Survivor's Guilt of a Non-Survivor

Is mourning October 7 tragedy appropriation?

When my father passed away 3 years ago, I felt that I had crossed over a line; the line dividing those who have lost a parent from everyone else. All I can say is that when I exited my parents’ home fatherless for the first time, the world felt off kilter. Losing a parent is a singular experience that is never supposed to happen.

I did not expect to experience the same sense of unreality so soon.

We all have an October 7 story. This is mine.

It was the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret, and I headed over to the synagogue at about 10 am. Although I don’t typically attend synagogue, this particular holiday includes the “Yizkor” service, memorial prayers for close family members who have passed away. Since my father’s death, I have adopted this ritual of going to synagogue on holidays when the Yizkor is held as a way to honor him, and I have come to appreciate marking the day with others in community.

On this beautiful Friday morning, as I walked to the synagogue, I had no idea that my life would soon change forever. In my moment of peace, unbeknownst to me, horrific events that came to be known collectively as “October 7,” were unfolding on the other side of the globe. Some 3,000 Palestinian terrorists, mainly from Hamas, as well as civilians from Gaza, invaded Israel and murdered upwards of 1,200 people. Many of the victims were attending a music festival at the time of the attack. Others were murdered in their homes, and not a day has gone by since that I don’t think about the brutalities perpetrated on my people.

Every joyous occasion is now muted by having encountered this evil.

I remember I called my mother that night to share information; she told me said “they came by land, air and sea.” Later I saw footage of the paragliders sailing over the Gaza border and into the site of the Nova musical festival massacre. They took hostages. I remember my heart sank when she described how she watched film of the terrorists parading them around Gaza. What did that mean exactly? I found out when I saw the footage of Shani Louk’s half- naked, broken body having been thrown in the back of a pick-up truck being spat upon by the terrorists as they sped down the street to the cheers of passersby, all the while shouting “Allahu Akhbar.”

Yup, Allah is great alright.

It would be many days before we learned all the shocking details and even longer before we understood the full extent of the calamity. Those of us with ties to Israel are used to hearing about rockets fired from Gaza onto Israeli towns; no one even notices it anymore, especially since the iron dome all but neuters their effect. Even infiltration and kidnappings are not unheard of, but it was clear that this bestial attack was on a completely different level.

Like a mourner, my reaction to the first reports was denial. No matter how the numbers of dead climbed, the extent of the cruelty and dimensions of horror, my simple human brain insisted things could not be that bad.

Until I could no longer maintain the pretense.

That’s when I learned that the terrorists had burned people alive, beheaded others, placed a baby in an oven to die. Then I realized we were dealing with a class of human being with which I was wholly unfamiliar.

Imagine what it takes to tie a father and a mother together and bind them to their young children; to laugh while pouring the gasoline around your bound prey. Maybe it’s all business, light a match, drop it, don’t let it go out, make sure it takes. They had a job to do.

October 7 broke me in ways I did not know were possible.

Rage and despair consumed me when instead of compassion, much of the world reacted by inverting a Jewish tragedy to another tired blood libel.

The Jews are blood thirsty for Palestinian children; the Jews have become Nazis, genocidal.

When have we heard that before? Oh yeah, every generation.

Clueless, Obama musing that “everyone is complicit” with typical sanctimony.

No, everyone is not complicit.The Palestinians bring every misfortune on themselves and we will not apologize for fighting back.

Beaten by the dhimmis again.

Then the bargaining- with God. “If you bring back the hostages I will……

“Maybe if I would have done …. the hostages would have been released sooner.”

I guess mourners have big egos.

I am still working on acceptance. That will not happen until all of the hostages are accounted for. I owe them that at least.

But who am I to be crying about October 7 as if I myself had been victim or lost loved ones to the rampage? I wasn’t and I didn’t. I lost neither friend nor family and do not have to bear the agony Israelis endure on a daily basis except vicariously, like some kind of tragedy appropriation.

I have the audacity to suffer in the face of families of the murdered and the hostages who endure unspeakable loss.

This is not my story to tell or my pain to feel. I am an imposter.

It’s paradoxical to feel survivor’s guilt when you haven’t actually survived anything

It’s like survivor’s guilt on top of survivor’s guilt.

The footage of Shiri Bibas’s terrified face as she was ushered into a jeep holding her two red- headed sons, Ariel, 4 and Kfir, 10 months is excruciating to watch. No one has seen or heard from them since that day, save for a single video of Shiri walking somewhere in Gaza holding her sons, stumbling with a white sheet over her head as she carried her babies flanked by several terrorists.

When I hold my own red-haired grandson, I wonder why we were spared the fate of the Bibas family.

We are not special- just lucky.

For some reason that thought terrifies me.

My daughter is a psychologist. When she works with patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, she treats them with a therapeutic method called Exposure and Response Prevention. ERP involves exposure to fearful experiences without engaging in compulsive responses.

When I think of Shiri Bibas and her boys I feel overwhelming fear and anxiety. So whenever I see an image of their beautiful smiling faces I look away and quickly scroll past shutting out my thoughts.

But how can I look away? Don’t I owe it to them to encounter them, pay tribute?

It’s the least I can do.

I fear the worst and I know I will fall apart if and when we learn they are no longer alive.

In the meantime, I am going to start slowly exposing myself to them until it stops hurting. I’ll start by displaying them here.