This is the bloodiest week in Israel since 2006. Say something

This is the bloodiest week in Israel since 2006, and it’s happening in the quiet places – the coffee shop near the mall with the old guys in front. The modest little bus stop not far from the beach. A neighborhood outside Tel Aviv where men in black hats eat cholent on Thursdays while their wives prepare for Shabbat.

Israeli police officers and medics are seen at the scene of a terrorist shooting attack in Bnei Brak, on March 29, 2022. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

These are the quiet places that have been part of Israel since we won our independence in 1948 , that aren’t called “obstacles toward peace,” that are emphatically not contested religious sites or part of “The Territories” — not that it should matter because terror is terror , and a Green Line doesn’t change that.

These are the quiet places – loud only with the sound of living… of honking horns, a construction drill, kids shrieking on a seesaw at the park, a woman calling to her friend across the street “Shoshi, where have you been? When are you coming for Shabbat?”

4 killed, 2 wounded in stabbing attack at Beersheba mall; terrorist shot dead
The scene of a car ramming and stabbing attack outside the ‘BIG’ shopping center in Beer Sheva, southern Israel, on March 22, 2022. (Flash90)

These are the quiet places — but listen: a hail-storm of bullets, the sound of a young father  screaming as he dies protecting his two year old son, a single mom’s death rattle as she bleeds out, the ambulance sirens one after another.

2 police officers killed in terror shooting in Hadera; both gunmen shot dead
The suspects in a terrorist attack in Hadera, March 27, 2022. (Screenshot: Twitter; used in accordance with Clause 27a of the copyright law)

And then… only silence.

Not just the silence that suffocates our streets as we stand in shock with tears pouring down our cheeks … our mouths stretched into rictuses of despair… not just the silence that echos after the last clot of earth has been thrown on an open grave… not just the silence the ones left behind face when they go home, and find those last relics of the ones who will never come home … a toothbrush, a towel on the floor, a half-finishes cup of mint tea with sage… but the silence across the world — In other quiet places like in the places where you live.

So please: Don’t be silent. Speak up clearly and unequivocally that you see us and you are with us.