In this difficult week, I would like to bring here the words of a good friend of mine. In normal times, Porat Salomon is one of the most respected and prominent plastic artists in Israel, whose works are exhibited and win prizes in Israel and around the world. These days he is a reservist whose eldest son also serves in the regular army. Porat the artist's wise and sharp look also came with him to the reserves, and I hope that the words he wrote on his Facebook account will strengthen the people of Israel during these difficult days just as they strengthened me. Porat wrote:
"It's 12 o'clock at night now, and since I was called up as a member of the alert squad yesterday at 8 a.m. I've barely slept for two hours.
"Not that there's no time to lay your head between tasks. But how can you sleep when all the videos I've seen running in a loop on closed eyelids, and my children's sweet faces flickering inside them, make my heart ache to try and buzz.
"When my father survived the outpost in the Canal during the Yom Kippur War, on the first exit home from the inferno, he said to my grandfather: 'There will still be great crying in this country.'
"And we will have more. But not now. This must not happen. I feel like shouting, laughing, being angry, grieving. It's not time yet.
"On Saturday night, our son was sent back to the army. When he spoke to us from the conference grounds, he said that he tries not to watch videos running in groups, but the friends who have sunk into them are frightened and confused. Their fighting spirit was damaged.
"It's not just a cliché, it's a conclusive truth – maintaining a spirit of optimism, determination and a desire to win is no less important than the fighting itself.
"There will still be great crying in this country, and anger. We will mourn with the communities and families that were destroyed, we will settle accounts with all those who abandoned us.
"But we're still in the middle of the event, maybe even at the beginning. At the moment, this is the task of each and every one of us - to suppress. To lift the spirit around us, to encourage and remind us of our goal: to eradicate evil from the world."
I would like to connect to the last line of Porat's words - "eradicate evil from the world."
In this war there is a side whose God has no mercy even on the kindergarten children or the helpless old women, so in this war there are sons of light and sons of darkness. In this war, the people who gave humanity the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" stand up to those who have made the murder of children a mitzvah
On Saturday morning, the fence was breached and the Jewish people encountered, not for the first time in its history, absolute evil. The poet Yehuda Amichai wrote following his experiences as a soldier in the Palmach's Negev Brigade in 2018: "God has mercy on the kindergarten children, less so on the school children, and on the older ones He will no longer have mercy, leaving them alone."
But this is a different war. In this war there is a side whose God has no mercy even on the kindergarten children or the helpless old women, so in this war there are sons of light and sons of darkness. In this war, the people who gave humanity the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" stand up to those who have made the murder of children a mitzvah.
As Porat wrote, the time for great crying and reckoning will come. But not now. Hamas' opening blow was made possible, among other things, by neutralizing the cameras on the fence. But the Jewish people have another eye, which Hamas has actually opened wide. This is the Scouting Eye to Zion, which never ceases to hope for life in this country under the wings of a culture that sanctifies human life. This hope unites us all – and it will prevail.
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