I knew…

I knew I wouldn't be able to blog today. Tomorrow might be a better day. I’m sorry.

I knew when, late yesterday afternoon, the radio stations started playing older, sadder songs… I just knew.

I knew what the newscasters wouldn’t/couldn’t say… that another set of parents, or two, or five were opening their front doors to find somber-faced army officers and social workers waiting outside.

I knew the truth as the radio played Arik Einstein’s ballad, ‘Shmor Al Atzmecha’ (Take care of yourself) in which a parent repeatedly implores a young man to “be careful… don’t be foolish… don’t be a hero…because we love you and think about you all the time”.

I knew without ever having yet said them that these are words that every Israeli parent says to his/her children as they go off to serve… words which come back to haunt some of them at the loneliest moments of their lives.

I knew when we decided to live here that service was the terrible price to be paid to purchase our nation’s security… and I think the unthinkable as I kiss my sleeping children each night.

But I didn’t know that our very humanity would become a weapon in the hands of our enemies. That even though we instruct our soldiers to respect their living… we are somehow, even in death, undeserving of respect.

I knew I wouldn't be able to blog today. Tomorrow might be a better day. I’m sorry.