I am the mother of soldiers, and I had a representative office in Jenin this week. I got a whiff of consciousness when I received a WhatsApp with an indirect update that everything was fine, at exactly the same moment they issued a push in Haaretz that whoever is now in Jenin is doing so for only one person.
The person is not his mother, of course, nor is Noa Kirl.
We educate our children, choose the environment in which they will grow up and try to guide them according to the values we believe in. Sometimes it is not important because education is a personal example. Sometimes it doesn't matter because they decide to do the opposite.
IDF Spokesperson
There is no cell phone in the operation, soldiers do not report from the field - and that's excellent. "It's going well, I'll get sick, mediate it to mom who won't worry," the boy who serves wrote about me and passed it on to another child he sent me without censorship. And in the opposite lane, someone wrote: "Whoever participates in the operation does not serve the State of Israel or Israel's security."
Sometimes Netanyahu is not the subject, and the obsession to start with him every day and end every act with him harms our mental health as individuals and as a nation.
A woman's tip: Are you trying to solve a certain problem and it really doesn't work out? Pressing hard and it doesn't happen? Sometimes a little relaxation can be helpful.
Personally, empty Israeli militarism doesn't do that to me; To paraphrase the old Peace Now campaign, I don't have children for unnecessary wars either, and I don't always trust politicians who care about us. But hey, whoever writes an article like this when our kids are on a small foray to the front is:
1. Unprofessional - deliberately minimizes military facts regarding the necessity of the event.
2. Does not respect basic values such as solidarity in times of extremity.
In Jenin, soldiers from all sectors and across the political spectrum fought. When did "leftist" values – that is, pluralistic – become a wish that the Zionist majority begs to preserve, and in which the extreme left cuts corners with excuses such as Kahane Chai, according to which all means are legitimate when ideology presses?
Is the new equation "war within the framework of the army" or "civil disobedience" within the framework of the extreme left?
Poisoned
The controversy surrounding the operation did not happen all at once, of course: for weeks now, the military echelon has been pointing to the necessity of entering Jenin and cleaning it of the arsenals piled up there under our denying eye, and the anarchist echelon is pumping at the same time that if the security forces are forced to cleanse the area in order to reduce free terror in Israel and Judea and Samaria, it will be in Milchan's honor.
A general like Benny Gantz, for example, finds himself very frustrated when the level of discourse drops low to the height of rubber bands in paratrooper's shoes, and makes contradictory statements:
Once he speaks out against insubordination and annoys protest activists, and once he blurts out that "when people bleed in the streets, it will be Netanyahu's fault." Gantz's credit as a prudent military man, who sees both the good of the country and the good of the people, goes down the drain when he skips between solidarity and populism. Which is a real shame.
Benny Gantz, credit goes down the drain, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
On Thursday, Dayan interviewed a demonstrator who blocked Tel Aviv on Wednesday night, and a Border Police company commander who returned from the front line in Samaria. Ask the demonstrator if there is a stage at which he will say as a responsible adult that the violence the protest is going to is not worth it.
The protester, after clarifying that violence always comes from the side of the police, said that it was more dangerous what would happen in the country.
The Border Police company commander, who opened his remarks by offering condolences to the bereaved family of a soldier in the Egoz Patrol, spoke about the cooperation between the army and the Border Police.
Ilana asked what was most complex, and he replied: a precise work of separating innocents from terrorists.
I tried to listen to these interviews not like an Israeli mother, but like just a rational creature caught up in another planet. I saw demonstrators imbued with battle spirit, armed with zero compassion, indifferent to the wider context taking place around them, despising the institutions of the state and determined to destroy it because what is it worth if they do not control it? And I saw military personnel who first of all see the grieving individual, do not tie crowns to themselves and do not boast of achievements, do not blame, and emphasize simply the effort to maintain human dignity and mutual respect even in the midst of battle. Towards someone who is defined as innocent, even if he lives in the same house with a clear terrorist.
It seems like a phenomenon that is beginning to deviate from the usual sociological definitions.
I wondered if the diagnosis even belonged to the world of medicine, and then the 17th of Tammuz came and I realized that maybe it was just a family thing.
I'm Jewish, so I'm allowed to say, maybe it seems like it's happening only here.
And no, it's not comforting that these are the best families.
Braiding mothers
So this year I went back to fasting on the 24th of Tammuz. When the children were born, I stopped - there is such a definition in halacha of "din from infancy", and its practice is a kind of Israbloff - ostensibly if you are pregnant and breastfeeding you do not need to fast, because your body currently serves other purposes. You are considered "breastfeeding" two years after birth, even if your baby grinds meatballs and rice, you won a lottery - an exemption from fasting for <> months.
It is common in our places that mothers of children simply skip these small fasts - 22 Tevet, <> Tammuz, Gedalia's fast (and, if you will, also juice fasting) and return to the rotation as they grow up. So after taking advantage of my exemption far beyond what was due, I returned this week to fast on the <>th of Tammuz after <> years.
It happened when I tried – an innocent mother – to leave blocked Tel Aviv at midnight and reach the children returning from Jenin, but I got stuck in the protest. On the radio, a publicist who presents himself as a strategist explained that blocking Ben Gurion Airport is wrong and blocking Ayalon is okay, because Ayalon always has traffic jams anyway.
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