100/10

Headline on Times of Israel: IDF troops thwart Hamas transfer of truck full of weapons to Khan Younis

Yesterday was 100 days.

One hundred days of fear, hate, and evil neighbors. One hundred days of worrying about our nation, our friends’ husbands, friends, cousins, brothers, sisters. One hundred days of memories of what they did – butchering, raping, decapitating.

Every day we find out more things that they did. Every day we work on identifying bodies and victims. Every day we pray that the 132 hostages are still alive.  I want them all home so badly. I want them safe.

And the farce that is the Hague. Parents of victims sitting in the gallery watching this trial, seeing Israel defending its ability to rescue their children and prevent more massacres.

Don’t get me started on UNWRA, the Useless Nothings that are the UN, and the ICRC.

Millions of people all over the world, saying ridiculous things in promotion of the genocide of Jews. Poets quoted as saying, “Normalize the massacres as the status-quo.” This is the same guy who he was nominated in 2021 as one of Time’s 100 most influential people for “helping to prompt an international shift in rhetoric in regard to Israel and Palestine.” He has been spouting ‘anti-Zionist’ garbage for years, calling the US military a “murderous, terrorist organization” to his 380,000 followers on social media. The evil that he represents is what we Jews are facing, what the world is facing. It is now. It is happening.

Yesterday was also my son’s tenth birthday. My firstborn son who is sensitive, gentle, and kind. The very opposite of all the atrocities we have witnessed – the kind of children we are supposed to protect from this.

100 days. Photo credit: Times of Israel

Even though yesterday was permeated with sadness and a 24-hour rally, people everywhere discussing the war, the losses, the hostages, the future, our little family did our damnedest to make it a great day for him. We arranged for his class to sing him happy birthday and two of our kids skipped acrodance just to spend time together as a family. We made a chocolate cake with oreos, topped it with sparklers, watched a great movie – How to Train Your Dragon (with ZERO sadness and death, per the birthday boy’s request), ordered shwarma (his choice), and even prepared fried ice cream, which we ate this morning for breakfast.

It seems as though yesterday was too much – the sadness, the joy, the conflict. An overload for me, for my oldest – we are both sensitive and empathic. And this morning, he lost it. Triggered by something ridiculous, he broke down. My poor boy, who loves fairness and equality, and wants to heal the world, couldn’t stop crying.

I hugged him. Sat on the floor of his new room, on his striped rug with him in my lap. I held him in my arms like when he was small, and cried with him.

I cried with, and for, my ten-year-old son. For his innocence, for his youth. For the things that I can no longer give him because it was stolen from us.

Now he’s in school and I’m crying while working on my laptop. I’ll likely be like this all morning, but it’s okay. I will feel my feelings. Then sometimes this afternoon, likely just before I have to go pick up the kids, the Israeli resilience will kick in and we’ll go back to living in our pretend world and going on with life as usual.

Because, quite simply, no amount of evil can, or will, stop us from living.