קונצרט מולדת - הביתה | HOMELAND CONCERT

The pornography of disasters

 These are just chapter heads that I write in my head. I decided not to comment on other blogs that refer superficially and without real knowledge to what is happening here. People take what they are given and I don't blame them, it is what it is.                                                                                                                              Filmed dramatic disasters bring high ratings. One moment you are a victim and the next moment you become the forces of evil because of the pornography of the disasters. As if there wasn't a continuous sequence of events, of history, of reasons, of facts.                                                                                                      Someone anonymous wrote here yesterday a correct and very comprehensive comment about the truth and facts here, but after a moment he deleted it. I regretted it, even though this blog was not supposed to deal with politics in the first place. But this is no longer politics but life itself here.                                Now we are in danger from the Houthis in Yemen who are firing missiles to the south, the Hezbollah in the north who have already destroyed entire settlements, this morning something was fired from Iraq, and of course still missiles from Gaza. And still we are the bad guys in the story.                                     

Merry Christmas

 To all my friends here, old and new, I wish you a happy holiday, may it be delicious, bright and full of joy. Merry Christmas.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Everyone wants to be right.

 In my childhood I was the only one of my friends who had grandmothers. One of my grandmothers fled Germany in 1933 and the other arrived here before that. The grandmothers of my friends stayed in their countries in Europe, and the end is known.I was also one of the few who had cousins and a large extended family, my friends didn't, their grandmothers disappeared there with the children and the whole family.                 The people who still came here after the war didn't talk much and little by little I started to find out what they went through. As a child I always wondered if I would manage to survive, and how, I had dreams, like many children of my generation, that I was hiding and being chased.                                          I think that something from this feeling of persecution is deeply embedded in our DNA, mine, otherwise I have no idea why in times of distress here, in times of deep fear I try to find support, if only with a kind word right here in Blogland, as if this is supposed to be the safe place, but it is not so for some people. People have opinions, they cling to them forcefully, they also have their fears.                                                                              Everyone wants to be right.

More thoughts

 I think I found the answer to why I get so upset and comment so emotionally on such and such posts in Blogland.

I realized what role the blog plays in my life now.

I function well day by day, of course there is a cloud of slight anxiety and attention that accompanies me

But it doesn't have much emotional expression.                                                                                                               The blog is where the emotions come out. The fear, the great anxiety, lack of acknowledgment, and the great need for a kind word and comfort.

Around me, in the place where I live, everyone feels the same, and most of the people I am with on a daily basis allow themselves very little expression of feelings in our daily life, it probably protects us.                                               I probably attribute much more power to what people write than it really has, just because here on the blog the emotions work stronger. The great fear comes out, the anger, the helplessness, the deep concern, the lack of confessions, the helplessness, and the guilt.

I argue with comments on blogs and then won't sleep at night because of it. I'm not good at arguments, I have no experience with it in real life.                                                                                                                             Our life here has changed so much and it is impossible to know what the future will be here, I want to write about it, but it is clear to me that there will always be someone who will comment "yes, but what about Gaza?", yes, suffering is compared to suffering and I have nothing to do with it.                                                                                                              

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?                                                                                                                                                                                     

                   

thoughts

 I knew this moment would come. Now that I'm on the side of the "bad guys" I'm very sensitive to nuances. I notice who no longer comments here and make my interpretation which may be wrong but that is my sensitivity.                                                                                                                                                                  I would so much like things to go differently but I have no control over what happens.

Yesterday I was at the hairdresser, there were few people there, we talked among ourselves in the silence and pain of shared fate. This country is small and everyone knows more than one person who was killed, kidnapped or missing, there was no need to justify or explain anything. No one had to "pick a side", we are all on this side.                                                                                                                                                           I read in the blogs of people not from here how difficult it is for them with this situation in the world and I feel a little guilty, I know I'm not really guilty but I started to think that maybe it is no longer possible to separate "who I am" in blogland from a difficult story of pain and sadness,                                                             I still can't find the real reason why I'm sharing my thoughts here, I'm not sure that those who don't go through it can really understand. Blogland is a kind of "imagined reality" where real people exist, apparently their opinion is very important to me otherwise I wouldn't bother to explain it.

And finally, if I succeed I will upload a picture of the meatballs I made today. This also happens here.              before cooking.

