Every flag-draped coffin that came home. Every mother who collapsed at a funeral. Every child who will grow up with just a folded flag and some medals to remember their parent by. I've watched it all, grinding my teeth until jaw aches, while they sign their fancy ceasefire for hostage papers.
Our soldiers died in streets and alleys, in doorways and tunnels. They died screaming and bleeding and fighting. They died protecting us, avenging us, believing in us. And now what? Now we're making deals?
The politicians talk about "necessary compromises" from their clean offices and air-conditioned rooms. Easy words from people who never had to wash their friends' blood off their hands. Who never had to write those letters home. Who never had to stand at attention while another helicopter brought another body back.
You want to know what echoes in my head at night? The sound of notifications hitting phones across the country. The wails of parents learning their children aren't coming home. The terrible silence at dinner tables with empty chairs. That's the price we paid. That's the currency we dealt in. Blood and grief and rage.
And now they tell us it's time to "move forward." Forward? FORWARD? Tell that to the wives who still reach for their partners in their sleep. Tell that to the kids who still run to the door when they hear boots on the steps, hoping maybe, just maybe, it was all a mistake. Tell that to the parents who haven't touched their children's rooms, preserved like shrines to what we lost.
They say this deal will bring peace. That it will prevent more deaths. More families torn apart. They're wrong. We all know that. We watched as the terrorists who were freed for Gilad Sahlit continued on their merry way, murdering innocent Israeli civilians.
I don't know anymore.
Maybe this is what leadership looks like. But right now, watching them shake hands and smile for the cameras, all I can see is every flag we folded, every salute we rendered, every last message we delivered.
Was it worth it? Were their sacrifices just bargaining chips on some diplomatic table? I don't know anymore. And that uncertainty - that's what haunts all of us, staring at the ceiling, feeling like we've somehow betrayed every single soldier who believed in what they were fighting for.
Tonight, somewhere, a family is sitting around a table with an empty chair, trying to make sense of all this. And I don't have any answers for them. Just this raw, burning question that won't go away: If this was always where we'd end up, why did so many have to die getting here?
Dedicated to the memory of my son's friend, Zamir Burke who fell protetcing our homeland six short weeks ago. Gone but never forgotten.
0 Comments