One week after

It's easy to find things to be grateful for today.

My grass is green and growing after much trouble and care-filled attention, the sun is gently warming up my skin, my precious dog Nella is always by my side never letting me be alone, so gentle and loving. The birds are chirping and singing.

The leaves on the bushes around me - dry from long months under the scorching sun of the unforgiving middle eastern summer, shuffling gently against each other in the October breeze.

The morning of the 7th, a mere 7 days ago, with the same clear skies and shining sun was cast in an invisible shadow painted by our minds to the sounds of loud sirens wailing, wailing, and wailing. Explosions of the iron dome showing the first visual signs that the time of peace has been terminated again.

The wails of the sirens are dreaded but familiar, "It's a Saturday and a Holiday, of course they would choose to spoil it for us". A part of a convoluted routine bestowed upon us by internal weakness, misconceptions, blindness and political powers casting their spells behind a collapsing iron dome.

The marvelous iron dome, brought to life by our truly ingenious minds to allow us just a little bit of that safety feeling during the rockets routines. To allow us to take a breath that is just a little bit less constrained to the sounds of the sirens and explosions, a breath filled with hope that the rocket will not hit the civilian home that it was aimed at this time. To help us to calm our children a bit faster by marveling at the explosions in the sky "like fireworks, son - let's count how many".

This iron dome that protects us, blinded us to the real danger - the monsters that launch the rockets. This time they came to do the job by hand, up real close in our bedrooms while cuddling with our children and pets, snoozing to the peaceful holiday morning. Up so close that the iron dome couldn't protect us and cast its false charms of safety. So close and massively, our young soldiers didn't have a chance to make it fast enough to put their 18 year old bodies between the babies and the hell's monsters. Which they would have done if only they could.

Now I do confess that I made a mistake in this piece of text. The mistake was to call them "hell's monsters". Because this is not hell, this is our beautiful home and these monsters are our neighbors that want to make it hell on earth. I will call them out by who they are, they are the Arab population of Gaza - they came to murder, torture and abduct people of all ages, nationalities and political beliefs. They are the Arabs of Gaza that is who they are.

This is what happened, this is reality. I know it's hard to believe. We want to disbelieve it most of all because this is our home, these are our sons, spouses, brothers and fathers that are bravely fighting to defend us from the barbarian force of the Arabs of Gaza today. It is our babies, children, elderly and civilian women and men that are held hostage in the under-city of Gaza. We don't want to believe, I don't want to believe - but we can't afford this luxury because if we lie down in grief and fold our weapons we will simply seize to exist. If they did the same before the black Saturday - the conflict would've been solved. Now they left us no choice but solve it ourselves in a fight for our lives, future, values and love of life. And the only thing that keeps me going is the volunteering and community help that is all around, the miracles that happened, the real life heroes that saved the lives they could. Everybody is trying to help and the good in us and our values shine bright right now.

We are in this together and we will win. Our light will overpower their darkness.

This is my hope and deepest wish: The world should not choose barbarity over civility and love of life. Choose to live by your values that bring good to the community of the people around you and the people of the Earth.