Août 4, 2014

27th day – In the open air

Thank you Marlene Ferron for the translation

Morning sky

Strange summer. I do not remember skies so cloudy in Israel this summer.

Ciel matinal

Iron Dome, Thank you!

Towards 5:00 p.m., the red alert took me by surprise. I thought it was over. Well, you know the procedure. I had the impression that there were two alarms after that.. Explosion sounds. This is the Iron Dome in action. I never repeat enough how I like this Dome.

Following the siren, my son Dan wrote on Facebook:

I remember my first memory of « Hamas ». I was about eleven years old, the first time I heard of that name, It was in October 1994. I lived close to Dizengoff Street, one of the major streets of Tel Aviv. That day, I remember hearing a huge bang, looking through the window and noticing smoke. It was the first of many suicide attacks on buses in Tel Aviv. 22 people were killed that day. Hamas claimed responsibility. This happened a year after the signing of the Oslo Accords, which was supposed to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians. There was no Iron Dome against suicide bombings.

A tweet from Fania Oz-Salzberger, the daughter of writer Amos Oz:

« Not all Goliath are evil by definition, nor are all David goog . Had Hamas been Goliath, not a single Jew would be tweeting now. »

I would also recommend Amos Oz interview which begins:

Amos Oz:
First Question. What would you do if your neighbor across the street sat on the balcony, put his little boy on his lap, and started firing at your day-care with a machine gun? »

Second Question. What would you do if your neighbor across the street was digging a tunnel from his daycare to your daycare in order to blow up your house or kidnap your family?

I speak, in the open, of the anxiety and the sadness I feel in Israel and I am well aware that I am privileged. I’m not the mother of an Israeli family who left her kibbutz on the Gaza border. I’m not a mother who remained in her kibbutz on the border but sent her children to another kibbutz in the north as more than rockets, she fears infiltrations through the tunnels. I am not the mother of a family living in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Sderot or Be’er Sheva with days filled with dozens of alerts. I can only tell you what I know. Yes, my fate is a thousand times better than the fate of a mother of a Palestinian family in Gaza.

Open air

In the open air, along the Tel Aviv promenade, facing the spot where usually take place folk dances on Saturday afternoons on the beach, where there are nets to play beach volleyball, there are now candles, bunches of flowers, a board with photos and letters in memory of Roy Peles. The young man used to play beach-volley in this area. His friends still play : « Roy didn’t go off to fight in Gaza so that we would sit at home, hide under our blankets and cry. »

En souvenir de Roy Peles

« Under the sky »

The funeral of Hadar Goldin. Thousands of Israelis behind an almost empty coffin.
That of Omri Tal where the singer David Broza sings the song Omri and his girlfriend chose to open the dance at their future wedding: « Under the sky », « מתחת לשמיים »

Sunset with baby

A special thought for my friend Nathalie G. who just urgently flew to Paris her mother liying in a coma. She is completely torn leaving her son in Gaza.

As I often do these days, I went to watch the sunset at Banana Beach and I stole this moment of happiness, this moment of eternity.