My baby turned one this week, but all I can think about is the boy who never had a birthday. This week, Israel is crying for the Bibas family, a pit in our stomachs, a catching in our throats.
Today, I wore an orange sweatshirt, it just happened to be hanging near the door. I walked outside, and a woman on the street stopped in front of me, eyes welling up before she turned away.
The color orange is a new trigger in this land where the sound of an accelerating motorcycle makes everyone catch their breath, or a loud thud from a construction site produces an involuntary flinch. We can’t rid the images from our eyes or our imaginations of what those boys went through. The fear and confusion. Every time Romi grabs at my pant legs I imagine Kfir clinging to his mother. I imagine Ariel regressing to his pacifier, desperate to retreat into babyhood in response to all the scary things around him. And of course I imagine Shiri, similar in age to me, who was awoken on a sunny Saturday morning to her world crumbling before her, all before she had a chance to brush her teeth. Arms heavy and brain spinning, wondering how to protect her children in this impossible situation. As Israelis, it’s our collective nightmare, and one we saw play out in slow motion over the past 16 months.
I feel responsible for some reason. I think a lot of Israelis do. Where were we? Why didn’t we shake off the shock more quickly and make the ground shake until the youngest hostages returned? Why didn’t the government act more quickly to get the children back? Why didn’t the world demand Hamas return all child captives immediately? Deep down we all wonder, why them and not me? We all have survivor’s guilt, no matter how far we live from the border. Even if we don’t live in the Otef, we were all one weekend getaway, one beach trip, one festival away from disaster.
A friend of mine posed a different question – how can an entire nation mourn the deaths of two, but not thousands of Gazan children?
I have many answers. First of all, humans cannot comprehend multiplied pain, only pain. Numbers on a page don’t feel like anything, but faces do.
Another, less convenient answer – the Bibas family feels like ours. Gazan families do not. Israelis do not deny that Gazans are enduring the unendurable. Israelis do not deny the unfathomable tragedy of the deaths of innocent Gazans. But, we do not feel responsible. We do not have the capacity to feel responsible or feel the pain beyond our borders right now. Unfortunately, there is enough pain here, as we are reminded weekly with the regular trickle of hostages home, some triumphant, some thin and depleted, some already gone.
I believe this is human. Humans were never meant to absorb the pain of the entire world. If there are atrocities that Israelis committed against Gazans, and there likely are because there almost always are in war, these should be investigated, prosecuted, and condemned. But do I, as an Israeli citizen, need to feel the weight of the death of innocents in Gaza? I’m not sure.
As the world is organized now, each government is responsible for their citizens. Hamas is the government of Gaza. They are quoted unquestioningly by news sources, yet not held accountable for the safety of their citizens. Israel is responsible for its citizens. It failed miserably and I am furious. But I am more furious at Hamas for bringing this destruction down on all of us.
All deaths are sad. All deaths are terrible. But intention matters. Realizing you dropped your wallet on the sidewalk feels different than knowing it was plucked from your pocket. Tragic, unintended deaths as byproducts of war resulting from the refusal of a government to protect its citizens is different than the very intentional invading of homes to capture and murder of people, including children, including two children who hadn’t even made it to kindergarten.
In Hebrew, we give condolences by saying אני משתתף בצערך, I share in your sorrow. Right now, Israelis are sharing in the sorrow of the Bibas family. And the four bodies returned last night. And the 60 souls still held by Hamas. And the thousands of tragedies that have happened all around us. Israeli society is small and we share in each sorrow as if it were our own.
I didn’t go line the street where the van would pass by with the bodies of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir like tens of thousands of other Israelis did, because it fell directly during Romi’s morning nap. Sometimes she catches me looking at her with tears in my eyes and she’s confused. I quickly smile and wipe them away. I need to share in the sorrow, at least right now. But she doesn’t.
Thank you so much for publishing this piece. I am most grateful for the vital fact it points out that critics of Israel and the Gaza war have so far refused to ackowledge:
“As the world is organized now, each government is responsible for their citizens. Hamas is the government of Gaza. They are quoted unquestioningly by news sources, yet not held accountable for the safety of their citizens.”