of friends of our kids doing things I don’t want to envision. It’s just too hard. And of course the losses. A friend whose son died that day. Friends of our kids who were at the dance party… a colleague and her family captured….a friend of a friend’s son captured…. my friend’s coworker’s daughter captured…. Everyone is affected. Some more than others. Some a half a degree closer than others. My son-in-law’s brother who is in Golani went to four funerals of people he was serving with. Now he’s in Gaza. And we are all worried that my son-in-law is on his way there, too. I can’t think about it too much because then I will stop functioning and never get this blog written. This is probably why it has taken me two weeks to even get this much out….

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I think that the most direct way that this is affecting us — by “us” I mean, like, the entire country — is the frozenness. Everything has stopped. We are all in this standstill. No university, no childcare, no work, in some cases no public transportation — until who knows when. The economy is at a standstill, as 300,000 workers are on reserve duty indefinitely. The tourism industry is dead, not only because everyone is cancelling everything, but also because most hotels have been repurposed as refugee camps for the communities displaced around Gaza. (Or at least the kosher hotels. The non-kosher hotels have been rejected as the government, even in this crisis, prefers to religiously control its people than take care of basic needs like a roof over their heads… But I digress….)

A walk through the mall shows many shops closed — temporarily? permanently? who knows. Events are cancelled, nobody is making big weddings or parties or having any kinds of get togethers. (Has our shul held services since Simchat Torah? I don’t even know.)

And then there’s the food issue. The 21 towns around Gaza are responsible for an estimated 50-60% of much of the fresh produce in Israel. Tomatoes, zucchinis, and many more. (I actually visited the area a few times over the summer as part of a project I was working on about innovative sustainability education…. so I learned all these fascinating statistics… but all of that is now blown to smithereens. A story for another time.) So now, there are thousands of acres of produce that the country relies on that have no workers and no communities around them. Even though volunteers are now filling in the gaps, it’s unclear what the long-term plan is for these farms, and how the emptying of the Gaza rim will affect not only farmers and the economy but also food security in Israel. Big questions.

Yeah, so a complete standstill.

Till who knows when.

My son told me that they have prepared his unit for at least another month or two of service. At least. His wife is in her ninth month. We’re figuring that out….

We’ve created a kind of routine amid the standstill. Every day, my husband and I run “Kaytanat Sababa and Tatu”. (Kaytana means camp. He goes by “Sababa” and I go by “Tatu”, which was a baby’s way of saying “Savtush” and kind of stuck.) So that’s what we do. We take care of the twins every day so that my daughter — whose husband is also in miluim and who is also 8 months pregnant — can have some kind of normalcy and time to do her things. We go to the park, do art projects, read books, play music, bake, and eat, and have a great time, pretending that nothing else exists. That is where I am.

Despite that very normal-seeming day (in which we, like many other grandparents right now, haven taken over preschool teacher as our contribution to the home front — go #teamgrandparents), this is anything but normal. It it reminiscent of the beginning of Corona lockdown, only far more terrifying. And I don’t just mean because of the booms in the background noise. Those booms are, truthfully, the least disturbing aspect of everything we are experiencing. It is far more than the rockets. There is something happening here that is very hard to see a way out of. And it is not just Hamas terrorists on attack. There is a deep change to what we considered normal in Israel. And we are seeing exacerbated both the best and the worst of Israeli culture. The best are beautiful but the worst are possibly insurmountable. And perhaps the hardest bit is that there is no exit pathway anywhere in sight. Who knows where this is taking us, and how long we will be here.

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I want to take a minute to note the “best of Israel”. Because even though there are many aspects of living here that I have been critiquing intensely, (like the status of women, everyday racism, lack of separation of religion and state, treatment of the Palestinians, macho culture, threats to democracy, and the entire Bibi-Smotrich-Ben Gvir world that has taken over), there are some very beautiful aspects of Israeli culture that have also emerged here in full force.

