Peace Lily In Bloom And Neighbors At War

While I have been cooking this morning I have been going over in my head how exactly to share my thoughts with you.....thoughts regarding the fact that we the state of Israel, or more accurately, we the Jewish people are once again at war with our neighbors. Neighbors whose requests go far beyond a desire for land or to establish a country of their own, nieghbors who quite simply want to wipe us off the face of the earth, and this is no secret.

So here I am, an American born Jewish woman, raising her kids in our precious holy land, and yet the ridiculousness of it all just doesn't make sense to someone like me raised in a country where if neighbors acted like our neighbors here in Israel, there would be no more aformentioned neighbors. Get what I'm saying? There is indeed a serious double standard going on here, and while our military takes actions to spare civilian lives as much as possible, the enemy takes great delight in killing as many of us as they can.

Fortunately, they have been largely unsuccessful in taking lives, and their military power doesn't compare to ours. While Israel is a third world country in many ways, the war technology that we have at our dispense is world class, it not revolutionary......they have fired hundreds of missiles into Israel over the past few days, and as of yesterday there were no casualities, a huge miracle.

So what can I tell you, we are fortunate to be living in Northern Israel, which is too far from Gaza to be directly affected by the war in its current state, so we are living in a strange sort of reality, meaning most of the country is running to bomb shelters when sirens are sounded, many families have left their homes, and certainly those with sons and husbands in the army wait nervously to hear whether their loved ones will be called upon to protect our country. We on the other hand are going about our everyday business.

If you are still reading this, my request of you, is firstly please don't judge Israel, and secondly, take everything you see and hear in the news with a grain of salt— news reports are so very often biased, unfortunately, and world leaders tend to take a stand that will keep their country's own population on their side.

So here we are once in again a situation where the world expects of us, the Jewish people, actions by which no other country could or would abide. That said, where exactly is this war taking us? Who knows, but as history has shown, despite terrible injustices against our people, for thousands of years, we are still here today, (unklike many of our enemies from the distant past who no longer exist!!) stronger than ever. And most importantly we have a sincere desire to continue to make our unique contribution to the world. Preferably in a world where there is peace!

Shabbat Shalom.