The body keeps the score

“For any patient who has chest pains, we need to do an ECG, OK?” So I thought - Sure, why not. Does it get better any time soon? Anyway, I got the ECG, and it came back fine. I had chest pains for a few days, just wanted to check it. Please resist all doctors/nurses/partners of medical professionals messaging me with your advice. You too. And you. Don’t do it. Not even you. OK thanks. As part of the deal please enjoy me with a cat in Be’eri the other day. I promise you I’ll be fine. I’m just in a war and it’s been seven months. Lee Kern has identified that many of us are losing it. It’s a collective thing, ok? It’s fine. Look - a cat. This cat survived 10/7. Meow, he says, as he bit my hand many times, but in a loving way, like every creature I’ve given my heart to.

This work is isolating, and there’s nothing anyone here can do. There’s no trade-off when it comes to the people you need. So I became more anxious until I started cracking up. I think this is normal – all war considered. The doctor says I have C-PTSD, which I find not surprising whatsoever, but also astounding that this life-sentence can be delivered after 20 minutes. They told me that I need to find a psychiatrist who specializes in war trauma. Ha. Oh wait, really? Where do I find one of those? “Just go on Psychology Today and you can search for it.”

Wow! Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and seeeeeeee.

[piano interlude]

[I know Brian May is one of them, and I hate him, but Freddie Mercury is dead and would never]

To be fair I probably have complex trauma. Don’t sleep. Have constant panic attacks. Breathlessness. Inability to regulate emotions. This has been going on for years, pretty much since I got cancelled. But I’m not going mad. I can understand the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter unlike most people with an Instagram account. And yet every time someone tells me I am removed from reality, I feel crazy, because more and more I realize that I’m cemented in reality, both feet. When have I been wrong? Please tell me when. Never. I hate this about me. I’m dramatic but I’m right. RIGHT? People are drifting off on an island of ignorant bliss while we stand here and battle evil.

I have stood in the aftermath of a genocide now three times during three visits to Israel. And “the aftermath” doesn’t do it justice, not when you’re also collecting survivor’s testimonies. Any victim of abuse or atrocities knows that the aftermath doesn’t exist. The body keeps the score. The atrocity lives inside of you. It’s never truly in the past. So yes, I have PTSD. For years I have put myself on the front lines for the atrocities that others have suffered at a great personal cost. Now I’m on the line defending the right for my people to survive and endure. The amount of evidence in favor of October 7 and this war is catastrophic. The exact same people - women - who understand the maddening effects of not being believed are choosing to overlook our atrocities and peddle a one-sided narrative demonizing Israel and denying the crimes against Jewish people on October 7. To say that I am heartbroken is an understatement. It has cracked something in me that will never be mended. The abandonment is not just personally disastrous to me, but to all Jewish people who recognize what happened that day. And it is by design. It’s the same playbook that every woman on this planet knows exists and is terrified of facing.

So when did the chest pain start? Last Wednesday I was in Israel. These Israel delegations are brutal. It’s 18 hour days. Five days solid of relentless horror and danger, and meetings, and hostage families looking me in the eye pleading, and victims telling stories, and police and soldiers recounting their traumas, and then me revisiting the blood on the walls and the emptiness in the fields down South between the constant government meetings about what the fuck we’re going to do?! Regah, regah, regah! Social media war! Mamash! Is there a strategy! Oy one at a time, one at a time! And going back to the Kibbutzim and the parking lot at Nova is different now, because it’s not an active crime scene like it was when I was there in December. Now it’s a memorial. It’s a museum. It’s Yad Vashem. It’s in the past. It was. There’s nothing more we can do. It happened. Fuck, it happened. It’s still happening. It’s in the South. It’s in the North. What the hell looms in the North. Hezbollah — Christ, they’re worse than Hamas. When is this going to end? I have a shiver running down my calves as I type this. My toenails are tingling.

