Living in War

I don't remember how much of this I've actually written here, but I need to write my experience so I don't forget. Here's a short journal of the end of 2023.

When Yossi was called up on October 7th at 11:00am I was left without a husband and without a house. I lived with my kids at my parents. We'd moved in a few weeks earlier and were planning to stay until mid October but we ended up living there until December.

For the first two weeks there was no school or kindergarten. It wasn't safe to have a large group of children in one place - what if there was an air raid? Could the teachers get them all into the safe room on time? What if a terrorist broke in and just started shooting kids? We didn't know how far Hamas had gotten, only that they had been invading cities near Gaza. Had they continued on foot further into Israel? The roads were empty, people were mostly staying home. There were police and army blockades everywhere to make sure that there was no Hamas left within Israeli borders. What about the West Bank? Would Palestinians join Hamas and invade from all across the fence?

A few days into the war, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, the Home Front app had a notification saying to get into the bomb shelter. Usually that sort of notification comes with an air raid siren and goes off in specific areas, but this was a notification for everyone all over the country. We locked the doors and windows and got in the mamad. I was sure that terrorists had infiltrated the entire country. My parents live at the edge of the city so we'd be the first line of fire. Then the Home Front sent an apology saying it was a false alarm. WTF? That doesn't help with the anxiety.

I wasn't eating. I could barely feed and bathe the kids. Thankfully my parents were active, and Yaira was living with us with her kids, so between the four adults the kids were being taken care of. Mommy was cooking food for soldiers. I couldn't bring myself to do anything.

Teenagers in my parents' neighborhood started offering babysitting help for free, which was wonderful. Every afternoon they'd bring toys to the shul and invite all the kids to play. I would go and find Amy there with her kids, and Elianna with hers, and Naomi Berman with hers, and Rivky with Betzalel and Adin. There was a sense of community. Also nostalgia just from being back at the place I grew up with the friends I grew up with. Amy said that Ari was a paramedic and he'd been doing shifts since October 7th - so he wasn't called into the army, but he was away too getting his own dose of trauma.

Abba started working on our house. He was working on an Air Force base at the time doing a construction project, but the base was closed to civilians so he was home, and of course he was going crazy doing nothing. So he went to our new house and started putting in the air conditioning. It was surreal. I would go to the house to help, and I'd call the tile company and the carpenters and I went out to buy paint for the kids' bedrooms and all the while I was thinking, "what if my house is bombed tomorrow? What if other Arab countries join the war and close in on all sides and Israel can't protect me? If Yossi dies and I'm left alone?" What's the point in building a new house?

I kept watering my house plants, and the plants I'd already planted in the garden (I'd sprouted sweet peas and they were growing along the fence in the backyard). What for? What's the point if we all die?

Eventually Yossi started coming home for short breaks. The first time he came back was on Wednesday night, a week and a half into the war. Longest week and a half of my life. He arrived Wednesday evening and was off to base again on Thursday morning. Later he'd come home for longer periods of time. And each time he left again I cried. Like, proper ugly crying. Every time. I knew it could be the last time.

Once schools started again we got into a routine. I'd get the kids up in the morning (we all shared a room), they'd have breakfast and I'd make lunch for Lavi, and then we'd all get in the car and I'd put on some podcast (for myself). It would take almost half an hour to get to Neve Michael and Givot Eden, then I'd go to the house to work. By this point we'd set up wifi and I could work from the kitchen. We didn't have chairs, I sat on a stepladder. I didn't go into the office until November, but I'd join meetings on Teams. One day I got an email about a colleague's son who was killed in Gaza. Then I went into a meeting. You think I could concentrate on the meeting? Please.

I started meeting neighbors. Lavi would make friends at gan and I'd meet the parents. Well, the mothers, because the fathers were all off at war. One evening I sat in the living room, on the dusty floor with no rug or couch, and Lavi took out Lego to play with Ido. Ruchama came with Shahak and he hung out with Yuvali. I'm sure Ruchama and I were both trying to be present in the situation but were we? It was so surreal. I'd take the kids out to the park. Neighbors would show up with snacks, sometimes with dinner. No men. Maybe one or two men, like Akiva and Yedidya, who gave the sense of normal life even though it wasn't. We didn't talk about the war. From the park we could hear distant explosions - either missiles landing in the Shfela, or interceptions, or artillery and air strikes in Gaza. Yeah, we could hear Gaza even 60 kilometers away because of the way the topography works in this region.