A deep care. A willingness to volunteer for the sake of others. A spirit of giving. A courage to step up when it’s needed. The ability to put money concerns aside for the sake of others. Like, the thousands of volunteers who have put their lives aside to take care of displaced strangers — like the Bonot Alternativa group that put aside their entire political agenda and has mobilized thousands of women to donate and help out in a zillion ways, all day every day. The students picking harvests. The falafel stores feeding hundreds of soldiers at their own cost. The “Brothers in Arms” group that within a day of the attack was organizing a massive mobilization from a conference center in the middle of Tel Aviv. The joint Jewish-Bedouin mobilization in Rahat. The Jewish-Arab dialogue groups facilitating friendship and partnership when those values are under fire. This is, truly, the heart of what Israel can be.

(Forgive me, I don’t have the energy to look for all the links to these things. You can find many of these on my FB page from the past few weeks.)

This is the Israel that I fell in love with 30 years ago when we moved here. It was a pre-Bibi time. It was also pre-hitech when socialism dominated more than capitalism, and everyone was in overdraft and nobody seemed to care. (Not to idealize a time when patriarchy reigned, the territories were being developed, religious radicalism was being cultivated, and Rabin was assassinated….) I’m just trying to say that with everything that I write about my struggles with Israeli political culture, there is also a very beautiful side and we are definitely seeing that now, and I’m grateful for that. It brings me some hope. Maybe we can build on that.

Another source of hope comes from the Arab-Israeli leadership. All across Israel, Arab Israelis have been volunteering alongside Jewish Israelis in big and small ways, despite their own hard experiences. Arab-Israeli influencers have been speaking out strongly about these events — with one poll showing that some 80-90% of Arab Israelis fully condemn Hamas’ actions. Ra’am leader Mahmoud Abbas released a very powerful video calling for his community to strive for unity and peace.

Despite, he added, the difficult conditions that Arab Israelis are going through right now.

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Alas, the other face of Israel.

The first day of the war, Arab Israelis across Israel were fired, especially women wearing hijab. The mayor of Givatayim said explicitly that he plans to ensure that no Arab workers will work in the city. The mayor of Bat Yam, adjacent to the mixed city of Jaffa, effectively said the same thing. Some of the community leaders in Jaffa who have toiled for years to bring peace and shared society were fired from their jobs in Bat Yam. You may have seen the story of Dr. Abed Samara who was suspended from the Sharon Hospital only because he is Arab. Stories like this are happening right now all over the country.

And then there is what we an only call the Ben Gvir effect. Arrests of people considered to be enemies of the state. A journalist arrested for an Islamic post. A ganenet taken in for questioning because years ago she posted a Palestinian flag on social media. Dr. Samara actually lost his job because he had an Islamic phrase about peace on his social media from 2022. Tons of these stories are coming in. A Palestinian friend of mine from Beit Hanina is terrified to talk to me on the phone because of how many friends have been arrested. “They are listening,” was the message.

And what is happening in the West Bank right now? Complete chaos. I fear that one day it is going to come back to haunt us. Just as Gaza did.

And Gaza. Can we talk about this? Is there any way for me to register my opposition to the IDF strategy of leveling entire neighborhoods? I have tried in several settings to have this conversation, but most Jews in Israel and elsewhere cannot engage in this discussion. I keep trying to say that we cannot equate “Hamas” and “Palestinians”. But it’s a losing battle. There is too much antisemitism right now, and Jews are (rightfully) terrified.

And so yet another vital conversation sacrificed on the altar of Jewish Survival is this. The question of who we are what are our values and whether we can, in the end, justify a response to a viscous attack on Israel with a viscous attack on others. How long can we say, “What kind of monsters kill babies?!” to justify actions in which we are killing hundreds of babies. I’m writing this here, but I realize that most people reading this will not be able to herit, and may even block me or call me a terrorist lover or Hamas supporter or whatever. In one conversation with a former classmate, when I raised these points she told me that she was worried about my sanity and that I should stick to just being a grandmother.

