OTTAWA — My daughter and I travelled to Israel to celebrate my niece’s wedding earlier this month. When we booked our trip, I would not have predicted that we would be there at the outset of the Operation Protective Edge.
This was my second time heading to Israel during a Gaza incursion. The first was in November 2012 on the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Trip with Lauren Shaps and 15 fellow travellers, so I was confident we would be fine. But I would not have predicted the deep, soulful impact of this second trip.
After four days in Paris, we continued our travels on a full Air France flight taking families and tourists to Israel. I had mixed feelings of guilt and defiance, taking my daughter to a “war zone” yet having no second thoughts about going to support my sister Connie for the upcoming nuptials of her daughter Sygall.
I recalled my late father’s declaration before leaving for Israel during the Gulf War in 1991, stating that the Arabs would never stop him from going to Israel. His legacy to me has now been bestowed upon my daughter.
We arrived on Wednesday, July 9, knowing that the Gaza operation had started. The following day, after touring Jerusalem on foot for more than seven hours, we were walking back to our rented apartment near the German Colony – sore and tired – when I heard the first siren.
“I think that’s a siren,” I said to Tara gently as we heard the wind-up wail for the first time in our lives.
It had been so quiet and peaceful during the day that it was hard to fathom this call to seek shelter. Two women walking ahead of us on Emek Refaim bolted into an ice cream shop and asked if they had a shelter. With 90 seconds and few to spare, the sole employee ushered us into a back storage room where 20 of us followed and piled in and huddled around freezers and stocked shelves. Safe, strangers among us chatted about the rockets while listening closely for the “boom.” After we heard four explosions, we were told to stay put for another 10 minutes before leaving.
Continuing on our walk to our apartment, we looked up to see strands of smoke from the exploded rockets hovering motionless in the clear blue sky.
We took pictures of the Iron Dome’s “rainbow” – a quasi modern-day promise that Israel’s leading technology and an iron determination to survive would get the country through very difficult times.
“Am I a bad mother for taking you here, now?” I asked Tara. I doubted myself.
No, she reassured me. We would get through this experience together – and over the next 72 hours, our solidarity with Israel strengthened. With each siren, with each experience in a makeshift shelter, we connected with our people and our land more deeply than either of us could have imagined, appreciating Israel’s DNA of resolve and resilience.
Before we left for home, we gathered once again during a siren, this time with fellow travellers in the back delivery room of the duty free store at Ben-Gurion Airport. Knowing that rockets were targeting Tel Aviv and the airport region, we sent messages to family in Jerusalem letting them know we were fine and later waited anxiously until our plane was given the all clear to take off.
Somehow, our departure was bittersweet – we both felt guilty to leave Israel behind for the comfort and quiet of life in Canada, yet we were strengthened by the experience of active solidarity with Israel. We knew we left beyachad, together with Israel.
Lynda Taller-Wakter is executive director of JNF Ottawa.