Windows of Light
Shortly before the one-year anniversary of the October 7 invasion by Hamas, a congenial family man I knew back in the US, before I moved to Israel, wrote on his Facebook page:
“F#%! these Nazis. F#%! Israel and f#%! their supporters. If Israel had any respect for Palestinian lives, October 7th wouldn’t have happened. The IDF is literally worse in every way than Palestinian militant groups. They rape more. They kill more innocents.”
The ferocity of his rhetoric shocked me, while his ignorance made my blood boil. If I had kept up with his posts, his words wouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Back in August he wrote: “So proud of Joe Biden approving the continued sale of Zyklon B to our greatest ally.” And after October 7, this, “Israel can’t prove a single rape happened on 10/7, and yet they’re raping Palestinians all the time. Every accusation from Israel is a confession.”
The kicker was this, written last May: “I’ve been following the problem since sometime in 2000. Palestinians have been treated worse than garbage almost exclusively since I have been paying attention.”
He’s been paying attention since 2000? So, he knows nothing about the Hebron Massacre of Jews by Arabs, which occurred in 1929, before the founding of the modern state of Israel? Those Arab attackers, who responded to false rumors that Jews were going to take control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, are beyond his purview?
He is unaware that Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip, and Jordan held the West Bank, from 1948-1967. His only reference to Europe’s Holocaust, which helped pave the way for the establishment of a Jewish State, is to equate Jews with Nazis and raise the ghosts of the gas chambers. He hasn’t read about the Munich Olympics Massacre (1972), or the cafe and bus bombings of the Second Intifada (1980s-1990s)? Or does he justify all of those murders of innocents, which included children, as he does October 7?
How does one look ahead to the new year with such words coming from an American family man who sandwiches his vicious social media posts between lovely pictures of his kids and other relatives?
Israelis of every stripe, those who support a two-state solution and those who don’t, religious and non-religious, liberal and conservative, black, brown, and white, Jew and non-Jew, might agree today on one thing, that it will be a challenge to find joy in the months ahead. Yet, we will move forward.
Yesterday, when people wished me the traditional “Shana Tova,” a good year, I repeated the same words back, followed by “Shana Shona,” wishing them a different year. They nodded, unsmiling, in understanding.
Things were already different in synagogue. Yom Kippur this year fell on the Sabbath. The rabbi declared that we would chant the Avinu Malkeinu, a prayer of supplication. By tradition Jews don’t make direct appeals to G-d on the Sabbath. This year, “because of the current situation,” the rabbi explained, we should recite Avinu Malkeinu.
To have one’s name written and sealed in the Book of Life this year brings a poignant mixed blessing. Despite its military supremacy over Hamas in Gaza, its ingenious moves in exploding beepers and walkie-talkies in Hezbollah’s pockets, and pinpoint surgical strikes to take out the enemies’ leaders across the Middle East, Israel seems a long way from victory, let alone peace.
How do we find the light in these dark days of war when we don’t even know how many of our hostages held by Hamas are still alive?
I found glimmers of it two days before Yom Kippur when I volunteered to prune orange trees at Kibbutz Be’eri. The kibbutz, less than 6 miles from the Gaza border, suffered the loss of 102 murdered and 30 kidnapped on October 7. (Ten hostages are still in captivity.)
Two days before Yom Kippur, so many volunteers showed up to help Be’eri’s farmers, whose workforce has been depleted by war, that my group of 20 was sent to work at a fruit-processing plant on another farming collective nearby. There, too, they had more volunteers than needed.
How do we go forward into a different, hopefully, good, new year?
For me that means to not read the posts of ignorant, rabid Israel-haters. It means that I need to celebrate the resilience and persistence of the Jewish people and to seek out more windows of light like those I found last week on the Gaza border.