Thoughts on the Present, Hopes for the Future

I spent all day yesterday in a very foul mood. I spent 7 hours waiting to give blood, another 3 preparing and delivering food to the wives of soldiers at the front, and what felt like hours refreshing JPost for updates that, to my dismay, came very, very seldom. I am nervous. I am scared. And I am so, so angry.

I feel betrayed by my leaders, whose job it is to identify such well-funded, carefully-orchestrated events and protect its people from them. I feel guilty – a sense of survivors guilt (no doubt, less so than the handful of partygoers who survived the massacre) that deeply questions why 22 and 25 year olds were left to die in the desert. I feel a sense of absolute devastation for the captives. I can think of no words to describe what they must be going through – physically, mentally, spiritually, psychologically. I am completely in a state of loss and confusion and I know not where to turn.

The pain I feel is twofold. Of course, it’s primarily due to the present situation. That said, perhaps no less painful is the realization of just how certifiably dangerous and destructive a lack of national unity can be. It is so clear to me (and surely, surely to others reading this!) that the enemy’s evil plan was in no small way totally missed due to the internal chaos in Israel.

Now, I am not getting on a podium and “calling for unity”. Call me cynical, but I think that people who do that often don’t believe in anything very strongly or are paying lip service to ideals which are far, far beyond our reach. But I do wonder what Simchat Torah 5784 may have looked like had we as individuals been more focused on listening rather than talking, on trusting rather than mistrusting, and on forgoing ideals in the name of compromise. That’s true for everyone, most of all myself. Especially point #3.

In the months and years ahead, I somehow feel that this event will be remembered as a military and political blunder and forgotten as a calamity brought about by internal, fraternal mistrust and disrespect.

I pray with tears in my eyes for the captives, with a heavy, heavy heart of a Chutznik who chose to call this Land home for the safety of our soldiers, and with an open mind for a future of open-mindedness, fraternity and trust.