It's been quite a week, but while I wasn't able to go out with Leket this week, thanks to local friends driving I did get down to the Otef to volunteer in support of Israeli farmers.

This week I returned to a little paradise in the sand dunes of the southern Otef where Itzik works his magic growing fruits and nuts from around the world. Some are native, some come from distant regions like the Amazon. He grows them all with a botanist's love and a scientists curiosity combined with an engineer's practical problem solving. He sells plants to private individuals, gardeners and farmers, common "exotic" fruit trees and rare plants that he's learnt to adapt to Israel's climate and soil, along with new varieties he's developed himself.

With only one worker and a war going on a short distance from his home Itzik has struggled to keep his unique plant nursery going, but despite the war and recently suffering a heart attack his enterprise is thriving. Each time I've volunteered there he has more plants, more stories, more projects and more patents. Israeli agricultural innovation at its finest. It was an honour to help even a little bit with this incredible project.

A gentle breeze was blowing, the weather was a perfect 24C, the sun felt a little strong at times but we were working in the shade of a net house surrounded by cool, lush greenery. But the occasional distant thud boom of artillery, whirr of drones or roar of jets reminded us that fighting had resumed in nearby Gaza.

This whole region could be a paradise for all if only Hamas would let everyone focus on building life instead of their obsession with destruction and death.

Only in Israel #234234 Swords of Iron

After a long morning working on a farm in incredibly windy conditions our group stopped at the petrol station in kibbutz Kfar Azza for a loo break.

Along the horizon, behind the fields of the kibbutz you can just about make out the white buildings of Gaza's urban skyline on the other side of the border.

As the bus parked the red alert apps on most people's phones went off, though not mine.

For a second we all made the calculation of Gaza border + phone red alert = we must be under attack.

Except that there was no Red Alert in Kfar Azza. I was with a group from the Rishon Letzion area and their phones were pinging because rockets had been fired at central Israel with sirens in and around Rishon Letzion and Tel Aviv.
In Kfar Azza and the Otef it was calm and safe, no alerts.

We heard the very occasional boom of distant artillery from the war in Gaza.

Most people have their phones set to get noisy siren alerts for where they live, where they work, maybe where they have family.

As this was a group from Rishon Letzion and nearby areas their phones went off while my phone stayed silent.

We were standing in today's calm, quiet of Kfar Azza, along the infamous Route 232, ground zero for some of the most horrific events of October 7 2023 with everyone phoning their family in the Rishon Letzion area and Tel Aviv to check that they're OK because Hamas has just fired rockets from Khan Yunis in south-central Gaza toward central Israel.

Everyday tears

Sometimes it's the normal that brings the tears. 

Not the overwhelming tragedies, the horrors, the terrorist atrocities, the cruel fate of battle, the bone deep, heartsick pain we all live with since October 7. 

Sometimes, maybe even often, what brings the tears are the intrusions of normal life, everyday joys, peacetime routine or ordinary childhood innocence. 

The moments of repreve. The glimpses of a life that was. 

Like on Friday watching our traditional local Adloyada Purim parade. 

Last year it was cancelled due to the war and we substituted a much more low key event with just our school, a tribute to Israel and the many, many families and staff in the school with a parent or sibling, or both, or more, called up to emergency reserve duty. 

This year the mayor decided that the Adloyada would go ahead, despite the war and the terrible sadness engulfing the country after the return of several dead hostages, including Shiri Bibas and her two little boys Ariel and Kfir. 

As I have done for so very many years, even before I had children to take to the parade, I grabbed my camera and made my way down to the central palm tree lined boulevard closed off each year for the Adloyada. 

My younger kids and I found a nice spot with a clear view along the road ahead and were joined by an elderly relative as excited as the little children for the spectacle to begin.

As the first marchers and colourful floats came down the street though I made a new discovery. It's hard to see through the camera lens when your eyes are full of tears. 

The smiling children, the upbeat pop arrangements of Israeli heritage songs, the bright homemade costumes, the whimsical floats and handwritten signs - it all hit me like a sledgehammer of innocence, of the carefree peaceful days we all desperately long for, of normal life that seems like another world. 

A tumult of emotion that has been frozen, submerged, through wartime weeks and months of body blow after body blow. 

Every red headed small child, every Batman costume this Purim season has been a twist of the knife to the heart. It's feeling that agonising pang all over again, just like the day Shiri, Ariel and Kfir's bodies were returned to Israel after a sick Hamas gloating ceremony over their murders. And then the agony all over again of the pathology reports that confirmed that they had been murdered in cold blood, strangled by their kidnappers. 

