What does a small scale bathing costume manufacturer do during a war?

Sadly thousands of Israelis from the Gaza border have had to flee their homes following attacks by Hamas, many unable to take anything with them, not even spare clothing, coming from kibbutzim, moshavim and towns under attack.

Marci Rapp of MarSea modest swimwear took 10 bags of swimsuits to give to women and girls at two Dead Sea hotels which are providing emergency housing for some of Israel's thousands of displaced people.

She hopes that with the nighmares that many of these families have experienced being able to go swimming and enjoy some relaxation will allow them to process and forget for at least a little bit the traumas and horrors unleashed on them and in particular allow the kids to just be kids again, as though their time at the Dead Sea is a holiday and not literally a life saving refuge from war.

Support Marci's small business via her website so that she can continue helping Israeli refugees: https://www.facebook.com/marsea.modest

Memories of Nahal Oz

I went to high school with someone from Nahal Oz (her father's work took the family away from the kibbutz for a few years) and many years ago DH's cousin got married to someone from there in a beautiful, joyous, irreverent kibbutz wedding (the couple later set up their home elsewhere).

When I hear Nahal Oz these are the people and images that come to mind. Every time we drive by the area. Every time over the years I see it flash up with a rocket alert on my rocket siren app that just about everyone in Israel has the way people elsewhere might have a weather app.

I know the news is a dizzying blitz of place names most of you have never heard of, Beeri, Kfar Aza, Re'im, Nir Oz, Nahal Oz. Two weeks later and the horror stories merge in to each other, the murdered families, the butchered babies, the houses burnt with their residents inside, the elderly and children kidnapped to Gaza, even the family pets slaughtered for sport in the modest gardens and neat paths of these kibbutzim. Each place name a nightmare of gruesome photos and body bags, families wiped out, communities shattered. But please try to also remember the reality of what these places were, the modest agricultural communities, the special people, the idealism, the spirit of these places. The care and concern for each other and for their neighbours in Gaza. The many social initiatives locals were involved with. Their love of Israel and their for their fellow human being. This is what Hamas could not abide, this is what it so gleefully wanted to erase in its barbaric amok murder spree of its Israeli neighbours. Remember what Hamas did to these kibbutzim, but also remember what these kibbutzim were, what hopefully one day they will rebuild and become again. Keep this in your mind: a wedding in Nahal Oz, locals and guests in sandals and informal summer clothing in the heat of this semi-arid region in late spring. A makeshift outdoor hupa (wedding canopy) in the dusty, sandy soil with a backdrop of agricultural fields, a few dusty leaved eucalyptus trees. The sun low in the sky, glowing in to a gorgeous sunset. Depending on which direction the breeze is blowing there is a faint or not so faint smell of cow shed. Everyone is smiling and happy and a bit silly. The groom walks down the aisle to the theme from the Muppet Show. The bride to something Latin American. There's a lot of giggling and humour during the ceremony. And then dancing in the meadow near the hupa to music that spans modern Israeli and Middle Eastern pop, Latin American dance beats and golden oldie rock and roll. Simple, irreverent happiness and love.

I don't know what happened to the local people at that wedding, to the people from the kibbutz we were casually dancing with. To the couple from a neighbouring kibbutz I got chatting with. All these years later I don't remember names, just people I casually chatted and danced with at a wedding nearly 25 years ago. But each time a new death or kidnap notice is posted with a photo I'm afraid it will be one of those random smiling faces I remember from all those years ago at a wedding in Nahal Oz.

Mr Rogers said in times of fear or crisis or tragedy look for the helpers.

Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczno Rebbe, also known as the Esh Kodesh, said in times of fear or crisis or tragedy or when you are feeling down BE the helpers, be the people doing good, find someone else who is also hurting or sad or in crisis and find a way to help them.

Take the energy of pain and sadness and use it to help someone else.

That is all we can do right now.

Our lives on the line

This isn't about teaching Hamas a lesson, this is about defeating them so they can't keep killing us. This is about our survival.

