Today I am attending a memorial service for a dear friend’s mom. Her mom died well into her nineties after what we call a good “long life.”
Death is a poignant moment and grief knows no boundaries. Whether it is after a life well lived or a life cut off too soon the ensuing grief we possess is part of what defines our human experience.
Death has been all around us since October 7
Yesterday I wrote about waves amplifying.
The attack of October 7 has been amplified many times over. Many many times. And it will continue to reverberate for generations. Hamas attacked Israel to maximize damage to civilians including all who died or injured.
They attacked all Jews over the world at that moment.
No Jew alive in 2023 will ever forget the date, Oct 7th. It is now a moment etched in my being. Hamas wounded each of us that day. They applied an evil psychological tattoo.
The tattoo will always burn like a radiation scar. I feel mine pulsating every day.
I doubt Hamas could have anticipated their capability to inflict these waves of personal trauma. Or maybe they did. They have racked up so much pain. Not just for Israelis and the Jewish people. For all the Gazans. For the whole world. Maybe Sinwar should get the Nobel Prize in psychological torture.
Art by Kichka
The psychological tattoo that I got on October 7 sometimes feels like an electric shock running through my very being. I have had to harden my heart to accept the awful human toll that Hamas has demanded. Israelis, soldiers, civilians, all, will always have to live with these wartime experiences. And Jews around the world share their pain. Hamas has inoculated each of us with the burden of so much death and destruction.
It is like we have all been swept into a diabolical puppet show under the direction of terrorists.
Hamas created the tableau.
Gazans are used as human shields while sinwar hides in a tunnel and his handlers guzzle champagne in Qatar.
They blame the death of thousands of Gazans on Israel. But the reality is that Hamas knew their terrorist attack on Israel would activate the military response we have seen. Hamas has calculated they will lose 30,000 - 50,000 civilians. Hamas has expected huge physical damage. That was factored in when the tunnels were built. Many of the Hamas leadership have safely sheltered in the tunnels while expendable civilians especially children have paid the consequences of war.
That tattoo I got on October 7 is a remembrance of the moment and the psychological fallout that has resulted.
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