I Saw - Israel Rises From Its Knees

I left Israel on October 10, a broken country on its knees (https://tinyurl.com/5xyc24f6 ). I came back in late December and found a country that had powerfully risen, with its head high and a renewed sense of self and purpose. Hamas badly miscalculated. They saw a nation that appeared torn apart by internal divisions and strife and thought it could deliver a lethal blow to the Zionist enterprise. Instead, it awoke a sleeping giant and Hamas now faces its own demise at the hands of a unified Israel.

Here are some of observations from my five-day visit:

I Saw Horror

I visited Kfar Aza, a kibbutz along the Gaza border that was ravaged in the Hamas massacre of October 7. I entered dozens of houses where families were murdered and kidnapped. I saw houses where Hamas terrorists burned occupants alive. In one neighborhood where young singles and couples lived, almost every house bore a sign with photos of its occupants who had been murdered or kidnapped. And this was not a sterilized memorial like the 9/11 museum or even a Nazi concentration camp. The ruins of houses crunched under your feet as you walked. The dirty laundry and dishes sat where they were on that fateful Saturday morning. There were dark stains on the ground where victims had bled out. The burnt-out shells of houses still smelled strongly from the incendiary bombs tossed in by the Hamas terrorists. Our guide pointed out a house where the whole family was murdered. He told us that the occupants of the house were the coordinators of the kibbutz residents’ efforts to drive Gaza residents to medical appointments in Israel; the weekly schedule listing driving assignments for Ahmad, Mohamed, and Fatima hung on the wall of the room where the family was butchered.

I visited the “car graveyard”, an empty field where all of the hundreds of cars destroyed during the Hamas massacre have been gathered. In one corner, there was a 20-foot-high pile of dozens of burnt-out vehicles. One had an iPhone that had melted into the dashboard. In three rows that ran as far as the eye could see, there were cars with multiple bullet holes and other signs of extreme violence. Most of the cars bore white rings that indicated the number of occupants killed in the car, and many had large portions of the seats cut out so that, in accordance with Jewish law, the victims’ blood could be buried with the body. Atop the cars were baby seats or lounge chairs from attendees of the Nova music festival that had been removed during the search for body parts. In a far corner of the field, there were remnants of vehicles – pick-up trucks, cars, motorbikes and bicycles – that Hamas terrorists had used in their infiltration. One had been spray-painted along the side with “Am Yisrael Chai."

I Saw Evil

On New Year’s Eve, we had just arrived back in Jerusalem. While the rest of the world celebrated the turning of the calendar with fireworks, the Hamas terrorists decided that Israel should instead face a barrage of 27 missiles around the center and south of the country at the stroke of midnight. As Hamas and its lackeys complain about deteriorating and uninhabitable conditions in Gaza, they somehow find the fuel and energy to deliberately target civilian populations with yet another attempt at mass murder.

I Saw Pain and Sadness

Upon landing, I went directly from the airport to a shiva (condolence visit) for a soldier killed in the Gaza fighting. Walking into the mourning tent, I saw a number of his squad-mates and a few other white faces. But the majority of the attendees were members of the Ethiopian community of this soldier. White colonialist oppressor he was not. The younger folks were dressed like any other Israeli; many of the older folks were dressed in traditional tribal garb that they brought when they arrived in Israel as part of the rescue of Ethiopian Jews from civil war in the early 1990s. The soldier was the youngest of eight, and his seven siblings sat in sadness realizing that anti-Semitism and the threat of death had followed their community to our homeland. I told the family that I was from New Jersey and that I was there because their pain was ours. What I got in return was a look mixing thanks and disbelief that people from across the ocean cared about an Ethiopian solider from a working-class background killed in Gaza.

On my last day in Israel, I visited a soldier who was badly wounded in Gaza fighting in December. He was from an ultra-Orthodox community outside Jerusalem and was serving as an officer in the Netzah Yehuda battalion that integrates members of those communities into the army. He was badly injured by an explosion during his service in Gaza. His severe physical wounds were compounded by mental injuries as well as psychological scars. He has a long road ahead, a reminder that the wounds of this war will last for many years to come.

I Saw Determination

I visited about 20 injured soldiers recuperating in the long-term rehabilitation unit at Tel HaShomer hospital. They had suffered gruesome orthopedic and trunk injuries on October 7 and beyond, and most had undergone multiple surgeries with more to follow. One particularly unlucky soldier had escaped the Nova festival massacre, only to be badly wounded fighting two months later in Gaza. But there was not a word of self-pity, resentment, or regret. To a man, their only desire was to get back onto the battlefield to complete the mission. One special forces soldier fought Hamas terrorists on the roof of the police station in Sderot on October 7, suffering massive gunshot wounds to his gut and leg. He tied his own tourniquet on his leg and kept his finger plugged into the bullet hole in his side until he could be evacuated after more than seven hours. He was in the ICU for six weeks and had undergone nine surgeries already. But he wheeled himself around the rehab unit with a smile on his face and a cheerful greeting to everyone he saw. Another reservist showed me the metal magazine he was carrying that deflected a bullet headed for his stomach, saving him from a fatal injury. He had become religious a few years ago, and in defiance of army instructions had been fasting the day he was shot in observance of a minor religious fast day (Asara B’Tevet). The doctors told him that the absence of food in his system saved him from potentially deadly infection as he was stuck on the battlefield for hours before he could be evacuated. His secular squad-mate, who was also visiting, told us that after being shot the reservist had held his stomach with one hand and grabbed his pistol with the other and stayed in the battle with a smile on his face the whole time.