When an entity invades your country, massacres, rapes and burns civilians, and takes hostages, you have no alternatives but to fight back.

This is about removing the guns and missiles Hamas has pointed at every Israeli and the Hamas army which has proved its enthusiasm for engaging in intentional indiscriminate mass atrocities across our border.

If we do not defend ourselves the ones teaching a lesson will be Hamas, and that lesson will be that Israel either can't or won't protect its civilians and that it is open season for mass murder of Israelis and Jews around the world. This is a war against a serious existential threat to our very existence.

It is a sick and depressing way to live, but at the moment we have no choice. We don't have any alternatives.

Broken hearts in the Negev desert

On the first day of the war, Shabbat Simhat Torah October 7th, Hamas unleashed a massive barrage of thousands of rockets targetting cities, towns, villages and farms all over central and southern Israel as cover for their invasion of Israel. In addition to the 1300 Israeli murdered by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza border area several more Israeli civilians were killed and wounded by rockets hitting homes, farms, vehicles and spraying open areas like fields and backyards with deadly shrapnel.

One of the areas worst hit was a collection of small Bedouin communities in the Negev desert. Several children and women, some from the same family, were killed by rockets hitting their villages. Other Israeli Bedouin were killed and injured by terrorists while working in the Gaza border area.

This is some of their story as told by Shalom Weil, a member of the regional council in charge of bereaved families (my quick translation of his Hebrew article):

As the regional council member with the dubious job of caring for bereaved families I call Jum'a and ask him how I can pay condolence calls for those murdered in the Bedouin diaspora in the Negev. How can I honour the memory of Bedouin pupils killed during the intense rocket bombardment last week?

Jum'a, the impressive school supervisor for the Bedouin sector listens for a moment. He then answers emphatically "You have to come and visit them. It's very important to them. It will honour them. I'll come right now and take you in my jeep from the Beer Sheva region, it will be fine."

We set off. The drive was over winding roads, then on to dirt tracks, climbing through hills, past makeshift homes. On the way he explained to me that the covenant between the Jews and the Bedouin is a covenant of blood going back to the days of the Palmah (the pre-state period underground). This covenant is strengthened today.

We arrive at the first mourners' sukkah (tent), between corrugated iron makeshift structures and sheep. Outside waiting for us in the sun is a line of barefoot men with red eyes.

Salam aleikum, shaking hands, greetings and blessings, and a hand over the heart as a sign of pain and condolences. We sit on a colourful rug, Jum'a and I cross legged, the mourners kneeling.

One of the children comes over to us with bottles of water, another with dates, another with a traditional finjan Bedouin coffee pot full of strong, bitter dark coffee.

I hear about the two children killed from the rocket which exploded on top of them in the sukka where they were playing. I ask where was the sukka? Right here, they point to the open area outside the mourning sukka in which we are sitting.

We return to the jeep and Jum'a explains to me that this is the first visit from a government representative to the bereaved families, and that is why they are all so emotional and moved, and even though the traditional three days of mourning have already ended they have turned out immediately to honour me and give respect to an official representative of the government. It turns out that the whole of the State of Israel is on my shoulders and I am her representative.

We go to the next mourners' tent, and the next. From there we drive to a more organised village, and when we arrive at the mourners' tent there the head of the local council, three sheikhs and a kadi (Islamic judge) are standing outside and waiting for us. The mourners are standing in the tent with red, tearful eyes full of pain.

With all the pain I can't ignore their pride in being visited by an official government representative who has come to honour them, and also the emotional way I hear over and over, with which they talk of faith in the Creator. "Everything is written".

One of the sheikhs asks to sit besides me. Tells me in shaky Hebrew and with profound shock about the atrocities of Hamas.

He told me that there was a woman in the community who was working in agricultural fields on that cursed Saturday morning. She was wearing the traditional modest long Bedouin robe typical of many southern Bedouin women. Hamas terrorists shot her 42 times, shot 42 bullets in to her and then desecrated her body.

She was found lying like that in the fields and returned home for burial.

