The Blogs: What Happens After the Uniform Comes Off

I wrote this not for attention, but because silence has a cost.

When I returned to the United States after serving in Gaza during the War of Iron Swords following October 7th, I didn’t expect applause. I didn’t want fanfare. I just thought someone would show up.

A Jewish institution.
A synagogue.
An organization.
A friend.
Someone to say:

“You’re not alone. We’ve got you.”

But that didn’t happen.

I served in the IDF Paratroopers Brigade as a lone soldier. I made aliyah on my own, lived in Israel for over a decade, and returned to the front lines during the war—not because anyone asked me to, but because my heart left me no choice.

Inside Gaza, I carried gear, shared fear, and walked through chaos. I left with a spinal injury—two herniated discs—something I feel every time I get out of bed, walk too far, or try to sleep. The pain is constant now. It wasn’t like that before.

When I came home, I reached out to every organization I could think of:

The Jewish Federation.
The Israeli-American Council.
My own congregation.
Even the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
I also contacted a smaller Israeli nonprofit, Restart Global, after a senior member told a friend of mine they could help. Their response was a polite thank you and a referral to someone in Miami—who also said he couldn’t help.

Some didn’t respond. Others offered little more than form letters. One told me to try United Way. Another suggested a church. I was told to “apply for public assistance,” “take a loan,” “be patient.”

One offered me a psychologist—not much else. I didn’t say no, but I also didn’t ask for that.

But the most alienating moments didn’t come from the emails—they came from the smiles.
From the handshakes.
From the parties and Shabbat tables and “networking events” where I was technically welcome, but never truly invited in.

That’s where it landed hardest:
Being treated like I was too Israeli—in rooms that never stop talking about how much they support Israel.

Too direct. Too intense. Too Hebrew.
Too full of something that didn’t fit the curated, American Jewish comfort zone.
I wasn’t giving speeches or waving a flag. I was just being myself—and that was enough to make people flinch.

And when I turned to Israel itself for support—
To the consulate, to the Ministry of Defense—I found another kind of silence.

An endless death loop.
No answers. No callbacks. No clarity.
Just departments bouncing me around, voicemails that go nowhere.

I’m not a number in a database.
I’m a soldier who walked into Gaza.
And yet, even with documentation, diagnosis, and a service record—they couldn’t find a moment to pick up the phone.

After months of dead ends, I finally got someone to move. Not through the proper avenues, but through backchannels. Eventually, I was told my case was accepted into the system. But even now, the process is slow—months, maybe longer.
In the meantime, I’m still here. On my own. Living with pain, carrying debt, chasing help that always seems just one step out of reach.

There’s nothing patient about chronic pain.
There’s nothing dignified about going into debt for an injury you got defending your people.
And there’s nothing more isolating than being made to feel like you don’t belong in the very communities that raised you to believe you were part of them.

I’m not writing this for pity. I’m writing this because the silence hurts more than the wound.

We love to chant Am Yisrael Chai, but I wonder—do we still mean it when a lone soldier returns home broken and no one picks up the phone?

I remember the first time I truly saw Am Yisrael. It wasn’t during my own service. It was in 2014, in a place called Kfar Vradim, the Village of Roses. A classmate of my then-girlfriend was killed in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge. The whole town came out. Thousands. I stood in the cemetery and heard a mother’s cry so primal it scratched itself into my soul forever.

That cry came back to me inside Gaza, years later, when a soldier I didn’t know said to me:
“You’re an only child? Think of your mother. Get out.”

It was like being struck. In that moment, I wasn’t a fighter. I was a son.
And I couldn’t stop thinking of my own mother—aging, sick, alone in America.
I thought of the uncertainty of who would even come to her door if something happened to me.

I left the battlefield.
But the war didn’t leave me.

It followed me into rejection emails, passive-aggressive texts, and the bitter realization that American Jewish spaces often honor soldiers more in the abstract than in real life. That Zionism, here, often begins with a hashtag, and ends in a click.

And yet, I’m still here. Writing.

Not to shame anyone.
Not to provoke.
But to tell the truth.

Because I know I’m not alone.
Because I know there are others like me—between worlds, aching, loyal, and unseen.
Because silence has a cost.

If you’ve ever felt abandoned after giving everything…
If you’ve ever wondered whether the community you fought for would show up for you…
If you’ve ever been told you’re “too much,” “too intense,” or too Israeli just for telling the truth—

This is for you.

You’re not imagining it.
You’re not asking for too much.
And you’re not alone.

Not anymore.

I didn’t come home entirely alone. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a terrified little stray caught between the lines. I named him Yunis.