“It’s in Your Kishkes”!

This just fell from the sky, in Tuval, not far from where my house is.

Part of an interceptor rocket after impact. (Own image).

Yesterday, I had a sort of an epiphany. It was just after the report on the radio about the underground garrison in Lebanon only meters from the border, that could house hundreds of fighters mere meters from our border settlements, and plans that showed that the attack from Hezbollah and Hamas was planned to happen simultaneously but Hamas jumped the gun, which perversely turned out to be a stroke of “luck” (if you can call it that), because imagine what it would have been like, if what happened on October 7 happened in the North as well as in the South, in the Gaza Envelope at the same time. And it hit home that we are faced with a real fight for our survival – no exaggeration.

Since October 7, 28,000 rockets and drones have been launched against Israeli cities and settlements. Let that sink in: twenty-eight THOUSAND. Each one has the potential to kill tens of people, as we witnessed only three days ago with the drone strike on the Golani base in Binyamina. The significance of that is, if it was not for the safe rooms and bomb shelters we have built, and the air defense systems we have developed, over 1.8 million people could have been killed, or maimed. What is important to realize, is their intent. Do not let the success of our defenses thwarting their intent fool you: their intent is genocidal – not the propagandized, gaslighting, rhetorical accusation leveled against us, but for real! When you look at the maniacal savagery that we experienced on October 7, that displays a mentality that requires an intensity of hate so deeply inculcated into their consciousness – and every fiber of their being, which can drive them to commit such atrocities without any psychological brakes holding them back – and then proudly boasting about what they did, you realize that if we had not eventually repulsed them, they would not have stopped – and that is genocide. If you contemplate the sheer enormity of the what 28,000 rockets and drones means and the damage they can do, and the attempts to kill 1.8 million Israelis, the only conclusion you can come to, is that is genocide.

Faced with this genuine fight for our survival, I can no longer care about how it “looks”, and how the world presents our actions, when we defend ourselves. I am not saying that I can excuse acts of vindictiveness, revenge or cruelty, or any unsolicited disregard for human life, but I will not apologize for actions we need to take to defend ourselves – even if it means “violating” UN facilities, whether it be UNRWA compounds in Gaza, or manned UNIFIL positions in Lebanon. Because to choose not to clear the threats in these facilities would mean Israelis being slaughtered by attacks being launched from these sites.

But that wasn’t the epiphany. The epiphany was, that I started thinking about how hard it is living in a country at war for so long; never before had I felt it as acutely as now and never before have I felt that our existence truly lies in the balance, as it does now. And I thought about all the people with foreign passports able to leave and go elsewhere, and some have and some would – and I cannot and will not judge them. But it struck me, that even now, I would actively choose to be here and go through this. In a perverse way, I want to experience this, because it is happening to my country. While I hate living through having to hear the heart wrenching news every day about another soldier being killed – and breathing a sigh of relief it wasn’t my son or someone I know, but it’s still like a knife to my heart; or having to run for shelter from rockets, and the nail-biting tension of waiting to hear if they were intercepted – or the dread of hearing that they weren’t and they killed some of us, I simply could not bear not being here while Israel is going through this trauma. It would tear me up inside.

This is why I came here; to be a part of this, of what our country is going through.

You see, for me, it’s sort of more personal. I started my Zionist journey on Yom Kippur 1973, when I saw and felt the effect of what it meant that Israel was in jeopardy, to us as Jews in the shul in Bulawayo. It was then I knew I wanted to live in Israel, the country that was so central to Jews everywhere, that what happens there – even 5000 miles away – will affect all our lives. And now we are in the same position again after 50 years, but this time I’m here, and I feel that it is a sort of privilege to be able to be a part of it now. It is at times like this that Israel needs us. And our presence here and our stubbornness not to leave, makes a difference. It gives us the resilience we need. The “we will get through this together” feeling.

That in the most visceral and existential way, this is what Zionism means – and is about – to me, right now. It’s not about Zionist ideology. It’s as my grandfather used to say: you feel it in your kishkes.