“How are you doing?” It’s the question Israelis are afraid to ask and find hard to answer.
“As good as can be expected,” most sigh in response to what should be – in regular circumstances – a mere rhetorical pleasantry. But these aren’t normal times. For Israelis, everything changed on October 7.
I have adopted the answer “Yehiyeh tov” – “Things will be good.” I believe it. Life goes on, but it will never be the same as it was before that Saturday.
In the Hamas mega-attack on that dark day, some 3,000 well-armed terrorists invaded southern Israel under heavy rocket fire and carried out the most barbaric atrocity perpetrated on the Jewish people since the Holocaust: Some 1,400 were massacred – many having been tortured before being burned alive. Whole families were wiped out. Some 5,000 survivors carry physical wounds; many thousands more have sustained emotional scars. Most of the country is suffering from trauma at some level. Hundreds of thousands from the northern and southern borders have been displaced.
And then there are the 240 people abducted by Hamas and being held captive in Gaza. It’s hard to sleep at night worrying about the fate of these hostages – Israelis and foreign workers; the young children, the elderly, and the infirm. As activist Hen Mazzig put it: “I wish people cared about Jewish babies being murdered, as much as they do for the rights of those responsible for their deaths.”
The news this week that Israeli forces had in a remarkable rescue operation managed to free Pvt. Ori Megidish from Hamas captivity provided a cause for celebration. But we all knew – even if we didn’t want to say it out loud – that soldiers would lose their lives in the battles and operations. By Wednesday, as the list of fallen soldiers grew longer – every one a fallen hero – the pain was almost physical.
And there were the hidden casualties: A young girl whose heart stopped beating as she took cover from rocket fire in the family’s safe room, literally scared to death – she, too, is a victim of Hamas; so is the bus driver, the once ever-smiling former resident of Gush Katif, who took his own life after days of witnessing the terrible scenes of death and destruction as he ferried the new refugees to safer places elsewhere in the country.
Jewish humor as a coping mechanism doesn't work now
FOR MANY, traditional Jewish humor provides a coping mechanism. One joke doing the rounds on social media asks: “Can we just jump to the ‘Let’s eat’ part?” It is a shorthand reference to the Jewish holidays of Purim, Passover, and Hanukkah – all of which are typically summed up as “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!”
Other memes have the words “No food, no water, but plenty of rockets” displayed against the backdrop of the Palestinian flag. It’s not funny.
This week, when the Arrow long-range air-defense system intercepted a missile fired at Israel by Houthi terrorists in Yemen – opening another potential front by Iranian proxies – a new joke surfaced: “If Yemen declares war and then cancels it, that is, in effect, a classic Yemenite Step,” referring to a standard feature in Israeli folk dancing.
There are also plenty of barbed jokes at the BBC’s expense. They deserve it. The Beeb’s initial refusal to call Hamas terrorists and its tendency to blame the Jewish state for whatever befalls it, earned the BBC a special place in Israeli dark humor as we go through hell.
One noted a rule of “Journalism 101: If someone says it’s raining outside and another person says it’s dry. It’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out of the window and find out which is true.”
Israeli satire TV programs such as Eretz Nehederet and Zehu Zeh!, making a comeback in these challenging times, both noted that Israel’s dislike and distrust of the BBC has created a new bond of national unity.
Indeed, the solidarity created in the emergency is the brightest light in this darkest hour. For the first nine months of the year, the country tore itself apart over the government’s proposed judicial reform and the response to it. Some went so far as to predict that Israel was on the verge of a civil war. That joke, at least, is on Hamas. They have brought us back together.
The slogan “Yachad nenatzeach” – “Together we will win” – is everywhere. Perhaps it serves as an alternative answer to the question: “How are you doing?”
I’ve seen the mantra on messages from my bank, my health fund, various government ministries, and even on the shelves of my local supermarket where it appears as: “With God’s help, we will win.” Milk cartons, by the way, display photos of the “Missing”: The captives being held by Hamas.
One Jerusalemite shared a photo of eggs with the slogan “Yachad nenatzeach” printed in red ink above the expiry date. At first glance it seemed incongruous, but less so when you recall the symbolism of eggs, both the symbol of life and the food traditionally eaten by Jewish mourners. Eggs also feature prominently at the Passover Seder – before we get down to the serious “Let’s eat” part.
I once heard a rabbi explain that the egg has a special quality that makes it appropriate for Jewish ceremonies. While most foods start out hard and become softer when they are boiled, eggs do the opposite, becoming tougher the longer they are immersed in boiling water. It serves as a metaphor. The more trials and hardships we are subjected to, the stronger we become.
There has been a blessed outpouring of support for Israel in our hour of need. But there has also been a dangerous jump in antisemitic incidents around the world. In Makhachkala, in the Muslim-majority Russian Republic of Dagestan, an angry mob supporting the Palestinians stormed an airport and a hotel, looking for Jews and Israelis to lynch.
The monstrosity of the Hamas attacks, so reminiscent of ISIS atrocities, should serve as a wake-up call. When hundreds of thousands of protesters crowd the streets of major Western cities calling for the death of Jews and for the Islamist Hamas regime to prevail, the message is clear: It’s literally written on walls and on the pro-Palestinian placards.
Those who side with the terrorists – the monsters who raped women, beheaded children, abducted captives, and burned homes around families whose charred remains were found bound together – have no right to claim to support human rights and justice. Those who call not for an end to terrorism, but to end the operation aimed at destroying the terrorists’ capabilities, have a broken moral compass that points in the wrong direction.
The anti-Israel rallies on American campuses including at Ivy League universities have given rise to their own genre of jokes, with people sharing Facebook posts proudly stating: “Not to brag or anything, but I never went to Harvard.”
And just when you thought the world could not get any more absurd, UN Watch noted that on Thursday, Iran was slated to chair a UN human rights forum meeting. The UN is a bad joke in its own right.
I’M OFTEN asked whether I regret having made aliyah, building my life in Israel since 1979. It’s an easier question to answer than “How are you doing?” No. No regrets at all. The catalyst for my Zionism was the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972. The Yom Kippur War and every subsequent terrorist attack, the Kiryat Shmona massacre, the Maalot massacre, the Coastal Road massacre, every one strengthened my resolve to make my life in Israel. It’s my personal victory over terrorism. And I have no doubt that even as I write these lines, there are Jews around the world considering aliyah more seriously than ever.
Yehiyeh tov. But it will take time. We’ll pull through this, but we will never be the same. People will rebuild their lives, and we’ll rebuild the country. The dark humor will be replaced by lighter spirits.
One day, this will just be a part of history. But make no mistake: This is Jewish history – since biblical times, ever since Amalek attacked the children of Israel on their exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land, we have followed the commandment “Zachor!” “Remember!”
Living life and enjoying life will be our ultimate victory, but we will never forget or forgive. We will, however, continue to eat together and raise a glass in that quintessential Jewish toast: “Le’chaim!” “To life!”
liat@jpost.com