“How are you?” Simple Question, Complicated Answer

These days, it is so difficult to answer the simplest of questions: “How are you?”

Do you know that split second, between tripping and hitting the ground, which feels like eternity and contains a myriad thoughts and questions? How hard will the fall be? Will I manage to get up? if not, who will help me? It is a frightening moment, time suspended and threatening. That is how I feel.

Sometimes I am sad, like meeting someone who is much loved and very ill. Will she survive? Is this our final farewell? If not, how much more will she suffer? What could I have done to save her, but failed to do?

I am very worried. Not for myself but for the young ones. Will they remain here? If so, what kind of country will be their home? If not, where will they go? Will they be a persecuted minority, as were our forefathers? I think of them too, of previous generations, try to see us through their exiled eyes. I imagine their incredulous joy in 1948 when Israel was established, and then visualize them observing us now…

I am so angry with those who are doing this to us. Not those but him, aided and abetted by a group of obedient sycophants – it is difficult to know what they lack, a mind or a spine. Do they stop to think a for minute, a second, before destroying yet another of the country’s vital assets?

Sometimes I am convinced that it cannot be; I will wake up and realize it was all a bad dream. It simply makes no sense that a country which was established by a nation to which many attribute extraordinary sense, actively damages itself, clearly something must happen to stop the madness. And then I despair, because I cannot imagine what.

I am frustrated by those who understand what is happening and do nothing: I am afraid of the police, I don’t sign petitions, my daughter represents me at demonstrations, what difference does it make if one person more or less stands on the street and waves a flag. For more than two years, the country was dismembered before your eyes and you did nothing, zero, nada, efes. Have you no shame? But perhaps they are right and it makes no difference, which is even more frustrating.

I am amazed at responsible and intelligent individuals who refuse to understand what is going on. You ignored warning signs while trusting a supposed wizard of security, economics and international relations. But now that everything is crumbling and his façade has been shattered, how is it possible that you are sticking to your old positions?

I envy those whose faith or anything else, persuades them that Israel is heading in the right direction. And I would like to be in the shoes of those who, choosing to avoid constant struggle and recognizing that their anxieties help no one, decide to proceed as usual, feigning an illusion of normality.

Yet despite everything, sometimes I am optimistic. Because of the good people who are the majority here, somehow, sometime, we will extricate ourselves.