To all my ‘friends’ who saw the news but didn’t check if I was alive

To the people in my social media network who used to be a part of my life:

Maybe we grew up together or went to school together or worked together.

Maybe we met whilst networking online, or we took the same online course together, chatted in Zoom breakout rooms, or bantered in Facebook groups together for years.

Now we exist in each other’s phones.

A like here, a story view there.

Just connected enough to double-tap or like my work-related posts but not enough to ask if I’m safe and well or to check that I’m still alive.

I wish that were an exaggeration.

Ballistic missiles, fired by a terrorist regime, are landing in my country, killing, injuring, and displacing civilians every single day. The place where I live. Where my children and grandchildren live. And from most of you… nothing. Not a word.

Let me paint you a picture for a minute.

Imagine a terrorist regime in Wales woke up tomorrow and decided England had no right to exist. And they meant it. Ballistic missiles into London. Cluster bombs into Manchester. Long-range suicide drones into Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds.

Now imagine you had a friend living there, someone whose kids you’ve seen grow up in photos, and you said nothing. Because reaching out could be perceived as a political statement.

And I know that’s exactly what this is. Because standing with me means standing against the people who want us gone, and you can’t be seen to be doing that, can you?

We are a country the size of New Jersey. Seven million people surrounded by 22 Arab and Muslim nations. And still, checking in on someone you know who lives here felt like too much. Some of you won’t even say the word “Israel,” as if just naming my country is too close to acknowledging our right to exist.

One person actually messaged me with “I saw things are kicking off again where you are.” Where you are. As if my country is a location you’d rather not name out loud.

And then there’s the line I keep hearing: that having bomb shelters is a “privilege.”

You know what? Fine. Yes. It is a privilege, bestowed upon us by a government that knows its people are always one attack away from the next war and builds accordingly.

Israel has required communal shelters in buildings since 1969 and individual safe rooms since 1993. And yet, according to the state comptroller’s report issued in March 2026, 3.2 million Israelis, a full third of the population, still do not have access to a bomb shelter.

And let’s not forget that 26 to 27 percent of that population are not Jewish. Over two million Arab citizens, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and over 500,000 others. The missiles don’t check your religion before they land.

This is a nation that has spent every generation writing songs about peace.

Praying that this war will be the last one.

Hoping our children won’t have to fight to defend the one homeland our people have ever had.

In 1977, David Broza wrote “Yihye Tov,” a song about a day when children would live without fear, without bomb shelters, without having to send their 18-year-olds to serve in the army.

..People live under stress
looking for a reason to breathe
and between hatred and murder
they talk about peace.

That was almost 50 years ago. We are still singing it. We are still waiting.

You didn’t need to post about it. You didn’t need to take a position. A three-second private message would have done it.

“Thinking of you.”

“Are you okay?”

That’s it. That’s all it would have taken.

And before anyone makes this about politics, let me be very clear. I could not care less where you fall on any political spectrum. This has nothing to do with Trump, or Bibi, or your opinions on foreign policy.

And if you’re one of the people posting, “Fighting for peace is like f***ing for virginity” or sighing about how “war is so pointless, why can’t everyone just talk to each other,” I need you to sit with this for a second.

You are comparing a country defending its citizens against ballistic missiles to a playground spat. As if we haven’t tried talking. As if we haven’t spent decades trying. As if the other side hasn’t made it explicitly clear, in its own words, that our destruction is the goal, not a negotiating position.

This is about me. A person you know. A mother, an entrepreneur, a human you’ve connected with, and laughed with on a Zoom networking or group coaching call. These are my kids. My family. Our lives.

Keep posting your holidays. Your grumbles. Your wins. I mean that; I want to hear about your life. But when someone you know is under fire, literally, the silence is deafening. And it says more than you probably realize.

And to the few who go beyond silence, who quietly (or not so quietly) believe that Jews wanting to live safely in their one homeland is somehow the problem, that the very existence of Israel was a mistake, that we brought this on ourselves… I have nothing for you. One former friend told me exactly that. Said, “It was a mistake to ever give Jews a state, but hey, what can you do now?”

I can tell you what I can do.

I can stop pretending that passes for friendship.

Because if your position is that my family’s right to exist in safety is up for debate, you are not someone I need in my life. Not even on the periphery of a screen.

There’s also this thing that happens every time a Jewish person speaks up. The immediate reaction is: “Well, they’re biased; they’re Jewish.” It’s as if experiencing it automatically disqualifies you from discussing it. Meanwhile, every other group on earth is encouraged to speak from their experience, centered, amplified, and believed. But when we do it, it needs a disclaimer.

I know what happens next. My Jewish friends will share this.

The rest of you will scroll past, or start drafting your “yes, but” in your head before you’ve even finished reading.

You won’t look into what’s really happening behind the slogans and the propaganda.

You won’t question what you’ve been told.

And we live in a world now where truth itself has become negotiable, where anyone can argue against anything, where this gets reduced to “my truth” as if facts are up for debate. So no, this wasn’t hard to write. I have more to say than I could fit here. What’s hard is knowing most of you switched off before you got to this line.

P.S. I paused writing this to go down to our shelter. Early warning sirens in my town. This isn’t something I’m reflecting on from a safe distance. This is my life, right now, in the middle of writing a post asking you to think about caring.