I was traveling in Israel last year at this time.
I have been struggling to comprehend what is going on and why. I received an email with two letters that left me asking the question: Could I survive in this environment?
For me, the difference in attitude between what each woman thinks is possible is key. I bolded the text that impacted me when I read these letters. These are the words of two people living in the bombed areas the first from a woman who is a journalist in Lebanon, afraid to publish her name; the second a reply from a woman in Israel. Their published letters have been making the rounds online.
* The anonymous journalist’s letter:
“Life is hard for us right now. I have to think about which is the safest way to go to work. I have to think about when or whether to go back to check on my house.
Not all Lebanese people want the Hezbellah, so why must all Lebanese people have to suffer? Today I am a refugee. I cannot return to my home. Israeli planes have been dropping pamphlets, warning us to leave our neighborhood because it is about to be bombed. I had nowhere to go, so I have stayed in this neighborhood, despite the warnings.
The nights are awful. The sound of the airplanes overhead is terrifying. They fly above for hours before they hit, searching for their targets. No one knows when the bombs will fall. Eventually you stop caring. You just want the noise to stop.
And the world is silent?”
* Liat ben David’s reply:
“To the anonymous Lebanese journalist, shalom:
It hurts, it really hurts, to read your words. It hurts first and foremost because your words are so familiar. Life in the Galilee and all over the North of Israel has become one long game of Russian Roulette, just as it is in Beirut. It didn’t happen in a week. It happened more than two weeks ago—and it hasn’t stopped since.
Every time we get out of the shelter, even for a few minutes, it is a gamble: will the Hezbollah start shelling again just as I leave the shelter to go buy some milk and bread for my kids, who are sitting in the shelter with me? And if the shelling does starts, where is the nearest hiding place? Is the local grocery store even open? Almost everything is closed.
Summer tourism, that both you and I base a lot of our economy on, is dead. Work is a forgotten dream, and those who still have jobs are afraid of the danger on the way back and forth.
You see, on our side of the border, no one throws pamphlets to let us know when and where the next shelling will occur, and there is no advance noise to prepare us that the rockets are about to fall. They just do eighty to a hundred every day. So I completely understand when you say: when will this noise stop?
Of course, the roads are not safe either, and not only because of the bombs. If you are too close to a border, any border—and Israel is so small that almost always you are close to some border—you must stay alert so that no terrorist infiltrates and kidnaps you, or shoots you, or blows himself up with you. Our kids, even those who are not in shelters, know that they must be alert, suspicious, connected to the news and to their parents. This is daily life everywhere, for all ages. They have grown accustom, since they were three years old, that everywhere there is a guard that checks them and everyone else, that each little bag might be a dangerous parcel, that each smiling person can turn into the big bad wolf. It isn’t exactly the way to raise normal, healthy kids, but that is our life and it has been for a very, very long time.
More than half of the population of the North have left their homes and gone South.
On our side, too, thousands can’t go home. BUT WE DON’T CALL THEM REFUGEES. You see, for us they are simply our brothers and sisters, and Israelis everywhere are embracing them, trying to give them comfort and help till they can go back home. That’s what the citizens of a state are supposed to do for each other.
Not all of them could get away. Sorry to say, even we need time to get our act together sometimes, to arrange safe transportation and secure places, especially since we have to do it while under fire and while defending ourselves. We have many volunteers, that is true, and they are doing miracles, but many of our elderly and needy have stayed in their homes, frightened by every explosion they hear, grateful when the blast is over, dreading the next one. We will have to deal with their trauma for many years to come.
Not all Israelis want war. Actually, I can tell you that almost all Israelis want peace, or at least quiet. And yet, all Israelis are paying the price. That’s how it is in a sovereign country, and that is probably the main difference between us: if a group of people in this country had turned our lives into Hell, the Israeli society and the Israeli government would do everything necessary to throw that group out. To destroy it. You can’t just sit passively, crying: ‘but it wasn’t me’—that is a lesson we learned in kindergarten, when we learned another lesson too, one of the most important lessons: social responsibility.
If a group like that would drag all of Israel into a horrible war - and every war is horrible - without us doing everything to stop them, then the consequences would be our responsibility, and we would have no right to say that ‘this isn’t our war. If it comes from within my state, by my citizens, it is my responsibility, just like it is my responsibility to take care of my citizens, those who need shelter and food. I can’t sit back while this is going on and then cry that I have been taken over. It is my responsibility to get rid of this malignancy, and if I don’t the price is mine to pay. Or, in the case of Hezbellah, yours.
As for the world being silent—you should not be so surprised. That is the way of the world - to be silent. We know. We have had many, many years of experience.
END OF LETTERS
What I find scariest in all of this is that my fellow Americans are not having an easy time throwing out a group of people who have worked hard to make our lives hell. I sure hope bombs don’t have to fall here before we succeed in reestablishing our own democracy.