The Children…
Growing up I always wanted to live in Israel. I would join the Army, marry my Israeli husband and raise our children in the place where all Jewish people can call home. Most of my dreams came true. Today I live in Israel, a land I love and am raising my kids with a quality of life that is unparalleled to anywhere else. I look at my children and am proud of whom they are becoming and the decisions I have made for myself and them.
I was not blind to the threats when we moved to Israel and fully aware of the situation, having enemies at every border and within. I was here through the second Intifada, when my husband and I were walking home and a bomb blew up about 100 feet away, that did not scare me enough not to want to live or raise my children here.
What I was not prepared for was the Children, what do I mean by children? I don’t mean mine or any specific child. I mean all children…
I am a mother to three beautiful girls and when you are a mother that widens to every child. In times like these, with three missing boys, every time I look at a child I see their lives in danger, every smile, laugh and tear breaks my heart. The joys on their faces are so much more potent because their lives are at risk…Yes, I know it is not any safer in America, England or wherever else you are from, but are Jews and their children specifically the target 24 hours a day? No.
How do we come to terms with the fact that our children are pawns in a never ending war with people whom only goal is to wipe any Jew out, in any way possible?
Yes, I was prepared to move here and sacrifice but I never thought the day would come when my daughter looked up at me and said “Mommy, why does Gd punish us so much?”, “Are we so bad that we have to be killed, bombed and kidnapped?” As you can imagine my breath caught and my eyes teared up. Sadness and anger overwhelmed me…Sadness, that my daughters at such young ages have to contemplate these things. They pray that rockets don’t fall from the sky, our family does not get called up to war and that those three precious boys come home soon and safely… Sadness, that there are kids my daughters ages being taught to glorify death and run into it with Jewish blood on their hands while we shield our children and run from it…Sadness that most of our conversations now are not excitement for the coming summer or the frivolous things young children should be talking about but prayers for Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali to come home.
My daughters ask. Are the boys hungry? Are they cold? Do they miss home? And the anger comes through… Anger at a Gd who does this to us (yes, sometimes we are allowed to be angry at Gd) Anger at people so close to home glorifying their children’s martyrdom and blood shed, Anger that our Army has not blown every Arab terrorist to bits till we find the boys (yes, it is extreme but we are allowed to have extreme thoughts sometimes). Anger that I might have to tell my children bad news and that will be nothing compared to what the families of the boys will go through.
My thoughts move fast from one to the other, sadness, despair, hopefulness and murderous all just a few… What does it take to make a loving, peaceful mother murderous? One answer: the Children.
They took our children…There are three mothers who don’t have their babies tonight, who are wondering how they will survive without them or if their babies are alive at all. There are brothers, sisters and friends all holding their breath’s. We are all holding our breath…
We will continue to wait, pray, be sad, angry, hopeful and all the emotions that come in between. All these feelings that are intensified and living here with us in Israel but I still wouldn’t have it any other way…with Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali, our children, always in our minds, prayers and hearts.