Tag: hostages

I think too much

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

Since October 7th not a day goes by where I’m not thinking of Israel.  Thinking of my friends who are on the front lines.  Thinking of the children of my friends who are fighting in the IDF against Hamas.  Thinking of my friends still running to their safe rooms due to the rockets.  Thinking of my friends on the moshav who need help harvesting the crops.  Thinking of the more than 260,000 Israeli refugees who fled their homes more than 2 months ago and have been living in one hotel room for an entire family since then.  I think about what it’s like to share a hotel room with my 2 adult children for a night or two and can’t imagine more than 2 months of that being our home.  Without our things.  Without a kitchen. 

I use the term Israeli refugees instead of evacuees because I have been an evacuee.  In 1979 we lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania when the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident happened.  We evacuated to my grandparents’ home in Connecticut for a week and then returned home.  Living in Florida, we have evacuated to my in-laws in Gainesville when a hurricane is coming.  We’re usually there for a day or two and then return home.  Spending more than two months out of your home, with no return in sight, is not being an evacuee.  It’s being a refugee.

Israel is a small country, and everybody is family.  I learn more about the cost of October 7th all the time.  I have two friends who have family members who were taken hostage by Hamas into Gaza.  Thankfully they were all returned in the last ceasefire.  I have a friend whose cousin was murdered at the music festival.  I have a friend whose son was an IDF soldier that was killed in the fighting on October 7th.  Being Jewish isn’t about our religion, it’s about being part of a people.  It’s being mishpacha, Hebrew for family.  Every day when the names of the soldiers who were killed are released, I take a deep breath and then read the names, hoping and praying that they are not names that I know.  And when they are not people that I know, I am deeply sad because they are people I will never get to know.  People who paid the ultimate sacrifice to save Israel and fight for the Jewish people.

I learned today that there is currently a 60% dropout rate in Israeli high schools.  Think about that – 60% of high school students have dropped out.  Maybe they will return when the war is over.  Maybe they won’t.  How will this affect the IDF, where they normally join after graduation?  What if they go back but are a year behind?  That means that 60% of those who would normally be joining the IDF are not.  How does this affect their long-term success, when military service and the unit you serve in is so integral to future opportunities?

A friend of mine is from Sderot, a town on the Gaza border that I have visited many times.  The playgrounds are also bomb shelters.  The movie theater is also a bomb shelter because why would anybody go to the movies if it wasn’t with the regular rockets fired by Hamas at Sderot.  I’ve been to the police station there many times where they talk to us about the ongoing rocket attacks and show us the rockets that Hamas fired at Sderot.  A friend who was in Sderot just a few weeks ago sent me a picture of the police station.  It’s gone, completely leveled.  My friend who lives there went back last week and told me that the town is empty.  There is nobody there because it’s not safe.  My heart breaks for my brothers and sisters who live on the border and are now refugees inside Israel.

My friends who live on moshav Bitzaron in southern Israel need help harvesting their crops.  I think of how I can put together a mission to help them and how I can approach my wife and children about doing that since they don’t want me to go because they are in fear for my safety in a war.  I haven’t figured out a way to bring that up in a way that wouldn’t get them angry at me for even talking about it, knowing how they feel. 

I think about the rise of antisemitism that I have seen and been talking about for a decade.  I wrote a piece with some colleagues in 2016 for the Seattle Times.  That was more than 7 years ago and yet it has grown.  And I think about the op-Ed disagreeing with me, saying that antisemitism wasn’t a problem and how frustrating it was then and how angry it makes me today.  Over the past 75 years we have convinced ourselves in the United States that we are US citizens just like anybody else.   That antisemitism was going away because of wonders of the United States and our freedom of religion.  Our Jewish history is that we forget who we are due to assimilation.  Here we are again.

In a piece by Daniel Gordis today, he wrote about how, as Jews, our history in the diaspora has always been based on the question, “How long are we going to be here until we get thrown out. Now, why would anybody think they were going to get thrown out? Because they always did.”  Whether it was England in the 1200s, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms in Poland/Russia in the 1800s and 1900s, Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, or the many Arab states in the more recent past, this is our history.  Once again, we are finding ourselves facing this hatred in the US and around the world.  Only now we have Israel, our homeland.

