The country we chose to live in

So this is the country we've chosen to live in. A country in which more than 40% of its population has had to run to find shelter from rockets being fired by Hamas from the Gaza strip. A country towards which more than 180 rockets have been fired in the last 24 hours. A country in which in certain areas, a mother has 15 seconds, the time it takes you to pour a cup of coffee, to gather her four children and run to the bomb shelter. A country in which I have to tell my family, who lives abroad, that the news make it sound worse than it is just to keep them calm. Yet, it is the country I feel safe in. No other country in the world goes to such lengths to keep their citizens safe. We have bomb shelters and iron domes and chayalim who proudly go out to defend our citizens.

Yesterday afternoon I took my kids with a couple of friends to a kibbutz near Modiin to collect grapes and step on them to make grape juice. The perfect afternoon for the kids. We were having a great time. And all of a sudden, the sound of a siren filled the air. We were in the field with no shelter to run into. We gathered the children and hid under tables. I had Ilanit, my youngest, who is a year and a half old, duck under the table and i laid on top of her trying to protect her head and mine, while my 6 year old, Nathan, was hiding with the rest of the children nearby. Not being next to both my children and the uncertainty of whether Nathan was doing what he was supposed to in this situations was terrifying. We hid for what seemed like an eternity, but what must have been two minutes until we felt the ground shake and the resound of a rocket hitting open ground. My first taste at this country's crude reality. I can't imagine a mother who has to go through what I went yesterday several times a day.

Today however, as rockets continue to be fired and we find ourselves at what hasn't yet been cataloged as war, but I cannot find a different name for, Israelis went to work, visited coffee shops and restaurants, went grocery shopping and took the kids to school. Because in Israel, life doesn't stop. Because we are Am Israel, we don't let anyone push us over, we are strong and we want to live in peace and will do whatever is necessary to ensure that we continue to enjoy the freedoms that this beautiful country provides.