The Reality Called Israel

With the plight of Gaza’s civilian population so much in the public eye, it feels almost politically incorrect to talk about the highly traumatic experience of Israelis in the wake of Hamas’s devastating October 7 terrorist attack. I just returned from a visit to Israel, where my father passed away in February. I grew up in Israel, and now make my home in Santa Barbara, and wanted to share some of my perceptions at this extraordinarily challenging moment in Israel’s history.

My father was Dutch and my mother is Polish. I grew up in a European household, raised on humanist values, embracing cultural diversity. My aba (father) grew up in a home that was both Zionist and at the same time extremely progressive. My siblings and I were taught from a very early age to view and treat all people as equals. My father’s friends included many who were Palestinian, Bedouin, and Arab Israeli, and one of my earliest memories is going with my father to midnight mass in Bethlehem. Aba spoke and wrote fluent Arabic, along with seven other languages. He also danced and played flamenco, and from him I got a love of music that was truly international.

Since moving to the U.S. many years ago, I’ve visited Israel countless times. But this visit felt very different. I arrived on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel). When you grow up in Israel, Yom HaShoah is a powerful part of childhood, marked by a special ceremony in school. I heard many stories from my heroic Polish grandfather, who lost 99 percent of his family. And from my father, sharing his memories as a 5-year-old fleeing Amsterdam on a boat to London, hiding under a tarp with his mother during the crossing. He remembered Nazis trying to bomb the boat, one bomb missing the boat by millimeters. Theirs was the very last boat to make it out.

So that’s about my family. It’s one of the reasons I have been involved professionally with films and creative projects relating to the Holocaust. For everyone in Israel, Yom HaShoah isn’t just an idea. It’s personal. And this time, when I stood silent for two minutes while the siren was sounding on the morning of May 6, I felt the enormity of the insane history, the terrible struggle Jewish people had to go through to survive. And at the present time, I feel how the world is acting like none of it happened 80 years go.

My family is full of peace activists, my nephews among them. They are parents. One is a new father. Because they are soldiers in reserve, they have to serve in the army. My uncle is an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who goes every week to demonstrate both for the return of the hostages and against the Netanyahu government. Everywhere I had conversations with people who suffered the biggest trauma of their life, losing friends, children, and family in the Nova Peace music festival and the war. People who are still looking for hope and peace and overall are in shock at how the world can be so cruel in times of such agony for them.

A week after Yom HaShoah comes Yom HaZikaron (Day of Remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism). There is a heaviness in the air that cannot truly be explained unless you are Israeli or spend substantial time living in Israel. Many people dress in black, and the whole country mourns for loved ones. Everyone stops what they are doing, including drivers on the roads, to stand in silence for two minutes while the siren sounds. This year, seven months after October 7, the feeling is indescribable. All the dead. The fact that no one knows the fate of the 132 hostages taken by the Hamas monsters, but we all know that many will never come home. It hurts. And it hurts to know how many people don’t care to know about that reality at all.

In Israel, you feel it all. You visit with friends. You eat with them and visit with their grownup children. You hold their infant grandchildren in your arms and rub their little bellies. You eat delicious food. You watch the Eurovision contest and feel what everyone feels about Eden Golan, this 20-year old-woman who represented Israel. Super talented singer, adorable, performing a beautiful song that expresses the pain of loss from October 7, and she’s the target of so much hate. She got the most votes from viewers around the world, but not one of the official judges awarded her their country’s points. Afterwards, I was in a taxi, and my Arab Israeli driver told me he could not understand why a young, incredibly talented singer who represents Israel should be protested and threatened so much that the head of the Mossad had to be flown to Sweden to ensure her safety. Eurovision is just a ridiculous talent show, but the way Eden Golan was treated wasn’t ridiculous. It was hateful.

In all the campus protests, people toss around the word Zionism without ever bothering to examine what Israelis mean by the term. My father’s Zionism, my Zionism, has nothing to do with colonialism or racism. Zionism is simple. It means that in a world that has tried — more than once — to wipe out the Jewish people, we need a place of safety. The evil that Hamas committed on October 7 shows that we have not outgrown the need for such a place. Israel is not where I live now, but it will always be home. It exists as such for all Jews, if they want or need it. Robert Frost wasn’t Jewish, but he had it right. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

In this bleak moment, I hope to shed a bit of much-needed light on the reality called Israel. Every Israeli I know yearns for peace, and they all understand that a tremendous amount of change needs to happen, both sides of the border, to get there. Perhaps when the dust settles on this terrible war, the urgent need for change will be the thing that finally makes a difference.