Coming Home

Two weeks of unbearably raw emotions. Two weeks since a monstrous and beastly hell was unleashed – again! And I’ve been away for it all. A family holiday, a big family celebration and a festival all marred and rendered irrelevant as a result of an orchestrated attack on Jewish sovereignty indiscriminately butchering man, woman and child. “The numbers aren’t final” were the last four words of every message that week. Rising exponentially whilst the discovery of atrocity after atrocity unfolded, more than 1400 Jews lay brutally exterminated. It’s been very hard to be away and now it’s very hard to come home.

The country I left is not the country I’m returning to. How could it be? How can it ever be the same again? How are we to appreciate the tranquility of sitting in our gardens surrounded by fruit trees when a palpable fear runs through us? How can the hustle and bustle of day-to-day working life reemerge whilst hundreds are held captive?

Each tale more heartbreaking, and each picture more stomach churning, than the next. Disabled children mutilated. Girls raped whilst lying next to the corpse of their freshly butchered friends, awaiting the same unspeakable fate. Senior citizens carted off, mirroring the horrors of the world they were born into. Babies beheaded – BABIES! BEHEADED! Families burnt at the stake. Mothers pulled from their screaming children’s arms and murdered before their very eyes. Pregnant women’s stomachs slit open and forced to watch the fetus chopped up before they too were slaughtered. Hundreds of party goers in the name of peace ravished and massacred. All the while digesting that hundreds had been kidnapped and are still held hostage. You know the images of battered dogs in China cooped up in cages awaiting slaughter? Hamas put Jewish babies in there and stole them. Driving them to a territory they’ve had autonomy over for 18 years and where not a single Jew is permitted to step foot.

This wasn’t an act of resistance. This wasn’t an act of frustration. This was pure, unadulterated evil. This was the lowest form of humanity; a people bred, to educate to hate to kill. And to kill in the most despicable manner so as to gain a higher Pay-To-Slay reward, and assurances from leaders of ultimate salvation from the God that presides over the world and who blesses with abundance terrorists in the name of a religion of peace. This was Hitler, Idi Amin, Genghis Khan and ISIS all rolled into one. And the repulsive perpetrators took so much pleasure in their vile and sinful acts that they recorded them and shared gloating images of their booty to the world. ?

A noxious stain on humanity itself and a most repugnant enemy, which is why I have no time anymore for the “it’s complicated” brigade. Unfollow me, don’t do business with me – it’s fine! Because it really, REALLY isn’t complicated. This is a moral war and you’re either with us or against us. You either respect the notion that what came before us is sacred and that factually, the oldest, practicing, monotheistic faith has lived and maintained a presence in the Land of Israel for millennia prior to the birth of any Palestinian, or you don’t. You either accept the fact that Hamas’ charter calls for the extermination of every Jew in Israel – and the planet – or you don’t. You either see a leadership who has stolen from its citizens to procure weapons and militia instead of bettering their society, or you’re blind. You either champion democracy, free speech and human rights or you fly the flag for those throwing homosexuals off grand public buildings.

It took a whole two days for calls of restraint to come flooding in. For obnoxious, pseudo intellectual commentators to call for understanding and proportionality. For correspondents to apportion blame on Israel and her leaders. For politicians to attend pro-Palestinian rallies where cries of ‘from the river to the sea’ – a public call for Jewish extermination – were blasted. And for today’s axis of evil to threaten more catastrophe and more pillaging. Not only are the Jews not allowed to defend themselves but they must keep their enemy alive and sustain them. Israel must provide them with everything they need because these poor people live in squalor and don’t have anything. Anything that is except for an endless supply of missiles and martyrs.

We thought long and hard whether or not to wait it out with family abroad but this is where we live. This is our home, our family. Friends tell me of the countless heroic and unifying acts of kindness people are doing in every pocket of the country in spite of the emotion and very high tensions. Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, is a tiny country. Everyone knows someone directly affected by the barbarism of October 7th. On Thursday evening we returned home with a plane full of Israelis who clapped and cheered as we touched down. I’ve never been prouder to be a Jew and never more grateful to be an Israeli.