#have empathy

I am a mother in Israel.

I am not a mother in Gaza.

I know the kind of mother I am here:

A fierce one.

A mother who demands the best for her children, who pushes them to explore, to question, to carve new paths in an ancient land.

A mother who lies awake at night, haunted, eyes tracing the cracks on the ceiling, listening for sirens, wondering how to make the world soft enough for her children to grow up inside it.

I know the kind of woman I am here, too:

The kind who suffers no fools.

The kind who speaks her mind.

Who dances barefoot at midnight.

Who laughs loud and loves hard.

Who walks through Jerusalem with fire in her eyes and salt on her skin.

It is easy for me to say, “I would never put my child on the front line.”

And yet, I am.

Every Israeli parent is, by raising our sons and daughters with the knowledge that when they turn 18 - only 18, barely more than children themselves - they will put on a uniform, lace up their boots, and carry a weapon.

It isn’t a choice.

It’s the weather here.

Eighteen.

Still young enough to text me for help with laundry.

Still young enough to cry in frustration when love doesn’t work out.

Still young enough to call me “ima” with a baby voice when they want something.

But old enough to guard a checkpoint.

Old enough to fight.

Old enough to die.

And yet, they will always be my babies.

It is easy for me to say I would never support Hamas.

And yes - I wouldn’t.

But I’ve also never been hungry.

I’ve also never stood in line for flour that never came.

I’ve also never watched the ceiling of my home buckle from the force of an airstrike.

I’ve also never had to choose between silence and survival in a regime that devours dissent.

I don’t know what kind of mother I would be if I were born behind a blockade, if I had electricity only four hours a day. If I had to warm soup over a candle while the sea-wind howled through cinderblock walls.

I don’t know what kind of woman I would be if I watched my leaders drag so-called collaborators through the streets, bodies mangled and leaking blood like red ink on a scorching road, while my child watched from the window and asked, “Why, Mama?”

I don’t know what I would do if my daughter - my wild, laughing daughter - lost a leg, an arm, half her face, to a retaliatory missile meant for the men who fire rockets from schoolyards.

I don’t know if I would have room in my heart to grieve the Israeli child killed on the other side of the border.

Or if my heart would be too swollen with rage.

I don’t know if I’d plant flowers in tires or throw Molotov cocktails over the fence.

I don’t know.

God help me, I don’t know.

But I do know that I am the kind of mother who would throw her body over her children—

I have.

Even now, with teenagers taller than I am, I will still shield them with my body, my bones, my skin.

Because I know the wild stink of fear.

I know the way it floods the throat.

And I know that I don’t run.

I fight.

I come from a line of Jewish women who did whatever it took- who lit fires, who smuggled guns, who clawed freedom into being with their bare hands.

And I know I would have stood beside them.

Now, in this moment -this war - I carry their fire.

I see the videos.

The children burned.

The women defiled.

The hostages still somewhere underground - our children.

I see the silence, the excuses, the masked celebrations of our grief.

And I feel the rage rise like floodwater.

Like an earthquake beneath my ribs.

And yes, I want to fight.

Because it feels like a fight for our very existence.

Because too many in the world seem to believe that fewer Jews would have been the better outcome.

But.

And.

Also.

Also - I know that in Gaza, there are mothers holding the lifeless bodies of their babies.

Babies who were alive on October 6th.

Who giggled.

Who learned new words.

Who took shaky steps and had favorite toys.

I know there are children starving now, their bellies bloated, their lips cracked, their mothers digging through rubble for grains of rice.

I won’t look away.

I know that somewhere a baby is crying over a mother who will never wake up - her body grey, her milk gone, her arms too still. Her skin putrefying into soup while flies swarm in the heat.

I know that famine is a slow death and shameful one.

And I know shame.

We are all made of the same flesh.

All of us.

Dust and blood and breath.

We forget this at our peril.

So while I pray for our soldiers - these precious, beloved sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and partners of my friends and neighbors -

And while I pray for the safe return of every last hostage -

And while I beg God to protect my own children from the call to battle -

I also pray for the mothers in Gaza.

For the ones who still live.

For the ones who don’t.

For the children caught between terror and siege, between monsters below ground and bombs above.

I grieve all of it.

And I rage at all of it.

And I refuse to flatten any of it.

Because to be human is to hold contradiction.

To love your own fiercely, and to weep for the other.

To fight when you must, and to see clearly even through your tears.

I am a mother in Israel.

And I am trying - desperately - to stay whole.

To keep my heart from cracking entirely open.

To believe that somehow, from this horror, something better might still grow.

That maybe one day, our children’s children will not need to be brave.

They will just get to be children.

The 15th Doctor never fails to pull at my heartstrings. And episode 2 of season 2 had a scene that made me sob.

Why? To say that it is timely, would be putting it too lightly.

So instead I’ll just write the dialogue here.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Mr. Rogers told us to look for the helpers and it turns out that they can also be fictional.

The Doctor’s words here brought me comfort. I hope they can do the same for you.

For context, he brought a man named Conrad into his TARDIS, and Conrad… well, there’s a lot of people like him out there in the world. And that’s the problem.

The Doctor and Conrad dialogue:

Doctor: …You have to be invited into my TARDIS, Conrad. To be special. But you, you’re special for all the wrong reasons. You see, I’m fighting a battle on behalf of everyday people who just wanna get through their day, and feel safe, and warm, and fed. And then along comes this noise. All day long, this relentless noise. Cowards like you, weaponize lies, taking people’s insecurity and fear, and making it currency. You are exhausting. You stamp on the truth, choke our bandwidth, and shred our patience because the only strategy you have is to wear us down. But the thing is, Conrad, I have energy to burn and all the time in the universe.

Conrad: (laughs) What is this? An intervention? Are you here to save my soul?

Doctor: You betrayed my friend.

Conrad: You’ve had plenty of friends. Have you met Belinda Chandra yet?

Doctor: Who?… You want spoilers? I’ll tell you your future. You die in a prison cell, boiling in anger and poison until your heart packs in at age 49. Alone and unloved. Forgotten. The world carries on. The world gets better. You aren’t even a footnote. Just ashes on the wind.

Conrad: I don’t accept your reality, Doctor. I reject it. So put me back in my prison and get off my world.

Oh so, do you want to know what others went through? do you want to feel the pain and suffering they had for DAYS, WEEKS, MONTHS or even worse, YEARS?