Something has taken hold of Israeli society in the recent weeks since the beginning of operation Protective Edge. It is not just the spirit of solidarity and civil mobilization. It is something deeper. In order to understand something elusive, we need to go back in time.
Fifteen years ago, a group of women called "the four mothers" became active in Israel. The group led a public campaign to get the Israeli Defense Forces out of Lebanon and, in so doing, introduced a dangerous discourse into Israeli society. Soldiers of the IDF suddenly became "our children". No more were they heroic soldiers but rather children that must be protected at all costs. Thus was the reversal in Israeli society, a reversal by which the front line became the home front and the home front became the front line. Instead of letting the army fulfill its task of defending our home, though we know that it bears the price of casualties, the army was castrated. This discussion turned the IDF into the Defense Forces of the IDF rather than the Israel Defense Forces. And now, in a burning Middle East, we are protecting "children" and not soldiers so that in the end the real children in the kindergartens of Nahal Oz, Ashkelon, and Ra'anana are left without protection.
The pinnacle of this twisted discourse was seen during the campaign to return Gilad Shalit. Shalit became the child of Israel. We forgot that we were speaking about a grown soldier whose job it was to defend the state. Yes, with the price of his life and his freedom, if it came to that. With closed eyes and under the ecstacy of the release of our child, the state let murderers free. The price was written on the wall: citizens would pay with their lives. But we decided to hide from the bloody writing because, according to the Israeli public, the lives of citizens were suddenly valued less than those youngsters wearing fatigues.
Since the departure from Lebanon and the evacuation of Gush Katif, the home front has been left unprotected, so much so that there is now no point on the map that is safe from the threat of terror. In both the second Lebanon war and now in the last several Gaza operations, Israel has left without subduing terror, for the fear that the price would be too high in the lives of soldiers - sorry - our children.
Between operations, Israeli society has indulged itself in silence. A society that can take another half year of "supposed quiet". Another season of "Big Brother" and "The Voice", anything to not think about the future, just to forget a little about the dangers of living in the Middle East. The shovels that were used to tunnel underneath the houses in the South did not disturb this ritual of forgetting. At least until the earth shook and woke us from our sleep and addiction to silence.
Israeli society knows today that she is fighting for her life. That if she shies away from this challenge the tunnels will bring death and destruction to the cities of Israel. A new spirit is blowing in the streets since the beginning of the ground operation in Gaza, a strong spirit, that which knows how to distinguish the front from the home; to the front we are sending soldiers to defend our home. The soldiers know that well. They know it from the letters they are receiving from children and pasting onto the side of their tanks. They are fighting in the name of those children.
And now Israeli society is starting to internalize that soldiers are fighting so that the children of the South can sleep soundly. It is sad, it tears the heart, but it is the role that they must fill because of the reality in which we live. This I whispered in the ear of a dear man before he left south to fight.
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