I had the honor of meeting one of the top generals in the Israeli army for a two-hour conversation about the war. He readily acknowledged that there were clear failures at all levels in not preventing the October 7 massacre. But impressively, he made no excuses and exuded commitment to learning from those mistakes and to completing the task at hand – eliminating the threat that Hamas and other Iranian proxies represent to the security of Israel and its people. For him and the army brass, it is not about revenge or emotion – it is about professionalism and completing the mission.

I Saw Resilience

I visited the Herbert Samuel hotel in Jerusalem, in ordinary times a luxury hotel in the heart of the city. Since October 7, it has been converted into a temporary shelter for families evacuated from Sderot, a town that sits on the Gaza border and a frequent target of Hamas missiles that land within 10 seconds of warning sirens. About 40 families, with 160 kids among them, had been living in the hotel for nearly three months, a small slice of the more than 200,000 Israelis from the north and south of the country living as refugees in hotels, apartments, and other shelters in the center of the country as Hamas and Hezbollah rain missiles on the border areas. They had made a mini-town out of the hotel, complete with schooling and activities for the children. I dropped off a duffel bag of toys brought from home and they showed me the group’s shared storage room to which they would be added. Again, any self-pity was far outweighed by a determination to make sure their families had some semblance of organization and normalcy until they could return to their homes.

I Saw Unity

Any visitor to Israel on October 6 would have found a country practically on the brink of civil war. Protests and counter-protests dominated the streets and the news, and virtually every sign in the country was on one side or the other of the issues dividing right from left, religious from secular, Ashkenaz from Mizrachi, etc. Since October 7 that has all changed. Virtually every sign in the country is about bringing home our hostages or unity in the fight against Hamas. You can’t help but be moved that the first thing you see upon landing at Ben Gurion airport is large posters of each of the hostages lining the long walkway to passport control. The national slogan “Yachad N’Nazeach” - United We Will Win - appears everywhere from billboards, to coffee cups, to tissue boxes, to digital highway signs.

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At a barbeque for a reserve unit on the Gaza border, I met an ultra-Orthodox soldier, complete with curly sidelocks (payes). He told me that after high school he had learned in yeshiva instead of serving in the army and was now in the middle of law school studies. When the war broke out, he decided that he wanted to do his part and volunteered to enlist. He was given two weeks of training and a gun, and was now attached to this reserve battalion as part of its evacuation team. He had already entered the Gaza battlefield multiple times and never felt better about his place in Israeli society. Perhaps most heartening was when he briefly excused himself from our conversation to knock on the door of the adjacent room to confirm that the Bedouin Arab soldiers sleeping there knew that the meal had been served.

On Sabbath morning at synagogue, the community recited special prayers for the safety of the soldiers and return of the hostages. The community paused in silent contemplation as the names of each and every remaining hostage – no distinction between Jew, Arab, or foreign national – was read aloud one-by-one.

I went one morning to pick clementines at a small family farm near Gaza. With the exit of foreign workers and hundreds of thousands of reservists called up, this farm like many other businesses lacked the manpower to do their daily work. Dozens of daily mailing lists broadcast the need for volunteers at these businesses and thousands of Israelis from all walks of life just show up and help with no pay or fanfare – picking fruits and vegetables, collecting eggs, shepherding flocks, packing food, etc.

I Saw a New Israeli Greatest Generation

While we all despaired about the weakness and aimlessness of the current generation of youth, apparently they secretly had been developing a strength and iron resolve that would thankfully prove us all woefully wrong. I met dozens of young men and women soldiers wholly committed to the mission of protecting Israel from its implacable enemies. They dropped everything – jobs, studies, girlfriends and boyfriends, spouses, children, video games, and beach days – and went to war without complaint. Tech entrepreneurs who just a few months ago were obsessing over exit multiples were now in the reserves focused on terrorist tunnel exits. They sought no recognition or glory and none acted like they were enjoying playing a live action version of Call of Duty. They fully understood the dangers but also the existential threat that they were charged with eliminating.

I visited a group of soldiers stationed in tents on a desolate base in the middle of the Negev desert. They had recently rotated out of Gaza after a month on the front lines. You might have expected them to be relieved to be out of the firing line and hoping that the brass would forget about them buried on a base in the middle of nowhere. Instead, all they wanted to do was to get back to the fight and join the rest of their brigade taking the fight to the Hamas terrorists hiding in the tunnels.

I also saw parents deeply proud of their children. I saw fathers who spent their days plotting how to get protective equipment (and some good food) to their children serving on the front lines, and mothers, who despite their constant worry and fear, serve as the backbone of their families and the country while their husbands and children were away at war for months on end.

While Hamas succeeded in delivering a devastating blow to Israel, it also badly misread the soul of the country. Yes, there were fights. Angry fights. But those were fights among brothers, sisters, family. At the lowest point, a large number of reservists threatened to ignore their annual service duties to protest the government’s judicial reforms. But on October 7, every one of those reservists grabbed their uniforms and reported for duty without a moment of hesitation. They fought with and for their brothers and sisters, no matter which side of the political spectrum they had all been on the day before. What drove the country apart is nothing compared to what holds us together, within Israel and the Jewish community worldwide. In the aftermath of October 7, Israel has found its collective soul and the soul of its collective. Truly, “Yachad N’Nazeach”, United We Will Win.