Israelis suspended between fear, grief and foreboding

Avi Solomon can not serve in Israel’s armed forces because he is blind, but he has a bout 20 close relatives who have been called up to fight.

- Emma Graham-Harrison

They include four brothers and more than a dozen nephews and cousins, and he accepts that they may not all come back.

“We feel like zombies anyway,” said the 39-year-old, an athlete and supermarket worker. “If we can’t feel safe in our own houses, if we can’t promise a future for our children, if any terrorist can come here and do the same thing to us , there is no point to be some kind of living dead.”

Israelis are suspended between fear, grief and grim preparation for more losses, as details of massacres of families in their homes emerge from southern areas, and the country prepares for a major operation against Hamas in Gaza.

Normal life has been put on hold. Schools are closed on a rolling basis, so parents are juggling fulltime parenting with working from home, while trying to protect their children from both actual attacks and the corrosive trauma of fear.

Ksenia Lvovsky’s son and daughter, who are 10 and six , don’t want to shower because the airraid sirens give only 90 seconds’ warning to reach a shelter. They fear they might not make it in time, so she stands by as they wash, ready with a robe to thrown on for a dash for safety.

A Ukrainian who moved to Israel 12 years ago, she still has close friends back home, and is grappling with fi nding both her countries at war, and her husband called up to serve. “A year and a half ago, I was asking them, how are you doing? Now they are asking me,” she said. It’s not been going on a long time like in Ukraine, but it feels the same; we are fi ghting for our lives.”