From Tel Aviv with hope

Hello all,

I wish today’s newsletter was a usual one with another story of me finding Céline on resale. But it can’t be.

I know you don’t want to read this. No one wants to read stories from a war zone. And I don’t want to write this. But the amount of people that are celebrating and justifying terrorism is just insane. The amount of people who is silent is insane. The least I can do is to talk about it.

Israel has been under a terrorist attack for four days, more than 1200 people were murdered, at least 200 people were kidnapped to Gaza including children and elders. More than 4400 missiles were fired from Gaza and with every minute it’s more. There were many direct hits to the houses across the country, two direct hits here in Tel Aviv, one quite close to my house. In the south people were hiding in shelters for hours. And it gets much worse. More than 200 people were slaughtered at the festival celebrating peace close to the border, women were raped and brought to Gaza as trophies. 200 people in Kfar Aza were brutally murdered, whole families, of them 40 children and some were beheaded. I can’t believe I’m typing these words. I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M TYPING THESE WORDS. It is just 80 km away.

I wanted to write how I felt during these days, but how can I? It was nothing comparing to that.

I remember I was reading Sheila Heti’s “How should a person be?” book mostly because of the question that I was always concerned about. How should a person be? I don’t think I found an answer in that book, but I hope by now we all know how a person can’t be. You can’t think that this attack can be justified in any way, you can’t think that terrorists can murder civilians, children and babies in the name of freedom, you can’t stay silent while it’s happening.

I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. What I know is that my heart is with everyone affected and with those who are fighting terrorism this very moment.

It is not political, it is not about Israel and Palestine, it is about horrible terrorist attack that took so many lives. I assure you, people on that festival were very much for freeing Palestine.

I don’t think I have words anymore, but I hope you won’t look away and will see what’s been happening these days in Israel as clearly as I do.