One Friday night I woke up at 3:00am with Yuvali. When I got her back to sleep I heard distant explosions. The windows were shaking. I was sure that this is it, Hizballah are attacking Tel Aviv - the pattern of the explosions was different from the Hamas pattern I was used to. Hamas rockets come in groups - you hear four or five booms in a row, then quiet, then more booms, and this lasts a few minutes and then stops for an hour or so. But this was different. This was one boom every few seconds and it went on and on. I was sure it was Hizballah. I checked my phone - but not the news! I didn't want to know. But I figured that if Tel Aviv was being bombed someone would write something on WhatsApp, like someone from Vocalocity would write something. Nothing. Yossi appeared to have been online so I felt like he must be ok, but I certainly couldn't sleep. My heart rate must have been through the roof. I put in my earphones and opened Netflix and binged whatever I could find. It didn't help, I could still hear the booms. This lasted until around 6am when the kids woke up. I don't remember if I got up with them or if I sent them to my parents' room.

For months Lavi kept asking when we're moving to the new house? We would have dinner there then drive back to my parents to sleep. At some point he got into his head that the kitchen was missing an oven and that's why we hadn't moved. Then the oven was put in and he would ask every day why we weren't sleeping there?

Eventually I felt like I couldn't live with my parents anymore. The house was set up, we all has beds or mattresses and we had a fridge and pantry and stovetop, so we moved in. It was December 19th and Yossi said he'd be coming home mid-January (at this point we knew that the army was releasing soldiers from the northern front. We knew it would be a short break). December 19th we slept in our new house, each in our own room which was very strange, then on the 20th Yossi said he was coming home the next day. On the 20th at night we got the news about Lior Sivan. All night I could hear the mosque from the next hill over. Every noise woke me up.

The war became a routine. Turns out people can get used to anything.

Trump's Plan

I've seen so many interesting takes on Trump's plan for Gaza, I figure I'd add a take of my own to the mix:

First of all, the plan is more of less to make Gazans leave Gaza, mostly to Jordan or Egypt, and for the USA to take over the Gaza Strip. So thoughts:

Against:

1. I can't help it, I'm a leftist. I don't want my nation to be responsible for forcing people out of their homes. It's horrible that we've destroyed their homes already, but forcing them to leave feels wrong. I would hate to have to leave my home - I love my community and I've put effort into building a house that I want to live in, and of course my family needs stability. I'd hate for it to happen to me and I don't want to do it to other people.
2. Moving the Gazans to Jordan and Egypt doesn't solve the problem, it only moves the problem somewhere else. In fact, it's more dangerous because Jordan and Egypt have longer borders with Israel, which makes them more of a threat. And yes, even though most Gazans are not directly affiliated with Hamas, they still probably believe that my country should cease to exist. Honestly Jordan is already mostly Palestinian so they might be ok, but Egypt has been working so hard to avoid being taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood and if you add a million more people who support Muslim Brotherhood ideologies to the mix then Egypt could easily become another Islamist state. Obviously that's bad for us.
3. What about Hamas and PIJ?
4. Do we really want the USA on our border? I mean sure, it would be nice to own a Starbucks Gaza City mug, but other than that they'd ruin the place. American pollution and consumerism is not something I want to import to the Middle East, thank you very much.
5. Also, America is getting kind of unstable. To me at least it's pretty clear that they're heading toward a civil war, and maybe soon the 50 states will split into two separate countries (red and blue or something like that). I don't need another unstable country on my borders.

Why do I think Trump's speech was a good idea?

1. He's making a big statement and we know him well enough to know he could mean it. That's enough to shuffle the cards a bit, which is good because right now we're stuck and need something radical to change the direction of this war.
2. He created a new card for Israel, which is pretty cool. Hamas carry the hostages card, which is huge, and Israel's cards are starting to look insignificant - we need more cards to use. (*I'll add that Israel's cards are not insignificant, but Hamas makes them look unimportant. Humanitarian aid, bombing Gaza, blocking the way from south to north, blocking the Egyptian border, actual soldiers on the ground - in theory these should be things that are choking Hamas, but they don't seem to be pressuring them.)

