We are not alone

Throughout the last year and a half, I have experienced periods that I feel I am alone in my profound pain. I know that I’m not alone but sometimes it feels that way.

October 7^th changed the DNA of the country and the DNA of so many of us in the country. The Israel of October 6 is history and the feelings of the people have forever changed as well. With all the wars we have experienced and the terror attacks that have become part of our lives did not change the way we live or the feelings we have about our country (for most of us).

In my first years in Israel (seems like a million years ago), it amazed me that following a terror attack, everyone was glued to the news, talked about it, but immediately went back to their lives. I found this national resilience to be quite unique in the world, where we all understood that it could be us in that situation, but we never allow terror to win and to actually terrorize us into changing the way we live our lives. That is the purpose of terrorism, to instill everlasting fear, disrupt our lives and lifestyles to the extreme and to get people to give up. That is not the Israeli way.

I was back in the US for a year when the Al Qaeda terrorists struck on September 11 and was taken about by the extreme success that the terrorists had, not in the attack itself but in the aftermath. The country basically shut down and not for a day or two, and the fear amongst the public was felt everywhere. For years, so many people refused to use any public transportation: trains, buses, planes, or go on cruises and vacations where there were many people and they felt they were easy targets. Travel outside of the US decreased by huge numbers. Americans chose to stay close to home where they felt the safest. Sure, it also created a new type of patriotism not seen in the US for decades, but it also created new types of racism against the other, especially Muslims, whether they have been in the US for generations or newly arrived. The permeating atmosphere was so different than anything I experienced in Israel in terms of fear, resilience, change of lifestyle.

All that changed on October 7. We went from a country that was considered a safe haven for Jews everywhere, despite the wars and terrorism, to a country where we no longer felt safe in our own homes, not just in the border communities but throughout the country. And that feeling of the loss of security was exacerbated by the ongoing hostage crisis.

We are now over a year and half past that horrific Black Saturday and many of us no longer have that dire insecurity about being in our own homes, but many still do. However, the worst thing that happened was the complete loss of faith in our government and the loss of the belief that they would do all that can be done to bring back the hostages. It has been quite the opposite because of the one person who has the power to make it happen, Netanyahu. Due to all of his personal political interests, he won’t make any deal to bring home the hostages if it means ending the war.

And due to this vile fact, the situation has instilled in me a year and half of profound sadness, depression and feelings that I am alone in this pain. For a year and a half, the hostages have taken over my life, changed the way I think about everything. When I was washing out a paint brush yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking that the amount of water I was using to wash this lousy brush was more than each hostage gets to drink in a week. I take my daily medications and think that if I was a hostage, I would probably be dead already for lack of my meds. There is barely a thing I do that I don’t think about all that they cannot do and the horrors that are befalling them every day, every hour, every minute and every second.

For a year and a half already, I feel so alone some of the time until I come to the demonstrations for the hostages or talk to other people and find that their lives have changed just the way mine has, that they can’t get through their days in what used to be their normal. Normal doesn’t exist anymore, at least not for me and not for hundreds of thousands of Israelis and Jews around the world, as well as many non-Jews who share this pain.

There are two words to describe this: empathy and sympathy. Empathy is when one feels the pain of the other. Sympathy is when one can feel bad for the pain that the other is feelings. I, like so many others have been blessed or cursed (depending on how you look at it) with both. We can feel the pain, especially of the families of the hostages because we can put ourselves in their shoes and we can feel horrible pain for the suffering that the hostages are experiencing all the time.

Every person in Israel should have some degree of sympathy and/or empathy for the hostages and their families. Yet, that is not the case. And I am devastated when I encounter people who not only don’t have the necessary sympathy or empathy, they embody the opposite which is pure evil. Today, when fixing some signs for the hostages on the main road near my house, a driver going by yelled out to me ‘son of a whore’ because I support the hostages. This is evil, an evil that has been cultivated by the Netanyahu poison machine and drilled into his cultist followers, the Bibists. These cultists can reach depths of evil that I always thought were aberrations of the society. Unfortunately, the cult leader, Netanyahu made evil, hate of the other, and racism the new norm when he normalized the most extreme elements of our society by bringing them into his government.

In politics, we have elected officials who run the gamut of great sympathy all the way to those who don’t have a sympathetic bone in their bodies and those are typically the same ones who support the cult leader.

This wasn’t the first time I have encountered this evil. It happens frequently while walking to the demonstrations or when I am just walking down the street because I wear shirts, yellow ribbons and tags every day in support of the hostages. My response to them is very simple. I don’t engage in arguments with them, I don’t curse them because these things don’t phase them. I simply say, “you can’t fix stupid.” I’m sure it doesn’t impact them at all but it gives me a little satisfaction.

Vicki Cohen, the mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen said “We can’t go on with life. It’s just not right — it’s not right for Israeli society that there are 59 hostages in captivity.”

Statements like hers are meant to address all those who don’t have the necessary sympathy or empathy for the hostages or their families but I believe that the numbers of those lacking these feelings are small numbers in our society. Unfortunately, they are the more vocal members. The majority are the silent or quiet members and we need them to stand up and be more vocal than the evil cultists who see our pain as weakness and treachery. We all know that it is quite the opposite. We love our country no less than the cultists and we want better for our future. We cannot even contemplate anything to be better while we still have 59 hostages rotting in Hamas hell and with the knowledge that the one person who can bring them home hasn’t a scintilla of real, genuine sympathy or empathy. Netanyahu doesn’t even shed the crocodile tear that Smotrich did when he visited Kibbutz Nir Oz. He may be devoid of a heart and a soul but we, the Nation of Israel are not.

Sometimes, I feel alone but I know I am not. We are not alone; the hostage families are not alone and the hostages are not alone. We are strong, stronger than the cultists, the haters, the evil speakers and we will prevail. We will bring home the hostages; we will bring about a State Commission of Inquiry and we will rid ourselves of the evil cultists and their leader.

We are not alone!

“I’ve never met them,
But I miss them.
I’ve never met them,
but I think of them every second.
I’ve never met them,
but they are my family.
BRING THEM HOME NOW!!!”