"I see that you are also a religious man" he said "Are these acts that honour faith in Allah? These are beasts" he asserted "Inhuman beasts of prey."

In the sixth mourners' tent we visited I was already exhausted and full of dates, water and coffee. But nothing prepared me for the sight I saw. Outside the house lay two overturned, burnt out vehicles. They had been hit by a rocket which caused them to burst in to flames, killing the children who'd been playing nearby. The mourners' tent faced the site of the rocket strike, and the impact site was clearly visible to all who came to offer condolences. The bereaved father looked over at me, hurting and seeking comfort in his surviving children.

All was quiet.

Jum'a returned me to my car in Beer Sheva and as we parted ways the rocket alert siren sounded. We got out of our cars and lay flat on the ground. Another rocket hit the Bedouin communities of the south. This time without injuries.

My heart breaks and I feel sick to my stomach every time I think of Darom Adom, the annual late winter "Red South" festival celebrating the season's profusion of wildflowers, and the horrific new meaning that has now, how the bright red kalaniot (crown anemone flowers) will bloom this year from fields literally drenched in blood.

Helping hand

 We have seen many serious crises in Israel over the years but this is the most serious that we have experienced in our lifetimes. While we've tried to shelter the younger children from the horror of what happened to Israel's Gaza border communities they are aware of the rockets, the displaced people in our town, the general atmosphere of uncertainty.

It's hard being a little kid in the middle of this. Big brothers and sisters, parents, they have jobs to do, whether they are first responders, army reservists called up in the emergency draft, medical professionals, police or just ordinary grown-ups and teens who can give blood, volunteer or go to work.

If you're a kid of 8 or 9 or 10 or 12 though, what do you do? How do you feel like you are contributing or just exerting some control over this very tense and unsettled situation?

When I was growing up my mother would often quote teachings of the Piaseczno Rebbe, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, also known as the Esh Kodesh after the posthumously published book of his teachings and writings during his time in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Rav Shapira did not survive the war but when it became clear that the Nazis were going to kill all the resident of the ghetto he and other Jews, such as Emanuel Ringelblum, historian of the Warsaw Ghetto, buried their writings in a metal box under the ghetto. One of my mother's treasured books was Esh Kodesh, this voice of hope, sadness and life from these Jews murdered by the Nazis who's words miraculously lived on to guide future generations of the Jewish people.

One of teachings of the Esh Kodesh that made the greatest impression on me and which I find myself passing on regularly to my children is that when you yourself are troubled, be it because you are sad, in difficulties or living through a national crisis, do not let yourself be brought down by that crisis or sadness, instead take that painful energy and find a way to help someone else.

Right now it feels like all of Israel is an embodiment of that idea, a nation in mourning galvanised en masse to bring more good, more light, in to a dark world in which evil has revealed itself in the most horrific way.

So DH and I, just like everyone around is, try to help the children to focus on doing, on helping, on extra mitzvot, actions that help to spread a little light, a little joy to the stressed, grieving, shocked people of Israel.

Whether it's baking hallot for our neighbours with family who've been drafted, delivering meals and care packages to elderly relatives or mothers home alone with kids while their husbands are at the front, drawing pictures with messages of encouragement to the many Israelis forced to flee their homes, collecting toys and games for children who lost everything in last week's attack or just bringing a smile to neighbours' faces by decorating apartment buildings with flags and positive messages. And davening and saying Tehillim for our country, for the missing, the wounded and the bereaved.

This isn't a brag or a eureka parenting moment, we aren't doing anything that our friends, neighbours and countrymen are doing all around the country. But if you're reading this in English it's really just an attempt to explain what it means to be in Israel in time of crisis, the ethos of mutual care and responsibility for one another, the strength of community and the commitment to our fellow citizens.

It's time to go to bed kids so you can do more mitzvot tomorrow.

