My Newest Obsession: Antarctica

This post was written on April 24, 2015.  I didn’t publish it then, because it needed a few tweaks.  Later, I didn’t publish it because life got hectic, and Antarctica was the furthest thing from my mind – besides for the fact that I was glad, at that point, that we live in a regular, civilized country.

Probably, you have already read about my Antarctica joke.  It goes like this:

Oh, no, X/Y/Z happened.  This world is such an awful, scary place.  I don’t know why I want to live in it, and I seriously don’t know why I am bringing another kid/ want to bring more kids into it.  Ugh.  It’s not safe in Israel, but at least here it’s more safe than other places, and we have a government and an army that doesn’t stick their heads into the sand.  If I thought there was a safer place, I’d go, but I don’t think any country is safe now . . . there’s really nowhere you can live safely . . .

Hey, wait! We can move to Antarctica!

Except that Yitzchak always pops the bubble:

Antarctica will suffer the after-effects of nukes in other places, just like every other country will, he says.

In twenty years, Antarctica will be the center of a major war, as every country tries to stake its claim, when the weather warms up and the land becomes habitable (there’s a treaty until 2048, maybe it will be extended?).

We would have sun six months out of the year, and we would have to accept Shabbat at one in the afternoon sometimes.  On the other hand, Shabbat would end at one in the afternoon – nice, but it makes the day pretty rushed, with barely enough time to daven and do kiddush.

Hmmm, there’s no mikva, and the snow doesn’t sound too nice.

At one point, he tried to scare me by telling me that it wasn’t exactly a safe place for women, because half the researchers are single guys who haven’t seen a woman in years.  Turns out, there are families there, too.

Our heating bill will be outrageous . . .

And so on . . .

But as we come closer to understanding that Iran will be allowed to get nukes, as far as Obama is concerned, and Putin has no issues giving Iran the tools to help them defend their nuclear reactor – and North Korea continues to help them develop nuclear weapons;

and as I hear more and more often about kidnappings, shootings, and who knows what;

and as we start and stop, start and stop, the task of getting rid of Hamas;

I’ve started to think that it’s better just to pick up and move.

To Antarctica.

Yes, seriously.

Now all I have to do is convince Yitzchak.

And MORE Terrorism

Really, guys.  I’m kind of sick of it.

Not just sick of it, scared of it.  Like there would be any place to move to.  Europe is filled with rising anti-Semites, Canada has had over 1,600 anti-Semitic incidents last year alone, and in America – oh, America.  All you need to do is look in this past week’s news.  Wonderful, isn’t it?

And why is Boston allowed to execute a terrorist, but Israel isn’t?  I think the answer is this: Jewish blood is cheap.  Always has been.  And unfortunately, probably always will be.  I feel like we’re dealing with a repeat Holocaust, just slower; this is frustrating for two reasons: 1. The world claimed to have learned its lesson, and we claimed to have learned ours. 2. Hello, nutcases!  We have our own state, our own government, our own army.  Yet it is a little state, and little states need to keep big friends.  Those big fiends like to tie our hands.  Yes, sir.  Unless we stand up for ourselves soon, and do what needs to happen instead of playing along with what the world wants to have happen, we will all be in the sea in record time.  (Muslims aren’t smart enough to build gas chambers, but you have to ask what’s better – to die quickly and painlessly in a gas chamber, or to be shot or knifed the middle of the street, or to be drowned at sea.  Honestly, not sure.  I think I’d prefer the gas chambers.  And I kid you not.)

Rockets, yeah.  That’s the smaller of the problems.  Tunnels, that’s a much bigger problem.  People walking around with knives, Molotov cocktails, metal rods, rocks; terrorists driving cars, trucks, and sometimes buses – those are much bigger problems.  And the guns, too.  But luckily guns are more controlled; except that we have allowed the PA “government” to own guns and are now paying for it.  Oh, and Iran.  Yeah, Iran.  Big problem.  Not that big, if Israel is allowed to deal with it efficiently and the world either supports us or turns a blind eye.

Guys, this is scary.  I haven’t written too much this past week because I just don’t know what to say.  What am I supposed to say?  Let’s ship all the Muslims off the Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia?  Well, I wish I could say that, but no one would listen, and I kind of feel like saying it is counterproductive.  Again, maybe if the attacks were criminal in nature, we could make the terrorists’ lives better and that would be the end of the story.  But when 43% of the Arab population wants to conquer all of Israel AND kill all the Jews, it’s not criminal, it’s nationalistic.  And there is no choice but to kill the terrorists and potential terrorists, and nothing that we can do to better their lives will help us save our skins.