I have had a number of people reach out to me to ask questions about what’s going on in Israel and to ask for clarity on many things that they are hearing, or friends are saying to them.  It’s startling to me the lack of information that so many smart, well-educated people have.  The number of people who don’t know that Gaza hasn’t been occupied since 2005 is shocking.  Or that Gaza has a border with Egypt.  Or that the blockade didn’t occur until after Hamas took over and started raining bombs and attacking through the tunnels they built.  People don’t know that Israel has been sending in humanitarian aid and continues to increase it.  There continue to be cries for Ceasefire Now, not understanding that what they are asking for is Israel to allow Hamas to restock, rebuild, and attack again, killing more Jews and resulting in the death of more Gazans.  The lack of information is an incredible failure in Israel education.  It’s why I volunteer my time as a board member for the Center for Israel Education.  I’m proud of the work they do and we need much more of it.  Check out the website – it’s worth it and the amount of information available is incredible.

I think about the word Zionism and how many people don’t know what it means.  How many people think that it means you can’t criticize the government (I don’t know a single Israeli who doesn’t criticize the Israeli government!!).  They think it means that only Jews get to live in Israel.  They think it means that if you aren’t Jewish and are a citizen in Israel, you don’t have equal rights.  They don’t know that it’s simply the right for Jews to have self determination and a state of their own. 

Since October 7th, I think too much.  Yet if I don’t think about these things and do whatever I can to deal with them, who am I?  What do I stand for?  Each of us has a role to play.  We can speak out.  We can educate those who don’t know.  We can learn more ourselves. 

What are you going to do?

Trouble sleeping after the video so a (very) long post to discuss

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

I saw the video of the Hamas atrocities from October 7, 2023, this past Thursday, December 14, 2023.  It was 47 minutes of horrifying video of the worst that people do to each other.  It was evil incarnate.  The Israel consulate shared with us that they have even worse video that they won’t share because it’s both too horrifying and because they don’t want to traumatize the families of the victims.  After what I viewed, I completely understand and don’t want or need to see that footage.

A friend asked me the next day if I was able to sleep that night, having just witnessed these atrocities and I told them that I had slept ok and was still processing everything that I saw and that I felt and integrating it with conversations I have had with family and friends living in Israel, some actively serving in the IDF and in the middle of the war.

I appreciate the sleep I had the night of Thursday December 14 because I haven’t slept well since.  The more I process, the more I think about it, the more I share with others about the experience, the more I feel my feelings, the worse I sleep.  There is so much that disturbs me about October 7, about what I hear from my Israeli family and friends, about the news coverage and what is happening in our country, what some of our Representatives and Senators in Washington are saying and doing, the United Nations, The International Red Cross, the loss of life that is occurring, all juxtaposed on my own experiences in Israel, with Israeli-Arabs, with Israeli Druze families, and with Palestinians.  My mind constantly spins with many thoughts that consume me.

On my 2019 Encounter trip to Israel, I spent 4 days meeting with leaders of Palestinian civil society and became friends with 4 amazing people.  I have found myself thinking about them often since the video.  They want peace with Israel.  They are vocal about Israel’s right to exist.  They are the people we need to have a larger voice. 

One of them, Ali Abu-Awaad, came to Orlando and spoke to a crowd that was half Israeli just before the pandemic.  The Israelis were blown away as they had never heard a Palestinian speak like that.  I’ll never forget what he said in Ramallah and in Orlando.  “The path to peace is not through Jewish blood.  It is through Jewish hearts.  We have to give the Jewish people a reason to trust us.”  How are they doing?  What are they feeling? 

I think of Osama, who was taught to hate the ‘Yehuds’ from birth, found redemption in an Israeli jail, through Combatants for Peace, and at a Shabbat dinner.  Does he still keep a kippah in his pocket because he never knows when he’ll be invited to Shabbat dinner? (A direct quote from him).  Does he still believe in a better future or has this shaken his hope for the future.

I think of Mahmoud, the owner of the Palestinian bookstore in East Jerusalem, where the password for Wi-Fi was “JerusalemIsOurs” and yet his startling admission to us later that evening that “If Zionism means the Jews have a right to the land and we also have a right to the land, then I am a Zionist.”  This came from somebody who a few years early thought Zionism was evil.  I think of the former Hamas member and former member of the Al Aqsa Brigade that I had lunch with one day.  Are they still on a path to peace or has this brought back their hatred and desire for violence?

I think about my friends and family in Israel.  I check in regularly.  My friends and family in Jerusalem are largely safe but also emotionally impacted.  Most of them have family living elsewhere that are at risk or have children, relatives, and/or friends who are actively serving.  Reading the names of the soldiers lost every day is a painful daily occurrence where we hope and pray not to know any of the names and then feeling guilty that we didn’t know the brave soldiers who paid the ultimate price for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. 