And then at 1am I couldn’t sleep so I’d walk along the most beautiful beach in the world where Jews and Arabs and Christians are out playing music and sports, no crime, safe and happy and trying to keep their inner peace. (Except one guitarist was singing “Tears In Heaven” and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Eric Clapton is a Hamasnik). And the world is trying to destroy this. It’s nuts to be there and to be there. You know what I mean? You’re there. In the eye of history.

So Wednesday. I’d spent a day in Jerusalem, a day in the South, and a day in the North by this point and on Wednesday I was on the bus coming back into Tel Aviv and I received word from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to post a video (3 minutes in length) from the Nahal Oz IDF base on October 7. And the publication was requested by the families of five female hostages - Na’ama Levy, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, Liri Albag and Karina Ariev. These girls are all teenagers. The video, which you can find on my Instagram account, but be warned, is perhaps the worst three minutes of footage you will ever watch. They’ve been there for over 230 days. This is just three minutes of these girls at their base when they woke up on October 7.

In the video, you see that the girls are surrounded by the bodies of their dead friends, while they are carted around by Hamas terrorists. Na’ama Levy with blood all over her face, attempting to negotiate with the terrorists by telling them “I have friends in Palestine”. Liri Albag pleading “anyone speak English?” Agam Berger with pools of blood dripping from her mouth. Daniella Gilboa being dragged outside, unable to walk properly, limping from pain. Karina Ariev cowering in a corner, looking petrified. And Hamas terrorists telling the girls that they have now referred to as sex slaves: “You are so beautiful”. Every girl knows what that feels like. To be powerless in an uncomfortable situation being told that you’re nothing but a piece of meat. Except to the world outside, these girls are not human. They can’t possibly be. Because here’s the reality: Not a single feminist, or celebrity, or non-Jewish activist posted this video. Not a single one. Nobody shared it. Nobody watched it. Nobody talked about it. Nobody acknowledged it. And once the press did, they printed that the Arabic translation was wrong. That the words used may not suggest that “these are the girls who can get pregnant” but instead the word meant “sex slave”.

Sorry what? What hairs are we splitting here? Use your eyes. We can see very clearly what has happened to these women in this video. It’s crystal clear what’s going on. And yet, no. No the mainstream media gaslights us. And then Jews started squabbling over this, which is exactly what the Islamic regime wanted. The terrorists who raped our girls are being given more grace in the mainstream media than the women they raped, who are STILL in captivity, god knows where. Keeping your sanity is an act of resistance these days. Imagine that.

Anyway the video arrives. I had seen this footage before, but it was never made public. And as I started to watch it again, something happened inside me. From my feet to just beneath my chin, I had this surge like an electrical charge go through me, and I felt like every single one of my nerve endings was on fire. This feeling didn’t leave me. When I got back to Tel Aviv, I had several calls that I missed from a dear friend who follows this newsletter and supports me in ways only a real one does, but never reads a word I write (LOL). This friend was punching a concrete wall with bare fists - such was the rage and the pain and the terror, and I spent hours just trying to soothe and calm and minimize whatever damage could result from this anguish. It wasn’t until I was on my own much later that I could sit in my own impossible feeling. A feeling that the world has failed us. Abandoned us. Sold us out for a psychotic terror regime.

Humanity demands that when terrorists invade and burn down houses and brutally murder innocents and gang rape women and children and steal hostages for more than 200 days, there is a unified global response to condemn and do everything to salvage. I have lost faith in humanity. I am no longer an atheist. I now believe in God. Not people. People are useless. Hashem, dude. You’re up.

I look at those five girls and I see me, I see my friends, I see my family. The pain and exhaustion in me at the moment is on a par with victims who suffer the most appalling abuse. Not only must I process all of this and that evidence thru the lens of my womanhood, I have to process it as a Jew carrying a fate on my shoulders that took millions of our lives including my own faceless ancestors while facing the same brand of terror in 2024, all in the knowledge that anyone of those women could have been me. And the world would line up to spit on them if they were released. I advocate knowing that the world would do the same to me if I was in their position spending unfathomable hours in a situation we can’t fully understand. I haven’t been able to take a second to myself in over eight months because there’s not enough I can do. So yes I cracked. The day after the video was released, the international courts (the ICC) attempted once more to delegitimize our efforts to safeguard our entire people from this thousands-year-old bullshit, and the key to it all is to try to drive us into such a state of psychological exhaustion and dismay that we cannot survive it.