The world’s Jewish population has just returned to pre-Holocaust levels, 60 years later.  I wonder what it’ll be in another sixty years.  I wonder if Israel will still exist then, or if the world will be partying because they managed to create a world without Jewish communities in other countries and without a Jewish state.

Here are some of the nationalistic terror incidents from [just] this past week:
A farmer was beaten to death in the field, by Arabs who came in illegally from the PA looking for “work”;

Arabs threw firebombs at a Jewish school, three times in a row, and the police did nothing;

an ambulance was attacked (lynched, more accurately) by a group of Druze (and I’m disappointed, I thought better of the Druze community);

obviously, the UN blames Israel for abusing Hamas; we Jews are the only ones blamed for the murder of our own people;

a border policeman was injured in an attack by an “innocent Arab youth”;

there was a rocket attack;

Hamas is proud of the fact that they steered a drone into Israeli airspace;

two youth who stopped to answer a question put to them by an Arab youth were shot by said Arab youth; one is seriously injured and one is dead;

the terrorist who attempted to murder two Jewish youths on Shavuot is not being charged with attempted murder, but with “aggravated assault.”

I could go on, but Tova is insisting on drinking ‘Mama milk,’ so I need to stop here.

Soldiers Are Just Kids in Uniform

This is a post I wrote in the middle of Tzuk Eitan (Operation Protective Edge, this past summer) and never published.

The first time I came to Israel, I was twelve; I came for my cousin’s wedding and it doubled as a bat mitzva trip for me.  When I saw soldiers they were cool and practically grown up.  Definitely with a lot of responsibility.

The next time I came, I was post high school, studying in a one-year program that would count as part of my degree when I got back.  I remember looking at the soldiers and thinking that we were the same age but living in completely different worlds.  I wasn’t sure which world was preferable; I did know that I owed them a lot and in many ways they were more mature than I was.  I remember thinking that we were so different, but still so much alike.

I’m not the same age as the soldiers anymore; I have a brother who, if he lived in Israel, would be just starting, or about to start, his stint in the army.  I see soldiers, I see high school boys and girls – and I see kids.  Young and innocent, immature, sweet, kids.  I wonder what they want to do with their lives.  I wonder what they’ve been through already.  I wonder, especially when I see soldier couples, if they were neighbors or met during their service, and if they will marry when they get out of the army.  I wonder who will go to Thailand to find himself and who will start studying for a degree.

I look at my youngest brother in law, a year and a bit older than me, and think about what the army has done for him.  Maybe he’s chronologically older than me, but he’s still just a kid.  And being in the army has matured him – a lot.  He’s not all for fighting, like he was at first.  And there are other changes, but I won’t write them.

I look at the kids finishing high school and know that in three years, when they finish army, they will be different people.

Unfortunately, thanks to Tzuk Eitan (Protective Edge), I’ve seen way too many pictures of soldiers on the internet.  Most of them, if not all, were of soldiers who are no longer with us.  Smiling faces of kids, young and innocent.  Kids who were engaged, kids who were two weeks before their weddings.  Kids whose younger siblings are still in grade school and asking the prime minister why this had to happen and why there was a ceasefire.

Kids who had plans for the future, who had their whole future before them.

Of course, some of those killed weren’t kids.  Some of them were career soldiers, or reservists; officers with wives and children.  Some of these career soldiers left behind children who will never know their father – because their father was killed a short while before they were born.

I’m not sure what’s worse – a dead kid soldier or a dead soldier who leaves a wife and five orphans.

I do know that when I see the faces of these kids, smiling faces full of life and hope, I can’t help but smile.  And then I remember that they’re not here anymore.  And I have to ask why.  They were kids!  Kids barely out of high school.  You see it in their jawlines, in their attitudes, in their crooked pubertal smiles and disproportionate noses, in their optimism, in their barely-there facial hair.

Kids.

Like any other kids.

High school kids in uniform.  That’s what they are.

Why did they have to die, and why can’t we respect their deaths, and their families, and make their deaths worthwhile?  Those are questions I don’t have the answer to.

I wish I did.

And I hope and pray that by the time Shlomo finishes high school, we won’t need to fight anymore, because we will have quiet.  Peace – probably will never come.  King Solomon didn’t have peace – the countries were afraid of him.  We don’t have peace with Syria – Syria is afraid to start up with us.  With Egypt we don’t have peace, either – they just hate Hamas, and so do we.  When Jacob’s sons fought and killed all of Sh’chem (Nablus?), they didn’t make peace with their neighbors.  No one came to kill them, because everyone was afraid.  That’s not peace.  But it is the only way we’ll have quiet.

