Monday, December 4th, 2023

I just realized the TV was still on in the other room with the news we watch upon waking each morning. We generally flip between stations in hopes of finding a more accurate, more sympathetic, less anti-Israeli depiction of what’s going on. Always a challenge, unmet more often than not.

As I reached for the remote to turn it off, I heard them say “Gaza”, so I paused and watched. CNN was doing a long, detailed piece on the Palestinian children in Gaza, with a lot of footage.  I mean A LOT. So many dust-covered Palestinian children crying. Crying at the camera about a brother being hurt or crying at the camera about someone – father? uncle? mother? – being killed in the bombing.  Truly heartbreaking to see a child cry like that. So distressing to imagine the fear and the loss for someone so young.

Then the camera panned across a group of Palestinian men running here and there to do whatever it is that they were doing. And now, after my initial, sincere sympathy, completely different emotions took over. Bitterness. Anger. Frustration. When I saw these groups of Palestinians, all I could think of was, “They want us dead.  They do not want to live in peace, they merely want us dead.” But the news didn’t say that.

You know what else the news didn’t say?  The report did not say one single word about the hostages. No one said that if Hamas would only free the hostages, something would change. No one said anything about how this started. No one said anything about the Israeli children who watched their sisters being raped, their brothers tortured, their mothers kidnapped, their fathers beheaded. And as the footage showed more and more Palestinian children crying to the camera in Arabic while the voice-over calmly explained the Palestinian suffering, I suddenly realized that I’m standing in my bedroom, screaming at the television in full volume as if they could hear me in Gaza, “Free the hostages!  Free the hostages!” (I only realized I was screaming when Cantor Simon called up to me from downstairs, “What?” as he thought I was addressing him.)

As I write this, buses, planes, trains and cars are en route from Toronto to Ottawa for the Rally for the Jewish People. Seventeen buses had drivers who “called in sick”, leaving Jewish people stranded in Toronto. The Jewish community will not let this pass, and I trust that someone will be held accountable and something like this will never happen again. But in the meantime, I pray that at today’s Ottawa rally, the screaming from throngs of “Free the hostages! Free the hostages!” may actually reach the ears of leaders who can do something to (a) change the anti-Semitic tone of this land, and (b) actually put pressure on Hamas to free the hostages. We hope and pray. And scream.

Am Yisrael Chai!