At first, when I heard of Kim’s actions, I was so happy and relieved.
I felt like someone, out there, see more in me than just a headline in a dramatic scene at your local evening news.
He asked us to help him to show you, people of Sweden, the other side. Our side of the story. I told myself: that’s cool. First thing tomorrow morning, when my boss is not around.
Now I’m home. No boss around.
But I feel so tired. I feel small. I think of you guys in your beautiful country, how far you are from all this mess, and I have no idea how I can touch your heart. How can I make you see my side of the conflict? What the f_k IS my side of the conflict? I’m confused like everybody else here. I’m 30 years old, grew up in north Israel and I’ve spent more nights in bomb shelters than I can even start to count – I’ve seen some things that no child should. Yet, now I’m older, and there’s no hate in my heart. Never was. I’m not a history master, I can’t tell you who started it all, I don’t even know if there’s hope for my little country. I don’t know the people from the other side.
But I have Arab friends, many of us do.
It’s not a perfect harmony, I won’t lie. Things here are so complicated that I don’t even know how to start. But I do know that in Israel the name ”shalom” (peace) is very common. For people, streets, restaurants, main roads, hotels, schools, villages and more. We answer the phone with ”shalom”, we use ”shalom” as a welcome greeting, and also as goodbye. The word ”peace” is in our everyday life. I was in ”Shalom Aleichem” elementary school.
We have so many songs about peace, about shalom – old and new – songs that are in our Israeli DNA for ever. You must know that. I feel like I have to tell you that. Of course we have our radicals. You have them too. They are everywhere. The majority of Israel is a real peace seeker. You might find it hard to believe, but shalom, peace, is in our mentality.
But we are tired. I can feel it. I can see it in people’s eyes. It’s been 60 years of non stop fighting. We all got burned really bad. Sometimes I think we’re dealing with a brutal crazy terrorist, and sometimes I feel the need to reach out my hand to them, cause they probably are tired, just like me.
My name is Oshra and I have a confession to make: I love Israel! I really do.
We have the most poetic language, we have city landscape as well as green meadows and yellow deserts. The weather here is phenomenal, it is never too hot or too cold. We have the beach and we have beautiful mountains. Our education system is one of the best in the world, we encourage great minds and thinking out of the box. Our health insurance is not that expensive, we have the ability to speak our minds and protest when necessary, and we do it non violently. Israel is a great country. I love it. I really do.
Don’t get me wrong though, it is not always easy for me to admit that. I don’t always agree with my country’s actions.
I am a pacifist. I have, what you might call, a romantic point of view to life. I choose to have this point of view! I choose to be a little naive, to believe that if people want peace they can make a difference. I don’t believe that violence is the answer. I do, however, know that there are many times that there is no other choice.
Non of us here actually wants war. We want to live our lives in peace, we want to open the newspaper and read articles about soccer or science or even ministers embarrassing sex tapes! Anything but war.
We don’t hate Arabs. We live with them, work with them, befriend them. It’s the media that makes it so nasty. It’s the same media that constantly portrays the pain and suffering of the people in Gaza, completely neglecting those poor people living in Israel, under a constant threat of terror.
Let me break it to you: BOTH SIDES SUFFER. War sucks, for both sides! We don’t enjoy this. We just want to live our lives in peace, drink our morning coffee, kick back and relax. Do you know how hard it is to relax around here? Every time you hear a supersonic boom you are sure your country is under attack. Every time you hear a motorcycle outside that sounds like a siren your heart drops a beat.
I am a graphic artist and illustrator. About a month ago, on the latest bomb attacks, I had a costumer from Be’er Sheva (southern Israel) asking me to not use the color red. ”Red Color” is the name of the alarm system in the south. Imagine a world without the color red! A world in which red is a color for passion and energy instead of terror and fear…
The bottom line is- we just want to live and let live. This is the voice of the real people in Israel.
My Israeli story.
Hey, my name is Yossi, from Jerusalem, Israel.
I’m 23 and working for an Israeli company in The Netherlands.
I want to tell you about a short period in my life, my puberty.
As you know, or don’t know, Israel used to suffer a lot from bomb attacks, for a long period. This was reflected as bombs in buses, suicide bombers in restaurants, shopping centers and anywhere else.
That time was during my high-school period. As a teenager I was afraid of going by bus to school, which forced me to go two hours earlier, with my mom, or to walk two times a day 7 km back and forth.
There are few things that I will keep in my head for years.
First, 22 April 2004 – a suicide bomber on line-bus 14 in Jerusalem. A class-mate of mine was on her way to school with a few other students. After a few minutes’ ride, the bus was bombed by a suicide bomber. As you can imagine, it was a black morning for me and for the rest of the school. My class mate was severely injured in her leg, luckily the nowadays Mayor of Jerusalem was in the area and he saved her life. She was hospitalized for six months. One student from my school died on this bus attack – an 18-year-old student.
Second, Sukkot (Jewish holiday) evening, barely remember the date details. I woke up with a great bomb sound under my house, I looked up from the window and all I saw was black fog of smoke. It was a car bomb on my building’s parking. Thank god the terrorist was afraid to leave it somewhere else; he just left the car in a non-public place, no one was hurt.
There are few more things to tell, but let’s be a bit positive and keep on telling good things.
As a solder in the IDF I used to practice at the Israeli-Palestinian Checkpoints near the West Bank. I spoke to thousands of Palestinians every day, I always kept in mind the fact that I’m there because anyone of them can be the next terrorist who want to be a “Shahid”, but I always respected them as if they were my parents.