Friday 13

It's hard to think that it's been a almost a week since this started, but also hard to think that it's only been a week because I feel like I have almost no memory of the time before, it seems like another lifetime. We are not the people we were last Friday. I don't think we will ever again be the people that we were last Friday. In the middle of all the bleak news we heard this week that DH's family from a kibbutz near the Gaza border were safe. The kibbutz security volunteers were able to fend off the terrorists who attacked their community for many hours until help could arrive, the army eventually getting through and evacuating the residents out of the battle zone. Their kibbutz suffered damage and even as they are safe now, being hosted in quieter areas, their beloved kibbutz continues to be hit by rockets shot over the border. If and when they are able to return they have no idea what will be left of it.

Laws of war

The main focus of the international laws of war is to protect civilians. The IDF is fighting this war according to the international laws of war, often going above and beyond what is required to avoid civilian casualties.

When I was studying ethics of war in the overseas, at a university not known for being sympathetic to Israel, many of my professors, including some who were pacifists often cited examples from the IDF in explaining how an ethical army should operate within the laws of war. I'm not saying the IDF is perfect, no human army is, but they are doing far more to protect civilians than any other military I've studied.

Under international law Hamas is responsible for all the civilians killed, wounded and otherwise harmed by its policy of willfully, intentionally embedding itself among civilians and civilian infrastructure, all of which is contrary to the laws of war, which also include for example the requirement for militaries to clearly identify themselves with uniforms or other insignia to distinguish themselves from the surrounding civilian population of non-combatants. Hamas consistently finds ways to breach these laws over and over again, that is its doctrine.

International law does not give Hamas a free pass because its fighters embed themselves among the civilian population and intentionally build tunnels, weapons depots and bases under and in the middle of civilian neighbourhoods and infrastructure, hospitals, schools, mosques.

To hold Israel culpable for civilian casualties under such circumstances would be to encourage the increased deliberate endangering of civilians as a tactic.
It would also be immoral and unethical to allow Hamas to commit atrocities and then let them claim immunity by taking refuge among civilians.

The implication of such criticism of Israel is that Israeli civilian lives do not merit being protected and that Israel should allow the continued massacre of its civilian population rather than endanger the lives of Palestinians being used a human shields by Hamas. That Palestinian lives must be protected at all costs, while Israelis should be allowed to be killed with impunity because Hamas hides behind Palestinian civilians and should therefore be untouchable. This equation is unethical and immoral. 

Hamas breached the existing ceasefire with the invasion of October 7th. It could end this war any time it chooses by releasing all the hostages and surrendering its forces.

Life

People have been asking me how in the middle of all this horror people in Israel are having weddings, why people in Israel are having weddings this week, what's the deal with all the social media posts about weddings in the middle of our shock and mourning.

But that is exactly it. Life is a core Jewish value, even in the midst of the terrible massacre of so many of our brothers and sisters this week we choose to cling on to life, we find hope in building new families and celebrating new life.

This is how we honour the memories of the hundreds and hundreds murdered this week, by pledging that the Jewish people we continue to live on and keep their memories alive.

This is our way of life, this is the world we seek to create, one that is focused on creating life, family, love and hope. This is our response to the barbaric terrorists who committed heinous atrocities against our people this week. They want only death for the Jewish people but we will continue to choose life.

That is why in the middle of this nightmare couples are continuing to marry. They have had to cancel their plans for large celebrations, for hundreds of guests, for celebrating their wedding close to their homes in the war torn south-west, but in Jewish tradition we do not postpone weddings if we can at all help it, we cherish life too much.

So these couples have had smaller weddings, in synagogues, in shelters, in remote communities far from the fighting, anywhere they can, anything to ensure that life continues in Israel even as we bury and mourn our dead.

Am Yisrael Hai. 

Nightmare

Content warning: I'm sorry, this is not going to be pleasant reading.

I just want to say thank you for the many many kind and thoughtful people who have reached out to me. In this horrific situation your words mean so much. What we are living through right now is a horror story. I keep starting to post something, then stopping because it's just so terrible, but I wanted to answer all your concerned messages.

We are safe and in an area considered safe.

We are definitely not OK, but we are safe and well considering.

Friday night we went to the festive synagogue services to dance and sing with the Torah scrolls, throw sweets and treats to the community's kids and then enjoyed a family dinner at home.

