Visiting Israel, one year after

The People of Israel really do live, even after the year from hell. 

My husband Roger & I flew on October 1st, the day Iran launched 181 ballistic missiles at Israel. We came home on October 16th, the day the Israel Defense Forces killed Sinwar. We went this time for many reasons, mostly to pay our respects at the commemoration of the massacres of October 7th, but also to celebrate the Jewish Holidays. That’s what it feels like to visit Israel right now: mourning and carrying on.

First the mourning. We went to the site of the Nova music festival, on the Gaza border. This October 7, there were no rampaging terrorists, but there was enormous pain all around. Thousands of people came that day to do what we did. With them, we wandered around this open field slowly looking at photos of face after face ~ young, beautiful people in the prime of life, who are no more. Families have poured themselves into memorializing their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. After immersing ourselves in the images and stories of vibrant young people dancing, hiking, traveling the world ~ arms wrapped around best friends, family, soulmates ~ we began to feel the enormity of the loss. So many promising lives ended way too soon, and horrifically.

We also visited the nearby burnt vehicles compound at Tekuma. The original intention was a logistical one, to clear out the cars which had been destroyed by RPGs, and just bury them. But people soon realized that each car told a story, and so by preserving the cars, and collecting the stories, they have created an open air museum which describes both the cruelty and the heroism of that black day. Like the barracks at Auschwitz with piles of shoes and eyeglasses taken from prisoners before they were sent into the gas chambers, each mangled thing preserved is all that is left of a person.  

The burnt cars have been flattened and stacked into a large wall, and other cars have been placed in a semi circle with information about the occupants and how they were killed. A soldier was giving a particularly painful account when a young woman to my right said softly in American accented English, “that’s my car.”  Everyone froze in place as this 29 year old widow, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, explained that on that day, her husband had driven to the music festival with his cousins, but she had stayed home.

All over Israel, we were faced with constant reminders of the hostages. From the moment you step off the plane you see photos, yellow ribbons, flags, bumper stickers and signs making sure you know that they are still, one full year later, prisoners in a tunnel somewhere below Gaza. Almost every lamppost, park bench and apartment, every car, bicycle, motor scooter, the large skyscrapers, and small convenience stores, even the hello screens on the ATMs are pleading for them to be brought home, NOW. These reminders are probably for people like me because Israelis don’t need to be reminded; they never forgot, not for a moment, what happened on October 7th. They know the name of every person who is still not home and exactly how many days it has been.

If the faces of the hostages weren’t enough to break your heart, there are new faces appearing on newer signs, newer bumper stickers alongside the others ~ those of the fallen soldiers fighting on the fronts in Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon.   Over 750 soldiers have been killed in action over the past year. Though the Army and the Air Force have both made tremendous, even heroic progress, everyone knows the end of the war is likely not to come soon.

It is not post traumatic, it is still traumatic, because everyday the hostages are still in captivity, more soldiers get killed, the rocket, missile and drone attacks continue, and now there is terror from within ~ Arab Israelis shooting up & stabbing people at bus and train stations.

But the most amazing, inspiring thing is that in spite of it, and maybe because of it, they build. No matter how grief stricken and exhausted the people of this country are ~ the people we met are not despairing. They send their younger kids to school and the older ones off to war. They work their high tech jobs and plant olives. They get engaged and plan weddings and postpone weddings because the groom gets called up to the front. They run their companies while a third of their workforce routinely gets called up to the army. 

(I don’t know how you can even run a lemonade stand if a third of your workforce periodically leaves for months at a time, but somehow these farms, stores and businesses manage to hit their numbers, make their products & deliver their services.)

If you look up at the Tel Aviv skyline, it is dotted with cranes. They build not only in the city, but also the suburbs and north into Herzliya and Netanya. And at street level, on the sidewalks, whether Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or on a kibbutz or the moshav where Roger’s family lives, you see baby carriages and strollers. The birth rate in Israel is high, higher than other western nations. I’m no demographer, but construction cranes and baby carriages mean they are building their future.

We visited a Givati brigade army base, the one closest to Kibbutz Nir Oz. It’s a small one, with some dozen trailers thrown together, a home for 2-3 tanks. On that terrible day, there were 10 solders on base and they were overrun by the terrorists.  Hamas took out the communications antennas quickly so they were cut off. Four soldiers were killed, one is a still hostage. The soldiers are candid about the failures of the army. Many of the reservists we spoke with are older, in their 30s and 40s, and have returned for their 3rd or 4th tour, some voluntarily. The commanders say morale is solid, because everyone knows what they are fighting for.

And the home front is no less impressive. For over a year, volunteers support the soldiers and society in every way imaginable. (There’s an app so you can find an effort and quickly slot yourself in to help.) We found an old friend who runs a chamal, a volunteer group which supplies soldiers with the stuff the army just doesn’t get to: underwear, socks, neck warmers, head lamps, toiletries, fleece sweatshirts. With donated funds, they buy supplies, organize it in unused parts of a synagogue, and get it to the soldiers who need it.

On our last day in Israel, we met a woman who worked for an Israeli unicorn,  the term for a start up with an IPO of over a billion dollars. After October 7, she, a young mother herself, went to the kibbutzim near Gaza and met orphans, the hundreds of orphans that awful day created. The children have been taken in by remaining family & neighbors, but the government its hands full with the war, has left these kids without much financial support. She saw the problem, quit her job, and created an organization to care of these 450 orphans from now until age 25, a few years after they get out of the army.

And what about the holidays? Throughout history, the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people choose to attack on Jewish holidays. I’m guessing the Iranians sent their missiles on October 1 so that on October 2, the Jewish New Year would be ruined. Well, thanks to Iron Dome, the Air Force, Israel’s allies, (including the US) and the grace of G-d, we went to services just as planned and spent the rest of Rosh Hashana walking around the Old City of Jerusalem which is really something to see. All commerce stops ~ no car moves, no store opens. Everyone is dressed in their finest, and the synagogues are filled to capacity. From the sidewalk you can hear prayers, songs, and shofars blowing from every direction. One day after Iran’s second ballistic missile attack, the people of Israel welcomed the New Year, praying that it be a sweeter one for all.

Ten days later, on Yom Kippur, we were in Tel Aviv, which is famously secular, not traditionally religious at all. But on this day, no stores were open and no cars moved either, though the bike traffic was intense. A friend suggested a synagogue with an American born Rabbi, so we were gladly able to understand more of the service, but even better, we were uplifted by a 6 man choir singing in multi part harmony.

The prayers for those murdered on October 7, for hostages & soldiers living and dead, and for the State of Israel itself were powerful, magnificent even. Roger & I went to the morning service, took a break on the beach in the afternoon, and by the time we returned for the closing service, we could hardly squeeze back into the synagogue. All these supposedly secular Israelis in T shirts and flip flops crowded into the sanctuary, straining to hear the final prayers, blessings, and shofar blast.

This is why I believe that they will one day, maybe not today, but someday, they will dance again. A people who has the spirit to keep going after such a year, a year which began with a massacre and continues with a grueling war, a people who chooses to still have babies and raise children, to create start ups and plant olives, who gather for the holiday no matter how heartbroken they are, these people will survive and ultimately thrive. May it be soon, really soon. They have suffered enough.