What Me Worry?
Am I just not connected to reality or too used to the highs and lows of life here?
Early morning. A quick doomscroll on the Times of Israel, with a second check of an Israeli news source, reassures me that today seems stable. In any case, Iran has usually preferred bigger moments, Passover eve, Rosh Hashanah eve, June - we started, so to speak, and that goes along with the Middle East and summer time, or wartime. Was that learned from Napoleon and Russia, or Hitler and Russia? (Note: While Napoleon started in June, within six months it claimed - on both sides - the lives of nearly a million soldiers and civilians. As for Hitler, in the war’s deadliest 6 months, five million Soviet Red Army troops were captured, starved to death or killed, along with millions of civilians.)
Then, I check out the New York Times. Nothing about Iran. Nothing. At all. Nada.
Not about the protests and the killings, probably all continuing but given the internet blackout hard to, in the NYT’s lingo, ‘verify.’ Nothing about the Ayatollah’s threats to the neighborhood nearby, that is, Israel. Maybe there’s something buried somewhere in the world news, but it won’t be easy to find and it certainly won’t be seen by those who read the paper. Unless they’re looking for it.
The front page has important stories of course, about ICE and the horrible stuff happening on US streets to immigrants, many of them longstanding members of their communities who’ve gotten caught up in the horror that is new and brutal policy for those who come to live in the US, for all the reasons that people come to live in the US. That’s separate from those killed, shot down by ICE police? The mind struggles to take it all in. There’s also lots of salacious info about Jeffrey Epstein and everyone with whom he hung out, including Mr 45/47. I get it, the NYT wants to make sure that the news focuses on anything and everything that could bring him down. There’s stuff about the soon to open Winter Olympics (I’m excited), and there’s talk about the end of nuclear arms agreements and the rush to re-arm.
But Iran? Nothing.
Meanwhile, I’ve got the chairs in the living room - we can grab them as we go into our safe room - and I’ve reassessed the emergency supplies, focusing on water mostly, a working fan (it gets stuffy quickly which always makes me think of people suffocating and worse on October 7th in their safe rooms), and portable chargers. We could use some pretzels, and a bar of chocolate (to keep away the dementors) but we keep eating the safe-room supplies as this goes on.
As friend and local chiropractor, Dr. Leora Danzig Leeder put it today, “I am not sure that anyone who does not live in Israel could understand the bizarre emotional reality in which we live.”
At the pool this morning, it was unusually empty, not a bad thing. A regular quipped, “maybe everyone is afraid of the Iranian attack today.”
Last night, while watching our current favorite show Master Chef Israel (don’t knock it, it’s lots of fun) a headline flashed across my phone. “US talks with Iran collapsed.” Ira and I looked at each other. By the time we’d headed up to bed, the talks were back on. Meanwhile, I’d gone from stress to calmer…for the moment.
I think most of us think, like the news channels remind us each day, that an Iranian attack is most likely a given. Great. I can’t wait.
Booking a flight to the US for March, I vacillated between ElAl and United. United was about half of what I ultimately paid for my ElAl flight. Why ElAl? They didn’t let me down back in June, brining me home 5 days into the 12-Day War with Iran. And this time, I’ll believe they’ll get me back (and won’t book an emergency flight and cruise from Cyprus which I did last time). Listening to a recent radio interview with someone from the Ministry of Tourism, I laughed out loud when he spoke about the country’s readiness to cope with the estimated 43,000 tourists currently in Israel. “We have buses,” he said. Buses. To drive all those tourists through Syria - we’re friends, right - and then over into Turkey - we’re not friends really - and then home?
Am I just deluded? Don’t really get the dangers of life in the Middle East? Or, have spent too many years here, navigating between skirmishes and all out wars. It’s hard to know. I’ve often thought I had no idea, and I mean no idea, of what I was getting into, when we moved to Israel. I didn’t really consider the truth of living in a place that is not loved by its neighbors. I perceived of the IDF as able to protect me, except for during those moments that it couldn’t but never imagined the horror that was October 7th, nor the war that would play out afterwards.
Nor could I imagine the hatred that would be shown to Israel, let alone the indifference to the suffering initially experienced by Israelis, and of course the hostages. I couldn’t believe that Israel would only be seen as a bully, understanding for the first time in my life really, that sometimes you have to defend yourselves, let alone your civilian population and all you hold dear.
My little progressive Jewish bubble. My liberal attitudes. My pacifist outlook on life? What naiveté I displayed. Don’t get me wrong, I still buy into so much of what made me the New Yorker that I am, that I was, but I’ve been hardened by what I’ve learned, by the losses my country has endured, and by what I’ve seen. I am sad for Gazans. I want a different future for them, let alone the Lebanese, the Syrians and of course, the Iranians. But I care most about my own. I guess that’s what it has to be.
How I’ll find a way with those, especially those who formerly cared about what happens to me and mine here, who turned away from Israel and from their fellow Jews, only time will tell. I can no longer excuse their willful, chosen path of hate. I can hope they will find the nuance they need to show greater kindness to all those in need of help and support - especially their own people - but I know, maybe they will and maybe they won’t.
If you made it to the end, thanks for reading.
A piece of good news to share. My friend became a grandmother again the other day. Her daughter and son-in-law (he’s the brother of Dror Or z”l, murdered on Be’eri, and brother in law of Yonat Or z”l, murdered on Be’eri) had a 4th child. From grief and sorrow to joy, מיגון לשמחה she wrote. Amen.
#GivePeaceAChance