If you live somewhere long enough, you’ll eventually learn the lay of the land. Belonging somewhere means sharing in the national moments as well as the personal ones. As individuals, and as a nation, we go through a wide range of experiences and emotions – love and hate, anger and sorrow. Today is a day of great sorrow.
Belonging is understanding how the local people digest events; it’s the mood of the times and the soul of the country. In one month and eleven days, I will have lived here in this land for 25 years. Anyway you cut it, that’s a long time.
Forever in my mind, I can see myself boarding the plane with two young boys. Shmuli was not even three and a half. He fell asleep before the plane had finished its take off. Elie had just turned six and it took him a while longer. They are both married now, both fathers and husbands.
At the end of the flight, I knew my husband of almost 10 years was waiting with our daughter. She too is married now with two beautiful sons. In time, our little family grew. Two more children and now five grandchildren. Over these 25 years, we have experienced times of great joy and great sadness. We have spent endless hours worried, even terrified. We have celebrated more than we ever thought we would, and found our place here in Israel.
Every year, we celebrate Israel. On all days, but especially on the anniversary of our independence (5 Iyar, May 14). On that day, we celebrate not just our independence, but the life we have built in this land. We celebreate our democracy and the rights we share with so many others. The freedom we have here. We celebrate I’ve also gotten used to how fast we swing between sorrow and joy, anger and celebration. A few days ago, we were angry.
What right do they have to fire mortars and missiles at our land, at our people? Where is the world, the United Nations, when their missile strikes where our babies go to school?
There is still anger but today there is sorrow. Deep pain that tempts us to bow our heads and howl. Agony and tears. Not the same as when they attack our children, but deep and lacerating in any case.
They are attacking our land again. That they attack our people is nothing new and is always devastating. But there is something equally barbaric when they turn their hatred against a land they claim to love. A few years ago and again now, they chose to destroy.
Dunams and dunams of land, field after field after field has been burned by their flying explosive kites. There is anger but as we watch videos like the ones posted below, somehow the anger becomes the second emotion we feel. The first is sorrow.
They are burning my home, my land, my country. Their hate has triumphed over hundreds of dunams (and acres) of wheat fields and crops. What they still don’t realize, is that their hate may burn our land, but it will not bring them victory.
Fire Coming Dangerously Close to Sderot
https://www.facebook.com/devorah.horev/videos/10156541826669432/?t=10
Thank you Paula for another wonderful post expressing what so many of us feel but cannot express so eloquently! Your final sentence says it all : “What they still don’t realize, is that their hate may burn our land, but it will not bring them victory.”