I am an October 7 Zionist

As an oleh chadash, one of the questions I get asked most frequently is why I made Aliyah. The answer is simple. I am an October 7 Zionist.

Prior to October 2023, I had a very comfortable life in semi-retirement in a tiny town on the Oregon Coast (in the United States). Every day I took my dog for a walk on the beach and for dinner I enjoyed the fresh bounties of the sea. In the summertime I bought local fruit and vegetables (and lots of berries) at the weekly farmers market.

I was 70 years old and in no way identified as a Zionist. I had been raised in an observant Jewish home on Long Island (outside of NY City). My father and most of his immediate family had escaped Germany in 1938, so I was the son of a Holocaust survivor, although my father throughout his lifetime refused to use that term, believing that it only applied to those who had survived the camps.

As a young adult, I had been active in the anti-(Vietnam) war movement and identified primarily as part of the New Left counterculture. I had been a political activist throughout my life, and ultimately raised a family with 3 children while living in Boulder, Colorado for 20 years.

I had visited Israel only once (when I was 16 years old) on a summer program, and to the degree that I paid attention to the politics of the region, I hoped that the Israelis and the Palestinians could somehow reach an agreement to live in peace together.

It seems as if in every generation, modern Jews have believed that they have found a new home where they will be welcomed and allowed to integrate. America was such a place for me. On October 7, I woke up to the shocking news of the horrific massacre.

I guess I should clarify that while my father was born in Germany and lived in Berlin until April 1938, my mother’s side of the family immigrated to the United States from Lithuania before the First World War. My mother was born and raised in a Yiddish-speaking Orthodox family in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My bubbe had immigrated from Tavrig, Lithuania in 1907, and my zeida had come from Skaudville, Lithuania in about 1914. They had come to Minneapolis from separate shtetels in Russia that were less than 30 km apart. Like most immigrants, they both ended up in a city where they already had family and like most Jews who immigrated from Russia, the Jewish populations of both cities were ultimately destroyed during the Holocaust.

I remember once asking a dear family friend (who had been my mother’s best friend as a child in Minneapolis) what it had been like for her as a teenager while the Holocaust was happening. I will never forget her response. She immediately broke down sobbing, remembering the feeling (in her words) “that she had seen pictures in the newspapers and knew they looked just like her, and they were being murdered on the other side of the ocean and there was nothing that she could do to stop it.”

My first reaction to the October 7 massacre (like those of many Jews around the world) was emotional. I felt a triggering of what can best be described as a transgenerational trauma. A sort of genetic PTSD. I “felt” the pogroms that my ancestors had endured in the late 19th century (in Russia and Eastern Europe). I reexperienced the traumas of those earlier pogroms.

My next reaction surprised me. I felt glad that there was an IDF that was able to go after the perpetrators of this pogrom and for the first time appreciated the importance of Israel’s existence. I became grateful for the existence of the State of Israel and to the founders of the Jewish State. In my mind, I had a clear distinction between the civilian population of Gaza and those who had perpetrated the massacre of my people. I trusted that the IDF would respect that distinction.

Something else, however, happened in the first few weeks after the October 7 massacre that shook me even deeper to my core. I had lived for more than 20 years in Colorado and had deep connections and long-standing relationships with political activists. I was shocked when people (mostly non-Jewish political activists) whom I had known for years as real friends, started posting on Facebook things that could honestly only be described as support for Hamas and the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre.

I watched with growing anger and disgust as rallies took place across the country (mainly on campuses) in which leftists spoke about their “exhilaration” over the events of October 7. All of this occurred before Israel had even begun its attempt to retaliate against Hamas and secure the release of the hostages. People (many of whom I agreed with on other issues of social justice) began shouting and demonstrating for a “cease-fire” without even acknowledging the need for Hamas to release the hostages and be prevented from rearming and repeating the massacre. Most amazingly (to me), people started repeating talking points that denied the horrific scope of the October 7 massacre and then blamed the entire event on Israel.

I was shocked (and remain shocked to this day) about the way that Hamas’ propaganda had taken hold in what became known as the “pro-Palestinian” anti-war movement on college campuses. I was shocked at the degree to which anti-Israel sentiment took over, and antisemitism was allowed to flourish in the political left. I remember gently asking one of my former friends in Boulder, Colorado whether it was possible that his inability to empathize with the Jewish victims of October 7 could possibly be the result of “some small residual antisemitism” and he was insulted by the suggestion.

It seems like throughout the history of Jews in the Diaspora, we would settle in a new country and in a short time feel comfortable and safe and somehow believe that the scourge of antisemitism had disappeared in the new “modernity”. I grew up in New York State in the United States knowing about Jewish history (I attended a Yeshiva for my primary education until high school) and knowing that there had been antisemitism in the past (quotas on Jewish admission to universities and professional schools) but thinking that all of that was simply old thinking that had changed.

One of the great ironies of today’s situation is that Hamas (apparently) hoped that its act of terror on October 7 would frighten the Israelis into leaving their homeland and the actual consequence was the creation of new Zionists around the world who started to consider the possibility of making Aliyah.

The so-called antizionist movement that has mushroomed on the left has resulted in full blown Jew hatred. In my former hometown of Boulder, Colorado, one crazy “antizionist” firebombed a group of Jews who were gathering in a weekly peaceful protest in support of the hostages being held in Gaza. Various other attacks on Jews and Jewish-owned businesses happened throughout the United States (and around the world). It reminded me of the stories my dad had told about growing up in Germany before the Nazi’s seized power. Another irony of today’s situation is that the so-called “antizionist” movement has succeeded in convincing many previously non-Zionist Jews (like myself) of the reason for and importance of the Zionist movement.

The founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was a “Dreyfus affair” Zionist. I am an October 7 Zionist. I know I am not alone. In early 2024 I started planning a visit to Israel (my first in more than 50 years) both to spend some money supporting the Israeli economy and also to see how I would feel while there about the possibility of making Aliyah. On that trip, I spent a week in Jerusalem and a week in Tel Aviv and of course was amazed at how much the country had changed. One of my initial reactions on that trip was appreciation of the work that had been done by the early pioneers in building a homeland that (among other things) would be available to all Jews who might need refuge sometime in the future.

The end of this story is the beginning of my next story. I am an Oleh Chadash who has settled in Zichron Yaakov. I walk my dog twice a day on the trails of Ramat Hanadiv and spend hours at a time reading the news and writing. I am committed to doing my best in the time that I have left, to build an even better Israel than the one that had welcomed me.