I heard many of them, complaining about the way of living under the Palestinian government, as well as they complained about the checkpoints of the Israeli army and the fact that they need to go through the checkpoint every day.
But most, I remember one old man who lives in Gaza. It was Friday afternoon, I was at the checkpoint between Ramallah’s settlements and Modi’in (30 km from Jerusalem). An old man came to the checkpoint without the special permission to go to Israel from the West Bank. He told me that he was in Jordan for an operation and now he is willing to go back to his family in Gaza. At that time of the day, the office of the permissions was already closed; he couldn’t get the permission, which means he couldn’t get to his family. As the commander of the checkpoint, I made a few phone calls to the head of the permissions office in attempt to get him the permission. Eventually, I was able to give him the permission. The thing that I remember perfectly was his final sentence: “I wish for myself that Israel will win and we all live under the Israeli government”. I can just tell you, dear Swedish people, there are two sides of the coin. There are good and bad things. You just need to be aware of this fact. Israel is not evil, not even close to. It is just a small country which wants to live in peace in our one and only Jewish-land.
I am just a normal every day Israeli. I am 36 years old, married and father to two little girls: a 3-year-old and an 8 months old baby.
We live in Ashdod, a 250,000 people town, just 25 minutes drive south of Tel Aviv.
Ashdod is located on the Mediterranean beach and has a wonderful white sand beach. On our spare time we love going to the beach, swim, have a coffee in a trendy coffee shop, enjoy the sea view or let the kids play on the beach.
I guess some of you heard something of Israel and my guess is that probably this something is not so nice. So I decided to just tell you a few things about me and my life, and maybe through my story, give you another perspective of my country and the life of Israelis.
My both parents came to Israel from different places. My father is from Iran and my mother from Russia. They met here, In Ashdod. They both encountered the difficulties of a newcomer to a new country and had to adjust to new and unfamiliar society. I guess they both acclimatized pretty well. My mom became a high school teacher, my dad a real estate entrepreneur.
As a kid, I remember we had friends from Gaza – The Arab Contractors that were working with my dad. They used to come to our house and we would have lunch together – my mom always enjoyed their compliments for her cooking. We would speak about work, and about growing children, weddings and laugh together.
I remember the road from Gaza to Ashdod, every morning thousands of cars from Gaza packed with as much people a Peugeot 404 can contain were coming into Israel to start they days work. In the evening, they were all going back. On Saturdays my father and our neighbor used to drive to Gaza, to buy food: pigeons, shrimp and broad bean. Our neighbor would make delicacy out of it. These were good days.
And then, the intifada started. Arabs were attacking Israelis everywhere. It was no longer safe to go to Gaza and the border was closed, no Arabs entered Israel. In 1994 with peace talks, we met again for a short time, but then Arabs started to commit suicide bombings in Israeli towns, and they were no longer allowed to enter Israel. We kept in touch with our friends in Gaza for some time. Talking on the telephone, hoping for better days. But these days never came. All ties with Gaza were severed.
On 30 Jan 2001 Arabs started firing mortar shells into Israeli populated communities (Kibbutz and Moshavs). On April 16, 2001, the first rocket was fired into an Israeli town – Sderot, the nearest Israeli town to Gaza. We thought it was just a mistake, a onetime event. But it wasn’t. The Israeli communities around Gaza became a scary place to live in, daily fired at by the Arabs with mortars and rockets. The people in these communities have 15 seconds to hide after a siren is heard. On December 28, 2008 first missiles were fired on my hometown.
I clearly remember that day. It was a Saturday. Me and my brother in law were taking a short trip to the beautiful hills of Beit Shemesh. On our way there we saw many war planes taking off from their air bases. Since it was Saturday, it was weird. Saturday is the Jewish religious day of rest. No work of any kind nor any activity is done on this day, all the more so army activity. I turned on the radio and heard the IAF is retaliating for 60 rockets fired earlier by the Arabs on Israeli towns. I called my wife (she was 6 months pregnant then) and told her to ask our neighbor to immediately open the building’s bomb shelter. I had a very bad feeling.
90 minutes later my wife called me, ”We just had a Siren heard and missiles hit our town, come back” she said. I was shocked. Few days later a missile hit a penthouse apartment in a building just 30 meters from our building.
I hope our friends in Gaza remember us, that they do not hate us. I do not know what they are teaching their children and grandchildren but I want to hope it is not hate.
Since 2001, more than 12,000 rockets, Missiles & Mortar shells were fired from Gaza into Israeli cities. Every time a siren is heard, We have 45 Seconds to find shelter. Me and my wife have to take the baby and our little 3 years old girl and run for the bomb shelter 2 floors down. Sometimes we are fired at in the middle of the night, when we are sleeping. We are considered lucky – Israelis living closer to Gaza have 15 seconds only. My 3-year-old has trauma. She shakes in my hands every time a siren is heard. She hugs me and wouldn’t let go for long time. She asks me: ”Dad, why is the siren coming down at us?”. What do you say to your baby when she asks this? That Arabs Hate us and want us dead? How can I explain it to a baby? No we do not teach our children hate. We teach them hope and love and respect.
Especially in times like this, we tell our girl that it is ok to be afraid, we to afraid. We tell her that as long as we keep the safety provisions we’ll be ok. That’s it. When she will grow up she will decide on her own how to judge the situation we live in.
I am just a regular any day Israeli. This is my story. In case you didn’t hear it on national news, don’t think it didn’t happen. It’s the people telling the story prevented you from hearing it.