These below taken last week on my delegation are the images you don’t see in the mainstream media. Over 100,000 Israelis displaced. Villages destroyed beyond repair. Over a thousand successful attempts at genocide. Hundreds taken hostage. A country in the throes of extreme trauma. An unimaginable devastation that was achieved in a matter of hours using the highest grades of weaponry to cause total annihilation and erasure. The first four images are taken at the car graveyard just outside the location of the Nova festival. Hundreds of people were burned alive in these cars. Imagine if this was the parking lot at Glastonbury. It will be if the chants for intifada succeed. The latter six are from kibbutz Be’eri where 10% of the community were brutally murdered in the early hours of the morning of October 7; men, women and children. And their homes looted and incinerated, not by terrorists but waves of subsequent Gazan civilians. No Palestinian state should be rewarded for these evil and inhumane acts of barbarism, but the day that video of Nahal Oz base was released: Spain, Ireland and Norway decided to recognize a state of Palestine. For shame. For shame.

The second to last image is of the medical centre in Be’eri where the medical staff were murdered protecting the injured. Similarly there’s an ambulance in the image of the parking lot, where the remains of SIXTEEN dead bodies were found — can you imagine the desperation of those festivalgoers to hide that they crammed themselves in that ambulance, sixteen of them? Did you hear these stories? No. But you did hear about claims that Israel bombed Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, which turned out to be a totally erroneous fib. The victims of October 7 were the Israelis who beleived in coexistence the most. Never ever forget that.

In this last image, I’m staring at the second floor of the house, reminding everyone that it existed. I came to this spot in December, with another survivor - Hugo. It was cold. The air had ash and smoke in it still. You could smell death. He looked at me right here and he said: Why did the world not care what happened to us? And I said: We will make sure they care. Six months later, I feel like I failed Hugo.

Nobody does survival like the Jewish people. People in the South have a new focus. Healing. Rebuilding. Revitalising. And – yes – fighting in a war to make sure it never happens again. Jewish people are one of the oldest peoples on earth because we know how to recover. We have a special recipe. We don’t wallow. We don’t lick our wounds. We don’t misdirect our rage and anger, although we have much of that too. We thrive in spite of the hatred and the attempts to eradicate us. We don’t miss a moment to run in the light, to watch the ocean, to talk to the people we love, even if they don’t want to talk to us. I talk to the ones who won’t hear me out loud all the time, to keep them near. We are too much every minute and that is how we keep going. We bulldoze over lies and venomous prejudice with love and compassion and truth and relentless resistance. I wouldn’t choose to be anything else.

And who are our enemies? Hamas; a group more successful than the Nazis. We value life, they value death, breeding endlessly to multiply the terrorists so that they can kill more of us. Hamas have mastered the art of psychological terrorism and global propaganda. If you are screaming about the tragic deaths of innocents in Rafah today - a result of urban warfare meticulously provoked and planned by a terror regime who give ZERO FUCKS about their own people or anything but DEATH – and you have also yet to say a single thing about the atrocities of October 7 or the Jewish people still held in captivity, who were raped and murdered solely for the crime of being JEWISH then you have become a part of their regime. You and I will never ever share a common humanity. You have no humanity. You are a puppet for terrorism. Go to hell. If you are someone who continues to excuse these people in your life, then same. We cannot coexist.