We woke early Saturday morning to the ominous thud, thud, thud, boom of rockets. We're in the centre of this small country, sound carries far, and we could hear rockets on all sides, volley after volley after volley, thousands of rockets for hours on end fired at towns, villages and major cities in much of the country: Beer Sheva, Jerusalem, the densely populated Tel Aviv area and its many suburbs, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Rehovot, Rishon Letzion...

We decided to go to synagogue for morning services, a short walk away, there is a big shelter there, we hoped to get a better idea of what was happening.

The streets were eerily quiet, the sky was a criss cross of rocket contrails, straight lines for launches from Gaza, loops and swirls for the Iron Dome interception system that hopefully stops them.

A car stopped us in the street, the driver leaned out the window "You know that we're at war?" And we started to learn just how horrific the situation really was.

Life since then is a blur, time has stopped, there are just updates and more updates, and each seems worse than the one before.

The death toll is now more than 1000 Israelis dead, most of them civilians massacred in that initial assault on Israeli rural border villages and towns on Saturday morning, a nightmare killing spree that wiped out entire families, entire communities, babies, children, women, men, young old. Thousands more are wounded, many in serious condition. Thousands more are wounded, many in serious condition.

Among the dead are medics and ambulance crews murdered as they tried to save lives, some ambulances looted and taken as spoils.

The horror is unspeakable.

Women raped, homes set alight and families burnt alive in them, young, old, children and grandparents gunned down in the streets, while trying to hide in their houses, in vehicles trying to escape.

Hamas terrorists went door to door in sleepy small kibbutz villages and towns killing or kidnapping civilians.

A music festival turned in to a killing field.

Young women taken as "trophies" back to Gaza to be paraded in the streets.

Civilians, including children and babies, kidnapped from their homes and taken as hostages to Gaza.

A friend's son was murdered in his kibbutz home. He was an academic, and like many on the kibbutzim, a peace activist. He was murdered trying to protect a neighbour's family with his body as Hamas gunmen fired in to the kibbutz houses, going house to house murdering the residents.

A bartender at a music venue in my area was one of those gunned down at the Nova music festival. A young guy, full of life and optimism, someone I had met a few times, was familiar enough to recognise his smiling face on yet another death notice.

There is almost no one in Israel who hasn't lost someone themselves or knows someone who has. The foodtruck sausage guy we vaguely know lost his friend who borrowed the truck to attend the music festival. The high school on our street has lost a few graduates, students of a friend. A close friend's nephew saw a friend gunned down in cold blood at the music festival but survived by a miracle.

Another friend's son is fighting for his life, critically wounded trying to defend a different kibbutz from the marauders.

A teacher friend's colleague is still missing, fate unknown.

Social media is a constant stream of photos of the missing, family desperate to know if loved ones are alive, dead or kidnapped. Hundreds are still unaccounted for.

There are so many massacre victims that burial teams are still combing the streets, fields, houses, orchards and ditches looking for all the bodies, to ensure that everyone receives a dignified burial. A family friend risked her life driving down to one of the devastated towns to help evacuate people and said that as of yesterday there were still shot up and burnt out vehicles with bodies in them on the streets.

Several friend's children serve with the volunteer Zaka organisation which identifies disaster victims, others are serving with the army chaplaincy. Over the last few days they have spent day and night gathering the bodies for burial, often under fire. 

Another friend's son is an army chaplain, part of a team of chaplains trying to find every last massacre victim and bring them to their families for burial. Like the Zaka volunteers he has been working round the clock, many times under rocket and mortar fire.

There are so many dead that high school kids, 14, 15, 16 year-olds, are digging graves because the burial societies can't cope.

Days later they are still finding more bodies of victims strewn in the fields, roadsides, homes that were boobytrapped by the terrorists so that they had to wait until the army could come and defuse the grenades and bombs before searching more homes for corpses of those massacred.

Communal kibbutz dining halls are acting as makeshift morgues and truck after truck goes out from the Gaza border area taking bodies for burial in safer areas of the country.

