It has been 11 months since death arrived on our doorstep — first as an unwanted guest and now, it seems, as a permanent squatter who refuses to leave. Its presence is so intimate yet ethereal. The number of Palestinians that Israel has killed in its Holocaust in Gaza makes it difficult to digest the depth of the horror. How many images of dead Palestinian children can a person see before they all morph into one intangible expanse of darkness?
This feeling of numbness also applies to the Israeli victims, and especially the hostages. Perhaps for this reason, almost every Israeli, including those without a personal connection to them, has a particular hostage whose fate presses most painfully on their heart. Maybe it was Noa Argamani, the recently freed 26-year-old woman, whose kidnapping was watched on video around the world; or maybe it is the Bibas babies, whose orange hair has become a symbol of those held captive…..more
