WAITING FOR THE MISSILES
The Saturday night of the Iranian missile attack, my wife called me around midnight, Tel Aviv time—a few hours before the expected time of impact—and we had the following exchange:
Do you know where you’ll seek shelter? Will you go down to the basement?
The basement of my building is disgusting. It looks like the dungeon in “Silence of the Lambs” where the cannibal, Buffalo Bob, would chain the girls before he skinned them. No way I’m getting trapped down there. But there’s a nice, new building down the block with a deep garage, so I’ll shelter there.
Did you pack a get-away bag?
My backpack. I’ve got external batteries that can charge my iPhone at least ten times. And along with my laptop, I’ve packed a couple of bottles of water and a bottle of pretty good wine.
Did you pack a corkscrew?
Oh, shit, no! I love you so much for thinking of that!
Did you pack extra underwear?
I don’t need extra underwear. No matter what happens, it won’t go on for very long. This ain’t the Battle of Britain. Iran’s taking one big shot. Why would I need another pair of underwear?
In case you shit your pants.
And that👆ladies and gentlemen, right there, is the secret to a great marriage.
There was plenty of that sort of banter going around Israel the night of the attack, as we waited for Iran’s missiles and drones to arrive.
At my favorite neighborhood bar (ever) the Lily Rose, with about an hour to go before impact, people were asking, “Do we have time for another round?” And then, as the hour approached and people left to take shelter, instead of saying “Good night,” almost everyone said their goodbyes with some variation of: “I hope to see you tomorrow.”
All of us are always living in and through history, but there are times when you can’t help but feel it, to be acutely aware that you will always remember what you were doing the moment the world changed. In Israel, that sense of living in history is always on everybody’s mind, but it was especially so the night of the Iranian attack.
And without any posters encouraging the populace, it was consistent with the Israeli character for everyone to “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
Along with the dark humor, there was a quiet nervousness as we waited for the arrival of the 300 missiles and drones. Though the Lily Rose bar was less crowded than usual for a Saturday night, no one there was desperately trying to drown away their anxiety. No one believed we were living through a prelude to the end of the world, at least no one acted that way. Still, it was hard to avoid thinking about the incoming missiles and drones—especially because so many friends outside of Israel were constantly texting their concern. (Messages that were deeply appreciated.)
In return, I texted to friends a video taken just the previous night by an Arab acquaintance in Majdal Shams, a Druze village up north on the Syrian border in the Golan Heights, close to Lebanon and Hezbollah, where I had spent four days earlier in the week.
The night before had been a busy one in Majdal Shams:
(Video: Taymor Alwily)
And just days earlier, I had experienced a loud sunset, right outside the same village:
.
Tel Aviv the night of the attack was marked with a stoic faith in the inevitable.
Not that we knew exactly what the inevitable would be—it might be a great deal of destruction and damage, and even the beginning of a global war; or it might be an evening of sound and fury signifying nothing competent coming out of Iran—either way, though, we took it as inevitable. And except for preparing to shelter, if necessary, there wasn’t much we could do about it.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t just another night, not even for Israelis used to living on the home front of a country at war, surrounded by Jihadist controlled nation states trying to wipe them off the map. It’s just that Israelis weren’t panicking.
That said, it’s not like people weren’t taking the threat of 300 missiles and drones flying our way seriously.
I’m sure many religious Israelis were praying extra hard. I’m also sure that more than a few young, secular Israelis managed to get laid for the first time, after persuading their prospective partners that, “Tonight could be our last shot at this.” (A convenient excuse for youngsters not raised to aspire to an afterlife in heaven with 72 virgins—or, worse, 73 virgins, were they to have the misfortune of counting themselves in that total.) But the bottom line is that Israelis don’t panic, especially not over possibilities.
As the owner of the Lily Rose, Natan, explained to me the next day, “Normal in Israel is not normal anyplace else.
“Here it's normal to be a fighter in the IDF. It's normal that somebody in your family died in the army. It's normal that somebody in your family died in the Holocaust.