We don't know what tomorrow will bring. We haven't had any air raid sirens since Saturday but several times a day and night our windows shake with the boom and thud of distant and not so distant rockets.

Most are intercepted, some have scored direct hits on apartment buildings and homes in other towns and yet more civilians injured.

Our apartment, like most Israeli apartments built since the 1990s, has a reenforced concrete shelter room. It's small though and we have family staying with us, it isn't simple to squeeze nine of us in to that small space.

People are volunteering wherever they can - driving supplies to survivors evacuated from their towns and kibbutzim with nothing but the shirts on their backs, buying and packing care packages, hosting those who have had to flee their homes, donating blood, staffing hospitals overwhelmed with mass casualties, helping families who's fathers, mothers, adult children have received emergency call-ups as army reservists, cooking and baking for families in need. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have volunteered to deliver supplies around the country and transport evacuees, ordinary civilians just volunteering themselves and their vehicle, including driving in to harm's way to rescue people or deliver much needed humanitarian aid. 

Through all the horror, mourning and devastation Israelis come together and take care of each other, whether it's random people standing by the motorway handing out water to soldiers or entire Druze villages mobilising to provide meals to those evacuated from frontline communities, and opening up their homes to the refugees. 

Israelis know how to unite and offer assistance, support each other, risk their lives for one another. The profound human kindness, human decency we are experiencing from our fellow Israelis is our comfort and our strength. 

How do we mourn over 700 murdered Israelis? One by one, story by story. If you can only hold one or two photos in your mind, take this one to symbolise the utter barbarism of the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.

This entire family was wiped out by Hamas terrorists who attacked their home on kibbutz Nir Oz. Mother Tamari, father Jonathan and three young children: 6 year-old twins Shahar and Arbel and 4 year-old Omer cut down in cold blood just because they were Israelis.

And like them hundreds more Israelis. They were not "collateral damage" in a strike on a military target, they were the target, the object of this Hamas attack was the wholesale massacre of Israeli civilians.

New fruit

Sukkot is known as the holiday of joy, referred to in the Bible simply by the Hebrew name "haag", which just means "holiday". One of the ways many people traditionally enhance the enjoyment of meals on Sukkot is by adding new fruits over which one can say the blessing on new things. It can be a new fruit that you've never had or just a new fruit of the season, but it symbolises happiness and blessing, especially on this harvest festival.

Part of the joy of Sukkot is also to host in one's sukkah hut, hospitality is a huge aspect of the holiday, there is even a mystical tradition of "ushpizin", "guests" from biblical tradition, one of whom is said to visit the sukkah on each night of the holiday - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, David. This custom is there to highlight the importance of hosting - including new guests in one's holiday celebration each day if possible, widening the circle of joy and hospitality even during a week when we symbolically leave our homes and camp out in a makeshift hut in the garden or balcony or in homes with neither maybe in the street or building parking area. "Hosting" new fruits feeds in to this concept, enhancing holiday joy, welcoming new guests. :-) I am a sucker for new fruits. I'm like a magpie when I hear about a farmer who's working with a well known local agricultural research centre trying new fruits that will grow well in our climate and soil, fruits from around the world that may be hardier in low water conditions or flourish with recycled water or in extreme heat or sandy soil - all sorts of projects to diversify what is grown in our region. So there are all kinds of farm growing small trial quantities of fruits that many of us have never seen or heard of before. Sometimes they succeed and that fruit becomes a commercial success, grown in large quantities and sold widely in markets and supermarkets, sometimes it remains a niche acquired taste or too delicate to mass market and you just have to know where to look for it at certain farm markets or certain online produce sellers or market stalls who work with these growers. So this Sukkot dinner our "new fruit guests" included ambarella fruit, about which I'm still making up my mind, though certainly different and peanut butter fruit, which is, well, a small reddish fruit that tastes uncannily like peanut butter, everyone really liked it for the surprising flavour, the fruit's appearance and texture gave no hint of what to expect, so much fun!