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, baby, can't do this to me, baby
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here

All eyes on Rafah! - they cry. I say - all eyes on YOU. This is on them, oh woke progressives. The useful idiots of western media are responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians in Gaza. Without their outcry, Hamas wouldn’t have any need to continue to use their own civilians as human shields and to refuse hostage deals and ceasefire deals and to prolong this war. Yes, the effects of the war in Rafah are devastating. Yesterday Israel was being bombed from inside Rafah. Rockets made it as far as Tel Aviv. Israelis had to run from the beach in broad daylight. What do they expect us to do? Not defend ourselves? Not get our hostages back? Not protect our borders? The IDF had made horrible mistakes. Guess what. Most armies do. Every civilian death is a tragic result of war. But why do they keep putting civilians in harm’s way? Because the West keeps being myopically outraged! They keep ignoring the brutalities that Palestinians face at the hands of their own rulers. They keep ignoring the atrocities of October 7. They keep ignoring the 120+ hostages remaining in Gaza. They keep ignoring the FACTS. This is on them. They are keeping this war alive with their dumb propagandist ceasefire now posts. It’s them. They are helping Hamas win this war. They are doing exactly what Hamas wants. They/them. Moral cowards. Identity-less. Legitimately insane.

Speaking of, I was out for a walk tonight. I was behind some white person in keffiyeh with a watermelon handbag. One of the ugliest I’ve seen for a second. I have been using an acronym since the college encampments started, and to be clear it is a non-partisan acronym. MAHA. Make America Hot Again. I have noticed and I know you have too that these pro Hamas people are on a mission to render themselves uglier than sin. It’s like they want to be unfuckable. I don’t mean to make anyone feel uncomfortable but we’re all adults here. Don’t they want to have sex? I don’t think they’ve ever had sex. They are the 72 virgins. It’s them. Anyway, I passed this person, and swung my giant Star of David to my back as I walked on. And then I looked back at it, and thought, Honey have some taste. There’s a reason Givenchy doesn’t do a watermelon clutch. Saint Laurent? It’s never happening. Have some aspiration. Get some style. When I was young, I dreamed of a Kelly. I aspired to a Hermes Kelly. Call me materialistic, at least I have class. These 20-year-olds want everything to be a statement and they’re saying nothing and looking wretched. I’m not sorry. Pick a scarf. Any scarf. Not that. Something culturally appropriate. Or just hot. I cannot.

In Rafah, they are demanding to know if we care about the “beheaded babies”. Let me answer thus: We Jews value all life. Of course we understand that every human death is a loss. But please let’s not change the meaning of words. Beheaded? Leave it to the psychopaths (I am one) to make this clear. On October 7, babies were intentionally beheaded by Hamas, who came into homes, dismemebered and beheaded and then burned bodies alive. That’s not what happened in Rafah. In Rafah, two warheads were sent to bomb a terrorist location where two senior Hamas officials were killed. The munitions were precise. What wasn’t precise was the Jeep that was parked near the humanitarian area, which was loaded with explosives - a Hamas Jeep. Uhm hold on a second - what was that doing there? Isn’t that some sort of humanitarian crime? If a baby lost its head in this horrific blast, what abject horror. That is called accidental decapitation. Like I say - leave it to psychos like me, but words matter. And all the words are being used against us. Again, every civilian death is a tragedy. But for Hamas, it’s a strategy. They want as many of their own to die as possible. That way they can DARVO the Jews.

What’s DARVO again? OK well if we can prove it was the Jews doing the beheading then we don’t need to talk about how it was Hamas. In fact we can stop talking about all of it, the Holocaust included. Finally! We can let go of the Holocaust! The Jews are doing a worse one! It’s a gEn0cIde! This is DARVO. Deny Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender. Deny (the Holocaust/October 7) Attack (the Jews/survivors) Reverse (because they are doing the Holocaust now) Victim (to the Palestinians) and Offender (at the hands of the IDF).

Here’s an important video I made in Israel after I visited Yad Vashem. It’s vital. It explains why there is zero difference between 2024 and 1938, other than the existence of the state of Israel, which we will die for. All of us.

Watch it and share it. More of my trip to come.