The Fog

I shared a memory. It’s an hour past midnight. I walk all around the rig, checking all twenty two tires with my rubber mallet. The cab is lit with the dim lights of the instrument panel and I slowly ease the rig and head towards Arad and then down towards the Dead Sea, to pick up a load of potash. Past Dimona the fog begins to thicken and as it envelops my truck and trailer I shift the gears and slow down to an almost crawl. I navigate the curves. The fog seems to caress me, to gently soothe me.

I had a similar feeling this morning, although there was no fog outside. I felt that for quite some time now I have been caressed by a fog of memories.

Hitching around the Mediterranean basin from Rome to Algeciras and then from Tangier to Tunis, on to Palermo and Pireaus, finally arriving in Haifa, I began an adventure that I can hardly believe now.

My recently renewed friendships with my Golani Brigade brothers-in-arms have filled me with renewed memories. Some are very painful, as such memories tend to be. I question myself, was that really me? Did I really do that? My friend and brother-in-arms who lives, as I do now, in the US, confirmed that. We were young and fierce and now, in our seventh decade of life, that’s what is left. Our memories.  Our recollections.

The fog of memory caresses me and I recall the many years spent as a combat reservist, deployed to the border with Egypt at first, and then to the Gaza Strip. I share another memory with my friend who lives in Ashkelon. What was his name, he asked me, the brother from Migdal HaEmek? Ah, yes, it was Dror, suddenly jumping up from our position atop a building adjacent to Palestine Square in Gaza City. I ran down the flights of stairs with him. We both ran through the crowd until we reached the young man who held a meter-long butcher’s knife. He was on his way to murder his brother who had defiled the family honor by refusing to marry the bride his father had chosen (and paid for) for him. We handed him to the military authorities and got back to our business.

The many work-related trips with the rig into the Gaza Strip, always with my AK-47 on my lap. Always with my Beretta 9mm tucked into my pants. Both courtesy of the Kibbutz armory. The three Motorola radios at the ready, one always tuned to the security network. The first Intifada right before my very eyes and every subsequent trip thereafter.

Twenty years worth of memories, personal and painful, some beautiful and warm, all wrapped in that fog that enveloped me this morning.

A new adventure began some thirty three years ago, and a different fog brought different memories. We managed to buy a beautiful apartment in Zichron. We visited family and friends regularly and kept in touch even more regularly as technology advanced.

A dark sky brought an even darker fog, ominous and threatening. A new and deadly virus promised to murder us. COVID-19, the corona virus stopped us in our tracks as we scurried to cover our faces and waited for the cure. We were almost out of the woods when October 7th 2023 destroyed all of the prior fifty years of memories with a vengeance. Once again I saw myself reporting the gathering storm of hundreds (if not thousands) of Syrian troops and their tanks. We know, came the answer on the other end of the line; tell us something new.

Terrible parallels, this time with young women reporting and reporting again and being ignored. Who else knew? Who else ignored?

The months prior to that terrible Saturday (it was October 6th 1973 that was also a Saturday, then Yom Kippur and this time Sukkot) were filled with protests against a government that one could never have imagined fifty or forty or thirty years prior.

Jew hatred reared its ugly head not just on the seven fronts of the war. Jew hatred reared its head in places unimaginable. University campuses once the pantheons of higher education were the arenas of Jew hatred. In London England and Montreal Canada, in Sydney Australia and Los Angeles California, demonstrations became vile expressions of Jew hatred.

Israelis one and all, Jews the world over, were painted as one monolith, the words genocide and mass murder were thrown about without regard and the rhetoric of some ministers in the Israeli Government came to represent all of us. The dark fog became darker still.

And so, as I write and reminisce and hope for the fog to lift and the light to come back and shine again, I ask myself what can I do? Where can I go to tell the story of the beautiful Israel and the beautiful people of Israel? Where can I go to share my pride in the new generation of Lions, as Naftali Bennet calls them, the generation of young Jews, courageous, fierce, determined to create a beautiful nation once again?  Who will listen to the tales of a seventy-something man hoping to shed a different light on our story?