I Cried - Some Firsthand Clarity on the War in Israel

I just landed in New York from Israel and I wanted to share with you some firsthand observations on the current situation in Israel with the modest hope of helping to clarify your thinking. Apologies for the length of this post but there is a lot to say.

Our annual family trip to Israel to celebrate the last of the Jewish holidays began like all the other years. Time at the beach, good meals, connecting with our holy land and, most importantly, spending time with family and friends.

That all changed on Saturday morning. I left our Jerusalem apartment alone to walk to synagogue for Shabbat and Simchat Torah services. My wife and teenage daughter were going to follow a bit later (my two older children had left us earlier in the week to get back to work and school, respectively). Suddenly I heard loud sirens. For a moment I thought ambulance; two loud booms and a look up where missile entrails were imprinted clearly on the clear blue sky quickly changed that thought to: “We are under missile attack.” I ran back upstairs and hurriedly woke up my wife, youngest daughter and twin cousins from the UK staying with us during vacation from a post-high school year of study in Jerusalem. I hustled them into the safe room - a depressing staple of every new apartment in Israel - where a bedroom is built with reinforced concrete and steel doors.

In panic, we tried to roll closed the heavy steel shutters that cover the window but the release pin was stuck. So we sat through the first round of missiles without that cover. After about 10 minutes and the sirens stopping, we exited the safe room. I ran to get a hammer and pliers and hacked at the pin until it released, sure that there was more to come. My wife quickly stocked the safe room with water and a large soup pot - in case someone became desperate for the bathroom.

Sure enough, the scene would repeat itself seven times that Saturday morning. Although I do not use my phone on the Sabbath, I turned it on because we could not hear the sirens clearly inside the apartment and wanted to be sure we could get the full warning. Yes, Israel has multiple ubiquitous phone apps (a popular one is Red Alert) that play a siren when there is incoming missile fire to your location based on the post-launch calculations of the Iron Dome missile defense system. The app also plays the army radio station and we spent the rest of the morning in and out of the safe room listening to the impossible, the unbelievable, the tragic unfold in real time on the airwaves.

You have all read about what happened since then so I don’t need to repeat it. Especially since the rest of our story is so mundane compared to what unfolded in the rest of the country. Our remaining time in Israel was spent trying to find a way out. United, and most other foreign airlines, cancelled flights to and from Israel. After much time refreshing websites and plotting multi-leg odysseys, we were able to get on an El Al flight Tuesday morning to Paris and then on to New York with help from my colleagues and friends at Kirkland & Ellis.

But let me share some specific stories and thoughts with you:

1. We left Israel with heavy hearts and guilt. While we have a life and children to go back to (including my oldest daughter’s wedding in exactly one month), it is not easy saying goodbye to family and friends who live there and don’t have the choice of just flying away. They hold down the fort for all of us and send their children to the army (trust me, much harder than serving yourself), and they deserve undying respect for that.

2. I watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 from the windows of the Skadden cafeteria in Times Square. Just like that image is indelibly planted in your memory, the sounds of missile sirens is similarly implanted. Despite having myself served in the Israeli army more than 30 years ago and been in the country for multiple prior missile attacks (yes, sad, I am not sure I could quickly list each time that has happened), the siren sends your heart into your throat even the seventh time it happens in a single morning. And who can forget the guilty relief of hearing and feeling the thud of a missile landing elsewhere nearby, knowing your number was not called this time. Especially when your youngest child is experiencing it for the first time. And our experience is nothing. Residents of both the south and north of Israel face days and weeks of these endless sirens every single year for decades. And while Jerusalem has 90 seconds from siren to impact, these border communities have 10-15 seconds.

3. Earlier in our trip, we visited my wife’s 97-year-old cousin who lives outside Tel Aviv. He survived Nazi concentration camps in the Holocaust. He arrived in Israel as a refugee after the war and was handed a gun and sent out to fight in Israel’s War of Independence as surrounding Arab armies sought to end Israel’s existence even before it began. He rebuilt a life and beautiful family in Israel and our visit with him is the highlight of every trip. This is a man who has earned the right to finally enjoy some peace in his old age. Instead, we heard from his daughter that each time the siren goes off his aide has to carry him into the internal stairwell of his apartment building because he does not have the strength to go down to the communal safe room in the basement (a feature of older buildings). We cried.

4. One of my oldest friends became a grandfather for the fifth time last Friday. We celebrated the news together in his home in Jerusalem and I lamented that I would be leaving the country before the Bris. On Sunday, my friend’s wife sent a picture of his son - the new father - in army uniform holding his two-day-old son saying goodbye as he headed off to war as part of the massive call-up of reservists. He probably won’t be home for the Bris. I cried. If you haven’t seen the widely-circulated video of a father of another newborn son who made the blessings for the Bris of his own son over Zoom as the father stood in full battle gear on a break from engaging Hamas terrorists, you should. You will cry too.

5. Another childhood friend was due to celebrate his oldest son’s wedding this coming Thursday night. Again, I lamented over text to him that I would miss the celebration as I had to get back to New York for work. As the groom and his friends held the traditional “aufruf” celebration held on the Sabbath morning before the wedding, the war began. As they sat there trying to maintain the celebration after the first round of missile attacks, the groom’s brother and friends one-by-one received their urgent call-up notices and ran to change into uniform and mobilize for war. The wedding was postponed. I cried.

