Sleepless -not- in Seattle

When I visited just over a year ago, Israel felt 'not broken, just bent' by war. Is it broken now?

By15

By Rebeca Permuth de Sabbagh

The slightly open curtains in my hotel room show it’s the crack of dawn.   Sleepless in Tel Aviv.  Only this time, it is not the  jet lag that kept me awake.

Over the years, I’ve had many opportunities to travel to Israel — for my brothers’ bar mitzvot at the Kotel, holidays, seminars, and to reconnect with friends. When my immediate family left Guatemala during the armed conflict of the 1980s, we often visited them in Ra’anana. I still remember when they made aliyah, they brought a microwave — a novelty in Israel at the time. Ironically, Guatemala was ahead in that regard, well before Israel became known as the Startup Nation.

With each new trip, Israel seemed transformed. Always on the cutting-edge in every field,  we marveled at how it seemed we were visiting a different place each time.

After October 7th, unfortunately, it also feels like a completely different country. It counts as a new destination. Using this measure,  this would now be my second trip to Israel.

When I visited just over a year ago, Israel felt “not broken, just bent” by war. Is it broken now? It’s like the June heat here— already unbearable… and yet, you can’t help but wonder if the worst is still to come.

A friend told me in this visit  that she asked one of her students — who was called up again to miluim (reserve duty) — how it felt to be back in Gaza.

“At best, like a fool; at worst, like an enabler.”  “I show up for duty”, he said, “..but just for loyalty towards my comrades in the unit, because if I don’t show up, they’re worse off.”

Right after October 7th, the feeling was completely different. Reservists enlisted even without being called up,  crossing the globe, leaving families and vacations behind, because at that moment, there was no greater duty and honor than serving the homeland.

Today, when Prime Minister Netanyahu, who had the perfect excuse (if not moral duty) to abandon his unachievable plan of “total victory” over Hamas— a fantasy at best, a ploy to avoid facing corruption charges at worst — has chosen not to.  He could have refrained from re-entering Gaza when President Trump asked him not to. But he went in again, against all logic and reason, driven only by what seems like self-interest.

Israel is in a war where following a lack of Haredi manpower, the IDF is turning to woman power: 1 in 5 fighters are now female.   Young men barely out of basic training are being sent to fight without the necessary experience. Currently, there aren’t as many reservists anymore. Morale is low, and hostages continue not being the priority.

Growing up as a Jew in Guatemala, taught me to support Israel — regardless who its leaders were. We, diaspora Jews whose children don’t go to the army, who don’t pay taxes here, were told we had no right to criticize whomever Israelis chose to govern them. No vote, no voice. Our duty was to support, without questioning. But today, we must join our voices, even if from afar, to those who every Saturday after Shabbat, gather to speak out against a government that, though elected by a majority, paradoxically no longer represents that majority.

A government born from a coalition scheme between a Likud sealing its impunity and a group of ultra-Orthodox parties trading their neshama — their soul — and their vote, in exchange for their exemption from army service.  A legal construct eroding democracy, in the name of democracy itself. If they succeed, Israel risks becoming indistinguishable from the other theocratic regimes in the region — chanting with the same fanaticism to Hashem as their neighbors do to Allah.

Hitting the 609 days of captivity of those still kidnapped, as I walked towards Hostage Square, there was a silent vigil for the death of innocent Palestinians. There were posters with photos of the nine children the Al-Najjar family of Palestinian doctors who recently died in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis. This protest caused me internal conflict. Israel warned them to evacuate, since that  area would become a military zone. They should have left. I can’t agree with this protest — and yet …

Voltaire rings in my mind: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  It reminds me of the importance of not losing our humanity in this tragic conflict. If we do, nothing will differentiate us from the barbaric enemies we are fighting against.  Those children — at least until the day they died — were innocent. Despite of the Palestinian ideology that glorifies death, those children deserved the opportunity to grow up to become peace loving individuals.  Maybe they would not have become a product of their indoctrinated environment of hate. And yet, I still would like to know of a single Palestinian who has done anything to save a Jewish hostage in Gaza. No stories have emerged of Righteous Among the Palestinians. Even under nazism, gentiles risked their lives to save a fellow Jew; but among Palestinians, it seems, there are only the unrighteous among the nations.

I scroll through my photos from the day. Beach. Middle Eastern food. Family. I stop at the pictures of the Agam Fountain, which used to be in Dizengoff Square — still not renovated. I remember on previous trips — which no longer count under this new tally — how its colors swirled with the  fragmented water, forming beautiful rainbows. Our family, mostly vacationing in Jerusalem, would make a detour,  just to see the fountain in Tel Aviv.

Today, it is a shadow of what it once was. A mass of gray concrete, colorless, sadly decorated with photos of those murdered on October 7. Tattered teddy bears left as tribute. Photos of loved ones fading in the sun and rain. Around the fountain, poles covered in stickers with the faces of those still kidnapped. I read new names. Names that never made headlines. What could be worse than being held captive in Gaza? Perhaps only being held, without the world even caring about it.

Each photo — a life shattered by terror.  A family member, a friend, a spouse. These are the somber decorations of what was once the beautiful Agam Fountain. A fountain struggling to reinvent itself, like the Israel I’m visiting today. Maybe one day it will show  its colors again,  swirling  with  fragmented water, creating beautiful rainbows.