Eight mothers from in and around New York City recount how they’ve discussed the attack on Israel, the history of conflict in the Middle East, and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza with their children.
. The message in just about every well-intentioned article: Remind your children they are safe, stay composed, and keep the true terror of the news to yourself. But in New York City, following that advice can feel nearly impossible. Here, communities and classrooms are international and diverse, and even when they aren’t, the subways, buses, and streets that lead to them are.
The first thing I told my kids was that the whole family is safe, and that this is hard but we’ll get through this. But my daughter is very aware and sensitive. She was crying and worried about rockets. We had to calm her down. We again said that the family is safe and no one is in harm’s way right now and everyone’s okay — their grandmother, their uncle.
She asked me what the difference between Gaza and the West Bank was. And she wanted to know more about the settlers, and why Palestine had two different governments. She asked: Who are the legitimate rulers, and who speaks on behalf of the Palestinian people? I think my daughter is trying to come to terms with the fact that we live in a world where children can be killed and no one really cares one way or another.
“Our conversation included killing babies. It included rape. It included the most violent expressions of how to treat other humans.”Leora Kaye is the mother of a 14-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son. She lives in Park Slope. Of course, neither of my kids are old enough to understand everything I said, and I say that with love for both of them. They are smart, sophisticated New York kids. The one thing I know they could clearly see is that their dad and I were both in a traumatic mental space.
She said, “I couldn’t help but get involved in the conversation and say, ‘Palestinians have been under occupation for 75 years, and they have been killed.’” We told her we understood why she needed to share in that way, but also asked her not to engage unless she was being addressed directly. We wanted to avoid the possibility of unnecessary conflict with her friends.
“I practiced hiding with my kids. I said to them, ‘What would you do if there was somebody pounding on the door, saying that they have to come in?’”My plan had been not to talk to my boys about what’s happening in Israel, because they’re young and they don’t really know what’s going on right now. They also don’t know about the politics of the Middle East, and they don’t know about the Holocaust.
But at some point, he came to me and said, “I heard everybody hates the Jews. Is that true?” I said, “Well, you know how we don’t wear a kippah outside anymore? It’s because there are some people who want to hurt us, because of who we are. And we don’t need to make it so easy for them to identify who we are.”
Our children fear speaking their mind. They are trying to understand, “Why are Muslims viewed in this way?” They are feeling more othered than I did growing up. All day I had been trying to read the news secretly, to keep it to myself. But it turned out she had known about it the whole time and hadn’t said anything. I asked her how she knew about Israel. And she said, “I saw it at the hotel.” She had spent that morning with her dad, who lives out of state but was in town for the night at a hotel. It turns out the TV was on in the room that morning right before they checked out, and she saw the news.
I made a bit of a misstep on Friday, October 13, when many of us were very worried about a Hamas video circulating that called for protests. There was no credible threat to New York City, but there was an increased police presence in front of my kids’ school, and my DMs and mom text thread were blowing up with Jewish friends freaking out, questioning whether to send their kids that day.
On Saturday, October 7, as soon as I heard what was happening, I turned on the news — MSNBC and CNN — and kept it on all day. I had it on a loop, and I was crying nonstop — and this was before everything had come out. Had we not had places we needed to be that Sunday, I think I would have sat there watching the news all weekend.
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