Ok. Not. Not Us. Not Them.
As usual, I spent hours in the kitchen on Friday. This was the first time, that our 3-1/2-year-old granddaughter helped make the cake. Breaking her first egg on her own, she excitedly said, “We can make a hard-boiled egg.” Usually, I minimize kitchen time on Saturday, but her older sister, a month short of 8, wanted to spend the day with us instead of going to the beach with the rest of her family. She wanted to make cupcakes with frosting and sprinkles. I supervised and did the dishes.
It was a lovely distraction from news about a new video clip from Hamas showing one of the hostages. A distraction from thinking that the 700th day since October 7 passed and 48 hostages remain in Gaza. It distracted me from thinking about soldiers sent to war to protect political interests of this government and its prime minister. A government that doesn’t protect the safety of its Arab citizens and enables crime and violence to fester in Arab society. A government that selectively curbs freedom of expression, or not, by peculiar standards of interference and arrests at protest demonstrations.
Wandering thoughts wandering back to the same thought. Don’t tell me about new restaurants in Gaza or new ice-cream parlors with bright and shiny pictures to prove that things are not so bad. I wish innocent Gazans were in new restaurants and ice-cream parlors. I don’t want to see another reel about the demolished Christian quarter in Gaza City with only two churches still standing.
I don’t want Hamas to have the capacity to continue launching rockets against Israel. Apparently, it does. News of kilometrage of Hamas tunnels destroyed by the IDF contributes nothing to my sense of personal safety. It angers me. It threatens the hostages’ safety. Extensive kilometrage of tunnels remains in place. Convoluted thoughts cross my cynical mind. I deny their feasibility. But I ask, considering Intelligence provided the government of Israel with information of ongoing tunnel digging for years, and Israeli towns and villages adjacent to Gaza suffered from Hamas capabilities that this enabled, why attack now? Why did the government not better protect our safety and security over the decades prior to October 7?
No, leftie here, did not unilaterally object to attacks in retaliation for attacks from Gaza over the years, though I believed there were other ways too – even if the proverbial “there is no partner” held true. With the disengagement, withdrawal of Israeli settlements, how – and why – did the Israeli government with its power to manipulate, abide by its conception, empowering Hamas over other options?
Starving children and adults in Gaza is that act that making those of us horrified by our government not preventing this – not to say enabling it– wonder how, in time, a national Israeli narrative will seek repentance. Is there an alternative? Not for my people, but this government seems to have a people of its own.
The Houthis launched a drone that hit the passenger departure hall at the Ramon Airport outside of Eilat. Five physical injuries. Disrupted lives. The drone passed under the detectors. Thus, no interceptor activated. No siren warning people to find shelter. Sirens are unnerving. Better than no siren though.
Please don’t tell me that life in Gaza is ok because you saw a reel of a new ice-cream parlor. When Israelis demonstrate, demanding government action to bring the hostages home, Cabinet members go out for dinner at an exclusive restaurant. We are not ok.
When we took our 8-year-old granddaughter home after her cupcake bake on Saturday night, her little sister – the 3-1/2-year-old demanded her rightful attention. When I washed her hands in the bathroom and wanted her to dry them, she refused, saying she was afraid. I took a towel and dried them, and she repeated that she was afraid. I insisted on knowing what she feared. She told me: “Air raid sirens.” We are not ok. Gazans are not ok either.
Harriet Gimpel, September 7, 2025