Enemies are at the gate, but we will survive

On our last night in Israel, the participants in the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island’s Israel Solidarity Mission were in Hostages Square, speaking to the friends and family members of the hostages still being held in Gaza by Hamas. Then, Elihay Skital, the Israeli emissary to our community, gave us an assignment.

Previously, we had spent days doing the kind of volunteer work that many Israelis now do to help those displaced by the Israel-Hamas war. We sorted and boxed donations, and we made a tiny dent in the agricultural work left in under-tended greenhouses. We toured underground hospitals being built in anticipation of war with Hezbollah, and we spent time with at-risk children.

Now, in Tel Aviv, Skital scattered flashcards and asked us to choose two. The first picture, he explained, should represent something we felt while in-country. The second should represent a hope for the future.

I prayed that I would not be asked to share because I was too exhausted and hungry to process and articulate. But days later, back in my home with my family, I’m still thinking about those pictures.

In the first picture I chose, there is a woman. Her mouth is wide open; she is screaming. I think of how, as a “leftist” American Jew, I have felt like I have been screaming since Oct. 7.

I’ve been screaming to defend Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, as well as to remind the world that Israeli women were raped and butchered, and entire families were bound together and burned alive. And, all the while, I’ve been fielding posts and comments from well-intentioned but misinformed friends who have no connection to these people or events.

For us, this is our family. We didn’t just learn that there is unrest in the region; we’ve been living in its shadow our entire lives.

I’ve been screaming in public and in private to assert that these things did happen – even when people use words like “alleged” or “proven false” in reference to these atrocities. I’ve been screaming to defend written history and established facts and to call out antisemitic tropes and blood libel. And a million other things.

I feel like I have been screaming so much my throat is raw.

We have not been able to process the pogrom on Oct. 7. We haven’t been able to mourn the deaths, or pray, or heal. There hasn’t been space because many of us have been on the defensive since the second we woke up to the news – even before we were able to confirm the safety of our Israeli friends and family.

Our Western ideological allies do not understand the moment we have been stuck in since that day. Some have even demanded that we recognize the Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters,” branding us racist and/or Islamophobic for referring to them as a “genocidal death cult.”

Looking at this picture, I realized that, when I was in Israel, I could sit with myself and the community. I could feel our loss. I could shut my mouth, listen and just “be” for the first time in months.

What I heard from Israelis still fills me with pride. I felt an uncontainable love for and oneness with the Jewish people. The fist in my stomach was gone. There was a cloud of grief overhead – the hostages are still in Gaza, and time is running out for them – but hope lined this cloud.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the months ahead, but I know we are going to survive –not just this war with Hamas, but we will survive the global rise in antisemitism and the tsunami of misinformation and disinformation responsible for this swell.

Seeing hospitals being built underground reminded me that people are thinking beyond this moment. Yes, something major is coming. The enemies are at the gate – Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian terror proxies – but we will outlive them.

THE SECOND PHOTO I chose pictured a set of parents and three children, from their knees down, biggest shoes to smallest. This card represented my hope for the future. I saw in it my family in a few years. I hope I can bring my children to Israel after this war, and wouldn’t it be just the most fantastic miracle if this was the last war of its kind? I could tell them that terrible things used to happen here, but thank God, that’s over because we figured it out, and those days are behind us.

I know coexistence is possible. I know that this is not a matter of Jews versus Muslims or Judaism versus Islam. There are a lot of problems, and I don’t have all the answers, nor should I. I’m just one person and one Jew. But there is a way to make this work; the future we see for our children can’t look the same as the last several thousand years.

The Jewish people are alone in their grief over the massacre and the hostages. The rest of the world has moved on – because it can.

Many Israelis believe that, while the hostages may still be alive, they are lost to us already. We heard from some who felt that since Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was one of the prisoners released in the exchange for Gilad Shalit, in 2011, they no longer support any negotiations with Hamas. Sinwar was one of the architects of the Oct. 7 massacre.

My world has become smaller since Oct. 7. Even so, I have never loved us, Am Yisrael, the people of Israel, more. We’re living through a moment that, like so many before, we will one day tell our grandchildren about.

I don’t know much for certain, but I do know that as long as there is human civilization, there will be Jews telling these stories. For now, and for me, this is enough.

E. LYDIA FASCIA WONG lives in Warwick with her husband and their two Chinese-American Jewish babies. She works to improve the quality of life for individuals with autism, and she is active in local theater.