Seeing the throngs of happy, smiling Jewish children strolling along in the Purim parade though I felt that surge of pain even stronger, a sucker punch of images of all the Jewish children Hamas murdered on October 7 and since who will never have another Purim parade. 

At the same time though I realised that I was also feeling something else, something I don't quite know how to express, but an opposite reaction to the pain and grief, though I wouldn't call it joy. It was something more profound, not pride, not elation, not victory.

For want of a better word I will call it an intense feeling of being alive. 

Of being a living Jew, a living Israeli rooted in my homeland. 

An awareness of the generations of Jewish blood flowing in my veins, an overpowering sensation of life, mine, my children's, my fellow Israelis in the parade and watching from the sides, of our connectedness like a an invisible mycelium, regenerating, carrying on even us pieces might be picked off or damaged. 

My children were fortunately enraptured by the parade and their "auntie" was too, all enthralled so much that they couldn't see how I was affected by it all, too overcome to speak, tears blurring my vision, my camera clicking on automatic even though I couldn't really see what I was photographing.

I wasn't really seeing the details through it all until suddenly everything came in to focus again, the signs of the group walking past in the parade "Am Yisrael Hai", "We are a nation of superheroes" - words from a popular, moving, wartime poem turned in to an anthemic song. The children and teachers had dressed up with simple capes and headbands illustrating the song.

It took my breath away again, lyrics that encapsulate so much of our nation's experience, a feeling of mutual care and responsibility, a sense of duty and purpose, a willingness to risk everything one has to protect our people and our homeland. This is why we are still alive, Am Yisrael Hai, because our superpower is that mutual care and responsibility, whether it's the thousands who've put aside their civilian lives to defend our country or the thousands more civilian volunteers holding the country together so that they can go and protect us.

The people making vast quantities of meals each week for the soldiers and their families, the people rebuilding the Otef and the north, the farm volunteers, the folks who go round the country each week to provide support and raise the spirits of the Nova survivors, the refugees, the wounded, the military families, the bereaved and the returned hostages and their families, even the huge numbers tying tzitzit because so many have asked for them.

It doesn't take a village, it takes a nation. This is our story, the nation of Israel lives. 

Alive!

 This song is a family favourite.

The other day I was watching this Eurovision performance with the twins and Twin Q asked me "Imma, it was such a long time ago, how did they know to wear yellow for the hatufim (hostages)?"

This is song is so much an anthem of the Jewish experience. At the time the song "Hai!" (Alive!) was chosen because of the deep symbolism of the Jewish state performing in a song competition in Germany, and not just Germany, but Munich. All around Europe and Israel Jewish viewers were not the only ones to shed some emotional tears at seeing Israelis singing "Am Yisrael Hai!" on German soil.

Since October 7th 2023 the lyrics are more relevant and more poignant than ever, exemplifying a Jewish ethos that maintains a hope and faith in a better tomorrow, that looks back on centuries of persecution and suffering through the lens of national survival despite each oppressor who has attempted to wipe out the Jewish people. This is the song of eternal Jewish optimism, always bittersweet, always with the thorns and the flowers, the honey and the sting, but nevertheless maintaining that hope for better times.

Our people just buried the brutally murdered Bibas mother and little boys, and the father of the Yahalomi family, and elderly Oded Lifshitz and day after day we hear of the horrors endured by the surviving hostages, those released and those still suffering Hamas captivity in Gaza. Hamas raises its head as though in triumph, with shiny new uniforms and guns and gruesomely staged hostages releases that look more like lynchings. We are surrounded by uncertainty and the constant threat that war will resume. This time of year I hear so many saying how to we even think of celebrating the upcoming Purim holiday under these circumstances? Hai, this is how we even think of Purim right now, we see it in the frame of giving thanks for the survival of the Jewish people, just like the Jews of the Persian empire did all those millennia ago after surviving Haman's attempted genocide of the Jewish people. Am Yisrael Hai, the nation of Israel lives.

Hai (Alive) peformed by Ofra Haza, Israel's entry to the 1983 Eurovision song contest hosted by Germany. (please excuse my very rough 3am translation)

Hear my brothers,

I still live!

And my two eyes are still focused on the light

I have many thorns

But also flowers

And there are so many years ahead of me

I ask

And I pray

It's good that we haven't lost hope

A hymn passes

from generation to generation

Like an eternal spring

Hai, Hai, Hai (alive, alive, alive)

This is the song that grandfather

Sang yesterday to father

And today it's me

Alive, alive, alive

I'm still alive

The nation of Israel lives!

