If the cards were dealt differently

 I try to think what I would write or say if I were somewhere else, in some place in the world where bloggers come from. What would I write if any of the blogland people were in danger of life, living in great anxiety and trying to put what is happening into words here. Would it be very important for me to be objective? Would I try to reflect to him how wrong and inappropriate the way the people who are leading the situation is? Would I understand that he also has no control over the situation?                                                  Would I ignore his pain and would I write superficial comments that try to balance and compare the situation of the attacker and the attacked at the same time?                                                                                            I don't think I would do that to a virtual friend even if I never meet him.

And a few more words--

My heart also aches for the citizens, children and women of Gaza. And maybe that's precisely why my reactions are so emotional, I seem to feel a little guilty even though I'm not bombing anyone. The citizens of Gaza are not our enemies, only the people of Hamas.

This time the only way is to bomb their weapons stockpiles and drive them out of Gaza. There is no other way. Hamas prevents the citizens from leaving the dangerous places and they are its victims.                                      Despite the comments of the good majority here, the feeling is of loneliness in blogland, there is no one here like me.

                  

 Blogland is not a good place for Israelis or Jews at this time.

I know there are many good people here but the other minority breaks my heart.

Day fifty eight

 There is no ceasefire. Guess who broke it?

I can't understand why they do this and how they have no mercy for the people they use as human shields.

On Friday I planned to be at my daughter's house for the evening because I thought there would still be a ceasefire, of course I stayed at home and as soon as the alarms started I saw that rockets were being fired towards their place as well. I always wait ten minutes which is the recommended time to stay in the protected room (for those who have one) and then call to ask if everything is okay. Everything was fine then.                                                                                                                                                                               We decided that I would come on Saturday morning but I was afraid, in the previous round I knew more or less when they would shoot and I could guess when it was worth going, this time I decided to wait and see what the rate and range were at which they shoot. I haven't been to them yet.                                               Yesterday I went to buy some things in the small town next to us and it is impossible to describe the sadness I see on the faces of the people, everyone knows someone who was killed, kidnapped, captured or missing. This country is very small.                                                                                                                                  There are still more than a hundred people in captivity. They are not in a hurry to release the young women, it is clear to everyone why, but nobody talk about it openly.

Yesterday I saw on TV a 97-year-old woman who managed to escape from her house in Kibbutz Beri, her Filipino nanny was murdered, the terrorists were already in her house, but she went out with her walker and found someone who drove her outside the kibbutz that was already destroyed and burned and managed to get to a safe place. A 97-year-old woman, her son was murdered there and her grandson was kidnapped to Gaza.                                                                                                                                                        There are hours when if you don't turn on the TV and don't look at the iPhone, life seems to be normal, but the soul knows that it is not really so.

The grandmothers who returned from captivity

 They were taken from their homes that Saturday morning. Some of them after hiding in the protected room in their houses when the terrorists were shooting and burning their houses, they could no longer breathe the smoke and left. On the way to captivity they saw the bodies of their friends or their children or their husbands on the sidewalks near the burned houses.                                                                                           The terrorists drove them on motorcycles or on the scooters they stole from them or took them barefoot on a dirt road with spikes, women in their seventies, eighties and eighty-five. The terrorists filmed it on video and they look very amused and happy there. They make fun of the older women.                   These women are women who lived near the border with Gaza and every Friday they would wait there with vehicles that they had ordered in advance to take patients from Gaza for treatment in hospitals in Israel. They believed in peace and were very innocent. They did it for years. In the hospitals they took care of the mothers from Gaza who came with the sick children and gave them everything they needed.                      It didn't help them. They were taken captive without medication and some of them did not survive there. The Red Cross received a list of medications but did not see them.                                                        For 54 days they did not shower, ate pita bread a day, divided the pita into four parts, a quarter for each meal, they lost 20 kilograms of their weight in 54 days.

Before returning home, the terrorists let them shower and dressed them in strange clothes, they did not change clothes for 54 days.

Despite everything, they returned proud and upright and asked the families who received them not to cry. These are the women they are.                                                                                                                                       They also really have nowhere to return to because their houses were burned. Some of them have their husbands still in captivity, there are some whose husbands did not survive captivity because he did not receive medicine or was taken wounded and not treated.

