Reality check

Reality check.

Yesterday, watching scenes from the funeral procession in Majd el Shams was heartbreaking. Children. Druze children from the Golan Heights, northern Israel.

Majd el Shams, a place we have often taken visitors from abroad as part of a day trip, a place to have lunch in a Druze restaurant after visiting Mt. Bental, overlooking Quneitra, Syria, to get perspective on Israel’s strategic location.

Listening to the principal of the school where most of the 12 victims were students. Listening to a parent whose child was not found. Understood by all – some finding would appear at the location of the explosion and DNA would confirm what that parent knew.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Amal Asad, military career officer from the Druze community in Israel, said when interviewed yesterday that vengeance is not a plan of action. He knows. Even if the community in Majd el Shams is demanding harsh Israeli retaliation, Asad rightly added that the one who brought us to this point in the last 10 months can’t get us out of it. Yes, he added, we must do everything possible to return the hostages from Gaza.

A work-related call distracted me. As work calls go when you work with people you know share your views, conversation slips into discussion about the most current event. I know many people look at me as some leftie creature out of touch with reality – the reality they want. The colleague on the phone is considered among the furthest left in the organization, providing me with the opportunity for a reality check. Children. Druze children living in Israel, killed by Hezbollah. I ask, “Where are the demonstrations worldwide against this evil?” (I don’t need demonstrators to know Israel too has brought destruction and death upon people beyond anything I find justifiable – even if self-defense is justified.) Is it because it happened in Israel that there is no demonstration against Hezbollah? If an Israeli attack in Gaza, or in Lebanon, resulted in the death of 12 children, the world would understandably be enraged, but is it only when Israel is responsible that the world is enraged? Maybe my colleague will set me straight, because all us lefties are probably just self-hating, right? He responds, “Harriet, if we were all in our gardens planting flowers, the world would demonstrate against us.” I know we agree this is not justification for us to refrain from exercising self-criticism.

New headlines today. Military police arrived at a base where Hamas terrorists are held prisoners to detain eight IDF soldiers for interrogation, suspected of sexual abuse and torture of one of the prisoners. If months ago, I said I couldn’t bring myself to write the words of what was implied that some Israeli soldiers had done, now, the Israeli press is saying it. The words. Intimate body parts injured. The press is using worse words, but I can’t, can’t fight my tears.

I am not unaware of other acts of abuse. Handcuffs have resulted in prisoners losing hands. War. Familiar phenomena worldwide.

One moment medical teams overcome psychological obstacles faced in treating terrorists they know raped and murdered Israelis on October 7. Demonstrations ensue against detention of Israeli soldiers suspected of abusing a terrorist prisoner.

Headlines get worse. Protesters, including right-wing Knesset members, break into the base, condemning military police for detaining soldiers suspected of attacking a Hamas prisoner. Soldiers. Israeli heroes. Demonstrators protest disregard for heroic IDF soldiers.

Demonstrators including politicians reach the detention site condemning the IDF Military Advocate and Police for detaining Israeli soldiers for suspected involvement in the rape of a Hamas prisoner. It feels, in my stomach, like civil war might be more imminent than retaliation against the Hezbollah.

Time for another reality check. And another.