Higher Than Me

Even though I’ve lived in Israel for nearly 15 years, conducting my day-to-day life in Hebrew and doing important things like buying a house and adopting children in the Hebrew language, I am still dismayed at how often I find myself saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand!” How, after all this time in the country, people still hear my accent and switch to English. How distinctly British I feel among all the Israeli mums at my children’s parties.

But what I never expected was to be back in England in the country where I grew up, while a war raged in Israel, looking at British people blankly and thinking, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

A lot of it is because our current realities are so different. Most people in England have not experienced war and don’t know how it feels to hear sirens overhead or to leave their home, not knowing if and when they will be back.

Most of the questions people ask are good-intentioned, even if they cause my head to spin.

“Are the children happy to be here?” (Truthful answer – the children are having panic attacks when they go to sleep or leave the house because they can’t stop thinking about bombs).

“I bet you’re relieved to have made it out of Israel” (Really I feel like I am torn in half. I am grateful to be in a safe place, but I am also in deep grief for the suffering of the people in my adopted homeland).

“What are your plans for the future?” (I can’t think beyond the end of the day, let alone the future!).

These conversations leave me with a sense of dissonance, but I understand that people are trying to be kind and make a connection. So, I do my best to respond with something friendly and hopefully coherent.

But there’s one thing I’ve experienced since being back in England that I just don’t understand.

Why are tens of thousands of people up and down the country taking to the streets to protest the loss of innocent life in Gaza, but failing to mention the brutal massacre of Jewish families that triggered this war in the first place?

On Saturday 7th October, hundreds of Hamas terrorists from Gaza descended upon the small Israeli villages and communities near the Gaza border with no warning or provocation. They went house to house torturing, murdering and kidnapping men, women and children. Babies were beheaded.

Terrorists also overran a dance festival attended by thousands of Israeli young people and carried out a killing spree.

These massacres were accompanied by a barrage of rockets from Gaza, fired indiscriminately into residential neighbourhoods around Israel, destroying homes and adding to the death toll.

I decided to take my children out of Israel because they were so terrified by the war. We managed to get seats on a British government repatriation flight.

But when I turned on the UK news, I was shocked by what I saw.

There was no reference to the ongoing barrage of rockets that Hamas was firing into Israel. Instead, the coverage focused entirely on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which was blamed entirely upon Israeli airstrikes.

People outside Israel make the mistake of thinking that this is a regular war between two countries on opposing sides. Israel vs. Palestine. The truth is that all the innocent people involved in this conflict are on the same side. Israeli children and Gazan children are dying at the hands of the same enemy. And the enemy is Hamas.

When Hamas embarked upon its brutal assault on Israeli families, it dragged the ordinary people of Gaza into a conflict that many didn’t want – especially the women and children.

Some hardliners say that everyone in Gaza is a terrorist and they all want to destroy Israel. But this is not true. Although there is a high degree of radicalisation in Gaza, there are still many who want to live in peace. Right now, there are people in Gaza protesting against the actions of Hamas. These protestors are risking their lives because Hamas rules Gaza with an iron fist and doesn’t take kindly to dissent.

Israel did not begin this conflict. Its airstrikes in Gaza have one goal: To destroy a highly sophisticated and dangerous terrorist organisation that poses a threat beyond just Israel’s borders, and to ensure that the sort of atrocity that happened on 7th October will never happen again.

As I look at the British media coverage of the war, there’s one story in particular that I don’t understand.

When an explosion went off in the car park of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on 17th October, resulting in a large number of injuries and fatalities, the world media was quick to accuse Israel of a war crime. As evidence came to light proving beyond doubt that this event was in fact caused by a Hamas rocket misfiring – evidence that included a recording of two Hamas operatives discussing their mistake – the media was less interested in broadcasting these new findings.

But the question that I never heard anyone ask was, “Why on earth was Hamas launching its rockets from behind a hospital?” The answer, of course, is clear. Hamas wanted Israel to retaliate and launch a missile towards the site that Hamas had fired from. Hamas wanted Israel to hit the hospital so that it would gain popularity points from the inevitable media outcry. Hamas wanted its own innocent Gazan people to die for the sake of publicity.

Why can no one see that Hamas is the real enemy of the Gazan and Israeli people alike?

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.