Across the media, social media and the world, there are innocent and naïve – dare I say lucky – people who are falling prey to a fundamental misconception.

If you have never experienced or witnessed violence, whether personal or in war, you can mistakenly believe that the reaction to such trauma is loud. That it is emotional, hysterical.

I cannot speak for everyone, only for myself. And my own lived experience.

The misconception I speak of is that the people in Gaza, the people in Judea and Samaria – or the West bank if that is what your politics dictates – must be suffering.

That they must be truthful because they are loud. They are hysterical. They are crying.

And by logical deduction, Israel’s survivors of October 7 must be lying. They are calm. They speak with a lack of emotion – or what you perceive as a lack of emotion. Their voices hold no tremor, their hands do not clench. Their eyes are not filled with tears.

Look again.

By the time I was 12 I had witnessed violent domestic abuse, I had seen my first human die on the nightly news. By the time I was 20, I had been caught up in protest march which echoed the march of Shaka impis, replete with short shields and knob kierries and the rhythmic, uniform stomping of feet. Witnessed a man beaten, near to death for the colour of his skin. Had my home invaded by armed robbers because of the colour of my skin, By the time I turned 34 I had been on a bus. The bus stop was blown up just as we pulled up. I was not hurt, the one who was had help. I went to work.

I grew up with bomb drills in my birth country of South Africa. I arrived in Israel when I was 24. I dropped my children at school during the Second Intifada, waving good morning to the silent stoic IDF soldiers guarding the gates, in the heart of Tel Aviv with loaded automatic weapons. I watched the coverage of 9/11 at a street café on a tiny TV with 50 other Israelis at 7am on weekday morning.

When you have seen violence, when you have lived with missiles overhead, when you see the nightly news reporting the latest suicide bombing.

When you walk past the scene of the aftermath of such a bombing on your daily errands, on the way to work, on the way home.

When every person you know has served in the military – because if they didn’t you would all be vulnerable to suffer the same fate as our people did on October 7^th.

When you have lived these things, when you have made a life full of energy and hope and achievement. Full of joy and light and love despite all of these things.

Then you understand. True trauma does not manifest in hysteria. It literally either kills you – or it makes you unbelievable strong. It makes you calm. It makes you resolute.

We suffer, we do so in private, with those who love us. I cry when I am alone, as I write this.

You are not entitled to witness my suffering. I do not owe you a show – Israel does not owe you a show.