“Our normal is not normal.”
So, the morning after the Iranian attack—after both miraculously and routinely destroying 99% of the missiles before they landed, thanks to both Israeli technology and diplomatic and military cooperation involving the United States, Great Britain, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—something that’s been sorely missing—the reactions of Israelis spectacularly reflected their “Our normal is not normal” existence.
This gem of a video by karination_nyc is a very funny example of how many Israelis immediately looked back on the Iranian Blitz, the morning after. (When you play it, be sure to “full-screen” the video.)
And this Instagram comment deserves to be framed:
As noted in karination_nyc’s video, a serious irritant for Israeli mothers was the fact that part of the government’s preparations for the Iranian attack was to declare the wartime equivalent of an Israeli snow day and cancel all schools, which in Israel run Sunday through Thursday. That meant everyone’s kids would be home all day while their mothers were trying to prepare for Passover—a major, multi-day holiday in Israel.
This cartoon👇 was texted to me around 5:30 AM the next morning—just a few hours after the attack—by a Modern Orthodox mother with four children:
.
Gaby also texted me👇
.
Israelis were low-key proud of having made Iran look impotent, so thankfully the morning after there wasn’t much jingoism in the air.
Nobody was driving up and down the streets in fanatical celebration while a bunch of their buddies wildly fired guns into the air from the back of their pick-up truck, while ejaculating ulations and waving flags, and appealing to the Almighty to smite their enemies. That’s the exact opposite of the Israeli way.
Instead, Israel waved its middle finger at Iran and Lebanon and Hezbollah and Hamas, by simply going back to work the next day.
.
The afternoon after the attack, sitting in his bar about an hour before it opens back up, Natan tells me about his day at work. (Along with owning the bar, Natan is a B2B web marketer for early stage startups.)
“This morning, I saw a post on LinkedIn in which somebody had written, ‘Everyone is already at work. Last night whatever-happened-happened. Now, we’re at work.”
Natan smiles and says, “But we're not really working—we're all spending our time on LinkedIn talking about what happened.
“Still,” he says, shaking his head, “we are already back at work.”
.
“SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?”
All that said, Israel is still suffering through a nationwide case of PTSD, as the shock of October 7 still reverberates throughout the country.
The stress from the continuing war against Hamas, the agony over the fact that 133 hostages (or their remains) are still being held captive by barbarians, and the high probability of a second war in the north against Hezbollah in Lebanon—not to mention the price tag of Israel defending itself against the Iranian blitz, which is estimated to have cost north of $550 million for one night—has even the most resilient Israelis wondering how much more of this they can take.
My last month in Israel I began asking Israelis the following thought experiment:
Let’s say that somehow you know with certainty that Israel and her hostile neighbors were all going to be turned into a nuclear parking lot. It doesn’t matter how you know this, but you know it with certainty, the way Noah knew there was going to be a flood.
Would you still stay in Israel?
Or would you leave to save yourself?
I had started asking myself this question about two months into my journey, after incessantly pondering the monumental existential crisis confronting Israel. And I had come to the conclusion that it would be too painful for me to witness Israel’s destruction from afar.
It wasn’t a well thought out conclusion, it was an emotional one.
After two months of traveling the country and encountering a remarkably diverse variety of people—engaging daily in deeply profound discussions about Israel, our differing senses of our Jewish identity, our shared cultural values, and our fears about the rising fever of antisemitism in the United States and Europe, especially among the young and tragically uneducated American college students—I had come to the emotional conclusion that a world without Israel isn’t a world that I’m interested in experiencing.
But Israel is not my home.
Natan, however, was born in Israel. He’s 41 and married with three children, ages 10, 7 and five.
When I pose my thought experiment to him, Natan answers as if stating the obvious, as if he’s telling me that the sun will rise tomorrow in the east:
“At this junction, all of us Israeli parents have to think about if we want to stay here or want to go out.”
