I had all kinds of possibilities of what to share today, but realized that as I was trying to choose just what, I was beginning to feel more and more down. It’s not simple in Israel now, to put it mildly. I heard and saw a lot of poignant, painful words and images. Yet, I also came across voices of people who’ve been much more directly affected by this war than I have, and I realized that if they won’t give into despair, neither will I. And so I share here the words of two women I admire enormously.
The first, Esther Lachman, is the founder, alongside her husband, of Arugot Cosmetic Wellness, an organic and natural beauty company based near their home in the Gaza envelope.
Esther is a beloved teacher of natural healing and herbology, and in the long years of flare-ups and tension and danger that she and her neighbors lived through even before October 7th, she was often a voice sharing the effect on families of life in the South.
I previously shared something else she wrote here.
Esther wrote this post following a panel she spoke on recently at a conference hosted by Google Israel and Israel’s financial newspaper Calcalist:
I didn't mean to be optimistic.
On the contrary, I arrived after a sleepless night of shelling and artillery
I arrived late tired and overwhelmed by the gap between (life in the Gaza) envelope and the center of the country
But then Roni, the cute interviewer, bombarded me with a question about the government’s functioning and aid to businesses (which has not yet arrived).
And I smelled that smell
Of consent and fatigue and guilt and despair
And I'm sick of him and of the death smell that he brings
Of the anger and the feeling of helplessness
Of the tendency to find fault and point at them
Only because it hurts so much inside and it’s all too hard.
I almost agreed and blamed and participated like a good girl
But then another thought occurred to me
Anyway I’m suspected of being a fan of the government
And anyway, I'm the most unusual one here, with my blue head scarf and sleeves in the middle of summer
So my heart whispered to me to lean into this
To my deviations
As it is I don't meet anyone’s expectations, at most I’ll be seen as a bit chutzpadik.
So I took a deep breath
And I gave my take on the current situation
(Although) I don't have such a take
But it is clear to me that the situation is so complexThat the worst thing we can do is be helpless
And to give away the power to government officials or the Tkuma (rehabilitation) project
Or to think that someone owes us something
So I growled something about life and death about the opportunity to be a tigress and to raise up a business that is on the fence with Gaza
To new places;
And about the word mashber, which in Hebrew means both crisis, and to give birth
And in childbirth, as we all know, we die a little
Because the angel of death comes when he smells an opportunity
The same angel is also walking about here, in our neighborhood, in the Gaza envelope
And like me he smells fear, despair, an opportunity to die.
He simply doesn't know that women have this trick we’ve practiced for thousands of years called mashber/crisis
That’s called giving birth
Of which we are champions
That just when it seems to hurt the most, and that it's all over
That we’ve reached the end
And there is no chance
Just then
A small baby screams and emerges from the lowest place
Within us
And new life comes into the world.
Thank you, wonderful Calcalist and Google Israel Conference
On innovation and renewal
I at least, was renewed…
The second is Iris Haim.
Iris, a palliative nurse— a fact that strikes me as incredibly symbolic— has herself become a symbol of positivity since October 7 when her son Yotam was taken captive by Hamas, and even more so when he was killed as he tried to escape his captors, by what is called “friendly fire,” and she wrote to those very soldiers that she is not angry with them, that she loves them, ad invited them to come visit her in her home, which they did. And with this she comforted a nation.
Iris has given voice, and permission, to everyone here who, despite everything, refuses to give in to anger and to hold on to hope.
From the beginning of the war, I chose to say things, words that inspire much confidence. And I always mentioned that during this time, to have full confidence, to believe and trust in my country, because I have no other country… this way, of complete confidence without asking too many questions, and maybe it sounds a little strange because I am someone who asks questions, many questions- but this gave strength to many people. People stop me in the street today and tell me 'you -you- helped me to lift my chin during this war'. And it cuts across sectors - religious, ultra-Orthodox, secular, mothers of mentally ill people, mothers of soldiers, wives of reservists, female reservists…
And on the words that people use surrounding her son’s death:
I will refer to the word tragedy for a moment. In one of my meetings with people someone told me that a tragedy (in Israel people use the Hebraicized word tragedia) is a word we received from the Greeks, and it is a story lacking all hope. So I don't like the word tragedy, because I think there is hope. The way in which I look at things always leaves an opening for for hope, because without hope— and it’s not by chance that “HaTikvah”, meaning “The Hope” is our national anthem— we won’t be able to continue living here, or at all, with ourselves, and I discovered the power of hope. So I don't use the word tragedy. I say an incident happened. There was a shooting incident, Yotam - it's hard for me to even say the word, was killed - but I will say it- and I spoke with Daniel Hagari (the head of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit) earlier and I said I would even remove the phrase ‘by accident’ because I am so patriotic and I so love our army and its soldiers…
The interviewer interrupts her and asks “You’re not angry?”
No, I'm not angry at all. I’m really not angry. They won't convince me that I should be angry. And I asked (Hagari) to consider the phrase ‘by accident’ - why do they need to continue saying ‘by accident’ - from my perspective it’s a ‘two-way shooting’, and this is (a term) that we will try to advocate for- in my eyes this is very important- because when a soldier shoots at another soldier, and in this incident at my son who was a hostage, not even a soldier, and kills him- it’s a two-way shooting in that the shot doubles back at him, into his heart, and injures him in his heart, a fatal injury, that is very hard to rise from, and many times the soldiers that were involved in a two-way shooting, they are sorry that they themselves didn’t die in the same incident. And this is something that we must deal with, these soldiers and their families…