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7th of October early in the morning in Tel Aviv. We got up to the sounds of sirens. It took some hours to get a glimpse of understanding of what is going on here. However, the first thought that came to my mind while staying in a tiny walk-in closet under the stairs in my house and listening to the radio through my cellular was: It shouldn’t have happened. We are now at the gates of Hell. Nothing will be the same.
Writing nowadays in Israel about anything at all and especially about “fear of breakdown” seems hard. We are there and unfortunately there is no end to our breaking down. Not here and most certainly not in Gaza. There it is “really real:” “Fire has fallen from heaven” and ruined all.
Knowing where I live, the words “Never Again” (relating to the Holocaust) were written on our souls. Knowing that this is Israel’s founding Trauma, it felt as if there were only one way, no other: an all-out war. Though desperately wishing for another way – recognizing our defeat and seeking some way to agreement – I knew that our fear of breakdown was horrendously realized.
However, that was only the beginning.
Living through these eight months, one comes to realize that the Fear of Breakdown is not the worst of all – the Dissolution of Fear surpasses it
What am I talking about? Let me explain through a little vignette and some thoughts.
Daniel an Israeli man, came to meet me seven months after the 7th of October. He lives in the area surrounding the Gaza strip. His place wasn’t invaded by the Hamas’ terrorists, though there were some attempts. After 30 hours in the “safe room” they were evacuated to the center of Israel and after some months to a place in the North and then back to his place of living. All this time he worked with other evacuees. Many of his friends, acquaintances and patients were raped or murdered or abducted or lost family members – hundreds of them. He talked about it in a dense flow of speech and seemingly very contained. And then he said: “I can’t touch this