This is the song that grandfather

Sang yesterday to father

And today it's me

Straight up anger and mourning should be a legitimate response to the gruesomely staged "release" of the living hostages and those returning in boxes. The ability to feel anger towards those who promote genocide against the Jewish people is basic self-preservation. If we can't feel rage against the savages who invaded our country, massacred, tortured, raped and kidnapped our people, burnt our yishuvim and our farms, put on sick public spectacles to revel in all these crimes, if we aren't allowed to be angry or can't feel rage, then how do we feel anything at all? How do we internalise the murderous hate directed against us and how do we defend ourselves from it? The anger has a purpose, the recognition of the utter depravity of the enemy has a purpose.

We have been taught that we aren't allowed to be angry at our enemy, we aren't allowed to even mention the enemy. We have entire memorial days where we mourn our losses without even mentioning the enemy once, without naming him, without pointing fingers - so and so was killed in a terror attack, so and so fell in battle, so and so was murdered in their home. But the enemy has no name, no face, no identity in most of these ceremonies. There's just an anonymous, amorphous force that culls our people. We focus on mourning the dead, remembering their lives, not on who took their lives, out of a fear that naming names of the enemy leads down a path to a hatred that gives way to revenge and the loss of our civilised humanity. Yet doesn't losing the ability to be angry at the monsters who did this, who continue to revel in this barbarity, show that we have already lost something of that civilised humanity? Isn't part of being a civilised human feeling rage at those humans who engage in inhuman savagery and brazenly trample on the concept of a civilised society? How do we protect ourselves, defend against an enemy intent on our erradication, if we are not allowed to feel anger at what this enemy has done to us?

Why am I glad that Israel Railways carpets the floors of their train carriages?

Because it makes it a little more comfortable when there is an air raid siren and you have to lie on the floor and try to take cover under the seats.

People are usually very friendly in these situations, there is a certain camaraderie of lying on the floor on a moving train trying to figure out whether it's safe to get up yet when suddenly you meet all the people in the neighbouring seats to commiserate and make jokes about the bizarre circumstances we find ourselves in.

Like yesterday, the train was passing a usually quiet area, not far from Modiin when the sirens went off. The Arabic speaking mother and kids diagonally across the aisle from me were the fastest to react, instantly pulling down the shades on the windows, the smaller kids squeezing into the spaces between the seats which are meant for luggage, the rest of the family hitting the floor and covering their heads in a flash, clearly well drilled in air raid sirens, no panic, no fuss, just autopilot, while the rest of us were a few seconds slower, taking a moment to register what was happening.

Flat on the floor, half under the seats my eyes met those of my neighbour across the aisle, the mother shielding her kids and the woman on the next bench over and we all kinds of smiled sheepishly at each other, lying there with our hands over our heads trying to fit ourselves as much under the seats as possible.

"We made it all the way from Nahariya with no sirens, who would have believed it would happen here!" declared the mother ruefully. Turns out they were coming from a village in the much bombarded north of Israel (two people were killed yesterday in a direct hit on Nahariya) to get some respite in the relative quiet of central Israel.

I was coming home from a day volunteering on a kibbutz right on the Gaza border where yes, we had heard the chilling sounds of the fighting in Gaza, including at times the staccato of heavy machine gun fire, but it had all been in the distance, listening to a war that while only a few kilometres from us, did not directly endanger us, but rather the opposite, was mostly the sound of the IDF protecting us from the remaining ragtag Hamas gunmen attempting to regroup.

There have been very few sirens lately in the Gaza border area. I had to take the train from Ashkelon because the section of the line from Sderot towards Tel Aviv is still closed because it is very exposed to line of sight from Gaza, and the IDF thinks it is still at risk, though they are hoping it will be safe enough to start running again in a few weeks.

Ashkelon was thankfully quiet. Tel Aviv was thankfully quiet. But here, on the train so close to home, davka here, the air raids sirens wailed.

"At least the floor is carpeted" commented the young across the aisle woman brightly. "It might be filthy from all the people walking on it, but at least it's soft to lie on."

I've wanted to write about Yaakov and Bilhaa Yinon for so many months, almost a year now. Last October I translated and transcribed so many stories. Then I found myself by chance in Netiv Ha'asara standing in their garden by the charred remains of their burnt out home and I think I was just so overwhelmed by it for so long that I couldn't tell their story, I was literally standing at the place where they had been burnt to death just weeks after their murders (we didn't know yet for sure about Bilhaa). I didn't know them, have no connection to the family or moshav, but the surviving whimsical, vibrant, gloriously colourful art she made and the story of his agricultural work both touched me so deeply, people so devoted to life, love and tikkun olam butchered so horrifically. It wasn't until I saw the press release from Volcani that I felt able talk about them and hopefully do something to help honour their memory.