war life Archives - Page 5 of 7

Writing from home

Cleared for Publication

We’re fairly new here, so we don’t really know that many people. And we don’t know this family. But it’s as if we do. We caught our breath at the time when we heard that the soldier whose name was cleared for publication was one of our own, a local boy, 21-year-old Staff Sgt. David Sasson. David, who was a fighter in the Israel Defense Forces’s Oketz Special Force Counter Terror K9 Unit, was reportedly killed while on his way to search a building in Southern Gaza where his unit had identified terrorists.

Gayle Danis Rinot May 18, 2024

Writing from home

War Diaries Day 220 – From Mourning to Morning: A Path of Resilience, Strength and Unity

One minute’s silence.

The whole country stops what they’re doing.

Wherever we are – at home, on the highway, walking in the street, sitting in a meeting – we all stop, stand up and become silent for a minute.

Yesterday was Memorial Day in Israel. A day to remember all lives lost. Our soldiers who fought in the wars to secure our Jewish State and civilians who lost their lives in acts of terror – more than 30,000 in total.

This year, the day was particularly heavy because we’re in the midst of war with many soldiers’ and civilians’ lives lost and 132 hostages still held in Gaza.

It’s been more than seven months since the 7th October. With every 7th of the month that passes, we struggle to believe the reality we’re living in, that another month has been added to the count, and the hostages are still there.

Daphna Horowitz May 14, 2024

Writing from home

Freeze

I’m not brave.
I have never offered to check if there’s a burglar or terrorist outside in our garden when the dog growls and barks at night.

I take a tranquillizer before I visit the dentist.
I don’t live in a town or a kibbutz five minutes from a border. When I worked in the community school on a deserted, badly-lit road, I recited the Shema as I drove home at night from staff meetings. I clutched the steering wheel, my body hunched forward, tailing the headlights of the driver in front of me.

Fran Levin April 15, 2024

Writing from home

Broken Hearts

Some people wear their heart on their sleeves
To show it off to all around
Mine lays heavy, tied round my neck
It’s weight, it’s worth I’ve avowed

Miriam Roskind March 12, 2024

Writing from home

Waiting for Friday

Some days you can try to close your eyes and ears to the world and the war and just focus on your immediate family and your life.

But in order to do that you can’t listen to the radio in the morning where they interview the families of hostages. Or the families of soldiers who have been killed. Or the families who have been displaced from northern Israel because of continued bombings from Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Rachel Secunda February 27, 2024

Writing from home

Day 12

It has been nearly two weeks.
Somehow time has managed to crawl by and speed past.
We have been living in a weird alternate reality.
There isn’t any routine. School is still not functional.
Rockets are still falling. My kids discuss how many ‘booms’ they have heard each day.

Rachel Secunda February 19, 2024

Writing from home

Diary Entry: Days 28 and 29 – Heart Stickers

There is no shelter here, reads the sign blowing in the wind taped to the glass door. I have walked from one end of the namal (port) to the other looking for a cafe, not a restaurant that serves fish or chicken. I want a salad and a hot coffee with oat milk. I have found one at the northern area of the port of Tel Aviv. Not fancy but with a table near an outlet and they serve coffee.

Mallory Serebrin February 12, 2024

War Diaries: Day 25 – A Ray of Hope in the Darkness

3 November, 2023

On Monday night we had a sliver of light in the darkness.

We rejoiced at the brave rescue of one of the hostages, Ori Megidish, 19 years old, from a Gaza tunnel, by the IDF. A young girl who was taken, is now back with her family, back home.

Together with the four hostages released last week by Hamas (a mom and daughter, both US citizens who were visiting family in Israel and a couple of days later, two elderly women, aged 80 and 85), that makes five hostages out; 242 (by latest count) to go.

Daphna Horowitz February 12, 2024

Writing from home

Diary Entry: Days 24 and 25 – Sugar

For some, the act of just getting to a shelter is an anxiety-producing activity, especially for families with small kids that have to go down flights of stairs to the building bomb shelter, or run to the closest one in the neighborhood. My mother’s former caretaker who now cares for a 90+ invalid woman has to leave her in her bed or her wheelchair and retreat to the shelter downstairs alone, leaving R upstairs in her apartment.

Mallory Serebrin February 12, 2024

Untitled Passage

8 October, 2023

It’s my daughter yelling “airplane!” in excitement as a fighter jet flies overhead.

It’s my little nephew coming home early from shul to put on his uniform and go before the dancing has even begun.

It’s the mothers at kiddush swapping rumors and news as their sons and husbands are called up, while the children line up for candy and dance hakafot[1] because it’s still Simchat Torah and what else are we supposed to do.

Shev Shatzman February 12, 2024

Tag: war life