In the Media

An edited version of this article appeared in ABC Religion & Ethics – 8 September 2024

Recently, my daughter marked her 19th birthday, but rather than the usual chats, ours went something like this:

Me – “Hey sweetie how are you doing? Are you ok?”

Daughter – “Yeah, I’m ok, got my bomb bag ready under my bed.”

This odd exchange reflects her current reality – having chosen to spend part of her gap year in Israel volunteering on a kibbutz on the Israeli coast, north of Tel Aviv.

The “bomb bag” is a bag of pre-packed essentials to take to a bomb shelter in case of an imminent attack. Her shelter is “just down the stairs and right across from my dorm.”

So her birthday wasn’t a night of drinks and revelry. Rather she, along with millions of Israelis, spent that weekend anxiously awaiting Iran’s promised “reprisal” attack, and I spent it some 13,000 kilometres away, in a sleepless daze, glued to the “red alert” app which tracks rocket attacks, my nails chewed to the cuticles.

Threats, mixed messages, propaganda videos, forced waiting, and violence are all tactics in Iran’s and its proxies’ sadistic strategy to strip away any sense of security for Israel and Israelis,  as part of a wider war of attrition which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei promises will lead to Israel’s destruction by 2040.

Iran and its proxies are determined to harm, harry and intimidate Israelis through violence, while trying to avoid provoking all-out war. Hezbollah continues to fire dozens of rockets, missiles and drones at northern Israel every day, as it has since October 8 last year.

The reverberations of this strategy, which ultimately threatens the whole free world, were felt again with the devastating news that the IDF had extracted the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in Rafah. Hersh, Eden, Carmel, Alex, Almog and Ori, who Hamas had kidnapped on October 7, and had brutally murdered days before their retrieval.

It felt like a gut punch.

I have been unable to quell the tears. I have cried for them, their families, for humanity. Hamas’ brutality and utter cruelty, and its sick psychological warfare games, were just too much. Some of the victims were little older than my own children. These events leave yet another scar on the Israeli psyche and on the Jewish people as a whole, already suffering 11 months of trauma.

Like so many aspects of the Middle East, things are very different from daily life in Australia, and one often needs a steely resolve to get through one’s daily routine there.

Israel has been blocking hits on many fronts from the Iranian-sponsored “Ring of Fire” for some time, whilst also having to fight the barrage of fake news, hate, and AI threats.  This would challenge most nations, yet this tiny sliver of a country somehow maintains its stamina. The Jewish state’s core narrative in its modern incarnation has been resilience.

Tens of thousands of Israeli citizens have been living a life of continued dislocation for almost a year now – most residents of the Gaza envelope  having been relocated, some permanently, while 28 towns and villages in Israel’s north have been completely emptied of citizens, with no return in sight. Children will not be able to recommence their school year for a second year running.

Of course, the plight of a ten-year-old Israeli unable to attend school and whose home has been destroyed by a Hezbollah rocket and is stuck in a hotel or the overcrowded home of a relative pales in comparison to the reality experienced by Palestinian children amidst the devastation in Gaza. Yet, the victimhood Olympics have no winners, only losers.

And hasn’t Hamas, in alliance with a network of Western supporters, proven to be a savvy media campaigner? It has mastered the art of turning the narrative, gaining the world’s ear, infiltrating university campuses worldwide, thanks in part to Iranian money supplied to student organisations, demonising Israel, and seeking to redefine “Zionism” (support for Israel’s right to exist,) as a dirty word, and all Zionists as criminals abetting “genocide”.

And the long-standing dominance of world bodies like the UN by pro-Palestinian states and bureaucrats has aided and abetted the Hamas tactics – ensuring that the dial moved from Israel having a right to self-defence to complaints about a supposed “disproportionate response” and “collective punishment” based on a complete re-writing of the relevant laws of armed conflict, to painting Israel’s very existence as illegitimate.

These lies seem to have been lapped up by many, instilling fear and division, and contributing to the huge global spike in antisemitism.

The distortion is so great that despite more evidence of Hamas’ continued cold-blooded brutality, condemnation of Hamas in some outlets is still often qualified, or followed by a “yes, but…”. Instead, we read subdued headlines or none at all.

Whilst Israel will always host a special brand of brashness, the scars of months of grief, mourning, loss and anger that were bubbling under the surface have now broken through. The pain was palpable as we watched a broken mother, Rachel Goldberg Polin, bravely take the podium to speak at the funeral of her son Hersh. Rachel spoke from her personal well of pain as a parent who lost her child, but her words cut straight into the heart of a bleeding nation.

As the children of Israel mourn together, this does not mean that Israel should remain above criticism. Likewise, I certainly acknowledge more than one story of victimhood, and feel for the devastating suffering of Gazans, while emphasising that their plight is primarily caused by Hamas’ actions on October 7, and its use of all their homes, schools, hospitals and mosques as a vast human shield for Hamas’ fighters and leadership.

I ask myself how to help my children through the universal pain and suffering, and how do we reckon with the evil of Hamas and those who have been cast under its spell.

I don’t have all the answers but right now, I just wish that I could visit my daughter, put her bomb bag aside, give her a hug, and tell her everything will be ok.

Tammy Reznik is a staff writer and policy analyst at Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), and the mother of two adult children.