We are heavy at 6am.
We open the news and wake up with the ritual of "be allowed to be published" that changes the face of our day. Even if we didn't know the fallen, we know them. Days of cloud shadowed by stories of fallen soldiers, smiling faces from the screen, interviews with painful family members and a flood of social media posts. We are a hard-necked people, but now the home front is a bit bent.
"How are there so many dead?" I wrote this week in a moment of weakness to a member of the front, a senior member of one of the brigades' reserves. "There are not so many," the fighter at the front tried to encourage the home front, "I remind you of the horror scenarios about the maneuver. Today there are about 150 dead in two months, when we maneuvered everywhere."
The horror scenarios are, of course, those of Operation Protective Edge, the same predictions that were leaked to the media and prevented the necessary action to eliminate Hamas even then. In our slightly opposite world, the front encourages the home front, puts things in proportion.
Those who eat battle rations and burrow into the mud cheer up those in the warm house; Those who lose friends, who get injured and carry on, are the ones who raise our heads to all of us, remind us of what and how important it is.
But not only the front, the new bereaved families are also working to straighten out our home front. "The job of a company on a morning like this is not only to mourn and cry as much as possible, but also to remember and remind each other more intensely why our soldiers fell and why this is our hope," Menachem Clemensohn wrote this week after the previous difficult weekend.
Menachem jumped to Kibbutz Be'eri on Black Saturday together with his brother, Elhanan, and his nephew, and together they saved dozens of lives until Elchanan fell in battle. Later, he also lost his cousin, Padya Mark, who fell at the beginning of the ground maneuver. As someone who saw the horror on Black Saturday, he wants to go from the private to the national, to put things in proportion and at the right angle, to give hope. He does not challenge national mourning, but it is precisely from his personal grief that he brings great light. And he's not the only one.
Iris Chaim, the mother of Yotam, the kidnapped who fell by the gunfire of our forces, also became the mother of the nation. In a painful but determined voice, with understanding and power, she is interviewed and her words save lives.
Hagai Louber, Jonathan's father who fell this week, also emphasized how proud and grateful they are to his son for taking part in erasing evil in the world. Hadas, Elisha Levinstern's widow, who cried in her interviews and voice, also breathed Elisha's spirit of life in all of us, when she clarified that "our life strengths will not diminish but will only increase, I have no intention of giving these evildoers a piece of my life."
Jewish and national history will not forgive those who stutter again. We don't want an obstacle, no technological means along the Philadelphi route, no more security zones on the fence in Israeli territory, no more trickles or rounds
In my imagination I see them - Menahem, Iris, Hagai and Hadas - they and many others, standing above all of us, the sane people of Israel, and asking us: Don't break, don't sink. They have already paid the most precious of all, and in doing so they raise their necks, lift our heads, wipe away a tear and remind us of the essence, why we embarked on a war of no choice, why it is to be or to cease.
But the uprightness of the home front does not depend only on the front and is not fed only by the strength of the bereaved families.
It depends mainly on our leadership, which is tasked with the task of victory. They all repeat one message to Israel's political and military leadership: lead us to victory this time, we must finish the job, at any price.
Jewish and national history will not forgive those who stutter again. We don't want an obstacle, no technological means along the Philadelphi route, no more security zone on the fence in Israeli territory, no more trickles or rounds.
The public will not close its eyes again and tell itself that Hamas is deterred only for the sake of temporary quiet. The uprightness of the home front depends on the knowledge that whoever is leading the campaign aspires, this time, to an unequivocal victory.
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