My family lives in one of the few places in Israel untouched by the physical effects of the war. We haven’t heard rocket sirens, seen rockets overhead, or faced gunmen infiltrating our village. It’s a strange, beautiful (albeit hot and humid) bubble of normalcy amid the nation’s anguish. From this bubble, my heart breaks for the victims of October 7 and the families shattered by a war that drags on, forcing men to serve over 200 days in a conflict they [may] no longer believe in.
And my heart is breaking for this world. It is a challenge to pretend that the world is good, to try to inspire hope in the next generation when this nation I now call home is weeping, when this nation is up in flames, and mostly, when this world makes me question the essence of humanity. How can there be such hate for those trying to rescue the innocent hostages held captive for so long?
I watch the news of the hatred targeted at American Jews and feel grateful that my children and I aren’t subject to this. And yet I don’t know if I’ll be able to protect them when the rockets from Lebanon are directed at the center, where we reside. Hezbollah’s rocket attacks are a real threat, one I have tried to ignore for the last eight months but can no longer do, as the place where I was vacationing with my family on October 7 is up in flames from nearly 250 rockets from Hezbollah. And still America is quiet.
I listened to the recent Honestly podcast with Bari Weiss in which she interviews Sheryl Sandberg, former Facebook COO, who just made a documentary about Hamas’s rape and sexual violence against women on October 7. They discuss not only the world’s lack of response to these horrific acts but also the disgusting (my word, not theirs) denial that they even occurred. I’m not sure which is worse – the disbelief of rape or the belief that the act is justified. Either way, it’s sick and distorted and deeply concerning [to me] as a woman and mother of two little girls. The podcast left me puzzled. How can my community, which so passionately chanted “Women’s rights are human rights” in the wake of the Roe v. Wade reversal, not say anything? How can amazing mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles of young girls today who will grow to an age of sexual maturity not scream from the rooftop that this is not okay? It’s not okay. We should do better, myself included.
Being saddened about the future
I am grateful for my current safety, but I am deeply saddened about our future. An American friend reminded me recently that every generation has faced societal challenges – war, economic instability, pandemics. But this war hits differently. With this conflict, it appears that what is deemed moral and just is no longer clear. I fear we are on the brink of a terrible revolution in which blame and hatred supersede logic, dialogue, the search for commonality. Or maybe it’s just that I’m no longer in America, and the bubble of same-day delivery is not strong enough to mask the hatred engulfing our world.
For those of you who find Israel’s acts in Gaza or the West Bank inhumane and unjust, please know that I do not believe that Israel or Israelis or Jews, for that matter, are categorically right or righteous. But I do feel that I am at the epicenter of the hate looking out, and we, a very small group of people, are in utter shock at the world’s response to the massacre of Israelis, to the Israeli hostages, to the rape, to Hamas’s brutality toward the Palestinian people.
I end with this thought. It appears that moderates are becoming a dwindling minority – if not in number, then certainly in share of voice. Apathy or denial that radicalism is a Western problem is the goal of radicalism, which subverts from within, and moderate America is falling for it. There will be no fence high enough to protect moderate centers from hatred if the radical majority does not share our values for civil liberties, human decency, respect for difference of opinion, and kindness. Progressivism versus conservatism needs to be tempered against the reality of the world we live in – hatred and blame are prevailing.■
Alexandra Maital lives on a moshav in the Emek Hefer region. She made aliyah with her family two years ago from Los Angeles and is in the final stage of converting her US nursing license.