http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=8755
On Monday morning, I met with the editor of a New York newspaper.
”Isn’t it hard being away from Israel right now, with all that’s going on?” he asked, referring to Thursday night’s abduction of three teenagers — Naftali Frenkel, 16, Gil-ad Shaer, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19 — who were on their way home for the weekend from yeshivas they attend in Gush Etzion and Hebron.
“Yes,” I said. “But there is always something critical happening there.”
Indeed, I have yet to visit my family in the United States without either leaving behind, or greeting upon my arrival, a worrisome event that is dominating the news in Israel. And my first response, like that of all Israeli parents, is to locate each of my children to make sure they are safe, or to find out whether they have been called up for reserve duty.
This is not simply a function of Jewish motherhood, however. It is not due to hysteria over the ills that might befall our offspring. No, this is not how we Israelis live at all. If anything, we are experts at compartmentalizing danger, clucking our tongues at existential crises, while fretting over grocery shopping and bad-hair days.
Until something horrific happens to snap us out of our stupor, that is. Like the kidnapping of “our” boys at the hands of bloodthirsty terrorists. It is then that we turn off the soccer matches on TV and gather together to cry with and pray for the victimized families, fully aware that they could be us, that the only thing differentiating them from us is an accident of fate.
It is during such moments that reality hits home, yet again: Israel is under enemy attack, as it has been since its inception.
This fact is continually obfuscated, however, both unwittingly and on purpose. The former is understandable. Israeli democracy is among the most vibrant and successful in the world. In spite of glitches that would be called “growing pains” in any other fledgling state established a mere 66 years ago, it has a viable economy, a passable education system, reasonable health care, a vigilant legal system, a free press, and attention to social justice. It absorbs massive amounts of legal immigrants, and contends, as humanely as possible, with the illegal ones.