Uri, Teacher at Eynot Yarden High School

I am writing this message from my home on Kibbutz Shamir, about 5 miles from the Lebanese border. The level of fear is very high here on my kibbutz, mostly because of the stories from the kibbutzim in the Otef Aza region. I do not know a single kibbutznik who isn’t imagining their kibbutz being overrun by murderers, just as it happened in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Kibbutz Beeri and Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

For more than a month I haven’t met the teens with whom I work because the school is closed and the teens are scattered all over Israel. Some were evacuated, and some led the area on their own because they feared an attack by Hezbollah from the North. I spend my time trying to stay in contact with them. Yesterday a missile fell several yards from one of my students, a participant in Galilee Dreamers.

In the midst of all the fear, hatred, death and evil we are experiencing, the likes of which I have never felt in my entire life, I search for reasons for op4mism. I am hoping that my country will be a place where my daughters will be able to live without fearing that they will be murdered in their beds. But it is difficult to be optimistic when the current solution is more killing – this time of hundreds of children in Gaza. They, too, like my own daughters, deserve a future devoid of fear.

But I do believe that there is another way. The Yom Kippur War led to peace with Egypt, the Intifada led to the Oslo Peace Accords, and the Lebanese War led to our withdrawal from the Security Belt. Maybe this current horror will bring us to an understanding that might bring about an end to this hatred. The only solutions are for the children to talk, to understand, to love one another. Inshallah (God willing).