Winds Blowing

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
15 June '10

The winds in the Middle East, at least where I live, can be sudden and strong. Sometimes, you think you might be able to spread your arms and fly into the air. The wind is harsh; raising a garden is hard and takes a lot of work and selective planting. On the flip side, the air feels fresher, drier, cleaner. Those are the real winds.

We also have the other kind; the kind few experience in a life time and ones that already I have experienced twice - the winds of war. One of the things I love about this blog is that it provides me with a glimpse of hindsight, for the future. At the beginning, each time the Arabs threatened war, I wrote about the concerns, the special concerns you have when it is not only your nation, but your son in the direct line of fire. The concept is bad enough, the reality crippling.

In the first years that Elie was in the army, I lost count of the number of times Hasan Nasrallah of the Hezbollah threatened, how many times Gaza fired on Israel and deserved to be stopped, how many times Syria belched and Iran burped messages of hatred and war. I finally learned that it is almost a seasonal thing. Summer comes and the Arabs dream of war and destruction. They kidnapped Gilad and Ehud and Eldad in the early summer and within weeks, we were at war.

And just two years later, they drastically increased the number of rockets fired at Israel and within a month, we were at war again. Then, as now, we did not know where the war would start - in the north with Hezbollah or in the south with Gaza. Summer is coming, and once again we do not know.

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