On October 7, I was with my family in Boston, visiting my sister. The jet lag woke me up at 3 a.m. Boston time and, glancing at my phone, the push notifications of all the horrors happening in Israel, where the travesties of the Hamas attack were well underway, kept me awake.
I am reminiscing about my last trip and its terrible end: a “makeup trip” to Boston that my little sister insisted my family take in order to do the things we missed out on last time when the war cut our plans short.
The trip has thrown into sharp relief the differences between Israel before and after October 7 by putting me in the same place where I experienced the war’s start.
I remember the morning of October 7: lying in the dark, trying not to wake the rest of my family, reading news reports that soldiers had been taken captive, that people were being brutally murdered, that Hamas terrorists had infiltrated the country.
The feelings surrounding October 7
It was surreal and horrible. I was in a daze and entirely unsure what to do with myself in those moments.
As the hours went by, and the picture became even clearer, all I could do beyond watching the news in a state of utter disbelief was start to wonder if I should cut my trip short and fly back to Israel.
While I knew that I would not be called to IDF reserves because I received a medical discharge, I also knew that the home for lone soldiers where I worked would need all hands on deck and would have lost most of its staff to reserve duty.
And so I joined the crowds of Israelis globally, desperately trying to get on planes back to Israel. After talking to anyone with connections, I could think of and refreshing the El Al bookings page more times than I could count, I got a flight back, cutting my family trip in half.
I wondered back in October if flying home early was the right thing to do. While I knew I could help through my work, I also knew they would get by without me, and upsetting my family by leaving early was especially hard, given how rarely we are all together.
Part of me thought that hopping on a plane home was an overreaction and that maybe I would get back to Israel just before things calmed down again. I thought that maybe this would be a quick conflict, wrapped up in a number of days, with a hostage deal.
Now, I know that going back to Israel was indeed an overreaction, but not because of how quickly things wound down, but because of how long this crisis has stretched.
There was plenty of bad to come and plenty of help I could offer over the months, and in hindsight, I don’t think I necessarily needed to rush back.
But I felt pushed by some force, some need to be together with other Israelis, to experience the war and the fallout of October 7 with others who could understand what I was feeling. I also felt the need to take part in the country’s revival story: the joint healing journey that I was sure was bound to come.
But the healing and revival have not happened. It’s not that Israelis did not pull together to support each other – they did. They showed up en masse for reserves or took part in civic volunteer opportunities that did everything from providing housing and clothing to the displaced to organizing the victims of the attack and families of hostages to sending food to soldiers.
Israel’s civil society shone in the country’s darkest hour, but as the war continues with no clear end or even end goal in sight and over 100 people still held hostage by Hamas, healing and rebirth are not possible.
The country cannot continue and cannot heal or move forward without bringing the hostages home. It is a complete fracture of the most basic contract between a country and its citizens, and a country that has broken this contract cannot simply continue on.
The endless loop
Israelis and Gazans are stuck in what seems like an endless loop of killing and military pressure, going absolutely nowhere, and governed by politicians whose motives and morals we don’t trust.
The scale of the death and tragedy in Israel and Gaza is impossible to continue to live with, but no end and no solution seem near.
I am ending this trip to Boston almost exactly as I ended the last one – waiting alone at my sister’s house for a night-time flight back to Israel while my family continues on to other parts of the trip. The startling similarity of both trips’ conclusions further throws the difference between October and now into sharp relief.
When I last left Boston, I was desperate and determined to get home, to help, to take part. This time, I don’t recognize the home I am traveling back to at all and can’t think of a way to make anything better.
Now, I am wary of jumping back into the realities of living in Israel – the impacts of the war and the political games played while using it as an excuse in daily life.
If you had told me then that things would feel bleaker and more hopeless now, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Israel’s leadership has failed its people and has taken neither accountability nor responsibility for this failure. There is only so much the people can do to make life in the country good without a leadership taking responsibility and acting determinedly for the benefit of the citizens.
Leaving the country made it possible to see how much harder life in Israel has become since October 7, how much less hope there is that things will be ok, and how much less faith there is in the country’s leadership to do the right thing.