6. Yet, our people who have known so much pain recognize the importance of continuing the circle of life even amidst all the horror. After we exited the safe room for the second time on Monday afternoon (a missile landed about 10 miles away and critically injured a mother and child), we suddenly heard music from an adjacent rooftop. I walked down to street level and saw a small crowd of people looking up at the rooftop. To my amazement, a wedding was going on. I later learned that the wedding was scheduled for Tuesday, but was hurriedly held on Monday as no one knew what tomorrow would bring. With many of the guests unable to attend, the family posted on the neighborhood WhatsApp group asking the community to dance the young couple down the street before a quick wedding ceremony was held on the rooftop. Yet I could hear the traditional wedding songs and cheers from the sparse crowd and it reminded me that we go on because we have to. I cried.

7. On Saturday afternoon after the last of that day’s sirens, we walked outside our building to get some air. We saw a young uniformed soldier getting into his car, heading off to his reserve unit. Suddenly a car pulled up beside his. A woman jumped out, clearly his mother. She grabbed him into a long hug, unsure when - and if - she would see him again. We cried. Closer to home, my three nephews left for war on Saturday. One to the Gaza border, one to the Lebanese border and one to organize logistics for the largest mobilization of reserves in the country’s history. Just last week, my younger nephew had excitedly introduced us to his girlfriend. The older one was supposed to do the same this past weekend as he readied himself to start college after his mandatory army service as a paratrooper. The oldest, married to my niece, had hiked with us last Tuesday and he shared his excitement at his first ever trip to the United States which was supposed to happen this week. I got him tickets to a Knicks game as he always dreamed of seeing an NBA game in person. The trip was supposed to follow my niece’s board exams this Thursday as she nears the end of her path to become a doctor. Instead, all of this is and the rest of life is on hold as we pray constantly for their safety and of all those who have been called up to serve. We cried.

8. We have already lost some of our best and brightest. The list is too long to even contemplate. Just one example. One of my nephew’s closest friends served in an elite commando unit and was killed in clashes with terrorists as the army sought to clear them from Israeli communities on Monday. He was married just over a year ago to a childhood friend of my oldest daughter, who in turn was the child of a camp friend of my own from 35 years ago. We don’t have six degrees of separation. We have one or, at most, two. I cried.

9. You have all seen the horrifying videos and pictures that speak volumes themselves and anything I say likely will be trite and not do them justice. But I do want to use them as an opportunity to draw a sharp distinction between those images and the tragic pictures you see of the Gazan victims of Israeli retaliation. There is NO equivalence. Hamas cynically chooses to locate its terror cells and missile launchers in residential buildings, schools, hospitals and mosques. Israel does not target civilians - they are casualties of actions that Israel (as any civilized country would do) must take to defend its people. Israel does not intentionally target music festivals and kill hundreds of unsuspecting young revelers. Hamas does. Israel does not take hostages and use them as human shields. Hamas does. Israel does not parade naked civilian victims through their cities as thousands gleefully and savagely mutilate the body and celebrate. Hamas does. Israel does not kidnap Holocaust survivors, grandmothers, toddlers. Hamas does. Israel does not decapitate babies. Hamas does. Israel does not hand out sweets to celebrate the deaths of the other side’s civilians. Hamas does. Israel’s supporters do not hold rallies around the world gleefully chanting the number of dead of the other side’s civilians as if a trophy. Hamas’ do. Israel’s best and brightest spend their time trying to cure cancer and developing cutting edge missile defense systems. Hamas’ spend their time figuring out how to commit the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel celebrates life. Hamas glorifies death.

10. It is hard to answer the question of what we can do to help as Israel stands practically alone on the front lines of the civilized world, holding the line against those who make common cause with ISIS, the Taliban and others who have long since left the bounds of human behavior. There are small things - before we left, my wife heeded a call for type O blood donations. She waited 7.5 hours on line to donate because so many hundreds of people wanted to help in some way - despite having to rush twice to the bomb shelter because of missile attacks. You can donate to United Hatzallah and Magen David Adom, Israel’s nonprofit emergency medical services who have been stretched to the limit since the war began. And there are many other charities like them. But the main thing we can do is Stand with Israel. Make sure there is no ambiguity about right and wrong here. Speak up. Make sure your government remains resolute in supporting Israel’s right to defend its people.

There will be a time and place to debate the obvious political, military and intelligence failures by the Israeli establishment. But that time is not now. And there will be a time to renew the debate over the direction of the country that has torn it apart over the last year. But that time is not now.

The week’s events have been described as Israel’s 9/11 and Pearl Harbor rolled into one. It is so much worse. Given the comparative size of the countries, Israel’s death toll from the first few days would be the rough equivalent of about 36,000 people dying on 9/11.

The last time our people were slaughtered this way, the world abandoned us to our cruel and helpless fate. That will not happen this time. We are strong. Stronger than you can imagine. And we come armed with fighter jets and tanks to ensure our blood is no longer cheaply spilled.

I have no idea what the coming days and weeks will bring. There will be much more pain. Unbearable pain. But Israel will win. Because it has to. Because we have nowhere else to go. Because it is right. Not perfect. Flawed, including in its treatment of the Palestinians, but ultimately right.

Let me end by stating clearly and unequivocally that this war is a tragedy on both sides. There are no winners here, just losers. You may have strong views on how we got here that impact your opinion of the allocation of blame. But that does not justify the moral equivalence that Israel’s implacable enemies try to project.

Please join me in Standing for Israel at this pivotal moment in its history.

- Daniel Wolf