Taking it Personally

Our almost 8-year-old granddaughter breaking eggs, measuring sugar, flour, oil, pouring batter into a pan, yesterday, while I watched, asked if there could be a siren, worrying about her sisters and her mom at a water park in Tel Aviv.  I told her not likely but could happen. Fleeting thought: on October 8 or 9, 2023, I would not have mentioned the unlikely of October 7 to her. Yesterday, I did. Yesterday, unlikely, spoke the truth.

After our Friday night family dinner, she, her sisters and parents prepared to leave our place for theirs. Apps buzzed: sirens in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, throughout much of Israel. Houthis. Mere coincidence – Kfar Saba (where we live) and Raanana (where they live) were not on the target map, but they waited to be sure before heading home. Complacence: not telling a child there’s no chance of a siren today.

Waking Saturday morning with a splitting tension headache and indecision whether I felt hungry or nauseous, thinking laughing would be healthy, I started to cry. In response to Haim’s concern, I explained. When I was 16, if I found books, movies, photos of the Shoah seemingly too painful to watch, “Never Again,” would shout at my mind, until eventual realization that I would not forget even if avoiding exposure to the information. Now, I can’t avoid the thought that members of the Jewish people perpetrate events I cannot bear to watch, that my government is not disabling such events. Laugh or cry?

Convinced – reality is worse than the words I write. A media commentator this week described Israel’s situation vis a vis Syria as a pending recurrence of Sabra and Shatila. That complements the anchorperson referring to Israel’s idea of a humanitarian city in Gaza as a “concentration camp.” The strongest emotional triggers are always simpler, downsized, involving an individual, someone you know.

My SFF (like BFF, Special Friend Forever) struggles with balancing the rights and wrongs of this world. Understatement. She spent a few days and nights this week volunteering in the Southern Hebron Hills with other Israeli Jews documenting and peacefully attempting to preempt Jewish Israeli Hilltop Youth from provoking Palestinian residents of this West Bank Israeli occupied territory. Understated, condensed view of context. She texted a photo and a video clip. Rural desert setting. Modest home in the forefront. A Bedouin Palestinian home by all indications. A teenaged Jewish boy stood on the cemented space outside the front door, putting on tefillin – morning prayers. It haunts me.

Not because this kid could have found 10 men to form a minyan, quorum, required for certain prayers and the traditional preference to praying alone. Overlooking exclusion of women from the minyan which my pluralist approach condemns, nothing here is inclusive. Imagine, Yom Kippur, a Palestinian bringing a solo picnic breakfast to the doorstep of an observant fasting Jew. How would Israeli Jews react? Hilltop Youth hope Palestinians, humiliated, steeped in fear, will relocate.

I trust Israelis are not claiming the numbers of Syrian Druze massacred in Syria this week are unreliable. I trust Israeli Druze sentiments about the circumstances and Israeli intervention. I cannot bear the words, much less the pictures, of the crimes – hundreds, and against a little girl.

Trying escapism, I suggest flight reservations for October. Haim suggests deferring. News of possible “preemptive attack” from Iran. My thoughts wander to the magnitude of scientific research data, equipment, infrastructure demolished at the Weizmann Institute by Iran during the 12-day war. But if there is a government strategy in Israel, it seems to prioritize promotion of a bastardized Torah to science and research.

Heeding Haim’s suggestion, refraining from making reservations, but holding on to the plan. We know it feels different when you make the reservation. If you think for a moment we forget the plight of Israeli hostages in Gaza, you are mistaken.

Recent public surveys show 80% of the Israeli public want them home, and an end to the war. So why are people not on the streets? They were on the streets from January to October, before the war, protesting judicial reform – or democracy’s demise. Eventually enough Israelis compartmentalized the dissonance: supporting IDF soldiers – their daughters and sons, siblings, and grandchildren – juxtaposed to demanding an end to the war. They returned to the streets. The government politicized support for bringing home the hostages. Israelis on the streets are tired, recognizing their democratically elected government heeds not the people’s wishes. Diminishing protesters, lame protests. Political activism amidst evolving dynamics still must implant sustainable values in public discourse.

An Instagram post by a Palestinian friend from Jenin showed an explosion in Iran – implied Israeli attack, and whether engineered or authentic is irrelevant. He cynically wrote: Killing innocent civilians is only a crime when it happens to Israelis. Once, that would have infuriated me. Too simplistic. It would have felt personal, even while rejecting Israeli self-deceptions about vulnerability and morality. We are vulnerable.

Catholic church in Gaza struck by Israel this week. Casualties. Apologies, an accident of war, because we’re vulnerable? Morality is dismissible by decision makers in the name of vulnerability?

Once infuriated by a European contact referring to Israeli actions as genocide. Now, dismissing the accusation without reflection looks like political denialism to me.

Harriet Gimpel, July 19, 2025