Remembrance and Rebuilding: Reflections on My Trip to Israel

From December 6-12, I participated in a 20-person “mission” as part of the New England chapter of the Friends of the IDF, a charitable organization that supports the Israeli Defense Forces. I participated in a similar mission earlier this year.

Having been to Israel earlier this year, I expected this trip to be focused on the ongoing military operations in Gaza and the outlook for long-term peace. I thought I was sufficiently familiar with the details of October 7 and was ready to learn about how the IDF would make it safe for residents to return to the Gaza envelope and northern Israel.

But even though I returned to some of the same places I previously visited in the south, I learned much more about the horror that had been inflicted on innocent civilians on October 7. As is the case with the Holocaust, we have the responsibility to document and retell the evidence of that barbarity; it is a means to healing and to preventing its recurrence.

We visited kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the 24 kibbutzim attacked that day and, along with Be’eri, one of the two that suffered the most losses.  We saw the house where the five members of the Kutz family were found, embracing each other, executed with bullets to the head. There were houses bearing the emblem of ZAKA, a volunteer organization that collects pieces of dismembered bodies to permit proper Jewish burials of a complete person. Because it was near the point where the terrorists broke into the kibbutz, many of the first victims were in the “young generation” area. There, 17- and 18-year-olds lived independently from their families as part of their journey into adulthood. Only a couple of those residents survived. One was a young woman whose boyfriend had been shot and killed. She covered herself with his blood and lay on the floor, pretending to be dead, for 17 hours until she was rescued.

Five hostages from Kfar Aza remain in Gaza, along with 96 other innocents held in captivity under horrific conditions.

At the site of the Nova music festival, where 362 young partygoers were massacred by the terrorists, one of our guides told us about her close friend, Abraham Choen.  She recalled how his beautiful blue eyes conveyed warmth and love, and how deeply she missed him.

Nearby, an ambulance was parked on October 7. Many sought safety in it, including a father who sheltered his daughter in a wheelchair until both were shot by Hamas terrorists.

Every person in Israel has a story of loss, friends and family who were mercilessly slaughtered only because they were Jewish. I spoke with a young man, the son of fellow mission participant, who had served in the IDF. He was not active on October 7, when his unit was charged with defending the Nachal Oz military base near Gaza.  He lost 45 friends in that battle.

Those are some of the stories I heard. Many more will never be known, either out of respect for privacy, or because the victims and witnesses did not survive the massacre.

Our most impactful visit was to the Shura base. It is where fallen IDF soldiers are taken for identification and preparation for burial. Because Israel did not have morgue facilities to accommodate the civilian casualties on October 7, it was also where those victims were taken.

We were briefed by a rabbi who oversaw the handling of the bodies and the task of notifying the families. He related how some soldiers could not work there because they were overwhelmed with the odor that permeated the base and the neighborhood. Others could not handle what they saw, such as opening a body bag and seeing a nine-year-old girl.

But none of us were prepared for our meeting with the woman who performed “chevra kadisha,” the ritual cleaning of the female victims. This is the ultimate act of kindness an individual can perform and, indeed, her job was the most difficult in the entire country. For she was the last witness to sexual violence suffered by those women. Yet, she described how she derived honor and happiness from her work. By fulfilling the traditions of the Torah, she was one more unsung hero during this crisis.

Israel will never fully recover from the immense pain it suffered. But remembrance is part of the healing process.

Traditionally, the first place a diplomat is taken on their first visit to the country is Yad Vashem. Going forward, I expect there will also be a visit to the Nova site and memorials to the victims in the Gaza envelope.

Rebuilding

The Israeli state failed its citizens – its political and military leadership were unaware of and unprepared for the October 7 attack. The question now is whether the country is resilient enough to make it objectively and psychologically safe for residents to return to the communities that were evacuated in the north and south.

The failures of October 7 were not the fault of the IDF. Since the early morning that day, the soldiers proved themselves to be a brave and eminently ethical and effective military force, operating in extremely difficult urban combat conditions.

Israel will surely achieve a military victory. It has labeled this conflict as the “second war for independence.” It cannot live under the constant threat of rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza, or fight wars every five years to fend off attacks on those fronts.

Achieving that victory will be hollow unless the IDF continues to live up to the highest ethical standards. The many examples we saw of the enduring morality of the IDF soldiers made me confident that will be the case.

Many soldiers told us about the rigorous rules of engagement they follow. A soldier who is directing a missile attack knows exactly the radius of damage that weapon will cause. If a civilian is in danger, within that radius, the mission will be aborted, and a high percentage are for that reason. The Hamas terrorists know this and will perversely use civilians – even children – as protective shields, knowing that their deaths will only reinforce world opinion against the Jewish people.

IDF medics treat wounded Hamas terrorists in the battlefield, in some cases at their own risk. Yet, we face an enemy that starves, rapes and tortures its prisoners, and executes them once they believe a rescue is underway.

There is ample data showing that Israel has caused the fewest civilian deaths relative to combatants in the history modern warfare. A British think tank, unaffiliated in any way with the Jewish community or the state of Israel, just came out with a report that says that the casualty figures published by Hamas are exaggerated.

The defense of Israel starts and ends with the ethics practiced by the IDF. Israel and the Jewish people have been demonized on college campuses, in our educational system, on the news and editorial pages of major newspapers, and across social media.

That public opinion onslaught will worsen once the media gains full access to Gaza and southern Lebanon. They will find entire neighborhoods that are uninhabitable.  The stories we heard from soldiers – that every house they entered contained weapons, ammunition, Nazi and antisemitic propaganda, and often booby-trapped bombs – will be ignored.

Israel also faces a great challenge treating its wounded soldiers – approximately 18,000 so far. Of those, 85% have returned to regular life, and 1,500 were treated, rehabilitated and volunteered to go back into combat, only to be wounded a second time.

We toured Sheba Medical Center, which is the center for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment. It is bracing to handle a wave of new patients in 2025, since the onset of PTSD is typically delayed. It has already treated many thousands of soldiers who sustained serious injuries, including the loss of limbs, and provided therapy to regain the skills of everyday life.

I don’t know when the hostages will be freed, or whether this rebuilding will heal the soldiers and the nation and allow Israel’s citizens to live without fear of terror. I spoke with young people who are asking themselves whether they want to raise their children in Israel or live abroad for some period. But those who share the vision of Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people should be immensely proud of the way it has conducted this war and the steps it is taking to heal the nation.