#BringBackOURBoys

I know I said that on Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut I truly felt like an Israeli, but I was wrong. Last night I went to a rally in Rabin Square for the 3 missing Israeli teens. I had prepared a blog post about it this morning and when I came home this evening to finish it I found out that this afternoon their bodies were discovered.

"Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach were kidnapped on the night of June 12 at a hitchhiking post outside the settlement of Alon Shvut in the Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem...The bodies were found at about 5:30 p.m., bound and partially buried, in an open field in a hard-to-access area known as Wadi Tellem near Halhul. The site is less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from where the teens had been abducted." — Times of Israel, Hamas will pay, says PM after body of kidnapped teens found 

Yesterday I witnessed tens of thousands, myself and my friend Alex included, gather in this city square to sing and pray together for the safe return of these boys. I watched mothers hold their children, crying at the thought that those boys could be their boys or girls. I watched fellow teens pass out posters and stickers, swaying along to songs and prayers. Who knows how many of them might have known those boys personally. The Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, and the mothers of the 3 boys addressed the crowd. Their strength in the situation was incredible and I have an idea why. They were able to stay so strong, never losing hope, because they had millions of Israelis and people around the world sending their love, thoughts, and prayers.

Unfortunately things did not go as we had all hoped. These 3 innocent boys were murdered in cold blood. Outside we may feel the blistering heat of the Israeli summer, but inside we feel the chill of this tragic event.

They chose the slogan for the hashtag campaign "Bring Back Our Boys". Last night I truly realized what that meant. They were my boys. These were OUR boys, all of ours. I sent my thoughts and prayers when my boys were missing, and I mourn with everyone knowing my boys have been murdered. We together as an Israeli nation, a Jewish nation, mourned their absence and hoped with all of our hearts for their return. And now we as a nation mourn their deaths, a murderous act of true terror. Sadly my epiphany of feeling like a true Israeli has come with such a tragedy.

More about the rally here (Times of Israel)

More about the kidnappings here (Times of Israel)

More about the Israeli Government's Response thus far (Jerusalem Post)

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Too much has happened since I've last posted for me to give you actual words about them all. So here are a few literal snap shots of what happened. My parent's visited, I toured the West Bank, I turned 23, I took a trip to the Negev, 4-monthers from my program left and I went camping for a night in Canada Park outside of Modiin.

Let The Kids Play

Monday was an interesting day for me. I spent the day witnessing one reality and the evening listening to something else.

Let's start with the evening. Our program's weekly enrichment was a workshop with a woman from a company called Debate. She was there to give us some tools for the challenges we might face when we tell people that we chose to spend time in Israel. As you read in my last post, not everyone is so keen on Israel. There are entire movements (like BDS) opposing Israel's right to even exist. So she was there to tell us about the questions we might be asked and some of the best ways to answer these questions without having our words twisted around. The precision with which one must speak about Israel is utterly ridiculous. Dissenters will take even the most positive of things and turn it into a negative. Although I experienced it for years, the battle of rhetoric and semantics about Israel in the rest of the world never ceases to amaze me.

Now let's go back to my day. I was lucky enough to spend the day volunteering at a Mini Mondial (Mini World Cup - Mondial is what they call it) put on by The Peres Center For Peace. This tournament was part of an ongoing soccer program that brings Israeli and Palestinian children together through sports. The children go to after school soccer trainings in their cities and are taught soccer terminology in each other's languages, sportsmanship, leadership, and team work, and most importantly they are brought together to play soccer with each other. All day I watched these kids have fun just playing together. Of course not everyone got along perfectly, but it was so amazing to see the mixture of Israeli and Palestinian children getting to be what they are – kids.


So here is what is happening in America (and other places around the world): grown adults are yelling in each other's faces because they can't agree on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And here is what is happening in Israel: actual Israeli and Palestinian children are learning about each other in order to create meaningful relationships, which will hopefully lead them to grow up with more understanding of each other.

I realize neither of these situations is the reality everywhere. Not every confrontation about Israel is yelling, heated, or irrational. And in many places in Israel the Jewish and Palestinians are not getting along. I've said it before, I'll say it again, and just about everyone else will also tell you that IT IS COMPLICATED. I just really felt that the juxtaposition of these two experiences in one day gave me some perspective about things. My perspective? There is hope for some kind of peace, somewhere in the future. I saw that in these kids and I hope that we adults can get ourselves together to encourage them to work towards it, or maybe even genuinely work towards it ourselves.