No, We Are Not OK

No, we are not OK. So why do we always say we are? No one could possibly be when Israel is one fabric woven together with indestructible threads connecting the souls of every citizen. I may look OK physically but I’m broken inside. I’m shattered into fragments of what was and that will never be the same, no matter how much glue and workmanship can try to repair it.  How can it be? Every one of us in Israel knows a soldier in uniform, someone who lives in the terrorized South, someone who was brutally slaughtered, dragged to Gaza or still missing, young festival goers who were gunned down, missing, or worse, soldiers in hospitals, and soldiers already killed in battle.

The incomprehensible magnitude of this does not allow us to be OK.   

Guy is my son-in-law’s nephew, whom I’ve known since he was five years old. When Guy, his pregnant wife and toddler heard the gunfire and explosions on their kibbutz, they rushed into their mamad – the reinforced security room. Imagine the only barrier between your family and terrorists armed with AK 47s and grenades is the steel door of your mamad. It may sound secure, but these doors cannot be locked from the inside. They were built to protect residents from explosions, not murderous terrorists. 

Guy became a human lock. For two-and-a-half hours, he pushed against the metal bar to prevent the terrorists from forcing it back to open the door. Human locks can’t comfort babies, sit down, relax the cramping hand muscles, or take a sip of water because on the other side of the door, terrorists are shooting up the cabinets, the closets, the bed, looking for anyone hiding from them while others are trying to break down the steel door.  They were close to succeeding when IDF soldiers came running, and in a fierce gun battle, killed the terrorists and rescued Guy and his family. 

End of story? 

No, just the beginning. Fifty-two (so far) of their friends in the community were slaughtered, many still missing and several wounded. And this may sound trivial, but they have no home. I don’t mean a house. I mean a home. A kibbutz or a moshav is a tight-knit family. It is your way of life. It is your identity and your whole being, an extended family spread out in little homes among the trees and gardens and lawns. How can the human mind process the unimaginable losses they have suffered as individuals and as a community?

There’s the story of Olga, a close friend of my daughter and her husband. Olga’s daughter, Alina is still missing. She was at the music festival, which was specifically targeted by Hamas. There are clips of Olga’s daughter running in the fields with a friend. 

Will there be an “End of Story” here? What “end” would you hope for? Finding out your daughter is alive but captured by Hamas sadists — or that she was murdered on Shabbat and her body not yet identified? Imagine such a horrendous “choice” It’s out there — it’s even spoken out loud — because what’s happening to the captives is beyond comprehension. We’ve all seen videos.

Yesterday my husband and I joined others from our community, lining the street, holding Israeli flags as the funeral procession passed by for Alia, a young woman who lived a few doors away. Her parents, like Alina’s, had no idea of her fate until a few days ago when her body was positively identified. She had been shot to death at the festival. Only shot, we hope. What a thing to hope for. 

End of story? No. It is the end of waiting for news, but it’s the beginning of a heartbreaking reality for her family.

All we ask is that you stay with us throughout. It will be a catastrophe for us and for our country if we succumb to foreign pressure and forget this. 

We watch or listen to personal accounts of those who survived but whose husbands, children, wives were dragged off or cruelly executed in front of them. We listen to stories of heroism and self-sacrifice.  We all need to hear these stories because these people are our neighbors, our friends, our family, our colleagues, our children’s playmates. And there is an urgent need to keep them in mind. This will be our fate if we do not irradicate Hamas-Isis from Gaza, from the world. Al we ask is that you stay with us throughout. It will be a catastrophe for us and for our country if we succumb to foreign pressure and forget this.  Because we are not OK.

Galia Miller Sprung, who moved to Israel in 1970 to become a pioneer farmer, is a retired high school teacher, writer and editor.