And by the way, I haven’t even mentioned gender. Who has the bandwidth to talk about gender? Nobody, that’s who. There was something of a social-media stir when one of the hostages who was released, an 85-year-old woman who was consistently referred to as “grandmother”, gave a press conference and said some things that people didn’t want to hear. Aside from describing the horror of her experiences, she also said that the terrorists fed the hostages and gave them shampoo. The Israeli PR machine went crazy because it sounded like she was praising the terrorists who abducted her and her husband and killed many of her friends. Her critics kept referring to her as a kind of feeble-minded old lady who clearly doesn’t understand things and should not be allowed to speak in public or something. Thankfully, that led to something of a feminist backlash reminding stupid people that grandmothers have minds and women should be allowed to speak their truths and that anyone who has been through what she went through should be allowed to say exactly what she wants and get some basic respect. So that happened.

And also, there is this whole anti-feminist thing happening in which feminists of the world are being blamed for supporting Hamas. I wrote a post about how the Israeli feminist movement is on the frontlines of taking care of victims and displaced people and all that. And also, you know, as a feminist activist myself, I don’t know how to respond to that sense of complete invisibility of “These feminists are doing nothing for Israel and they are all terrorist supporters.” All I can say really is that patriarchy is still alive and well and some people will go to dark places to prove how undeserving women and feminists are, but I don’t have the ability to fight that fight right now.

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And so, getting back to my original question, what keeps me up at night these days? It’s a long list. The long, fat list full of big things with no good answers.

Hostages. I think about the hostages constantly, wondering what they are going through, the children especially, wondering if and when they will ever be released, and what they will be like when that happens. I’m thinking about the Iran hostages in 1979, held for 444 days, wondering if this is the long plan that Hamas had in mind. Are they in this for the long haul? It’s impossible to fathom.

The displaced. I am worried about the 21 communities around Gaza that have been destroyed, along with their farms, businesses, and innovations. I think about the people who are now living in makeshift centers around the world – in hotels, hostels, and homes everywhere but their own. Will they ever be able to go back? What will their lives be like? What will they do? Or will they have to start all over – and where will they do that, and how? Will the Gaza surrounds just lay empty, forever? Judenrein? And how does one mourn when one fourth of one’s community is gone? Those are images that are impossible to fathom.

Food security, economy. All the things I mentioned above. The standstill. The deserted farms. The lack of a plan.

Lack of a plan. Who is in charge here? Can we count on anyone in the government to know what they’re doing? Really no.

This endless war. I am very, very worried about this war – how long will it go on? Will the rockets ever stop? How many rockets did I hear exploding overhead as I wrote this essay? (I stopped counting at one point.) Will my kids and grandkids ever be able to go back to their homes and routines? When will all the reservists – including my son and sons-in-law – get back home? And even if there is some temporary ending at some point, what will happen after that? Is there a future vision for an Israel that is not at war? Is anyone actually considering what it would take to create actual, real peace with the Palestinians? Is anyone today even capable of thinking in those terms?

Our kids. And all the kids now invading Gaza – I say “kids” because I know so many mothers whose children are those soldiers, and so many are friends of my own kids. What is going to happen here with this ground invasion – what will the end game look like? I can’t even contemplate the many possibilities here. They are all a lot of pain.

And their kids. I am worried about the people in Gaza. They don’t deserve this. Hamas does, yes. But we have almost no mechanism for actually weakening Hamas militarily. Nothing the Israeli government has done in the last 20 or 30 years has worked. And it’s the same thing we are doing now. Just bombing the hell out of everyone. These actions foments more hate for Israel, which makes it easy for Hamas to recruit new fighters, apparently willing to do the worst things. So even if we kill thousands of Hamas terrorists, the actions of killing all these civilians will make twice as many terrorists crop up in their place. And in the meantime, so many people dying, so many children, so many families ruined. I can’t cope with these thoughts. Truly.

Jews, and Jewishness. And so I worry about us, the Jewish people. Who we are. Who we are becoming. Whether we are capable of hearing the truth. Whether we are capable of getting out of the cycle of bad thinking. Whether we can feel empathy even when we are angry and in pain. Whether we can humanize the other.

And whether we can do all that while fighting some very ugly things that are still happening.

This is (some of) what is keeping me up at night. And I suspect it will be for a long time.

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POST-SCRIPT:

But in good news, I got through this blog post. I’m still here. Still alive. And my voice still works. Grateful for small miracles.

And also in an hour, I’ll be joining a Jewish-Muslim dialogue group for mutual support.

Small miracles. Where there’s life there’s hope

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