This Shabbat, as Israelis rested from a devastating week of rockets and shock and damage, the government finally allowed the army to do what armies are supposed to do – they moved to stop the rockets. In the early hours, many rockets were launched, a man was killed and others wounded. But this time, there is resolve in Israel. We will be as other nations are – we will not allow our citizens to live in fear of rockets that take over their lives and condemn them to darkness and fear.
It’s a scary thing for a nation to go to war; but at times, it is scarier not to. Like most of Israel’s war, if not all of them, this was not a war of choice. Perhaps, finally, we chose the time and the place, but we did not choose if this would come to be. Today, Israel wakes to a new day, a dawn where we are at war; where our sons are fighting so that our children can go to school and play outside. There are traffic jams in the streets in central Israel; all is normal and nothing is normal.
People who need to go shopping will go; weddings that were planned will take place tonight. People will go to the movies. But with each step we take, a part of our brain is listening to what is happening in the south; a part of our heart is worrying and a part of our soul is praying.
What comes out of this military action will probably not be called peace, but at very least, it will allow us to live, at least for a while, as others do. And sometimes, that has to be enough.
We will be as others are – others who do not live under the rockets.
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