Yesterday in a TV report I saw a young couple of parents announcing to their granddaughter that grandma is coming back. The granddaughter said "Grandma is free?" , in what world should a granddaughter say such a thing?

The children who returned from captivity

 The children who returned from captivity are two, three, four, eight or twelve years old. Still talking in whispers. They lost their voice after being banned from speaking out loud for more than fifty days in dark tunnels.                                                                                                                                                                                        They came back very thin. Eat a pita bread or two a day. They have not seen sunlight and have skin problems. Also orthopedic problems because they haven't been on the move for so long.                                                Some of them returned with the mothers and the father remained captive or was murdered on the first day of what happened here. Some of them returned without parents. They can't really go home because they don't have a home. Their houses were destroyed and burned.                                                     They stay with their whole community in small rooms in hotels in Israel and are basically refugees in their own country. They have nowhere to return.                                                                                         A nine-month-old baby and a two-year-old boy were still left there with their mother. Hamas claims that it does not know where they are. What does a baby do in captivity? Recently there are rumors that they are no longer alive.                                                                                                                                              Twelve-year-old Eitan, who was there alone all these days, said that they beat him and forced him to watch the horror films of the massacres that Hamas committed here. His father is still in captivity. His mother was also kidnapped from the house with a baby and a four-year-old girl but managed to escape on the way. Yesterday they met after fifty-four days.                                                                                                            There is still a ceasefire here and no one knows if it will last two more days and what will happen next.

 My daughter came back from London this morning. As usual my worries were in vain and everything is fine. Due to the nature of her work she had two security guards there and she even enjoyed the streets of London which she loves so much.

Here the girl enjoys the sweets and perfumes that her mother brought.

Luckily for us there is still a ceasefire and our lives are going on like life anywhere else in the world, more or less.

The television is still on since six in the morning and we are following the return of the captives to Gaza. In the meantime, children and mothers and grandmothers who were kidnapped on Saturday morning are being returned, they were taken barefoot and with their pyjamas.                                                           Now on TV the  daughter of one of the grandmothers)84( who was returned yesterday,   she is in danger of life because for 54 days she did not receive her medication. Her son met with the representatives of the Red Cross and gave them the medicines but they never reached her,                               The four-year-old girl Abigail also returned yesterday from captivity in Gaza. She was there alone because her parents were murdered in their home. She fled to the neighbors' house and was taken prisoner with the mother and the three children of the neighbors, ages 4, 10 and 9.                                             Abigail also has Irish citizenship. The Prime Minister of Ireland talked about her but was unable to tell the truth. He said "Abigail got lost and came back". This tells the whole story of hypocrisy and the inability to look reality in the eyes and tell the truth.                                                                                         The children's hospitals that were preparing to receive the captive children who lived for 54 days in dark tunnels in Gaza tried to learn in advance how to receive them but were unable to find any previous experience in the world for such a case.                                                                                                       They established a department that is like a hotel and do everything for the children who return. They even brought the pets there that the kids missed so much. Unfortunately not all pets survived, they also shot dogs and cats.                                                                                                                   In an hour the additional list of the children who will return today will be published, we all hope that the nine-month-old baby will also be among them.

The day after tomorrow or tomorrow the ceasefire will end. No one really knows what will happen here.

four in the morning

 I've been awake since four in the morning, I woke up in a panic and I've been awake ever since, probably the thing that scares me the most is mice.

I heard a mouse, or so I thought, and I couldn't continue sleeping, I brought Philip the cat into the room, I never allow him to enter the bedroom but this time he had a role, he purred happily and was excited but it didn't seem that he suspected anything. He is an excellent hunter and I trust him.                                                         Soon I will turn on the TV and reality will take over my thoughts again. The frequency of the alarms and the rocket fire here is decreasing, but there are still sounds of war in the background.                                              My daughter is supposed to go to London for work for a week and I will be with the  grandchildren. I warn her not to speak Hebrew in the street and to hide any identifying mark ץ                                                                                                                                                                      Doesn't it remind you of other dark times?