Itamar and Monday Musings

So I heard about the slaying of the 5 memebers of the Israeli family that chose to make their home in Itamar. Eran mentioned it in passing, asking nochalantly if I had heard about the "pigua*" that his mom had just told him about. Since I tend to shy away from the computer over the weekend when I prefer to spend my time coddling my babies who won't be babies for long, and clamoring over my daughter who will forever be my little princess even as I watch her grow before my eyes, and "fighting" with the choices of shows my oldest chooses to watch -from annoying Spongebob to annoying sports (esp basketball), but in the same breath explaining how I prefer basesball, and that it drives his dad crazy just like the basketball drives me nuts.
But back to the tragedy at hand. I feel like that is so far away from my world - but it is not just because I am completely tied up in baby-land. I feel like I am so far removed from that part of the current conflict. I feel (and this admission in hard for me to make) that maybe the "settlers" were asking for it - not this kind of murderous event, but by choosing to make their home in the place that they made it fenced off from their completly surrounded by hostile neighbors - I can't even beleive I am typing this sentence much less thinking it, since that is probably what the rest of the uniformed world feels about Israel being surrounded by Arab neighbors that are now in turmoil since we are living in these "cursed interesting" times. ***

***Note: It is also because I am a news junkie. I was really sick of hearing about the Charlie Sheen antics and cannot bear to watch the devestation in Japan including all the impending horrors that are on the horizon with the nuclear meltdown looming-did I just wake up and find myself in 1950? I'm a June Cleaver, albeit it with an outside the home, FT J-O-B in a downtown office building, but my mind is filled with-and therefore I'm talking-about raising kids and Japanese nuclear horrors in the same POST as ANOTHER terrorist attack in Israel dammit! SIGH!***

And until I read this, (several hours later ) and came back to this post to "finish" it,
I was pretty indifferent about the whole thing. Then I realized how it was to be in her shoes - the women who choose to build their homes and raise their children in such a place. They would rather think of themselves as the pioneering spirit of today's generation - ones that will face the brunt of the fight and rely on their enourmous faith in Hashem to keep them from harm's way.

some of the more recent posts I have seen have alluded to the fact that perhaps the whole disgusting incident was a result of a foreign worker not getting his salary and that the Fogel family was somehow responsible for not properly compensating their help. If that is truly a motivator and I am not convinced that it is, isn't it more likely that the man would still want to see his money and would more likely resort to petty sabotage and other misdemeanors of the same ilk. He would want the family to pay in money and not in blood.

The fact that there have not been many incidents that have come to light in the past few months, years or however long ago the last event was does not diminsh the fact that the danger is always there in the back of the minds of the people who live there. The PA claims that their "citizens" are banned from entering the yishuvim, but clearly what took place was not carried out by a law-abiding citizen of any nature. Just typing this out and really lettting the words flow from my fingers is more about clarifying my positions and my way of thinking than my over-tired, sleep-deprived, dis-engaged confused brain can actually manage.

I was disgusted with myself. Why was I not able to muster up the usual and natural feelings of solidarity and "how horrible", etc until I hunted - and I choose to use the word hunted here - because it wasn't enough for my brain to know the images were readily available and then to leave well enough alone. The original sites that I turned to made mention of the disturbing images and made concerted efforts not to display them or make it too easy to stumble across them. I had to make a concerted effort on my part to find a site that displayed a link to them, and then at that point I had to really decide to look at the images after I clicked. It was literally a 3 step process. 1. Know they exist somewhere within reach, 2. find a site that had the link to the images (and in doing that research I was exposed to other interesting sites and other points of view that inadvertently broadened my horizons - Steven Amsel and Pam Gellar were unknown to me before today) 3. press the link which opened another small window which I had to choose to enlarge to view. This last step was the hardest.  I literally turned my head away from the screen as I glimpsed the first view of the small window that only showed a part of a sleeve. 
In the end I looked and the reaction was what I used to be able to come up with all on my own without needing the violent images to prompt it. It makes me wonder about the person I have morphed into and whether I want to encourage this somewhat more laid-back outlook or be horrified by the fact that I needed a journey to get to the place where I once was.

*Usually "pigua" to me means a bombing. I know the literal translation is something like terrorist attack, but in my mind the first jump is to bombing and then when I hear the details I categorize it appropriately. This attack in Itamar has many (too many) causualties and in my mind it is classified as a senseless murder - no matter of who carried it out. Babies and small children can not make the choice to live where they do and so are of course the innocent victims. The Fogels made the choices that were right for their family and that is their right to be able to do so. I, however, would not necessarily knowingly put my kids in that particular kind of danger on a daily basis. This is something that is a hard issue for me to struggle with as well. I know that we ultimately want to live in Eretz Yisrael, but in a place that my Americanized children will feel comfortable adapting to.

Another interesting thing is the offhanded remark made by another new mother who I know from a meeting or two at the supermarket and as the guidance counsellor at the HS part of my oldest's school. She mentioned that they had just come off of a recent trip to Israel to scope things out. She has a small baby (maybe 3 months old) and 4 or more other kids in tow. This was one thing  - that if we are really considering a move to Israel at this point, then a pilot trip is a natural progression. Another family I know who has 3 boys (and the head of the family is a lawyer-ie they're not hurting for $$$) made a stab at a year-long stay in Israel and the experiment was over after the summer citing money as the #1 issue. But back to the offhand remark...After asking if I hadn't gotten Israel out of my system having lived there previuosly and my emphatic, no pause answer of no, that every day is literally a struggle for us, she said that it is really easier to move as a family if you move with another family or more of a support group. Much food for thought!