The 18’th day.

This is the first day I have been outside my home all day. I cannot tell you how good that was….
Since the war started we have spent most of our time inside house for security reasons. TV has been on non stop in order to get the latest updates. We have seen so much misery…..
I don’t think any other country has covered what’s going on in any way similar to the Israeli news. We see all the terrible pictures of civilians suffering, bombed houses, funerals , children crying.... We hear conversations with Arab doctors from hospitals inside the Gaza Strip and from reporters living there explaining about lack of electricity and water and a whole lot of other things that we just take for granted.
On the other hand we see Mosques full of weapons, schools with bomb traps and store rooms with weapons and subterranean tunnel systems.
We have lots of soldiers fighting with Hamas activists face to face. These young men are somewhere between 18 and 21 years old (… that’s as long as their army service lasts for: 3 years. ) I don’t have any sons , but I can tell you that I cannot afford losing even one of them…. We want the parents to pass away before their children are being buried.
There are no celebrations in Israel when Arabs are killed. It does not make us happy to see Arab funerals on TV. Israel is not “thirsty for Arab blood”.
Unfortunately we know that when Jews are killed in suicide attacks, blown up, stabbed to death, run over by vehicles of various kinds or as a result of rockets our neighbors are celebrating.
There are some extreme right wing Jewish groups, but they do not have any support from the rest of the Jewish society.

I remember watching a Palestinian peace activist some months ago. She was a religious Moslem with husband and children. Some years ago she “signed up” to become a “shaheed” (a Moslem martyr by wearing explosives on her body in order to blow herself and others up ) The morning she left for her mission she told her 7 year old daughter that she did it “for her future”.
Luckily this woman did not succeed and was sentenced to some years in prison. While in jail she got to know a female Jewish prison officer. By the time she was released her view on “how to solve problems between people” had changed a little…
In the TV program both the woman and her daughter were interviewed. The daughter, now a teenager, said that her reaction to her mother wanting to blow herself up was anger. It had been very hard for her to be without her mother while she was imprisoned but she said that she preferred a mother in prison to a tomb.
The Moslem woman still disagrees with a lot of things in the Israeli society and she is busy working for her children to have a better future. ( I wouldn’t mind to team up with her !!!)
I believe in women like her and I do believe that there is more energy in dedicated women than in a belt with explosives…..

We are not that much different when it comes to the bottom of it !!!

Elin Elkouby