In the eye of the storm, it’s much easier to either rationalize or ignore the constant onslaught of calamities, scandals and cataclysmic events that occur in the Holy Land on a daily basis.
However, having just returned from 12 days in the relatively placid post-Trump US, visiting a daughter studying in Seattle and bringing a son to the East Coast for a year’s work/study program, I was struck by how those very events look from the outside in.
Within that short time span, here are some of the headlines that jumped out from the front pages of The Jerusalem Post: “PM set to offer Bennett, Sa’ar lead in rotation,” “IDF preparing for escalation as Gaza front remains tense,” “Syria missile lands near Dimona reactor, IDF interceptor fails,” “Netanyahu offers premiership to Gantz,” “Violence persists in capital,” “Netanyahu abandons forming gov’t,” and of course the topper, “Nations mourns 45 victims of Meron tragedy.”
Does that seem like a normal, functioning country – or even a struggling state seeking to gain steady footing? No, it sounds like total chaos. Most countries would require well more than a year to cobble together a list of headlines like that.
Which brings us to the difference between most countries and Israel. For anyone who has chosen to throw their lot with Israel, like the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from English-speaking countries, the fallback to those disquieting thoughts that this isn’t really working is “But this is our home, the only Jewish state in the world. The joie de vivre, the pioneering spirit, the ‘we’re all in it together’ spirit continue to make it all worthwhile despite all the difficulties.”
I’ve repeated variations of that countless times when asked by people, or challenged by my internal voice. But, as two of my children, born and raised in that Israel, test the waters thousands of miles across the sea, the question arises if that is enough anymore?
How many more rockets, riots, elections and stampedes can someone endure? Like a ship at stormy sea, the nonstop spiral of events has us crashing into wave after wave with no captain at the helm or life jacket in sight.
Granted, we bought the ticket and paid the price to be here. But at what cost?
Unless we’re able to regain helm and stabilize the journey, we shouldn’t be surprised that our children – no matter how well-developed their love of Israel and Jewish people is and how nurtured they were in the country’s history and heritage growing up – decide to buy a ticket elsewhere.