Warplanes and birdsong
Sometimes I’m woken in the wee hours of the morning by the sound of warplanes flying overhead, a tight knot in my gut. It was like this at the beginning of the war, and now again, this constant roar and the knowledge of where those planes are going and what they mean. Sometimes it’s helicopters coming in to land at Hadassah Ein Karem and I know that, more than likely, those helicopters are carrying wounded soldiers — often this is confirmed by the news some hours later. In recent nights, I wake from dreams of invading terrorists or general confusion (in last night’s dream my house was taken over by a group of tourists who had succeeded in disabling my phone that was plugged in to charge, and, aside from not understanding who these people were and how they’d gotten into my house, I was very concerned that now I wouldn’t receive missile alerts).
The planes continue to fly, hour after hour, night after night.
I have it relatively easy. I live in Jerusalem, which has had very few alerts. I don’t have children or a husband fighting in Gaza or Lebanon or the West Bank. I don’t personally know anyone who was kidnapped or killed on October 7th (although a friend’s son was killed at the Nova party, and many of my friends or friends’ children are in the army, and I knew someone who fell in Gaza… In Israel there are virtually no degrees of separation). Still, there is so much anxiety and despair and pain and a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. Each morning we see pictures and names of soldiers who have been killed. Endless WhatsApp messages come in with names of wounded soldiers to pray for – so many that it’s hard for me to keep up. Two days ago, an army base was hit by a drone, with four soldiers killed and 58 wounded. These were not soldiers who were in combat, they were new recruits, trainees, mostly under the age of 20. All their lives ahead of them, which many will now spend missing a limb or suffering from severe PTSD.
And the planes continue to roar, hour after hour, night after night.
There are now terror attacks within Israel every couple of days, in what seems to be the lead-up to a third intifada. More and more underground tunnel cities and plans for attacks intended to fully invade and wipe out our country are found. And every day we read about condemnations of Israel for its fight to defend itself. To survive. None of these condemnations relates to the difficulty of fighting an enemy that is happy to sacrifice its citizens, to use them as human shields and their homes, mosques, and schools as weapons storerooms, and which is committed to utterly destroying Israel.
A year into the war, 101 hostages remain in captivity, in horrific conditions, in Gaza, and this pierces the heart of every Israeli. The government is doing nothing to reign in the terror committed by extreme right-wing settlers. Israeli society is split between the right and the left, those who want a hostage deal and those who don’t want to pay the price for a deal; between those who want a ceasefire and those who want to fight to the bitter end (what kind of end?). Between those who believe that only this government can win this war and those who believe this government is responsible for the oversights that enabled the October 7th massacre and that it continues to destroy the country and abandon its responsibility to its citizens. And yet, we must, somehow, unite.
And the planes continue to roar, hour after hour, night after night.
When one wakes in the middle of the night, in that twilight zone between sleep and alertness, all of life’s stresses and worries come to the surface, and it becomes impossible to return to sleep. I drop Rescue Remedy under my tongue, I count my breaths, I flip from side to side. Sometimes I drift off for a short time, drowse. But mostly, I lie awake, listening to the planes, until they are joined by birdsong, letting me know that it’s time to get up.
No one wins in a war. There are only losers.
Joni Mitchell dreamed of seeing bombers turn into butterflies.
I’m waiting to hear the birds sing to mark the end of this war.