My father, my son, and the Israel-Gaza War

My son Ari went to the Gaza border with his Israeli army unit a few weeks ago, as rocket attacks on Israel intensified. The army took away their cellphones, so when the casualty reports began, we didn’t know where he was. The one consolation — such as it is — is that families are notified before casualties are mentioned publicly. We cry for the families of the casualties, but our thoughts are on the next casualty report. My son’s battalion, Golani 13, lost seven men in the early fighting. The Golani commander, who is Druze, inspired the nation by sustaining an eye injury and insisting to return to combat to lead his soldiers. While my son is in Gaza, my father is in Ashkelon, where sirens went off in the supermarket. Everybody else rushed to the bomb shelter. My father kept choosing tomatoes, happy that his competition evacuated. A few minutes later, the others returned.

The sirens went off again, and this time the security guard told my father that he needed to go to the shelter. “OK,” my father said as he started walking. “Faster,” the security guard insisted. “The odds of me getting hit by a rocket are about a million to one,” my father calmly replied. “The odds of me dying of a heart attack while running to the shelter? About fifty-fifty.”

The third time the siren went off everybody just left the crazy American in peace. Afterward — but before the war started — my father joked about sending Hamas a thank you card. “I’ve never gotten this much attention before. People I haven’t heard from in years are calling me. I feel like a Warsaw ghetto resistance fighter, all for ignoring the sirens! I’ll try to keep the enemy at bay.” My father wasn’t a Warsaw resistance fighter. His parents escaped Poland into Russia in 1939. His father died in the Russian army, fighting the Germans. His grandparents and most of his uncles and aunts were killed in Poland. He and his mother eventually made it to the United States. We remain ever grateful to the world’s greatest country. A few days after the fighting began, Ari finally got in touch with his fiancée and his mother, in that order; one more way we have to get accustomed to the fact that he’s a man now. A few days later, we heard from him again. I was driving home from a softball game Sunday night when he called. Before that call, I had no idea how much I needed to hear his voice. Weeks of tension escaped my body as we talked. They were out of Gaza. I hope the next time they see Gaza it’s as civilians living in peace. We got to see him for a few hours the next day. And we’re expecting him home for Shabbat, before he returns to his base near the relatively peaceful Syrian border. He posted this to Facebook yesterday:

It looks like it’s over .. Mixed feelings about the war, On the one hand – a sense of pride, we were privileged to take part in something big, to join the history of Israeli fighters from the wars in the wilderness through today’s battles … We went in, and we attacked – Gaza no longer looks the same. We hit those who hate us, and with God’s help may this give the people of Israel a few years of a quiet … On the other hand, a painful feeling. For the heroes we lost along the way, the wounded warriors – and the blood of innocent children that we spilled out of necessity, the innocents that we killed because we had to do it. The efforts from both sides that were devoted to destruction and death instead of to building and living. Of course, I believe in what we did – we were servants of God, and I believe we did our job as best we could. But I am aware that there was a very painful price. It’s dirty work. War is one of God’s ugliest creations … I wish for us and for the whole world that He who dwells above will bless the whole world with peace.

Pax Americana is waning, and parts of the world are returning to their natural, Hobbesian state. If there were more appreciation for all the good that America has done, and still tries to do, perhaps life in much of the Middle East would be less nasty, brutish and short.

Great comment thread on this post here at Ricochet.