My Israel hurts.
Today we woke to the devasting news that our forces found six of our hostages, dead.
They were alive just days ago.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23
Eden Yerushalmi, 24
Carmel Gat, 40
Almog Sarusi, 26
Alexander Lobanov, 32
Ori Danino, 25
Names, faces, and families that we have come to know and love.
We’ve held them as our own.
Built shelter for them in our hearts and prayers.
Cried and begged for their health and safety.
It’s devastating.
I don’t know how else to say it.
My Israel hurts.
Meanwhile fires of evil and hate rage throughout our country.
Inside our borders.
The headlines this morning:
1) Bodies of 6 hostages, murdered by Hamas just days ago, found in Rafah – IDF
2) Three police officers killed in southern West Bank shooting attack; IDF pursuing gunmen
3) 2 car bombs detonate in coordinated Gush Etzion attacks; terrorists killed by troops
It’s been a hell of a morning and it’s only 6:30.
My Israel hurts.
Emotion swells in me like a penned wild horse.
Slamming into the back of my eyes.
It’s September first.
The first day of school.
Soon.
Wait till they all get out the door.
Then you can fall apart.
Images of the families flood my mind.
Hersh’s parents, his sisters. Alex’s wife, their two-year-old son, and the baby born just a few months ago that he never met. Eden’s mother and her sisters who were on the phone with her for hours while she was hiding and while she was kidnapped.
We held hope that maybe they were still alive.
I did.
Rachel Goldberg Polin, Hersh’s mom, taught me how to hold that hope.
Now, instead of living through the constant horror of not knowing the fate of their loved ones
they meet the new horror of knowing.
No more questions about how they will be when they’re out.
What kind of physical and psychological wounds they will or won’t learn to live through…
נגמר
It’s over.
My Israel hurts.
It’s hard to breathe.
It’s too much.
IT’S TOO MUCH
This is an impossible day in an impossible year.
(As I type this I remember that we are an impossible people).
Truth: The idea of hope is hard to hold in this moment.
It’ll resurface – I know it will.
We still have stolen whose fates are not yet sealed.
Battles we have not yet won.
We will.
But today, my Israel hurts.
All of it.
Join me and pray for comfort for these families.
Pray for the safe return of all our hostages.
Pray for the safety of our brave soldiers giving their all to protect us on land, sea, and sky.
Pray for the 70,000 uprooted residents of the northern region who still cannot return to their homes.
Pray for the unity of our people – this big, bleeding, thumping, beautiful broken heart of a nation – pray that we survive this together – as one person with one heart.
Pray that we never lose sight of the fact that it’s only when we’re together that we overcome the darkness that threatens to overtake us.
Together we hurt.
Together we heal.
I love you.