These days I’m walking around with a constant mo-a-ka. My Hebrew-speaking friends know that a moaka is “a feeling of heavy burden, emotional stress or a physical sensation of stress and discomfort.” I want it to stop. I want to go back to planning trips abroad, to going out for breakfast with my gal pals on Friday mornings, to posting nonsense on FB, and to not having to worry about our kids who are serving in the army. My youngest daughter told me that two of her friends have been incommunicado for close to a week and that means that they are surely fighting in Gaza. Lots of soldiers are fighting on the ground in Gaza but this news specifically gives me a serious mo-a-ka.
I have a mo-a-ka because the app on my phone which notifies citizens when there’s an air raid siren has been alerting non-stop all over the country. Just imagine a siren going off when you’re in the shower or sleeping or changing your baby’s diaper. People have up to 90 seconds in the center of the country to get to a protected room and only 15 seconds for those closer to Israel’s borders. A nine-year-old girl died last week from heart failure when the siren went off in her town and she had an extreme panic attack. Even though we have the Iron Dome which does a pretty good job of shooting rockets out of the sky, sometimes it misses and there is a direct hit on someone’s home. Can you blame this little girl for being terrified? Can you imagine a rocket slamming through your roof?
And what if you can’t get to a protective space in time? Then you’re supposed to lie on the ground face down with your arms folded over your head. I had to do that once in Tel Aviv when a siren caught me driving on a busy road. You see, missiles fired from Gaza on civilian populations have been going on for years. Nothing new there. But every time the IDF has retaliated by going after the rocket launchers, the world has demanded a ceasefire. And we, as good citizens of the world, have complied. But not now. It would be a big mistake to bow to demands for a ceasefire now because it would just be an opportunity, like every other time, for Hamas to regroup and re-arm. I feel a moaka hoping that all of this is not for nothing.
I feel SICK watching all the pro-Palestinian protesters in big cities all over the world and on college campuses spew their hate-filled anti-Israel rhetoric and hearing their entirely false accusations of “genocide,” “occupation,” and how the IDF is killing “innocent Palestinians.” The sharp rise of antisemitism all over the world frightens me. But as someone I know posted today: Israel is not the reason for antisemitism. Antisemitism is the reason we have Israel.
I feel a deep moaka thinking about those hostages in Gaza. Mothers with babies, children, the elderly, the disabled…. There is a three-year-old little girl whose parents were murdered and I lie awake wondering who comforts her when she is scared. I also think of Hersh, an American citizen, whose mother spoke so eloquently to the U.N. and I wonder if he received medical attention. There was a Hamas video of him being loaded onto a truck with one hand blown off. And the poor, poor families not knowing what is to become of their loved ones. And what sick people tear down posters of the hostages? I have lots of reasons to feel a moaka.
And all those poor people killed on that peaceful Saturday morning almost a month ago. That gives me the biggest moaka. I have heard one witness account after another from first responders who told of the horror they saw. And I saw photos, terrible photos, which I cannot unsee. I am haunted by what I cannot imagine they experienced in their final moments on this Earth. I have the deepest sympathy for their families.
And I have a terrible moaka for the young soldiers who were killed in battle and especially for their mothers who have to bury them.
The good news is that we are resilient. Our president went on national TV yesterday to praise us for it during these difficult days. Because even with such a moaka, we get on with our business. We really have no other choice. But we are looking forward to better days. And they will come. And only then, this moaka will finally stop.
