I’ve lost count of when the war started. Every day seems to be the same: the short, sleepless nights, the waking to check the apps which tell you what happened in the few hours when you weren’t glued to the screen. Yes, they are bombing the hell out of Gaza. You try to feel satisfaction at the huge swathe that has been destroyed, even though the people are alive and well and getting taken care of by Egypt and Biden.

Someone wrote me: “One wonders what Harry Truman would have said about supplying food, water and medications to Germany and Japan in the middle of the war, while American prisoners were being tortured in prison camps.” Wonder, indeed.

There is a slow ebbing of confidence in our leadership. Bibi, after all, was responsible for this. And I voted for him and fought his enemies, believe me. But all those Gaza wars that ended abruptly, leaving them free to dig their tunnels and plan their attack. The buck ends there.

The truth about what actually happened in the Gaza Envelope kibbutzim is a daily revelation that burns our hearts. Today, I read the testimony from a doctor who volunteered from New Zealand to help identify the dead. She said that there were little girls and old women and teenagers that had been so violently and repeatedly raped that it broke their pelvises. She said there were x-rays of corpses so burnt they were unrecognizable showing an adult holding a child both of them tied together by a metal band. I read from a Zaka volunteer about the bodies of a man and woman sitting back to back with a little boy of five and a little girl of six, both of them tied hands behind their backs, their eyes gouged out, their fingers chopped off. And you wonder: Did they do this to the parents in front of the children? To the children in front of their helpless parents before they were shot? And the images won’t leave me.

There was testimony from Hamas terrorists taken captive explaining that THEY HAD BEEN INSTRUCTED TO TARGET WOMEN AND CHILDREN. There was evidence on dead terrorists of plans to murder thousands with chemical weapons and cyanide.

I watch the bombs falling over Gaza, the huge clouds of smoke, and yet, it seems so clean, somehow. We told them to leave. And those that didn’t now watch from afar. And even though the daily body count of the Gazans goes up, the figures come from Hamas, who wouldn’t know the truth if they could figure it out, which they can’t. So who knows? And how many dead would make us even? To tell you that , I’d have to know the number of every last man, woman, and child still left alive in Gaza.

Any feeling of humanity towards them is gone. I was never a peace-nower. But I never objected to treating a sick Gazan child in an Israeli hospital. But now, the very idea of it fills me with rage. Never! Ever! Let them go to Egypt if they are still alive. There is no right and left in Israel. No land for peace, two state solution. That is as dead as the families in Be’eri. There will be no Gazans who work in Israel. No good-will check points. No Gazan children having heart operations in Israeli hospitals. No beach day for sick Gazan children being treated free in Israeli hospitals (which they held not long ago.) Now there is only revulsion, at best indifference, to the fate of the population that elected Hamas and educated their children from early on to kill Jews. One of the cameras on the forehead of a terrorist shows him calling home excitedly: “Dad,” he says into the phone with so much joy you’d think he was announcing a winning lottery ticket, “ I killed TEN JEWS! TEN JEWS, DAD!” I’m sure “Dad” was suitably impressed and filled with joy, may he find himself soon under the rubble of a twenty story building.

Believe me, I try to distract myself. My granddaughter, who got married last year and made Aliyah, just had a baby. There was some discussion about where to have it. But since school was out, and her Mom lives in Paris (long story, it was Sherut Leumi and a handsome, religious Jewish Parisian won her heart twenty five years ago}, she went to Paris to be with the family during the holidays and wound up giving birth there. A beautiful baby girl. Sary Ora . It seems everybody I know having a baby is naming them some form of “light” which they are. The only thing making me smile these days are photos of the baby, my great granddaughter.

I also went to my water aerobics class at the gym. Everybody smiled at me, which isn’t so normal. They are a bit of cliquish group Now, they wanted to know how I was, patted me on the shoulder. In the middle of the class we heard the noise of a jet on its way to Lebanon. For a moment the chatter ceased, and eyes scanned the roof over the pool.
My daughter sends me photos of her day: volunteering in a farm in hard-hit Ashkelon to pick and pack the ripe lettuce. Seven hours of backbreaking work. Every day, she finds some way to help. Delivering meals, sorting donations of clothing and other goods. It makes me ashamed of myself. I try to do some good by making a video to upload to Twitter and Facebook, with photos of cheering Hamas supporters and a photo of crowds cheering Hitler. Probably no one will see it. I don’t know how to compete with the haters. They seem to be all over social media.

Now I’m getting tired. I guess I’ll try to go to bed. Please G-d, let this nightmare be over soon.