The Dilemma: Returning to Israel

Four years.

Almost four years since I last set foot in Israel.

My last visit was in February 2023. I planned an entire week because I had a mission. I had just officially registered my NGO, Time To Stand Up For Israel, and I wanted to build something serious. I wanted to speak with stakeholders, meet people, create connections and discuss the future with a very dear friend, a hero of Israel.

I stayed in an Airbnb in Herzliya. I flew with El Al. My return ticket cost less than €300, including the additional travel requirements, and my accommodation for eight days cost roughly the same.

It feels like another lifetime.

That same year I regained access to my LinkedIn account after it had been suspended for two years following repeated reports against me. I created a company page for Time To Stand Up For Israel and continued doing what I had already been doing for years: gathering news, researching history, fact checking claims and educating people about Israel.

And everybody had an opinion.

Including Israelis, because Israelis always have an opinion about everything.

“This is a business platform.”

“Stop your posts.”

I tried explaining that journalism, education, research, historical analysis and fact checking are also professional activities. They did not want to hear it.

Within six weeks my LinkedIn account was restricted again.

That restriction would last more than two years, until a lawyer from New York, Ava Z., helped me regain access. For free.

During that last visit to Israel, I still felt that I knew every stone. I visited my old home in Jerusalem for the memories. I met many people. I talked about my plans.

But not one person thought it necessary to help me build the NGO into something that could become my full time work. Nobody stepped forward with the financial support that would make that possible.

In that respect, very little has changed.

Like always, I cried when I left Israel.

Leaving Israel has always felt as though somebody tears my heart from my body and leaves half of it behind.

In the Netherlands I survive.

In Israel I live.

Then 2023 became a year of horror.

My father, an enormous friend of Israel, died in September.

And then came October 7.

For me, what happened became deeply personal. I had been monitoring hostile WhatsApp groups on behalf of an organization in Israel, and already on October 6 I sensed that something was terribly wrong. Shabbat had begun before I fully understood the significance of what I was seeing. I could not mobilize anybody.

Then the nightmare unfolded.

October 7 has been burned into the collective memory of Israelis, but it has also been burned into mine.

My life has never been quite the same.

The days after October 7 became weeks. The weeks became months. The months became years.

We watched international sympathy for Israel evaporate with astonishing speed. Within days, a country that had just experienced the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was already being placed on trial in the court of public opinion. Antisemitism exploded across countries, universities, streets and social media.

Something else changed too.

Our own world changed.

Suddenly everybody discovered LinkedIn.

People who once mocked me for using a “business platform” to advocate for Israel reinvented themselves as advocates and influencers.

Influencers came flocking to it like moths to a flame.

People such as Yoseph Haddad suddenly became internationally recognizable names, while countless others appeared almost overnight.

Pro Israel organizations seemed to emerge everywhere. Everybody had a platform. Everybody had a logo. Everybody had the answer.

But did we become more united?

I am not convinced.

Sometimes it feels as though we became more fragmented.

The years since October 7 have hardened people. Trauma does that. War does that. Fear does that. But there is another harsh reality that we should be willing to discuss.

Our moral compass should not become another casualty of October 7.

Too often I see people behaving as though personal responsibility suddenly became optional. Relationships become disposable. Adultery is excused with “we only live once.” Helping somebody else becomes secondary because everybody is protecting their own organization, audience, reputation, network or cause.

Everybody wants unity, provided everybody unites behind them.

That is not unity.

Personally, the years since 2023 have been among the most difficult of my life.

I lost jobs that I believe were connected to my public pro Israel activities. I poured enormous amounts of time, energy and money into Time To Stand Up For Israel, yet I still have not managed to raise enough structural funding to turn it into the organization I know it could become.

But I will not give up.

Because eventually the dust will settle.

At some point this war will no longer dominate every headline. Social media algorithms will find another obsession. Some of today’s influencers will move on. Some organizations created in response to October 7 will disappear.

Time To Stand Up For Israel will still be here.

With help from Israel or without it.

There have been painful lessons along the way.

It hurt that I was not invited to the October 7 commemoration organized by the Israeli embassy. Perhaps I am not Jewish enough. Perhaps I am simply not considered important enough.

That is okay.

A commemoration cannot erase trauma anyway. An invitation cannot remove guilt. Recognition cannot change what happened.

But it taught me something important.

I should support Israel without expecting Israel to support me.

My commitment cannot depend upon which Israeli government happens to be in office, which ambassador happens to represent Israel in the Netherlands, whether somebody invites me to a ceremony or whether somebody considers my work important enough.

Israel is bigger than all of them.

And now I have finally done it.

I booked my flight back to Israel.

I could not wait anymore.

This time the ticket, including the required ETA registration, cost me around €900. Three times what I paid before. Hotel prices nearly made me fall off my chair. Eventually I booked an Airbnb in Bat Yam, and even that costs roughly twice what I paid for accommodation in Herzliya four years ago.

I don’t care.

My heart has been bleeding since October 7, 2023.

I miss Israel.

And I miss the part of myself that exists there.

But there is a dilemma.

For the first time in my life, I am afraid of what returning to Israel might do to me emotionally.

Before October 7, I travelled through the communities alongside the Gaza border near Ashkelon. I visited the crossings because I wanted to see with my own eyes how many trucks entered Gaza. I wanted firsthand information instead of somebody else’s interpretation.

I knew the landscape.

I knew the roads.

I knew the Israel I was looking at.

But what happens when I return now?

Can my heart handle the Nova festival site?

Can I walk through the kibbutzim where people were murdered, kidnapped and terrorized and then simply get back into a car and continue my day?

Can I look at those places knowing what happened there?

Can I visit Mount Bental again and experience Israel with the same eyes?

I genuinely don’t know.

I have never visited Auschwitz.

There is a reason.

I am highly sensitive, and I know myself well enough to understand that certain places do not leave me when I leave them. I absorb atmosphere, grief and human suffering in a way that can remain with me for years.

I fear that the silent witnesses of October 7 could do the same.

Perhaps visiting them would help me understand.

Perhaps it would help me process what happened.

Or perhaps I would carry those places inside me forever.

That is the dilemma.

Israel has changed.

I have changed.

The world has certainly changed.

In February 2023 I left a country whose stones I thought I knew by heart.

When I return, I will return to a country carrying scars that were not there when I left.

Maybe I no longer know every stone.

Maybe some stones will be unbearable to look at.

But there is one thing I do know.

After almost four years, I need to go home to the country that is not technically my home, yet somehow has always felt more like home than anywhere else.

I have another three months to decide which places I am emotionally capable of visiting.

And perhaps that is the hardest reality of all.

For years I dreamed only about returning to Israel.

Now that I finally am returning, I have to decide how much of Israel my heart can bear to see.