Our current reality feels surreal. Today, Israel navigates through the uncanny aspects of existence. There are words to describe such situations: horror, betrayal, pain, astonishment, fear, the loss of humanity. However, these words are far from our reality. Now we are enveloped in emptiness, hollowness and denial. Our bodies are numb and trembling at the same time. We are a wounded bird lying on the sidewalk, gazing at the distant sky, bereft of the wind and clear clouds.
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We struggle to believe how low we have sunken, facing such humiliation and submission. Yet, it has happened to us, again. Over and over, we have been massacred, we were seen as animals and treated as an inferior race.
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IDF soldiers inspect house devastated in Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be'eri
(Photo: EPA/MARTIN DIVISEK)
The kibbutzim and settlements on the Gaza border, Sderot and Ashkelon have transformed into scenes of butchery. A group of savages known as Hamas has raped our minds and souls, gauged our eyes out and turned our lives into an inferno.
Hamas has violated our basic code of living. This transcends a mere ideological conflict between two groups of people - it is the fact that Hamas is driven by a fanatic, missionary zeal to obliterate our fundamental right to breathe. They negate the human spirit just like ISIS, and like blind, brain-washed zombies, they murdered our dearest.
Israel at war
Israel is once again undergoing a transformative shift, altering its daily life and potentially its global positioning. As Israelis and Jews, nothing can be taken for granted anymore, and we must adapt to an unsettling reality amid dreadful circumstances. The nation is once again internally shaken, acutely aware and feeling that enemies will always emerge against us.
We thought we could contain and respond to the enemy within conventional conflict norms, but we failed to foresee their cruel tactics reminiscent of our painful history from the last century and centuries before it. While we know war has its own rules, war crimes beckon a threat to the very existence of each of us and the end of the world.
Israel is in shock and many of us are terrified. We are terrified to witness our deeply held and soul-rooted moral principles disregarded not only by our worst enemies but also, regrettably, by other adversaries. Once again, we sense the lifeblood being drained from our hearts.
Everyone should have already realized that being Israeli or Jewish is far from a given.