In the last few hours I am extremely sad. Heartbroken would be the right words to express what I feel. This is because the son of a theatre person I know for years was killed today. He was only 21, and was hit by an anti-tank rocket.
When I got this horrible news I was in the bathroom with my two 2.3 years old boys. Michael and Daniel were playing with water and foam, pouring water on each other and on the floor. They did not take a bath for almost 20 days, since the war begun. I wash them twice a day in this hot weather, but only in the shower, so that a missile from Gaza will not catch us while naked and unable to run to the nearest public shelter.
The boys looked at me. They sensed something is wrong. They felt my sadness. I tried hard not to cry while watching them play so joyfully and innocently. It was hard, because I kept thinking about my friend and his family, their tremendous loss, and also about the future of my sons. I raise them in a country which is doomed to live in a continuous state of war. This is the only Jewish state in the world. We must sustain it, and since we live in the Middle East, we will have to send our boys to the army, and pray that they will come back home alive and untouched.
This recognition of our national state and the inevitable need to protect ourselves is the source of our strength. It is a result of 3000 years of The Jewish history and collective memory, and this heritage is a burden that no one will lift off our backs. This is the reason for the erection of the Jewish state, and the source of its creativity, novelty and strength. This conviction is not based on ideology, on false promises of 72 virgins in a polygamous chauvinistic heaven, as the Islam promises to its worriers. This is a conviction that is carved in our hearts. And in times of war, they become like stone, our hearts.
The Hamas did not understand it. Neither does Hezbollah or the Iranian leaders, who keep threatening us. They all do the same mistake. They think that by gathering military, diplomatic or media power they will be able to destroy us. They cannot and will not. There is something they cannot understand about us – the more you hit us, the more missiles you send over Israel, the more soldiers and Israeli citizens you kill – the stronger you make our conviction that we do not have a partner for peace, that we must overcome you and win. And we will.
You can continue to throw missiles on Israel. You can agitate your allies in The West Bank, you can raise anti-Israel protests all over the world. But doing so, you actually make us stronger, united in our belief in the necessity of our lives here, of protecting the Jewish state. This is a sort of a conviction that is stronger than any explosives. This is a mental weapon you cannot win.
לבכות לנו. ככה אני מרגישה כשמסתכלת וחושבת על הנכד בן השלוש שלי