622 & 7 Days of War

As we approach a greater war, I am reminded more of my history, the history of my family, and the history of my people. Who am I in these confusing and dark times, and who do I want to be – who was I raised to be? I’m writing this after 622 days of war; the person I am today is not the person I was 623 days ago, and I sometimes miss him.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas started a war with my country. This war did not come out of a vacuum; it had been long awaited on both sides, after many years of operations that took a toll on everyone. All I can remember from that day are two things: first, the phone call from my mom telling me, “A war started,” and my dismissing her out of disbelief; second, the army calling me, saying they needed me, and my refusing to leave my wife – then my girlfriend. It took me nearly seven hours before I broke and decided to leave for duty, as if I knew something bad was going to happen, as if I knew nothing good awaited me beyond the front door.

On October 8 I was tasked with a mission suited to my abilities – video and editing, a skill I had learned at 13 to express myself, spark emotion in others, and bring my thoughts and imagination into reality. This mission, however, was the opposite: my team received videos from every possible angle of an attack still in progress. Plastic tubs of phones and GoPros lay on my desk as my team and I plugged them in, horrified, only to see more death. I remember the worst of things; I saw it all, and it is now mine to bear.

That same day, amid the horror, I grasped one truth very clearly: the pain and sense of revenge had grown so strong in the hearts of the people of Israel that I knew the destruction of Gaza would be so intense that this could never happen again.

I follow one artist in Gaza – a very talented man whose name I won’t mention for his safety. We spoke once about a project I wanted him to work on; he said we couldn’t speak, and I understood why. Under Hamas, accepting money from Israel could get him executed. On October 8 I wrote, “Stay safe,” and he replied, “You too.” That exchange captures the person I was then.

Many people died on October 7–8, but something else died in everyone’s hearts: the idea that one day we could live together in two countries, sharing a border in mutual respect and peace. I still follow that man and his family and the struggle they endure each day in this terrible war – a war forced upon us, a war that doesn’t know how to stop. Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking, What if we stopped it all now? What if we went no further? Then I see images of little children tied up while their captors torch houses, smiling, sipping Coke from the fridge before moving on.

I know my friends fighting in Gaza; I know that cruelty is not what they set out to do. We are peace-seeking people – at least the great majority of us. We will never take children hostage or film a live execution and laugh. These are my thoughts as I try to live with the pain we cause every child who loses a home while the IDF gains control of the Strip.

I mentioned at the beginning that I think about my family’s and my people’s history a lot these days. I’m not a religious man, but I believe in God and in the Bible’s stories, minus the miracles. I believe the Jews have survived because we were the first to write our history and thus the first to learn from our mistakes. I believe with all my heart that Jews need a country. Personally, I wouldn’t have cared if that country were in Africa or the Americas – I feel connected only to the Earth – but there was no other place available, so reclaiming land taken from us was the only realistic start.

As the war in Gaza worsened, the world showed its real face. They talked about refugees and dead children without mentioning ours, without acknowledging that we are fighting more than just Gaza and that we, too, have refugees. I have lost the last of my family here because their house was destroyed, and now they have found refuge in Argentina. The world spreads fake stories and dusts off one word it has longed to use since World War II: genocide. They know that word hurts us most; it rattles and shakes us, driving us into our darkest thoughts. This propaganda reaches Israelis even if they don’t admit it, making us feel the war is only in our heads, that if we stopped now everything would be fine.

I watch protests in the US with sadness. I’ve never fully forgiven Europe for World War II, but the US feels like a second home, and I sense history repeating itself. I see Jews chanting slogans they don’t understand, calling for their own destruction; I see liberals supporting regimes that oppress people; and I see it all happening with no one stopping it. I try to tell myself these people are good – that if I lived in the US and hadn’t seen the horrors, I probably would have stood with them. I remind myself they’re people without historical memory; they live through the media but don’t remember that less than three years ago they marched against Iran’s regime under the banner “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

As the war in Iran enters its seventh day, I’m writing this. IDF planes fly over Iran, trying to destroy a nuclear project from a regime that publicly vows to wipe Israel out within five years, even putting a countdown clock in its main square. I can’t help thinking of the scared children and good people of Persia. Watching smoke rise over Tehran and Isfahan, a memory crawls back: a trip to Berlin with my grandfather. He showed me the home he fled in 1941 and the shelter where he hid during bombings. I thought, My grandfather ran to shelters, and two generations later I still run to shelters.

Then another thought crossed my mind: my grandfather wanted the bombers to win; he knew life isn’t black – and – white. If the Allies had attacked harder and sooner, maybe more Jews would have lived – maybe the Holocaust could have been stopped. I think of this as I see Israel bombing Iran, a force whose only goal is death and domination. Today, we wait once again for the US to join the war late, after suffering already incurred, as has happened before.

The Jewish people have survived one Persian holocaust, which we commemorate with Purim. I recall that in the 1930s many Americans protested attacking Hitler because “he hadn’t done anything to the US,” and that thought calms me slightly, hoping people will one day understand.

I was raised to chase justice and peace, and I thought I had lost that, but I haven’t. Today, the 622nd day of the war with Gaza and the seventh day of the war with Iran, I have lost friends, I know hostages still held, and I have seen the Western world cheer my country’s destruction and the horrors humans commit – yet I believe in peace. I believe the Middle East can one day thrive together, and I believe that after war comes peace.