Mom

Well, I only told Mom and Dad.

I only told Mom and Dad.

I only told Mom and Dad.

Well, I only told Mom and Dad.

I only told Mom and Dad.

Well, I only told Mom and Dad.

Aber jetzt weiß ich, wie ich meinen Namen spreche. Ich lerne auch, wie ich lesen oder andere Wörter lese. Das hat mein Leben wirklich verändert. Als ich von dem Trainingszentrum zurückkam, hat mich die anderen Frauen gefreut und ich bin für sie eine Inspiration geworden.

Bevor, we often made fires to have enough light to prepare fish for dinner. The sun is shining all year round, even during the rainy season. So using solar panels is really good for us.

Hey, kid. You did good. Real good. Thanks, Mom. I mean, I have to be honest. I was worried. I was not confident that this would be such a success. I upped our insurance policy. The addition's barely a decade old. Yeah, that's nice, Mom. But you're really growing up. I know a lot of millennials had to move back in with their parents. I mean, not your sister, but you did.

You were always a little behind.

You were complimenting me? I think? Right. Sorry. What I'm trying to say is tonight, after refusing my excellent party planning advice and ignoring your sister's offer to cater, you still... What I mean is... Everything you did was...

Yeah.

Oh, my God. That's all he does.

About everything, especially number one is poltergeist.

That's number one. Do you remember when we sat next to Spolstra's wife? Yes. And he was in the press and he get down.

And then he would go downstairs and he started in the stairs. Do you see Spolstra? Why is he there? He should be fired. I said, Gonzalo, his wife is sitting right there. Shut up.

No, because I put you on and on and on every game. Every game.

Yes. The heat will do it.

Gonzalo, here. He's warming his second lychee.

It varied a lot, but a typical day was we'd have some missions, looking for weapons, looking for tunnels. And if we see anybody, engage them. And my role was the front machine gunner, light machine gunner.

But once you got away from the humanitarian road... Everything besides that, we're told no one's supposed to be there. The orders to evacuate have been made. Anyone who is there is not supposed to be there. For us, basically, the guidance was men of fighting age, shoot. It doesn't matter if they're armed or not. They're not supposed to be there.

And the logic being that Hamas operators, they don't walk around armed. They keep weapons caches in different homes. They walk around. They run to the nearest house if they need a weapon. So any basically men, you shoot on sight. And it's shoot to kill. Shoot to kill. If it's a woman and child, use the standard kind of non-war procedure where you just detain them. Try to detain them.

This is how we heard it from the commanders. Don't shoot women and children unless they're a threat. Try to just detain them.

The Israeli army is not the U.S. Army. There's much more kind of DIY element. It comes down to your commander, how he decides the standards he sets. And our company commander happens to be a kibbutznik who is a little bit more cautious and doesn't want to essentially create a storm. It matters who your commander is. Yeah.

I can tell you there are soldiers in the unit who are hardcore right-wing settlers who, if it was up to them, we could be doing much more damage. I remember there was another company in the battalion. Their company commander... Very much not like ours.

I was at an observation post and he comes by just to look through my binoculars and he sees a Gazan family passing by some Sheldag soldiers and he sees them giving the family bottled water. And he goes on the radio to yell at them saying, what are you doing? You want to open up a lemonade stand too?

And he starts looking through my binoculars and calling in order to some bulldozers saying, see that line of trees over there? See that? Take him all down. Destroy all of that. And I ask, oh, are you doing an operation there later? And for security, you don't want them to have any kind of like sniper positions? And he said, no, just don't let them live.

He was pretty much operating from make it as difficult for their lives as possible going forward.

At least some of these cases I can see being intentional. It wouldn't shock me. They're in the situation and they get desensitized really fast and develop a hatred really fast. So no way to justify that. I do understand the mentality. At first, shooting unarmed people was horrifying to us. It's like, I can't believe we did that. And then it was like, ugh, like you get desensitized to it.

And after you lose some friends, you start thinking, why even take the chance? Our lives are more important than theirs. I won't bet my life on it that they're Hamas, but I'll bet their lives on it that they're Hamas, essentially.

So regarding these American doctors seeing the children, no, I can only give my take that, you know, some soldier took it upon themselves, said, okay, they're an age like this that, you know, I can rationalize to myself that they're potentially combatants. Why take the chance?