The thirty-seventh day

I myself am surprised by what great anxiety, despair, helplessness and fear bring out of me. The flurry of comments on poor Weaver's blog who herself is a victim of misinformation, the arguments I get into here in blogland trying to explain reality as it is to people who refuse to see.                                                                                                                                                                             I always read here how much the heart of one or another blogger hurts for the children of Gaza, I have never read that the heart hurts because of an Israeli child.                                         A bit of history - the British after they finished ruling here divided what they called Palestine-Israel into two countries. Egypt should have received the Gaza Strip but refused and tried to invade Israel from the south. They were stopped by the small Israeli army in the south and thus the Gaza Strip remained outside of Egypt, no one wanted them. Israel provided them with water, electricity and more for many years. allowed them to enter and work here. The Egyptians do not allow them to stay in Egypt for more than twenty-four hours.                                        The people of Zaka, who have been collecting remains of bodies from terrorist attacks that were here for twenty years and also arrived at the homes of the victims in the houses burned on the seventh of October, say that on the refrigerators they found a list of people from Gaza and travel times, they transported people and children from Gaza to medical treatments in hospitals. These good people are hostages in Gaza or dead. Most of them are in their seventies and eighties.                                                                                                                                         In 2006 the residents of Gaza chose Hamas to rule over them and since then their lives have changed for the worse. Hamas is ISIS and it is not only an organization but also an idea, the idea is to rule Islam all over the world, even in the most brutal ways, and it will not end here. We actually also protect you in London, Yorkshire and Bath from the day they get there. They are actually already there but still quiet. Waiting for an opportunity.                                                Hamas is hiding in hospitals in Gaza, I just heard a recorded conversation between an Israeli army commander and the director of the hospital in Gaza, the Israeli instructed the doctor which streets to pass with the patients they were evacuating from the hospital, the Hamas people shoot them so they don't leave and the Israeli army guards them so they can cross safely to the south of the Gaza Strip .                                                                                                There is a video of a nurse in a hospital in Gaza crying that Hamas is stealing the medicine from the sick children.

Israel does not commit war crimes and anyone who writes like that is committing an injustice. Imagine if one day London, Yorkshire or Bath were bombarded with thousands of rockets, what would your government or army do? (Who shelled Dresden?), don't believe what you see or read on the bbc, they have been distorting the facts for a long time and always against us.                                                                                                                                   The war is now going on in the north as well and it is possible that the next few days will be even more difficult.

Yesterday there were a few sentences in Blogland that were like an arrow in my heart and I thought I would no longer write here, but this morning I woke up with the decision that I must continue precisely because of this, because of the twisting of the truth and the small chance that there are some people who understand what is happening here.                                                 

 

The picture is from another time. The children grew up in the meantime.

On my last visit to them in a conversation with the fifteen year old grandson, he wanted to give me an example of an irrational decision and gave as an example my decisions to travel to them while there is a danger of rockets. It was his attempt to show me how sometimes emotion makes us make irrational decisions. I was very happy that this was the example he chose.                                                                         I'm still debating how and what to write here. Do people really want to read with their morning coffee about such a harsh reality? On the other hand, this is my blog and maybe this is my place to write what really hurts me.                                                                                                                                                  I find myself arguing with people on other blogs, arguing in a way that only great pain and deep anxiety can bring out of me and I have a hard time with it because it leaves me in great helplessness in the face of the lack of understanding that exists regarding the real situation.                                                          The position of a victim is a position that the world accepts with understanding, but as soon as the victim is fighting for his life and does not have a multitude of options to choose from, things change.                                                                                                                                                                       I will soon be on the road again, a relative asked me to take him to visit my daughter, for the past few weeks he has been afraid to join me and if the relative calm continues we will set off. The problem is on the way, you have to get out of the car and lay on the ground, I can lie down, I'm not sure I can get up easily. I hope I don't have to test it.

family

 I receive worried messages from relatives all over the world. They are all great-grandchildren of my grandmother's sisters.

From Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa, Copenhagen in Denmark, Sao Paulo in Brazil, Chemnitz in Germany. A small town in Alabama whose name I forgot, there are also in Australia and England but I haven't heard from them yet.                                                                                                                           These are the eight sisters. The only brother for some reason does not appear in the picture. The picture was taken around 1905 in Leipzig, Germany. The four little sisters, including my grandmother who was about five years old when the picture was taken, left Germany in 1933. My grandmother was already the mother of a six-year-old girl (my mother) and had to leave Berlin, where she lived then, and to abandon the shops she had there in Alexander Platz.                                                                Tsila, the eldest sister, left for South Africa many years before the rise of the Nazis, one of her grandsons was Nelson Mandela's advocate and had to flee South Africa, the Australians refused to accept him and that's how he came to England. He was very successful there and even became a lord.                                  Ida and her husband Jacob ran a Jewish orphanage in Oslo. The Nazis sent her husband to Auschwitz with many of their housemates. She was disabled and therefore saved.

Anna went to Alabama to meet Jacob's brother, she married him and stayed there. Bertha married a German in Chemnitz. When the Nazis wanted to take her he broke her leg and that's how she was saved.

Louisa and her husband sent one child to Denmark and one child to Israel even before the war. They did not manage to leave in time and arrived at Auschwitz.

Sophie stayed with the old father in Leipzig, he eventually managed to reach his daughter in Oslo but she did not manage to survive in Germany.

And that's why we have so many relatives all over the world.

My grandmother Dora lived here for sixty years. She never managed to learn Hebrew properly and that's why I understand German as my mother tongue.

I still miss her and the wonderful foods she made all my childhood. She was an artist, a talented painter, but there was always the feeling that she was someone who was uprooted from her roots.                                                   

More of the same

 Today I went to my grandchildren again with zucchini fritters, sweets and orange juice. On the way I stopped to buy them a "gahnoםn "which is a very popular Yemeni dish here and in fact it is a dough baked in a lot of fat throughout the night. There is a family that sells it in their yard in one of the small settlements on the way to the grandchildren.

Because I'm doing the calculation of the Hamas missiles I'm almost sure that the morning is the right time to go, so far I haven't been wrong but I got to them when everyone was still sleeping and I waited for them to open the door for me.

a month has passed already. The videos of the horror that was here are shown to foreign journalists and they leave in tears after a few minutes. There is a forty-five minute film most of which is from the terrorists' body cameras. They don't show it here because of the magnitude of the horror.

The aunt of a nine-month-old baby who was kidnapped to Gaza is now being interviewed on television, followed by the grandmother of a three-year-old girl who is there alone after her parents were shot, and so on all day.

.Public opinion in the world is against us now and I no longer have the strength to explain. I know that a sentence like that invites the trolls here, but I can deal with that.

In Germany they started marking Jewish homes and in France and England Jewish mothers are afraid to send their children to school. The world has learned nothing.

I changed my mind

 I changed my mind. I will write here. I hope something coherent comes out because every time I start writing there is an alarm.

I write what is happaning with me here, but I always feel that I represent something bigger because this is not my private war. I am especially saddened by the stormy and large demonstrations against us all over the world and I feel helpless in the face of people's lack of understanding that we would never start such a war. What country would stand silently in the face of the murder and massacre of 1400 of its people, babies, children, innocent citizens.

In what world should a grandmother like me feel that she is risking her life when she drives for half an hour to bring her grandchildren candy and food. Yes, I did it again. Yesterday I made them the cheese fritters they like, pasta and Bolognese and a meat pie and I left. The roads are empty and it's even scarier.                                                                                                                                                                                             They are surprised every time I come and of course very happy. I don't stay there long, I'm constantly calculating when is the right time to leave before the rockets and so far I've succeeded.

The shower is also a small victory every time. I hear around me that I'm not the only one who is afraid that the roof will collapse on her head in the middle of the shower. How embarrassing. I was told not to take a shower on the round hour because on the round hour there is more chance of an alarm.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Today I went to do the annual test for my car, something that in the past I paid someone to do it for me. Since on my birthday which was the day before the war started I promised myself to overcome my fears, I went by myself and it was easy. I was the only driver there, everyone is either the army or afraid and so I got through it in five minutes.

And thanks again to everyone who comments here and I apologize again that I still don't respond personally to the comments.                                                                                                                                                                        And one more thing, I of course think in Hebrew and sometimes I use Google Translate when I'm not sure I wrote correctly, if there are sentences or some words that seem strange to you, blame Google. (I will deal with the rest of the charges later...).

Another update

 I think I will take a short or long break from writing posts. I think that everything I can write here can bring a lot of sadness and pain to your world, you who read here, and I don't want to bring it to you.

