Israel bound (via Dubai)

The irony of sitting on an Emirates flight as I make my way to Israel isn’t lost on me. The world has become a very strange place. So strange in fact, that just one week after returning to work from the summer break, I’ve got my autoresponder back on and am in the air again.?

Since the horrors of October 7, I’ve felt an immense, visceral pull to be back in Israel. To walk the streets. To breathe the air. To hear the language. To be amongst my people. And it’s not just me. Thousands of Jews from all over the world have done exactly what I’m doing right now. Put their personal goals on hold, momentarily, because there are bigger, more important goals at stake.

In my mind, there are three clear purposes for my 10 day trip.?

The first is to show solidarity with my family (all seven million of them) in Israel. As an ‘almost’ middle-aged Jew living in Australia, it’s been easy to take the existence of Israel for granted, just like any other country. The wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973, where Israel was quite literally fighting for its survival, all occurred before my time. While there have been wars, intifadas and a steady flow of rocket fire and terror attacks in my lifetime, Israel has never truly felt vulnerable the way it has in the last 100 days.?

My paternal grandfather Eric and his two brothers Yechiel and Fritz moved to British Mandated Palestine in the early 1940s to flee rising antisemitism in Germany.?

Overnight, they were transformed from comfortable, middle class Europeans (the sons of a successful lawyer), to novice farmers on a barren, infertile wasteland. While his two brothers stayed and built by hand a community that still thrives today (Shadmot Devorah), Eric decided to move his young family to Australia in pursuit of a simpler life.?

My Israeli cousins, two generations down from the original three brothers, are like a mirror image of my brother and I. Yoni and Yair are also a couple of years apart, devastatingly handsome, married to incredible women and have gorgeous young families. They’re working hard, pursuing careers, navigating childcare, saving for family holidays, juggling it all, just like we are. It’s not hard to see how they could have been us, or how we could have been them.

The difference is, they served in the military, like every young Israeli does. They gave three of the best years of their lives (and more than that since in reservist duty), for us to be able to sit on the beach and eat ice cream with our kids each July.

I need my cousins, and every other Israeli to know, that we are with them. That we care more than they could ever imagine. That we cannot and do not take them for granted. I want them to hear my Australian accent, to know that I’ve travelled from the other side of the world on behalf of my family and my community to show support. To help in any way I can. To stand, quite literally, with Israel.

The second reason for my trip is to volunteer. I know that the impact from a week of making sandwiches, picking fruit or packing boxes is microscopic in the context of the job that needs to be done, but I’m compelled to make my microscopic contribution nonetheless.??

Nowhere is the togetherness of the Jewish community more obvious than the WhatsApp groups and Facebook communities that have sprung up to help the tidal wave of incoming volunteers from across the globe. With hundreds of thousands of reservists called up to defend the country, much of the regular economy is running at half speed. Every day in these groups, there are opportunities posted to help on farms, in commercial kitchens and in private homes. There are people needed to coordinate supplies for thousands of displaced families, to drive meals to the elderly, to plant crops and to herd goats.

When I travel with my wife, I know I’ll be dining at restaurants that she’s booked 12 months in advance. On this trip, I have no idea what I’ll be doing 12 hours from now, other than that it will be manual, meaningful and done alongside people like me who have flocked to Israel from all over the world.

The third reason for my trip is the one I was most unsure about. The idea of ‘war tourism’ doesn’t sit well with me, but I feel that I have an obligation to bear witness. I will travel to the kibbutizm that were brutally attacked in the south. I will go to the site of the Nova music festival. I will see with my own eyes where the most unspeakable acts of barbarism were carried out against men women and children. I will hold the hand of my father’s first cousin, Margalit Moses, a grape farmer in her seventies who was taken as a hostage to Gaza on October 7 and held for 49 days.

Before the blood from the single biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust had even dried, people were denying it had ever happened. Despite hours of footage, much of it gleefully taken by the very Hamas operatives that were massacring families and raping young women, parts of our society, including many of the institutions designed specifically to protect and honour us, have deprived us of our truth and our grief.?

If I’m honest, this is the part of the trip I’m most scared about. I have no idea how I’ll handle things. Those who know me know that emotionally, I’m somewhere between a stoic and a block of cement. My wife and I started dating in 2001 and she’s never seen me cry. I’m not even sure I know how to do it.

Every time I’ve felt emotions bubbling up about October 7, I’ve pushed them straight back down. Not now. Not today. I’m at work. I’m with the kids. I’m driving. I’m busy.

I have a week ahead of me with no excuses. No distractions. Yes, I’ll be out and about amongst millions of long lost family members, but I’ll also be travelling alone. Just a guy with some feelings that need to be dealt with.

I know that B (and the kids) would love nothing more than to be sitting on this flight next to me right now, but the realities of life mean it just couldn’t happen like that. I feel so lucky to be representing our family unit, and will do everything I can to make my kids proud.

Am Yisrael Chai ??????