They asked my mother about identity and her connection to Israel, and she opened up about it like a grown-up.

My mother is the Land of Israel. She carries the history and soul of the land. But when the question of identity and connection with the land arises, she asks that peace come first and that the proper rest from Kaddish become rest from wars and hope for a better life for all.

My mother, Leah Shohat, participates in a creative writing group. She says it's nonsense, but she writes wonderfully, and when she reads to her friends, the heart listens and expands. At the end of July, she will celebrate her 98th birthday, and I am grateful every day for the fact that she is lucid, independent, wise and knowledgeable, with a great sense of humor. Walking is harder for her than before, she tires quickly, but she remembers every event that has ever happened in her history and the world's, continues to tell jokes at every opportunity, and even remembers the sounds of the letters in Morse code from the days when she was a signalman in the War of Independence.

When we talk about living abroad, perhaps emigrating from here like many others, she reminds us how much we fought to have a country, and how important it is to preserve it and not leave it. She reminds us that at the end of the day, we have no other country and there is no other place in the world for us as Jews where we can feel at home. And at the same time, her soul is agitated by what is happening.

A few points about our family. We love the country. Everyone served and still serves in the IDF. Mom and Dad, even before it was called the IDF, I, my sister's and my husband's spouses, my sister's and my children, and my sister's granddaughters are now serving in the Israel Defense Forces. My father was wounded in Operation Ben Ami, one of the operations of the establishment of the state, and was disabled for the rest of his life, although most days he preferred to deny it. His only and youngest brother, Shmuel Shohat, was killed in the Battle of Derdara in the Golan Heights, during the Six-Day War. We continue to visit his grave at the military cemetery in Haifa every Memorial Day. Why is this important? When you read what my mother wrote, you will probably understand. I, as she wrote about the relationship between her mother and father, "pour water on her hands." Or in contemporary language, I take my hat off to her in great appreciation for the words she put on the page.

The topic she was asked to write about this time was probably in the context of Independence Day. "Identity and the connection with the land." When I came to visit her, she let me read what she had written. She said she was very hesitant about reading it to her friends in the group, but she was glad she did because they told her it was moving. Mom was born in Vienna, Austria, and came to Israel in 1936 at the age of almost 9 because her father was a Zionist. I will present the things as she wrote them, and it seems that she wrote from the blood of her heart, in her own language, Hebrew. I brought the things here because I find them worthy, true, deeply touching. And no less important: Mom, you are a princess. I love you.

And so she wrote: "What is my identity? What is my connection with the land? Am I Israeli? Apparently. At least in part. If it is a matter of will, with a half-smile I say that I am not at all clear whether I want to. But it is probably an innate matter. I was born Jewish, the daughter of a Jewish mother and father. And that is not enough, my father is of the Levi lineage, and the name Levi was added to his name, and my mother has a lineage that goes back to the genius of Vilnius. This burden is heavy for me, heavy on my shoulders. As if it is obligatory, and I do not want it. That ultra-Orthodox Lithuanian education that was an educational foundation – even without intention, but in the personal example of my parents' behavior, is what guided me all my life. Again, without intention. Because my intention was always to be a free person, a person whose feet would always be guided by common sense. And so Judaism seemed to me, in my adulthood and not in my youth, illogical. Logically, we would have been expected to interfere with other peoples among whom we lived. To assimilate and disappear completely as happened to other peoples. Logically, we had to introduce modern features into religion, changes that would allow a religious person to live in accordance with his faith with the possibilities of the 20th century. A kind of Reform Judaism. And this did happen, but only partially, because that's when Zionism emerged. Zionism saw a Jewish state as the solution to all problems."

An idea and a reality apart. The Zionist idea was embraced by the Jews of Poland and Russia, the most oppressed of all, and by the Jews of the East – about whom we did not know much at the time – who were also oppressed to the point of being crushed in some Islamic countries, such as Yemen or Libya, while in other parts they lived quite well, such as Morocco and Egypt. European and American Jewry was less enthusiastic, paid a 'lip service' and was content with donations. Only here and there did small Zionist movements emerge that were at odds with each other, between the right and the left. But all of them, without exception, thought of coming and redeeming the land from oppression. "To renew our days as before," to make the wilderness bloom.

But what can be done, there is no vacuum in nature, and when this land was abandoned by our ancestors thousands of years ago, other peoples entered and settled in it. It was no longer empty and certainly not standing idle. Once again we had to conquer it from their hands. And I, a 9-year-old girl, the only child of very Jewish parents, am going with them to the Promised Land, to build, according to my father's words, a homeland for the persecuted Jews, so that they will have a home to come to, when Europe will no longer allow them to live there. My father certainly did not think about the Holocaust, as it was afterwards. No one could have described to him such a planned mass murder. But according to him, in Europe, "the earth was burning under the feet of the Jews." Those were his words, and no one in the family wanted to listen to him. They stayed there and most of them perished.

And I grew up here. With an idealistic father with his head in the clouds, and with a mother who followed him without saying a word. At home, he was the king and I was the princess, and she "poured water on his hands" and feet. (A phrase that says - she was his loyal student. T.G.) Even when the princess went barefoot, and sometimes there was barely bread to eat at home, lineage was supposed to cover everything. Then World War II broke out. The boys and girls I grew up with and were a few years older than me, enlisted in the British army, the police, the brigade and the Palmach, and some of them never returned.  

The army appeared to us, the younger ones, as something mysterious and romantic, intertwined with heroic deeds. We dreamed of the day when we too could enlist. We believed in the story of "it is better to die for our country," before we realized that it was much better to live. We lived on the myth. We saw the results of the Holocaust and it was clear to us that our father was right, that a land for the Jews was essential, a refuge for those who remained alive.

When the War of Independence broke out, there was no question about whether the war was justified - it was forced upon us. We didn't want it. We thought that by means of a "wall and tower" policy, we would conquer it all. But fate and our neighbor apparently thought otherwise.

And now, when there is no tower or wall left, we are here, after countless wars, and dead and wounded in almost every Israeli family, we are here, and that includes standing in silence at the military cemeteries every Independence Day and visiting the humble and cold tombstones the rest of the year, countless days of remembrance. Now I am asked about my identity and my connection to this country – the one for which we fought, for which we gave our lives and blood, for which we gave our best sons who lie before us in the ground – and I have no answer. Are those rows of graves with unit symbols, the stupid pride of those wearing uniforms, the melodies of the parades, the noise of the planes binding me here?

Is this land worth the blood price we paid, and we continue to pay for it? Is the future we wanted to guarantee our children slipping away from us, and are they going to look for a better future somewhere else? Am I myself, would I choose my future in this country if I were 20 years old today? Am I really here only out of lack of choice? I have no answers, and it is very sad.

We didn't want to hurt anyone. We didn't want to expel another people. Events unfolded without our having any control over them. Small problems became a giant snowball, and now it's impossible to stop it. What will this country look like in 50 years? Who knows. Will we ever sit here safely, each under his own vine and fig tree? You tell me.

And as for my identity – life made my identity. No one asked me. I am Jewish, born in Europe, with a very liberal European Jewish upbringing. Israeli in fact. This is the first time I have asked myself if I am at peace with this identity and the first time I have been forced to answer, and I have no answer. Rows and rows of tombstones in the military cemeteries stand before my eyes and the blood from the ground cries out – until when? until when? and I have no answer. I only have a lot of questions. And He who sits on high, please find a proper rest for us, the living, and please give us some peace of mind. And He who makes peace on high, perhaps one day He will make peace with us too, and they said Amen. Then there will be no doubt and no question of identity."