Those who want to be updated can do so through the news wherever you live. Even if the truth is not always told there.

I will read your blogs and comment there as if nothing is happening here, as long as I feel it is the right thing to do.

The world is full of pain but also good and beautiful things and I don't want to bring the pain into your world.

I'm glad you were here for me with a kind word. It was very important and still is.

See you in the comments to your blogs, in the special and personal world that each of you brings to blogland.

The narrow corridor of fear

 I noticed that people here fear the silence. Hours of silence are interpreted here as a conspiracy. Maybe they are planning something big, maybe they are there doing the math on how to keep their ammunition for a long time and so on.

A miracle happened to me. I'm not afraid anymore. Most of the time. Yesterday I went to the small town nearby to buy a new computer. My computer crashed and if there's something I can't do without it's a computer even though most of the time I'm with the iPhone which is actually also a small computer but it's not the same.

I also took my neighbor who doesn't drive with me and together we felt very brave.

In one of the Zen books on my shelf I read the concept of the narrow corridor of fear. I remember then it helped me overcome my worries and concerns that always accompanied me. I think I crossed that corridor.                                                                                                                                                                                                My granddaughter asked me to make her the zucchini fritters she likes, tomorrow morning I will buy zucchini at the small store here that has everything and if the conditions permit I will go there again in the next few days.

In the meantime, Shabbat is relatively quiet except for a few rockets that were fired at the city of Ashdod, not far from where my grandchildren live.

 Friday the 6th of October was my birthday. This date is not always easy for me because it is also the date when my first husband was killed in the Yom Kippur War. There were years when I ignored my birthday, but years have come when I do mention it and here in the picture is my granddaughter, some of you know her from the blog at the restaurant in Ashdod where we celebrated my birthday. In the last week, Ashdod has been bombed every day and of course you can't go to the restaurant. But on this Friday life still seemed normal. On Saturday morning that changed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  On this birthday I promised myself that this would be the year I stop being afraid. I always worry and there are too many that I fear because of them. Like driving in certain places and parking in the city. I didn't think that the next morning life would challenge me to stop being afraid.

Indeed I am very proud of myself. I'm not afraid I went to my grandchildren yesterday with sweets and food that I cooked for them. I prayed all the way that I wouldn't get hit by a missile and I did arrive safely and returned home after two hours.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Yesterday on the phone my hairdresser told me that he had no clients. I agreed with him that I would arrive this morning and hoped that this time too I would do the 14 kilometers in peace, so it was.

It is now afternoon and that is the time when the windows and the house start shaking. Biden is visiting here and it gives a little confidence that there might be someone to help in difficult times.

Thanks again to everyone who says a kind word. It helps a lot.

update

 Every time I start writing there are alarms.

It is important for you to know that Israel did not shell a hospital. A long-range rocket that Hamas was preparing to launch exploded there and in addition to that there was a weapons cache there.

the eighth day

 I want to thank each of you who comment here with understanding and compassion and care. I'm sorry that I can't comment on everyone personally but I read everything. I read Joanne's compassionate and concerned post and the comments from people with whom I've been doing a long journey here in blogland and also those who are commenting for the first time . Thank you all.                                                                                Of course my attention was caught by one comment by someone that she doesn't like Israel. There are quite a few of them in the world, but a day after the terrible massacre that took place here, it would have been possible to show a little more compassion.                                                                                                      Here the alarms still go on but the frequency has decreased. Sometimes the prolonged silence is frightening because the question always arises, perhaps Hamas is saving the ammunition for the great strike that it constantly threatens.                                                                                                                                     There is also the daily question of when should I take a shower so that the alarm doesn't catch me in the middle. So far I have been able to meet the challenge.       I will update more later.

Thank you all.                                                                       

the seventh day

 Hamas is ISIS. Everyone should know this. Now it's with us, tomorrow it could be anywhere. They found Isis flags and training booklets of this terrible organization. The way they massacred people children and grandmothers is also the way of Isis. I'm writing this because the photos that came out or are already coming out of Gaza will provoke harsh criticism of us. Indeed, the heart goes out to the simple people in Gaza because they are also victims of the Hamas. We have no other choice. The population in Gaza is now being asked to leave south before they shell Hamas. The sad thing is that Egypt is not ready to give them asylum. There is not a single Arab country ready to receive them. Such a thing would not happen with us. Israel sends planes and people to the edge of the world when someone is in trouble.

