My Irrational Hope

Amid the continuing speculation as to the nature of the upcoming Iranian/Hezbollah reprisals (Will they coordinate? Will they tone it down or go for broke?), I admit there is a certain pleasure in simply waking up in the morning. The sounds over my head this morning were not military aircraft, but the gear-grinding, flying-lawnmower sounds of the weekend ultra-lights, starting precisely at 7:00 am. A semblance of normality.

We are told we can take some hope in the hostage/ceasefire negotiations taking place in Doha. (Did Bibi give the negotiators just enough rope to hang themselves, or an amount sufficient to meet up with the other side?) Just the fact that they spent the night, rather than returning after a single day, is reason for us to hope. (But don’t, we are told, get your hopes up too high. Things could crash to the ground at any moment.)

But here is the story, published in yesterday’s TOI, that is giving me hope today: WHO says 11 children with cancer evacuated from Gaza via Israel for treatment.

There is, of course, the feel-good aspect of the story. But if you read closely, it is also the story of parents that cannot get treatment for sick children, of families splitting up so that a mother or grandmother travels with the child, another stays back in Gaza to care for others.

Why should eleven children, among the tens of thousands killed, hundreds of thousands who do not have medical care, give me a shred of hope this Friday morning? First of all, the story hints at the negotiations, cooperation and organization that has gone into getting these children out of Gaza, across Israel into Jordan, and into hospitals there. Israel, Hamas, Jordanian authorities, the WHO, Red Cross and two charities were involved in the process.

If we can manage to get 11 children, at least one on life support, from Gaza to Jordan, surely we can get hostages back into Israel, surely we can find a way to let families back to the northern half of Gaza, to see our way toward ending a war that has already run its course.

They are not stoically giving in to death. Their families are doing everything in their power to give their children a chance at life.

These eleven children hint to me that we might find our way toward healing, rather than killing. Look them and their mothers in the eyes. They are not stoically giving in to death. Their families are doing everything in their power to give their children a chance at life.

I’m not saying I’m an optimist. At the same time these eleven children were making their way to Jordan, our Minister of Internal Insecurity has been busy trying to start WWIII up on the Dome of the Rock, rampaging settlers killed two in the Wast Bank, our Knesset, which has been on summer break, was hatching plans for renewing its assault on democracy, our credit rating was sinking, ultra-orthodox were rioting next to IDF draft centers and residents of the border with Gaza are returning home due to lack of funds, even as the Hamas managed to get off a couple of rockets in a “use-it-or-lose-it” effort.

That is, it’s not quite rational to pin any hopes on young cancer patients, what with everything else. It’s not even normal to hang on to hope that negotiations in which one side is not even present will bring an end to the fighting on every front. Emily Dickenson famously call hope “a thing with feathers.” If so, it is that thing with black feathers that eats the fruit off your tree, or the roadkill it snatches between cars, and flies off to the highest branches. It’s that feathered thing that wakes you at dawn with its raucous noise and then remains silent the rest of the day.

And yet I can’t help feeling that if there is hope for 11 young cancer patients, there is hope for the rest of us. May their recovery be speedy.