They, Who Kill Children

It's just after Shabbat.

It's the day after Shabbat here, our third since the war began, so I have some time.

Time to write, time to reflect.

This has been quite the week. A week full of moments, you might say, each of which could be a blog post unto itself.

The moment this week when I rushed home to meet a friend, and there was a bus just where I usually park, a police officer directing traffic, people everywhere, and signs indicating someone had died with information about the funeral and period of mourning.

I parked somewhere else, and went to buy peaches, asking the storekeepers what had happened, hoping against hope that someone much beloved but old had passed away--a grandmother, say, or a well-loved but worn uncle.

It was a soldier who had died. The bus was taking people to his funeral.

He was just a kid. He lived near me--where I park every day, closer than the closest bus stop.

I burst into tears in the small supermarket, unable to contain myself. I begged them to take money from me, in case the family came to the store, needing anything. Enough that they have just gotten the worst possible news, but they should have to pay for essentials? He wouldn't take my money, but as he refused, there were tears in his eyes.

He was just a boy, my neighbor. And now he's dead. He was a soldier--a legitimate target in a war--but that doesn't make my heart hurt less.

You know who else was just a boy? Jallal, the young Palestinian child from Jenin who I became incredibly close to more than seven years ago when I was a volunteer in Haifa's Rambam hospital. He had cancer at age three, and the religious girls doing their national service wouldn't play with him since he was Muslim, with a mother fully covered, though her tired eyes were exposed.

Somehow, I became deeply attached to Jallal, even though he and his family spoke no Hebrew or English, and I, no Arabic. We would play together for hours--he was the kind of boy who, handed a puzzle, would start chucking pieces with a mischievous grin. I loved him and came back time after time, even once I left Haifa.

When I brought friends to meet him, his deaf father, with so little money to spare, came running up with a pita full of falafel and as many toppings as he could fit for my friends and me; it was all he could do, but he wanted them to know how grateful he was for the love I had for his child.

When Jallal had a bone marrow transplant, his doctor, nurse, mother and I were the only ones allowed into the room.

We sang the itsy bitsy spider approximately one million times, I even have a video (though I won't post it, for the privacy of the boy I hope is now 10, and has forgotten me and ever being sick) of him doing the motions with me.

How many Jallals are dead?

How many sweet boys and girls of Gaza will never again sing?

But there is a fundamental difference between the two sides of this conflict, one that has been carrying me through.

Because it's been a long week.

A week of figuring out what to leave in the box outside the grocery store, designated for soldiers, that will tell the troops I support them wholeheartedly, but won't melt in the sun?

A week of going to order our crib and dresser, and on the way home, having to stop on the bridge and kneel near our car, since I can't lay on my stomach these days, but rockets are being intercepted above.

A week of deliberations about whether or not it's appropriate to pay a shiva call to someone you've never met, whose loss breaks your heart.

But the difference is between us and them--the protectors of children, and their killers.

No one wants children to die.

But we are taking extraordinary measures, on our side and theirs. The bomb shelters, the camps taking kids to the north where there are no sirens, the red alert song designed to calm anxious little ones--those are the steps we take for ours. There is, quite literally, a ping-pong table in our bomb shelter, which was checked by the authorities last week. It's in good shape apparently.

And there are the steps we take for theirs--knocking on roofs to warn people to get out before a bomb falls, clarifying over and over again with a hospital that no one injured is inside before firing at the terrorists firing rockets from within, stopping targeted assassinations when the targets (terrorists) surround themselves with children to stay safe.

They're storing rockets in multiple UN schools, to protect their rockets at the expense of their children, since they know we won't take out a school without a very specific reason.

You know what we store in our schools? Art supplies. Desks. Blue and white crayons, and songs about peace.

They're using children to dig tunnels, and those children are dying, digging tunnels so they can kill our children.

There are those who treat Jallals, who want them to grow and prosper. And there are those who kill, who see children as their best defensive weapon.

And for all the money in the world, for eternal life, for anything you could offer?

I wouldn't switch sides.