Reflections from the Jewish State at War

On Nov. 16th, I arrived in Israel for the 22nd time in my life. Amid the uncertainty of war and an existential battle for the Jewish State, it was unlike any other visit I'd ever made. Thoughts and reflections from a nation forever changed.

By ALEX KATZ

TEL AVIV (Nov. '23) -- The first thing you see now after deplaning at Ben Gurion Airport are the pictures of the hostages, lined up all along the walkway from the arrival gate to customs. It's a bitter reminder before you can even fetch your luggage that, six weeks later, most of them are still not home.

Staring up at you first is the face of Avigail Idan, who had been hiding in her neighbor’s home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7th. Her parents had been murdered earlier that morning by Hamas gunmen in front of her eyes. For 50 days she was held in Gaza, and even celebrated her fourth birthday in captivity. She’s since been released, but young Avigail has experienced more horror in her lifetime than any of us could possibly fathom.

The mother of another hostage had just been on my flight in from JFK. I stopped her in the aisle to say how much my heart breaks for her and her family, that I pray for her son’s safe return every night. She had spoken a day earlier at the March for Israel in Washington, where the poignancy of her words gutted the crowd of nearly 300,000 and later went viral. “We’ll see if my speech worked,” she tells me.

It’s the evening of November 16th and I just touched down in Tel Aviv. Why travel nearly 12 hours to a war zone? Because I wasn’t there on October 7th, and for that I felt a profound sense of guilt. I couldn’t really explain it to those who didn’t already understand or share the feeling. But my heart was in the Jewish State and it was shattered into 1,400 pieces. I watched from afar as my brothers and sisters were brutalized in a land that was created, at least in part, for the purpose of preventing such atrocities. And halfway around the world, from the cozy confines of the Diaspora, it felt like the ultimate betrayal. Call it survivor’s guilt, or perhaps it was just the innate Jewish guilt we're all born with. Either way, it weighed on me relentlessly.

Israel has always been woven into the fabric of my family’s history. My mother was born in Jerusalem in 1960 to an Ashkenazi mother and a Sephardic father – a mixed marriage in those days, between two young soldiers who met while serving their nascent country in the IDF. My mother's maternal grandfather had come over years earlier as a teenager with a Zionist youth group from Poland, as Hitler was beginning to find a foothold in Europe. While my great-grandfather was building the future Jewish State – quite literally –?with his bare hands as a construction worker in Tel Aviv, his family in Horodenka was gunned down in their home by Nazi soldiers and buried in a mass grave alongside their friends and neighbors.

Out of the ashes of the Holocaust, my family danced in the streets of the newly established State of Israel on May 14, 1948. My grandfather would go on to serve in the Office of Prime Minister Ben Gurion, and later fight against the Egyptians during the Six Day War as his family hid in an underground shelter. Even my American grandparents were such fervent Zionists that they made Aliyah from Boston in the 1980s, opting to spend their senior years in the hills of Jerusalem instead of on a golf course in Boca.

Our family’s deep connection with Israel was always a source of great pride for me. But the Jewish State also served as a source of great comfort to me. It would forever be a safe haven for us if things ever turned for the worse, as it had been for my ancestors before me. After all, the horrors of Horodenka couldn’t happen in Haifa.

Yet here I found myself, in a nation once again traumatized by the mass slaughter of Jews, surrounded by constant reminders of the hundreds of Israelis kidnapped from their homes one bloody Saturday morning in October.

***?

They follow you everywhere you go across Israel. The Shabbat dinner table stretched across the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, with more than 200 empty seats set for the hostages still in Gaza. The vacant strollers organized along Rothschild Boulevard for Avigail and the dozens of other babies, toddlers, and children kidnapped from their beds. The posters of hostages adorn every lamp post and tree trunk and storefront in sight. I find myself thinking the same thought again and again –?Thank God no one’s going to rip these down. It's a strange but welcome relief.

The streets of Tel Aviv are eerily quiet, and these days the city reminds me more of a sleepy suburb than its usual bustling self. People aren’t hiding or sheltering in place. Not anymore, at least. But some 360,000 reservists who would normally pack the city's bars and beaches are now in uniform and, in some cases, deep in the heart of northern Gaza.?

Some techno music blares in the background from a nearby?bar and our tour guide Noga looks pleasantly surprised. “We didn’t have any music a week ago,” she says. “This is good.”

The Israelis might have seen tourism and business travel plummet since October 7th, along with the vibrancy of a Mediterranean metropolis like Tel Aviv. But in its place they've witnessed a profound sense of national unity wash over the country and – at least temporarily –?heal the wounds of the past year. Israel was on the verge of a bloodless civil war in recent months, but nothing quite brings a country together like actual war.?

"For 10 months, Israelis said we are not willing to live with one another. Now they are saying?–?we are willing to die for each other," Micah Goodman tells us. Micah is one of Israel's leading intellectuals and a prominent writer, and we meet him outside of a college dormitory in Rehovot where he is giving a pep talk to a platoon of paratroopers who just returned from two weeks in Gaza.

