Home?

I spent waaay too much time this morning reading this article in ynet. It's written by an Israeli who has been living in Canada for 10 years and will soon be moving back to Israel. Most of the time I spent reading many of the hundreds of comments. Roughly half say what I figured they would say: you are crazy for wanting to come back here, and can I please take your place? I was quite surprised to see quite a lot of comments welcoming the writer back home and telling her she's making the right choice. But the comments that scared me most were those that said "your children will hate you for forcing them to leave their home and growing up in a much worse country".
When we think of leaving Australia of moving back, the most important thing (well, the only thing really) that we miss is our families and good friends. It's hard to raise a child so far away from his grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins. And it's not fair to our parents to raise their grandchild so far from them. But will my son really have a better life there? What with the terrible education system and all? I look at Israeli kids and I see spoiled brats who walk all over their parents and teachers. I'm not sure I want that for my son.
I'm very, very keen to see with my own eyes what things are like "back home". I'm glad we have the opportunity to be in Israel for a much longer visit this time, because you don't get enough time to see and do much in the standard 2-week family and friends whirlwind visit tour.
I'm hoping that our visit later this year will answer a lot of questions, but I have a feeling that it will only create many new questions instead...