12 May 2024
We live in Nahariya, a sweet coastal town just 6 miles south of the border with Lebanon. There are beautiful white-sand beaches, a small marina, and fishermen angling from the jetties that poke out into the azure-blue waters of the Mediterranean. We see lots of that from our balcony during the day, and in the late afternoon we enjoy a glass of wine (or tea) as we watch the red sun sink into the sea and fizzle out.
In the good old days, pre-October 7, 2023, Nahariya was considered a resort town, with several small hotels set along the beach, though two wars with Lebanon over the past 25 years have discouraged tourists from buying a home here. We bought our condo just ten days before the second war with Lebanon broke out in 2007. We thought one war had been enough.
But now we are at it again. The first month of the recent war was terrifying, despite our long experience. We awakened to the news and listened, horrified, as tales unfolded of what had taken place that first day just inside Israel, on the border with Gaza. Each passing day revealed atrocities by Hamas that I cannot bear to repeat. My friend Vivian Silver, a peace activist to her core, was also killed there. And then the news came that some 250 men, women, children, and babies had been taken hostage into Gaza. The next day, we jumped into the car with our daughter and granddaughter, who live with us, and fled to the homes of friends who live in the center of the country. From their rooftop, we could see rockets enter Israeli skies and anti-rocket missiles smash them mid-air. It looked like a cybergame, but for the ones that made it through.
A month later, with the war full tilt, we left Israel for our US home, a departure scheduled much before, on one of the only planes flying in and out of Israel. Our check-in was interrupted by sirens that twice had us racing into the airport shelter. Finally, we boarded. Our plane, a night flight, taxied down an unlit runway and then lifted off, its lights snuffed out on the wings, as it hurtled into the great black void in the hope that no missiles could locate its massive, darkened body crawling through the cosmos. As we distanced ourselves, my breathing eased.
We arrived in the US with the taste of fear and horror still in our mouths, and then the news began to arrive of what the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank were enduring: the killing, the destruction, the wrenching of lives, and then the severe dearth of food, water, and basic health care. And this tragically continues, day after day. The Israeli in me is heartbroken and furious that this is being done in my name. Yes, Hamas is guilty of war crimes, but the war is being prolonged because of our own Israeli government. Initially it was the government’s irrational desire to cleanse the Gaza Strip of its Hamas supporters – an unattainable goal – and its arrogant over-confidence that it could rescue the hostages by a heroic military raid. But now the war is being perpetuated by a combination of our extremists in power who want blood, more blood, and our prime minister who wants to appease them so they will not bolt the coalition, as well as his wish to delay his own trial on corruption. All this is preventing efforts to end the hostilities and bring home the hostages, few of them reportedly still alive.
According to the polls, most Israelis (56%) think it is more important to bring home the hostages than to invade Rafah (37%). Everywhere one turns in Israel are the faces of the hostages – on posters, billboards, storefronts, fire hydrants, tee-shirts, sidewalks, buses, trains. I saw a parking space labeled “this space reserved for when the hostages are released”. People wear military-style dog tags with the message “Bring them home NOW”, and yellow ribbons are ubiquitous. (Even our prime minister in colossal chutzpah wore a yellow ribbon during his CNN interview in English, as if he himself weren’t the obstacle to their return, which drew much mirthless laughter here.) Every day in Israel after the 5 PM news bulletins, the main radio stations of Israel play the same song – “Come Home”. The large plaza in front of the Tel Aviv Museum has been spontaneously transformed by individuals into a multi-media installation for the hostage release, including a prayer tent, an emotional health tent, an eerie tunnel to give a sense of where they are being held captive, “Release them NOW” merch to support the families of the hostages, and young people standing around a piano singing quiet songs. This is the beautiful side of Israel that I love – the commitment to one another that cannot be erased even by bad leaders.
And now back to the war in the north, where we live and to which we have returned. It has been heating up thanks to the joint efforts of the Hezbollah, a fundamentalist Shia group in Lebanon that is armed by Iran, and our own government’s desire to keep the war going. But there are mostly good days. Yesterday, we walked along the boardwalk and saw several hundred people, I reckon, disobeying military orders by being out on the beach, applying sunscreen and sunbathing. It looked lovely, though there were no lifeguards and the sailboats are gone. Instead, the waters are plied by naval patrol boats. Our town Nahariya has a frightening history of terrorists from Lebanon entering it by way of the sea. But yesterday we walked past the beach to a playground and pushed Gal on the swing, watching her little body thrill with joy. On the way home, we stopped for cold drinks at a nearby café, then took our time walking as we bumped into friends along the way.
And then this. At 06:46 this morning, the sirens in Nahariya went off, piercing the dawn. We tore out of bed and ran into our “safe room”, the one bolstered by hyper-concrete walls and a steel door and steel windows. Gal was in the safe room already – it is her bedroom – and she watched us blankly as we burst in wearing our looks of fear. Two drones had entered from Lebanon, said the radio, one had been shot down and the other was still at large, but we could emerge from the shelters. We got dressed, had coffee (tea for me), and agonized over taking Gal to her regular preschool or not. But she would be just as safe in the shelter there, she loves her friends and teachers, and life must go on. There was only the matter of the 10-minute drive to get there, but the decision was made to go. In the car, we did not wear seat belts and Gal was on my lap in the back so that we would be able to make a rapid exit and hit the ground if anything should happen. Nothing happened. At school, Gal was joyous to see her friends after the weekend. We left her, returned home, and my daughter drove to her school – she is a teacher – where classes resumed as normal.
It could have been a perfect morning. Walking back to the car from the preschool, located on a kibbutz of which my daughter is a member, I could again smell yesteryear. It was the tender early sun, the parents dropping off their children with quiet “good mornings”, the path labeled “Learning Lane” strewn with scented white magnolias, the sour smell of the chicken coops wafting up toward us, and the salty breeze of the sea floating in and cleansing it all anew. That was just yesterday, wasn’t it?