I think about my friends who live on Bitzaron, a Moshav in the south of Israel.  On October 7 we texted via WhatsApp as they hid in their safe room, hoping that terrorists wouldn’t come to their Moshav.  We have kept in touch throughout the time since and I have shared the aching in my soul to be in Israel, volunteering, helping to cook, clean, harvest crops, or do whatever they need me to do.  They have told me not to come yet, it wasn’t safe yet, wait a little longer.   Last week they messaged me, asking if I could come to help them with harvesting the crops as many are reservists, called up to fight in this war, and they don’t have enough people to harvest the crops.  It broke my heart telling them I couldn’t come now, as my family doesn’t want me to go because of their fears for my safety.  My wife has been to Israel 5 times and knows the realities.  My kids have seen me go to Israel most of their lives and know my love and passion for the country and the people.  They know how much I want to go and yet, as of now, I won’t go in order to honor their needs.  And yet I think of Irit and Avi and the Moshav and their crops and the need for food for the country and am left so conflicted.

I think of my friends and their children who are currently serving on the front lines.  I think of their bravery.  Some close to my age yet still on the front lines.  Others are 18, 19, 20, 21 – younger than my own children – who are doing what is needed for the Jewish people and the State of Israel.  I worry about them every single day, those serving in the South and in Gaza as well as those in the north dealing with Hezbollah.  I pray for their safety and that this war ends successfully soon so they can return to their lives.

I think of my friends who have family members that were either murdered on October 7 or were taken hostage.  The two that I know were hostages have thankfully been released.  I have previously written about Hila, kidnapped at 12 years old and released the day before her 13th birthday.  I’m so grateful to everybody who went to the Amazon page we set up to buy her birthday and Hanukkah gifts so she would feel the love from the worldwide Jewish and non-Jewish community.  Everything we listed and added and added was purchased and sent to her.  Her mother was released just after Hila’s birthday, so they are together but how are they doing?  How shattered are they?  How will they recover?  I have a little relief knowing that all of us joined together to help in our small way for her birthday and for Hanukkah to bring some light to their darkness. 

I think about those who are still hostages.  Are they alive?  Do they believe we haven’t forgotten them?  What about the infant and the children?  What about the women who were raped and taken captive?  Are they still being raped?  Are some of them now pregnant with their rapist’s baby?  Will they ever be released?  We are now getting daily reports of hostages murdered in captivity by Hamas.  Are they all dead and we are just waiting to hear the news day by day?  What about the tragic shooting of 3 escaped hostages by the IDF?  Are there more hostages that escaped?  What about the IDF soldiers who shot them – they were trying to keep safe and alive and now have to live with this for the rest of their lives. 

I think about those in Gaza who will remain after Hamas is removed.  How do we take care of them so that they believe in peace and in a future without violence, with prosperity and freedom?  How and who will rebuild Gaza?  I pray it will be the Abraham Accord countries who have the resources and can help put in a new government that will benefit the people of Gaza and give them a chance for a meaningful and fulfilling life that occurs peacefully next to their neighbor, Israel.  Is there hope?  Will we lose focus and leave them to be ‘saved’ by Iranian money once again? 

I think about all those calling for a “Ceasefire Now” because it sounds wonderful and their believe it will save lives, not understanding that Hamas has said they will commit the same atrocities or worse again and again and again.  Their leadership has said this publicly, on video, multiple times.  “Ceasefire now” means let Hamas regroup, rearm, and begin to murder Israelis once again, continuing the cycle of violence and ensuring more die.  How do we help them see that evil must be eradicated.  That there is no diplomacy with evil.  The only trust that exists with evil is that they aren’t trustworthly.

I think about the International Red Cross and how they haven’t seen a single hostage in captivity in Gaza.  Their only role has been to serve as a taxi service for those being released.  How they refuse to ensure needed medication gets to the hostages.  The abject failure of this organization haunts me and angers me. 

I think about UNRWA and how ineffective they are and how they are actively keeping Hamas going and harming the citizens of Gaza.   The Gazan people are rioting and stealing the aid from the warehouses because they know Hamas will steal it from UNRWA and they won’t get the food and medicine and water being supplied daily.  I think about the UNRWA employees who kept hostages in their homes.  About the doctor at a hospital who kept a hostage in his home.  These are the ‘innocent civilians’ we hear about and they are not innocent, they are complicit.

I think about being safe in the United States and around the world.  I haven’t felt safe in a year and have taken steps and continue to take steps to ensure my safety and the safety of my family.  I wait for the violence against Jewish people in the United States to increase significantly.  I wait for the first of what I fear will be many Jewish mass casualties in the United States.

I’m sorry this is so long but now you know why I have trouble sleeping since watching the video.  You know what I think about when I am awake and when I close my eyes.