I know that this hope, and prayer, may very well be in vain.  Those who fought in 1948 had the same hope and prayer for their children.  It didn’t happen.  Those who fought in 1967 felt the same way, and prayed that their children would never have to wear an army uniform.  That didn’t happen, either.  Every parent in this country, every soldier in this country, every reservist, hopes and prays that the fighting of today, that the soldiers of today, will be enough, and that the next generation, my generation’s children, will not have to wear uniforms and will not have to fight.

This is what we hope.  This is what we pray.

But as Golda Meir said, “We will not have peace until Hamas loves their children more than they hate us.”

Hamas hasn’t gotten there yet.  And as long as they turn their children into suicide terrorists, we will have to fight them, and so will our children.

I hope, I pray, that the world will wake up, that we will wake up, and that no more innocent high school kids will have to die.

I’ve Had It.

I’m through with this.

Or at least, I wish I was.

Stupid government, stupid world, no intifada, it’s all our fault.  Suicide bus drivers are our fault, too.

I don’t want to leave my city (which is really just a big neighborhood); I don’t want to go anywhere at all.

I’m mad and I’m scared.  And Yitzchak, who has been insisting, for the past who-knows-how-many months, that all the attacks in Jerusalem were in neighborhoods that were close to the “Green Line”, has been proven wrong.  Duh.  I kept telling him that maybe that’s so at the moment but in the blink of an eye it will be all of Jerusalem.

Sadly, I was right.  The blink of an eye came.

Yay, terrific.

It makes me want to leave Israel – because I know our stupid government won’t do anything without international backing, even if it means Israel committing suicide – until I remember that similar things are happening all over Europe and all over America.

And it’s not just happening to Jews, although Jews are always a favorite target.

In other words, there is no safe place to live.  Ever.  Anywhere.

So I might as well just stay where I am and pray for the best.

Maybe I should learn to use a gun and carry it with me all the time.

I am going to school to pick up some books and write a fancy-shmansy schedule of what I plan to teach for the entire year (or rather, what I plan to have the students learn the entire year).  When I get back, I will try to put in links.

In the meantime, I will attempt to calm my nerves.

If I had wanted to go to Jerusalem within the next few weeks, if I had thought that I really really don’t want to have to go to Be’er Sheva – well, I still don’t want to.  But my fear of leaving the area, especially for a city that is not exactly safe anymore, is stronger than my desire to be in Jerusalem.  I guess we will see what happens.

Woo-woo

It’s the middle of the night.  Shlomo woke up, came to join us, and got back into bed.  I’m nearly asleep again.  Suddenly I hear a familiar, unmistakable sound – wooo-wooo, starting off low, getting higher, then dropping back to the low.  Oh, great.  In the middle of the night.  Do I have to get up?  What happens if I just ignore it?  And what do we do now?

No, the risks are too great.  Yes, I have to get up.  Yitzchak will get Shlomo, find his shoes, and head to the door.  I will find where my hat fell (to cover my hair), find my slippers, and go.  This whole conversation in my head lasts about five seconds.

I bolt upright, planning to find my slippers and hat.

“Chana, what happened?” Yitzchak turns over, startled.

And I realize –

there’s no siren.

It was just a dream.

I was half asleep.  Only half asleep.  And it sounded so clearly that I had no doubt that it was real.

“Nothing, I thought there was an azaka (air-raid siren).”  I lay back down; my heart is still beating fast.  In my stomach, I feel the effects of the adrenalin rush.  It’s a good thing.  I take a deep breath, remind myself that it was just a dream, and try to relax.

I guess this is how Shlomo feels when he dreams of woo-woos.

 Just so that you can hear what I heard (or what I thought I heard).  Ours are slightly louder – or maybe not, it could just be less traffic.  Notice that the cars are stopping.  When there is an azaka, people who are driving are instructed to stop their vehicles, get out, and lay prone on the ground, to minimize the chance of injury.  Because not everyone follows these instructions (and just in general), it is safer to go to the side of the road, which is why everyone is going over to the shoulder. 

Hamas’ Tunnel Plans

from http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/27/security-sources-say-hamas-planned-a-massive-terror-tunnels-attack-for-september-24/

If you were wondering what Hamas was planning to do with the tunnels it was digging between Gaza and Israel, here’s the answer.  They were planning a massive massacre, to be carried out on the holiday of Rosh Hashana (in about two months).  Remember what happened to the Fogels?  Multiply that by a thousand.

Egypt, by the way, has been a good friend.  They’ve destroyed a number of tunnels (though their tunnels are different than ours; theirs are smuggling tunnels and the ones we’re destroying are meant for kidnapping, running, and hiding)  between Gaza and Sinai, and have killed quite a few terrorists.  Obviously, they have personal interest in doing this – it’s not just for us.  But it sure helps.