Well, the 18-month-old, there's no question there. And I don't think anything, I can't give a reason. I mean, the simple one of, you know, crossfire, et cetera, that's one. But if they're saying there was one shot exactly and no other wounds, then that goes out the window.

I hear enough attitudes and opinions that would have shocked me 10 years ago. Now it's like, yeah, this is how people feel here. I have a friend whose dad said in an interview, he was in the Mossad and basically said that no one in Gaza over the age of four is innocent. So this isn't a fringe mentality among Israelis. No one in Gaza is innocent. They all support Hamas of all ages.

Where they draw the line varies. But they'll say, you know, anyone that's self-aware in Gaza is a Hamas supporter.

Your father's in his silk robe and he's got a cocktail.

Three penalties on this drive against Ohio State. And now Johnson waiting back.

A lot going on in the last 12 hours.

And I told him that... He was welcome to come Christmas Eve, but that likely Christmas day, you and I would do something by ourselves. And he got very upset, and we... had a, I mean, I can't remember exactly all the parts of the conversation, but I said the, the reasoning way, how I got to this place was the situation with Kira. And then, you know, I, I was tolerant of his religious journey.

Um, I can be tolerant of political differences, but when he started following the, um, The YouTube shit.

The profit stuff. And and what I feel is fake news and all of the doom and gloom and generators and flats of water and granola bars all over the place. I said, I just it. I can't. I just can't anymore. A 40-year history is just not enough for me. We are already living very, very separate lives.

Yeah, and separate realities. I didn't say that. He said that he's not going to change his religious viewpoints. He's not going to change. And then I just said it. Then I just don't see, I don't see a path where this marriage can continue. I don't see a path for me. And what did he say? He sort of didn't really respond.

I'm embarrassed to say the situation with Kira wasn't the one that knocked it over. But I was ever hopeful that he would come to a reality about that. But what I realized is that... He's beyond redemption at this point. There's this little piece of me that is like, you have this conversation with him on January 1st. His list is debunked.

He will realize if he steps back and looks at the whole picture that that he's not grounded in any reality and that he'll have an awakening and I will have a marriage and a family.

It's getting pretty crazy, and I don't even know half of it. You know, we have two generators in the house. There are now eight flats of water in the garage that he bought at Costco and some kind of fancy water filter system that was a couple hundred dollars. He's stockpiling weird food.

You know, 12 cans of canned chicken. And I'm like, I have never eaten canned chicken. You have never eaten canned chicken. Why is there canned chicken? I feel like returning it all this week while he's not home. And he moved some money without my permission.

No, because it's a joint account. And he withdrew me from a joint account without telling me and made a purchase he knew I would never approve.

He bought a precious metal.

I don't know. I wish I knew because then I could crack it. I don't know how to pull him back. I have been very clear that I'm not sure how much more I can take.

Yeah. And I've even said, you know, I'm considering leaving, ending the marriage. You said that to him? Yeah. Which is very hard for me to say because I'm 69. I'm about to retire.

Not necessarily the life I had planned for myself to be alone. But what kind of life do I have now?

I need an endpoint. And so the endpoint is December 31st. When January 1st comes around, things have to change. I'm only going to put up, I can barely put up with it now, and I can't put up with it after that.

Yes.

I don't

I don't think Anita was.

I don't think she was.

Um, I know that stories are like that.

Can you just put the cream on after we go? Okay. You can't be messing with it as we drive. Okay.

Always has. I remember we argue a lot when we told people how we met. People laugh. He won't say one thing, I won't say another thing.

Mm-hmm. We drove around the corner?

Oh, yeah, I know.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. I think that's where it is.

Mm-hmm. I think it sounds right. Yeah, that's how I remember. Not much driving. Yeah.

Let's go this way.

He was walking here.

Yeah.

Yeah, but he was walking to the bus stop.

Mom, good job. The past memory never goes away.

Yeah. Very close. Everything is so close. Good job. We found the bus stop.

Did you know that? She said, I don't remember. I think she said something, yeah.

It's nice.

You feel like crying?

He loved it, yeah.

Right? Mm-hmm.

Mom didn't stop there. She told me something else.

As soon as he came home, he told me.

I thought it was odd because you would have told me about it if you were doing something like this. So it came as a huge surprise to me, too.

So when we spoke the next time, I brought it up and I asked you about it. Then you started laughing. Then I knew it was just a joke that I had to tell Dad.

He does that a lot, yes.