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 7th.
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.
It has been a strange year. It has been an oddball decade. There are so many ways to start this post, and none of them feel right. So I will go with a classic and start at the beginning.
This blog was conceived in 2019. The name was settled on, and I purchased the domain in 2020.
And since then, I have not written a word. Until the 7th of October 2023, there were many reasons, most of them juvenile and insecure, for not writing – or at least hitting the ‘publish’ button on what I had written.
Since the 7th of October 2023, there has been 1 reason: Do I want to start this blog right now, Do I want to make it an ‘Israeli‘ blog, Do I want to be seen as someone building a following off a tragedy. Again, all of these reasons are self-serving and give way too much credit to voices other than my own.
And with that out of the way, hang on to your frock – we are off!
Israel & I go way back. I was raised in a conservative, Christian culture. My religious influences were very old testament, geared toward a personal relationship with G_d.** And a simple, central, undoubtable principle – Israel is the first and Israel is G_d’s chosen people. This is quite possibly the only fact of my religion I have never doubted, questioned or, in all honesty, given much thought. It is just there – like the sun. All of this being said, I do not consider myself a religious person and I have not been a practising Christian for more decades now than I was one. G_d and I have an excellent relationship, and we speak often. I may have wandered off occasionally, but my Creator never did. To me, faith is a deeply personal and private matter – that alone makes me not a very good Christian. Outside of that, I cannot lay any claim to religious fervour or belief.
In the ‘80’s I was going through a sweeping, historical fiction phase in my reading, and I read a book called ‘Eagle in the sky’ by Wilbur Smith. In his classic style, but a rare departure from his deep-dive Africa stories, he tells the story of a Jewish boy from Cape Town who joins the Israeli Air Force, falls in love and learns the incredible phrase ‘Ye beseder’. It means ‘It will be ok’ – literally. And it is used for spilled milk, lost pets, childhood nightmares, bus bombings, wars. It is a statement, a prayer, a promise. And sometimes, that is all you have.
Outside of nightly news broadcasts, sandwiched in between reports of famine in Ethopia, and the weekly sporting news, this book was my first real encounter with the concept of the modern State of Israel.
I had no plans to ever visit or travel to Israel. There were so many more interesting places in the world to see. Places I knew nothing about, except that I wanted to see them. But, as the saying goes ‘Man proposes, and G_d disposes.’ Through a series of non-decision decisions, spanning 2 continents, an island, a lost engagement and a ‘running away from home’ mental state, I find myself early one Mediterranean morning in 1993 disembarking a ferry at Haifa. I have an address in Tel Aviv where a bed in a hostel – paid for 2 weeks, is waiting. 2 Cypriot pounds+a backpack+a passport comprise all of my worldly goods. A complicated 2 weeks followed – related to the lost engagement. [#Anotherstory, for another time]. But then….
Then – Tel Aviv! “Tel Aviv, ya Habibi, Tel Aviv!” in the ‘90’s. What chaos, what beauty, what madness, what love!
I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I do know it was a Shabbat morning in Tel Aviv, in the summer. I worked nights for many years, and to this day, my favourite time of day is those hours when the night-people are going to bed and the day-people have not yet opened their sleepy eyes. Those magical pre-dawn hours that so few of us take the time to experience. The world is quiet. It is waiting for a new sun, a new day with so many new possibilities. The dark of the night is behind us, the rush of the day not yet started. I sometimes think that all great ideas must be germinated in these hours – it is the only time most people hear themselves think. And then I wonder how many farmers could have been CEO’s if the cows didn’t need milking.
Nu! I hear you say – what happened? I will tell you.
I fell in love. I fell in love with Tel Aviv, I fell in love with Israel and I fell in love with the idea that G_d truly held this tiny piece of Earth in His hand. [I also fell in love with the people – but #Anotherstory]. The quiet of a Shabbat morning in one of the busiest, 24-7 cities on the planet is hard to describe. I do not possess the words to do it justice, not being of the poetic persuasion. But I can tell you that this is the only time in my life that I feel completely at peace – with myself, with humanity, with the natural world. I see more clearly; I hear more acutely and the smells of the early morning – oh, the smells! Yes, even in summer when the Shuk adds that deep bass note to the city’s aroma….You can feel the plants growing. You can find the dew-drop glimmer on a hidden spider web, you hear the birds waking up, as you see the last bat find it’s way home. It is a time of day when creation celebrates as the sun slowly creeps up from the east to bathe the land in glowing yellow light.
In the 30 years since then I have changed, the city has changed. I have not always been there in body, but in spirit I spend every Saturday morning in those hours, in that place. I was a traveller who found a place. And over many places and much time, hard as I try – I have found this nowhere else.
Israel. Claimed by so many, loved by more, understood by few. disputed, bloodied, torn, celebrated
Notes: **G_d – I write in this way because of what the word itself means to so many. You and I may not mean it the same way, and it may not have the same meaning to you as it does to me. With this writing I hope to leave it open to give each of us what we need from it. In speech, I use the words ‘The Creator’ as I have found this to be one of the few that won’t derail the conversation into a quagmire of semantics. Phrases I used: Tel Aviv ya Habibi Tel Aviv * Refers to a popular song released in 2013: Tel Aviv by Omer Adam Nu! 1. used to express surprise, agreement, acquiescence, resignation, etc. 2. used to ask a question, with such meanings as “ well?”, “so?”, or “so what?” Word origin [1890–95; ‹ Yiddish; c. OHG, MHG nū (adv. and conj.), G nu (dial. and colloquial) well! well now!] the Shuk The Carmel Market (the Shuk HaCarmel) is the largest market – or shuk – in Tel Aviv. [#Anotherstory, for another time] This will likely show up more often than I think is a good idea. But all stories are simply links in chains of stories.
Nomad Nation 