War or no war, it’s my home

Until we were finally over the sea, we weren’t sure we’d make it out of Israel. Ten months of nightmare – and we needed to get away. Never mind the incoming rockets from Iran,
never mind that most airlines had cancelled their flights, never mind that Hezbollah was firing missiles at the North, where we live, and calling for revenge – we had to get away. Miraculously, Wizzair was one of the only airlines brave, or greedy, enough, to keep their flights on schedule.

Once we were out of firing range, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Alive for another day.

Even on the platform for the train to Ben Gurion airport, we made friends with a couple who were on their way to America, to visit their oldest son. Their third son, a soldier, had been killed in the South on October 7^th. I took his mother’s hand and looked her in their eyes and gave her all the love and strength I could. What else is there to do? It’s all I’ve been doing for the last ten months – going to hostages’ families, going to bereaved families, and trying to give them something that shows a way to a time when this too will pass, somehow, and there will be beauty in their lives again. Even if it’s just a smile. Or a flower. Or a sunrise.

Every morning, for months now, in the kibbutz WhatsApp group, I’ve been sending a photo of something full of beauty, and attached to it, a yellow ribbon. The message? Look how lucky we are, with our lives, with all this beauty we can still enjoy. Let’s be grateful. Let’s remember the hostages. Let’s send this beauty to them as we think of them and pray one day soon they will get to see it again themselves.

I was in two minds whether to even wear my yellow ribbon necklace here in Italy. Who knows how people will react? But of course, I was being foolish. No one knows what it is, here in the mountains. There are no yellow cars at the sides of the roads with giant yellow ribbons on their sides, no huge posters blaming Netanyahu, no Israeli flags or yellow flags or signs saying: Together, we will win. Of course not.

Eighty years ago, in August, Italy was surrendering to the allies. By the end of the war, they had lost 457,000 people. In Pescara, our nearest large town, by June 1944, 78 % of all buildings had been destroyed or damaged; of a population of 54,000, between 2,000 and 6,000 had been killed, and 12,000 were left homeless.

Now, in 2024, there is simply mountain after mountain after mountain, a lot of pasta and pizza, and gentle, slow, kind, chilled people who don’t really know much about anything outside of their lives in the here and now. They don’t respect their government and have very little to do with it. They frequent the bar and enjoy good wine and good food. They enjoy meeting tourists, and generally don’t speak much English.

At first, I was fearful of saying I am Israeli – for the first time since I moved to Israel. In England when I was growing up, I often did not tell people I was Jewish also because of fear. (I was privy to much antisemitism because I kept quiet, and do not ‘look Jewish’.) Suddenly the fear was back, and I seriously considered removing my star of David necklace too, one I have worn night and day since the beginning of the war.

Yet, after less than a week here, I am telling all the friends we make. People have told me proudly about the Palestinian protests here in the bigger towns. No, it’s not a Palestinian state we need at the expense of a Jewish one, I correct them. It’s both. I tell them about the Jewish and Palestinian activists working hard together to bring about a two- state solution, and they listen open mouthed. They didn’t know Jews and Palestinians worked together.

I feel better going around telling people. I’m not very good at holidays at the best of times, but in these worst of times, it’s excessively difficult. We’re supposed to be having time off from our phones. I’m not supposed to be translating the October 7^th survivors’ testimonies (a project I volunteer for, to get the testimonies around the world on YouTube in English) for a week or so, just to give myself a break from the horror. I’m not checking the news or trying to change the news – our peace work is prolific and endless and does make a difference. I’m just supposed to ‘rest’.

Oh my God.

How can anybody rest after such stress, trauma, tragedy and noise for so many months? And we’ve barely lost anyone really close, except a friend here and there, an ex-student here and there, that kind of thing. We are not in ‘proper’ personal mourning. Only mourning with the entire county every single day. Mourning for the dead. Grieving for the hostages. The despair has never let up, for ten months.

And I expected to be able to rest?

At least, I have noted, I haven’t lost my way. Perhaps it would be natural for some who take a holiday in a peaceful place to want to stay. On the contrary, being here helps strengthen my resolve. Some people have asked me if I want to return ‘home’ to England. We’ve met three British families so far here who have made the Italian mountains their ‘home’. I couldn’t think of one thing to say to them after ten minutes or so. And they had absolutely no idea what we were talking about. And the Italians themselves, in these sleepy villages? Life is so simple – I mean, it’s just about what you do while being alive, not the essential and fundamental battle of actually trying to be alive, or trying to ensure the Palestinians in the West Bank are alive and have their livelihoods, or even questioning whether being alive is all it’s cracked up to be, when all this sorrow and distress and helplessness pervades our lives from moment to moment.

We’ve met an Israeli – the only Israeli living in the region and we met him, of course, in the fruit and veg shop – who has also made this his home. Though one daughter is serving in the army and the other in the diplomatic service in Europe, he has given up on his country. Entirely.

I wonder to myself, every morning, why do I love to run in the mountains so much? Because running up is so hard. So damn hard. And running down is just freedom. And it’s the perfect analogy for our lives in Israel. When things are tough, they are so incredibly tough. But life, when it is flowing and free, is so damn beautiful. And things being tough only serves to accentuate the beauty in that freedom.

Now we only have a few days left out here until our flight home again. Once again, the same worries: they must not cancel our flight; we must get home.

We must go back into that warzone.

It’s the only place in the world that is truly my home, no matter what.