Our parents and grandmothers came here because they had nowhere else to go in Europe during World War II. Those who stayed there did not survive and we have no other place. I am writing this as a prelude to the troll attacks that will write here or on other blogs how bad and cruel we are.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         I already know the difference between an explosion of the Iron Dome, shelling in the south or the fall of a rocket because yesterday a rocket fell very close to here. The house shook more than ever.

the fifth day

I am debating whether to tell only my personal story here or to give a broader picture of the terrible thing that happened here. The truth is that nothing happened to me that had not happened before in previous rounds of war. Right, I'm scared. I have many minutes of fear with alarms in my unprotected hallway, I don't go to my grandchildren and I hardly leave the house. My grandchildren have not been going to school for five days and they are all sleeping together with the two dogs, the cats and their mother in the protected room. They are used to such situations and not anxious.   -

The TV stations here take pity on us and do not broadcast difficult images or details. There are difficult details that I see precisely on foreign TV stations. But after five days the real story starts to come out.

There is an organization called Zaka that has been operating for more than twenty years in places where there have been serious accidents or attacks. They collect corpses and what remains after an attack. They have seen terrible things in these twenty years and now they are being interviewed and crying. They say that they have never been exposed to such severe cases of abuse of babies, children, and deaths. Entire settlements are completely burned and the bodies have not yet been collected. There are also dead bodies of dogs and cats in the streets.              Everyone talks about it in terms of a holocaust after the sights are revealed.

I think this is the last time I will write here about the general picture because I don't want to flood the post with descriptions of horror and also with the understanding that as much as I want the understanding and support from those who read it won't always happen 100 percent.

With all the difficulty we experience here there is also a beautiful side of the thousands of people here who help everyone who is in need. The feeling is that the disputes that have been here in the past months are over and the people are very united.

And a big thank you to all the blogland members for the supportive comments. For me it means a lot.                                             

what is happening now

 My house is about forty kilometers north of Gaza and thirty kilometers south of Jerusalem. In the terms of our small country, it is far from Gaza and close to Jerusalem. I can't sleep at night and already know how to distinguish between the echoes of the shelling in Gaza and the explosions of the rockets from Gaza that are sent here and stop near the Iron Dome. The house shakes anyway.All the TV stations here talk in terms of the Holocaust when they try to describe the scale of the horror that took place on Saturday in the border and at the nature party where 260 young people were murdered. In the settlements,  in the families with their small children were murdered. There are parents, children and grandchildren who are still looking for their family member.The feeling is that something more difficult and longer awaits us in the coming days. People were asked to stock up on water and food as scary as it sounds and belongs to other times. I will update more later and sorry that I don't personally answer comments.

what is happening here

 I don't know if I will go into all the details about what is happening here. I don't know what the news stations in your places are reporting, but without a doubt what you see from here you don't see there.

On Saturday morning at six thirty I woke up to an alarm. I don't have a protected place and I'm just standing in the small hallway of my small house that won't withstand even a rocket fragment. This happened several more times during the day. All day and night I heard loud explosions and saw the fireballs of the Iron Dome. The TV is on and tells me where there is an alarm at any given time.

TThey entered houses and shot at families there. They took captive small children and demented old women with their Nepali caregivers. People are still besieged in their homes and waiting for rescue.

I still haven't heard the alarms here this morning. I calm myself by cooking vegetable soup. I watch on TV unhappy and painful parents whose child who was at a nature party was kidnapped to Gaza with several dozen other boys and girls who were at the party. Those who were not kidnapped or managed to escape were shot.

If I succeed I will upload a picture from the night before from spending time at a restaurant with my granddaughter and the rest of the family in honor of my birthday which was the night before. 

Untitled

I'm afraid that when I really want to write here again, I won't  remember the technique of uploading the posts, so this is an attempt.

Life around here is so complex and charged with difficult energies, but everyday life is really fine. I guess when there is some sort of existential threat again I will come back and write because there is nothing like blogland as a comforting environment on hard days.
 

kitten

 She didn't go to school today because the puppy she found has to be fed every three hours. And yes, she has grown a lot and like all thirteen  year old  girls, the gel polish on her nails is very expertly done.