Anyway it's not going to happen, but it's interesting to see how people are reacting.

Israel's Fourth Quarter

Do you also have intense arguments in the shower? In your head with an imaginary person, obviously.

I don't sing in the shower, I argue. And I always have time to make a full point, and I'm always well articulated and I certainly win. Sometimes I imagine a specific person, it helps if I already know what they think about the subject. Sometimes I'm on a podium shouting into the street. I guess if I wrote my opinions on social media it would be the same thing? But I don't, I barely write them here :)

So my most recent argument has been about the essence of "Q4," which is a movement I joined that's meant to try to ensure Israel's sovereignty for the next quarter of a century. And I think it's so important and I need people to know. Here's why.

*Why am I writing it down? Because maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are points I haven't thought about and information I don't know that will make me see things differently? If you have any such information, then please provide!

**What are my sources? Mostly podcasts. I listen to Israeli and American, and some other international, mostly about politics and the middle east, and mostly liberal. I tried listening to a conservative episode once and it was really annoying... But I guess I learned a lot from it and I should do that more. (Ok it was Ben Shapiro, more on him soon.)

We Israelis know that many people (/countries/organizations/movements) want Israel to cease to exist as a sovereign state. Like, no more Israeli government. No more Jewish state. The Palestinians, for one, haven't even accepted that the state exists even though it's been around for 76 years. The trouble is that they have a precedent. Two precedents: twice in Jewish history did the Jews have sovereignty in this land and both times the sovereignty ended after about 70-80 years. The first was at the time of King Solomon, where the empire fell apart when it split into two kingdoms (one was Solomon's son and the other came from outside the royal family). The second was the Hashmonian rule during the second temple, which fell apart when the Romans conquered Jerusalem (sometime after Jesus was crucified). And now, the third sovereignty is at risk.

But there are many ways to take down an empire! One way is to literally claim their land in a war, but the Arabs have tried that several times and it doesn't seem to be working. So let's think of other ways: internal fighting, like a civil war or some sort of betrayal? Like someone assassinates a leader and the country falls into chaos. Or maybe a country runs into financial problems and that's how it falls apart. If you want to bring down an empire today you would shoot in all directions:

• Cut off financial ties. This could potentially bring down an economy.
• Weaken their allies. If the USA can longer provide ammunition to Israel then Israel is more likely to lose a war.
• Shame them. If other countries think they're not worth interacting with, then they'll eventually keep them from entering their country, cut off business ties, things like that. UN and ICJ resolutions are one way to do this.
• All of the above: convince young people in other countries that this country should cease to exist, and they'll do all the work for you once they become leaders in 20 years. If you have patience, which the Arabs do, this can work.
• Cause a civil war. This one is interesting, because how exactly do you cause a civil war in another country? Well, get creative. Use media? Get people stressed and anxious enough that it happens on its own?

So the civil war part is the one I want to address, because I feel like we can do something about that. That's also the most dangerous one in my opinion. And that's what "Q4" are doing. So what exactly is Q4?

Well, it's a social movement. It's about getting people to talk about the things they disagree about, until they can reach some sort of understanding. There are meetings where we pick a topic to discuss, sometimes in big groups and sometimes with just one other person. Sometimes we're given a topic. We're always taught how to have a constructive argument, because that's key.

And then there's the political part: it's not a political movement, as in it's not affiliated with any particular party or politician. That's important. But it does want to affect politics because there's only so much you can do with grassroots. So Q4 takes people from all over Israeli society and puts them together to discuss actual political issues and try to come up with a solution that can work across the board. For instance, the current crisis between the Knesset and the Supreme Court. It's evident to just about everyone that the current system isn't working. Maybe the laws are bad, maybe the court isn't working like it should, or maybe the laws are ok but we just don't trust the decision makers any more. In any case, we need to fix this. So Q4 is writing up what they call the new set of rules. It's fascinating.

This is what I call being a part of the solution, so I recommend.