DAY 613.

The flag and the angel

June 11, 2025. Nahariya, Israel.

Two days ago, we sat in the hospital waiting room, waiting to be called in. Willie is booked for surgery at the end of June. We've been circling the departments, doing the bureaucratic dance of pre-hospitalization. From my seat, I looked straight into a glass-covered room, filled with toys, where three small children played.

The three, two boys and a girl, were banging hard on the toys with much anger and strength. Despite the loud noise and their shouting, they were not reprimanded. Most of my life, I heard people say that Israeli children are misbehaving. They have no decorum or discipline. Other nations are better parents, and their children show respect. My eyes roamed around the room looking for the adults responsible for these children.

I found them.

A couple in their thirties watch the play. She had a soft look full of love, care, and inner strength. He was very tall, with a tired look and carried his gun. He must have taken leave to be with his kids at the hospital.

My eyes mist. A memory surfaced.

I was ten. The Sinai War started. My father left with his truck. His unit was one of the first to drive out and to arrive at Sharm el-Sheikh carrying supplies to the front, ensuring the army had its ammunition and food.

I did not comprehend what I saw or heard, nor the explanation of my father leaving for war. A while after he left, abdominal pain hit. My mother rushed to me, trying to understand my screaming. Looking back, I am sure the crying included more than the physical pain. By the end of the day, I was taken by an ambulance to the private Asuta Hospital in Tel Aviv.

“We don't have room in the hospitals, they are full with wounded soldiers,” explained the surgeon, “We will try Asuta.”

They rushed me to the OR for an emergency appendix operation. It exploded.

“Asuta is a good hospital”, said my mother to calm us both, “you were born here”.

My next memory was of my father, an Uzi hanging across his side, in soldier fatigue, visiting me in the underground bomb shelter. I was sitting on the cold, damp floor with my mother, smelling the strong, mouldy smell of the small room, hiding from the bombs. My father bent over me with tears in his eyes, “Don't cry, be a brave girl, Orith”. When I did not stop, his frustration came to the surface, “Why are you crying?” “It hurts,” I wailed, “It's my first operation”.

My mother never forgot his frustrated expectation from that time. Never forgotten, never forgiven. 

Their generation, though, grew up in Palestine, lived through 2 world wars and a holocaust. My father fought in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in WW2, then alongside Begin soldiers against the British Mandate, then in the IDF in one war after another, as well as against the hate and rejection of all of Europe.  With all that, neither he nor his generation acknowledged trauma and wariness. They did not see the hardship their children suffered. If they did, they had no way to cope with it. They and their children had to be tough to survive. My childish trauma was pushed aside.

Willie and I stopped by the strong, sad lady as we walked out of the doctor's office. “Your husband reminds me of my father visiting me in the bomb shelter during the Sinai war. I bless you, and pray for you and your family to be covered by the love and health of God almighty”. She smiled as I teared and thanked me. When Willie and I got outside, we held hands and prayed a longer blessing over this young family, adding all the young families of our soldiers to the prayer of protection.

Besides love and patience, what else does a parent give to the fifth generation of Israelis that hears the promise, “By the time you're 18, there will be peace and you don't need to go to war again”?

Our war in modern Israel is 77 years old. At times, it is more intense, and we give it a name and use more weapons, and give more orders to larger groups of young men and women fighting for the life of our country. But in 77 years, it did not stop. Our children might not be as respectful and disciplined as those in other countries, but when it is their time, they survive. They raise their offspring, set aside the promises they were given for peace, and go to war for their country, willing to die on their land. They set aside the traumas and heartaches and survive.

We have our God, who gives the
strength of character and spirit of discipline when it is needed. We believe in God, who respects life and gives it more abundantly. We trust the God of everlasting Love and Hope. Israel will continue to be, God sees to it. Amen.