They can be called back into combat at any moment, but morale is high as can be. During a brief respite from war across the border, they're eating homecooked meals prepared by loved ones and strangers alike. If you want to serve the war effort, you can donate blood, funds, clothing. Or, like a good Jewish mother, you can make kosher cholent and babka.

A hungry soldier doesn't do anyone much good.

One of the paratroopers we meet is an American from New York named Jonathan. He formerly served in the IDF and was working at a big-name consulting firm when October 7th turned his world upside down. "I dropped everything I was doing, put my life on hold, and came back to serve with my brothers," he says. "What other choice did I have?"?

I'm in awe of Jonathan's bravery and fortitude. But he's absolutely right?– in?an eternal struggle between Good and Evil, your day job can wait.

There may be radical uncertainty about what lies ahead for Israel?–?militarily, politically, socially. But for the moment there is a profound moral clarity about the mission at hand:?Defeat Hamas, secure the homeland, deter Israel's enemies. These objectives will take time, and more brave IDF soldiers will regrettably pay the ultimate price. But to borrow Jonathan's sentiment, what other choice does Israel have??

The real question is what comes next for the Jewish State. Its strength and resilience have been on full display for weeks, but it's also been thoroughly humbled by an organization in Hamas that Israel once considered the JV squad of terror groups. The government thought this was an?easily containable threat, and the nation was distracted by internal strife. Ultimately, the mighty IDF couldn't protect toddlers and the elderly in their kibbutzim, let alone its own military outposts along the border.?

There remains somewhat of a leadership vacuum in Israel, but civil society and everyday Israelis are stepping up to fill the void. As Goodman puts it –?when burdened with absentee parents, the children of Israel rely on their brothers and sisters. "Brotherhood has replaced parenthood," he says.?

Certainly this has been the case for the more than 200,000 displaced Israelis, who today are being housed in hotels and guest rooms across the country while countless volunteers ensure they have everything they need?– from diapers and baby food, to clothing and even trauma counseling.?Many survived the horrors of the 7th with only the clothes on their back and a few small belongings. They're being propped up and supported not so much by their government, but by their brothers and sisters.

Will this spirit carry on in the weeks and months ahead? Will it help provide the foundation for the rebirth of Israel once the fighting has ended and it's time to rebuild this country anew? If history is any indication, it's never smart to bet against the Jews.?Israel might be a young country, but it's home to an ancient people who have always been defined not by their sorrow but by their resilience.?

I'm reminded of this while thumbing through my prayer book as we usher in Shabbat at a small synagogue in Jerusalem: "Go forth from your ruined state... Too long have you dwelt in the valley of tears... Shake yourself off, arise from the dust... The city shall be rebuilt on its hill."

My attendance record at synagogue has never been terribly impressive. But as I pray in the eternal capital of the Jewish people this particular Friday evening, I can't help but think to myself –?They're marching in the streets of London, Paris, and New York, calling for our heads, and yet I couldn't be more deeply comforted surrounded by a minyan of strangers here in Jerusalem.?

***

"For the dead, and the living, we must bear witness." The immortal words of Elie Wiesel kept running through my head as we entered Kibbutz Kfar Aza, less than two miles from the Gaza border.

A once vibrant local community, the kibbutz had been ransacked and set ablaze by Hamas terrorists who decapitated its residents, raped women, kidnapped children, and burned whole families alive in their homes. In the midst of this chaos, some Gazans made their way to Kfar Aza to loot and pillage what was left. They stole TVs, furniture, and even food from the refrigerators.

Almost as soon as we arrived Sunday, our phones began buzzing as the sirens blared in the background – "Red Alert! Red Alert!" There was an incoming rocket attack and we had only 15 seconds to get to the nearest bomb shelter. Such is life this close to a war zone, where the violent fallout from October 7th ensues. The next time we had incoming rockets, the nearest shelter was too far away and we were forced to hit the deck and hope for the best.

What a world.

As the nearby sounds of Israeli artillery shells boomed in the background – one after another – we walked through a community frozen in time. It was an idyllic setting, tainted by the brutality of vicious barbarism. Bullet holes adorned most houses we saw. Charred children's bicycles lay on the front lawns. There was a baby's crib filled with empty shell casings.?This was Avigail Idan’s home, the once quaint community where her parents were murdered in front of her before she was abducted by terrorists. I can’t stop thinking about her smiling picture at the airport, and the trauma she’s experienced in the days and weeks since the 7th.

We met a young man named Ofek, who survived the attack and was back visiting what remained of his home for the first time in weeks. He was calm and unemotional as he smoked his cigarette and told us about that morning. "People here believed in peace... Look what we got for it." Ofek said he'd come back one day, to rebuild. "It's home. I was born here, I'm going to live here, and I'm going to die here."

As we surveyed the wreckage and walked back through the kibbutz, surrounded by a community utterly destroyed and the still lingering stench of death, I was overcome by a flood of outrage. I turned to Noga the tour guide: "The men who did this were animals – vicious animals," I said with utter disgust. Noga immediately stopped in her tracks and started furiously shaking her head no.

"No they're not. They're not animals," she said. "They don't get that excuse. That's what's so bad – humans did this."

This post represents the personal views of the author.