It's Friday in Israel and We Are

 It's Friday in my country. A Friday in which we are all feeling so many emotions. As I try to sort them in my mind, more come through...

We are happy - the nearly impossible has happened. We got ALL our living hostages back. There is no one left who can be tortured, starved, beaten. The agonizing acid in our stomachs has receded...some.

We are grateful - to God above all else. To Trump. To Netanyahu. To the families who managed to survive this horror. To the hostages who managed to survive. To God because no human could have accomplished all the pieces of the puzzle needed to make this happen. To Hamas and the Gazans who remained true to the last minute, repeatedly showing their barbarity again and again so that, at last, the blind are beginning to see.

We are devastated - for what the hostages had to endure, for what their families survived but mostly for the families of those who have not yet returned. We are with you. Please do not mistake our happiness for the 20 as having forgotten your pain...our pain. We are with you still, always.

We are angry - angry that Hamas has stayed true to its savageness. Its need to forever torture, if not physically then at least psychologically. We are angry at Europe for its blindness.

We are...tortured. We feel the blows that the hostages received as if we ourselves were beaten. We cannot imagine how they survived two years of such horrific treatment.

We are proud. Proud, so proud of our hostages. They were taken as, for the most part, people we had never met...and they returned as the most amazing, strong people who are trying to comfort us. They were not carried on stretchers out of hell. They forced themselves to walk out as men of courage and strength. We are in awe.

We are. Perhaps this is the most important. We ARE. For all that you have tried to remove us from this land, from this earth, we are here. Once we were weak and you took advantage of that weakness. But the truth is that we weren't so much weak as nice. We were raised to be good people, to care for our neighbors, our family. It's the essence of who we are.

Come to this land and you will be shocked. Complete strangers help each other here. Complete strangers talk to each other about anything. In truth, there are no complete strangers. We are one family, something you have never been able to comprehend.

This is what you are seeing. The only difference between the families of the hostage and me is that I don't get the chance to hug their child, to hold him, to bring him food and tell him that I love him and have prayed for him all the while he was held by monsters.

Is my agony any less than the mother burying her son...you'll tell me yes, of course it is less and I will agree but kindly remind you...not much. I too find it hard to breathe, hard to think of a world without Tamir Nimrodi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, baby Kfir and little Ariel and so so many others.

We are good people who did our best to accomplish the impossible. To find the bad people, to not hurt the innocent people, to end the agony thrust upon our loved ones.

It's Friday here in Israel. Twenty-one people are still being held in Gaza. They were murdered by Hamas, by monsters. They have a right to be buried in the land of their people. And so, because they are still there, because our sons are still on our borders, we are filled with more emotions than we know what to do with...

And so, we will light the candles and close our eyes. We will tell the world to get the hell away from us and beg Shabbat to come and surround us.

For all that you have tried to remove us from this land, from this earth, we are here. We are the people of Israel, forever tied to THIS land, OUR land. Never again, will you take this land. Never again will we close our eyes and rest. We will, if need be, forever watch because we know what happens when we close our eyes.

But no matter what you do to us, no matter how silent you are when others come to destroy us, we are. WE ARE.

Am Yisrael Chai
Shabbat shalom