I’m having a tough, tough time with social media right now.

As always, there are goods and bads to this ability to see things happen in real time. The newspaper that immediately gets thrown right into the recycle bin goes unread because I’m getting my news immediately from Twitter, from Facebook, from friends on skype, from texts. By the time I get around to reading the actual paper, it’s no longer, you know, news. News stories start popping up in the social space and then there’s the immediate scramble to make sure that the celebrity actually died, to make sure the shared news story isn’t from 2009, to make sure its not just a hoax.

Right now on social media there’s a lot of shared information about the current situation in Israel. Lots of anger, lots of outrage, lots of photo, lots of video. I log on to Facebook and in between the “What color is your aura?” and “What’s your old person name?” quizzes, and in between the Candy Crush lives being exchanged, there’s a lot of information about Israel.

I’m seeing a lot of truth, a lot of half-truths, a lot of un-truths. A lot of tiny snippets of a much larger story. A lot of media bias. A lot that hurts my heart.

Now here is where I stop and tell you my truth: My heart is with Israel.

Always.

I have family there, friends there. I lived there for a year in 1997 and gained 29 pounds (not an exaggeration) eating rugalach. This, of course, immediately gives me the bias stamp on my profile. I’m okay with that. I’m proud to be both a Jew AND a supporter of Israel. I know the history of the conflict, I feel I have a firm understanding of the current situation in the Middle East. As a non-prayer for the last however many years, I have found myself praying again — first for the three kidnapped and murdered boys, and now for the Israeli Defense Force, for my loved ones, for peace.

But I haven’t been sharing much on Facebook. I haven’t been retweeting many articles. I have even been closing Facebook more often than not.

It’s overwhelming.

I get a lump in my throat when friends in Israel share stories of running to bomb shelters, share videos of their babies learning in gan what to do when there’s a siren, share footage of the iron dome in action.

It is so hard to read comments on ANY article these days. (Note to self, for the 845th time: DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS)

I weep for humanity when I see hashtags like #hitlerwasright trending on Twitter.

I have a very diverse social network, which is mostly wonderful. You should see what happens to my Facebook feed during election time. Usually I simply ignore the posts that I don’t agree with, and give a thumbs up or share the ones I do. But right now, I have been mostly silent, I have had to hide a few people from my timeline, and I have even had to unfriend someone.

I won’t convince the person who doesn’t agree with me. I don’t need to convince people who do, they all already know, and many of them are living it on a daily, hourly, minute-ly basis. 

So right now I have been focusing on things like looking at camp photos of my girls, when brands get it right with bloggers (I’m talking about, Canada Goose!), my son’s almost-healed thumb, my photography, and my husband making it the final couple hundred for MasterChef Canada.

(And praying.)

(A lot.)