My kids go to school here in Tel Aviv. They have Israeli Arab teachers—everything is very, very modern, teaching about a Western liberal coexistence. Minorities are to be hugged and appreciated and learned from. There never was a reason for my kids to be afraid when they hear Arabic on the street.
But what is most devastating for me, is that it doesn't matter anymore.
It doesn’t matter how much I will try and keep it all away from them. What actually happened—October 7, the conflict, and the fact that we're occupying the West Bank—it goes both ways—there remains the fact that the Palestinians hate us for those reasons, and for past wars.
There's something very primal about looking at someone and being afraid that he might attack you. Okay? It's like an anxiety attack. It's like a panic attack—you don't exactly know where it comes from. And you can do a lot of educational research or a ton of educational work with your kids. You can explain to them, like we did, that “Everyone is equal,” and tell them “Nobody wants to kill you.”
But then something like October 7 happens, and they understand faster than you think. And it doesn't matter what you hid from them before.
Honestly, the most pessimistic that I have ever been is now. Because this is not for a year—this is for 30 years. My kids will grow up knowing that there are certain people looking to kill them, or thinking that somebody might kill them—just for them being them.
But the reality is, we don’t have anywhere to go.
Natan smiles at me, and then stuns me with his compassion—and his pity.
“Still,” he says, “I think our situation is easier than yours mentally.”
He explains:
Your situation, as a New York Jew, to realize that this hatred can come to your house is so disturbing because Jewish people in New York, they once owned the city.
In New York on Yom Kippur, it's closed. No other city in the world that’s not in Israel is closed on Yom Kippur.
For you as a group, for you and your peers—the people that you go to coffee with, people that are educated, people that are fine economically—even better than fine—your kids go to the best schools in New York and the best colleges, and your medical insurance is the best—you’ve always felt so secure.
Now, you and your friends are having an identity crisis. I think it’s worse than the identity crisis that we have.
We can stay here and boil with our thoughts, and understand that we're fucked. We're fucked, now. It doesn't matter what happened or why it happened. We're not in a good situation. But you have all that you need for life to be perfect—you have money, you have health insurance, you have this, you have that—but now you are threatened.
You feel threatened all of a sudden.
That's a big change.
Natan pauses, and again shares his kind smile with me.
“But I think it will pass. I don't think it will last. I think it's in the spotlight now, because there's elections in the States. But it will pass.”
I tell him I’m not so sure it will pass.
I’ve known Billy Crystal for more than 40 years. My closest friend and frequent partner for over 20 years was the remarkable journalist, Dick Schaap, and Billy and Dick were very close. So when I decided to come to Israel, I asked Billy if he could connect me to people in the Israeli comedy world, which he kindly did. (More about them in another dispatch in the weeks ahead). Billy also connected me to his closest childhood friend, from back when they were growing up together in Long Beach, Long Island, Neil Hasid.
After graduating high school, Billy’s friend Neil came to Israel, volunteering for six months on a kibbutz. He returned to New York to attend college but soon dropped out, a gifted poet inspired by the Beat Generation. He moved to Haight Ashbury during the “Summer of Love” in 1967. Then he returned to Israel in 1968, in no small part to avoid the Vietnam War draft; though he enthusiastically served in the Israeli army. A recovering addict himself, for years Neil has been a counselor to addicts and at-risk youth. Now, 76, he’s the father of four children, has 17 grandchildren, and three great grandchildren.
When I ask Neil my thought experiment, he quickly replies that it is a reality for him.
After October 7, Neil and his wife had their four children and their spouses come to their apartment in Netanya, just north of Tel Aviv. Sitting at the dinner table, Neil told them it was time to seriously consider leaving Israel. And that he was thinking of moving out of the country, himself:
After October 7, I considered leaving for the first time. I considered going back to the States, or to Denmark or Finland, or anywhere.
What stopped me?
First of all, the reaction of my kids was, “Forget it.”
Look, I don't think I could consider myself as a responsible grandfather if I didn't say to them, “Get out of here.” And I said to them, “You're raising kids. You're raising grandchildren. This is—it's not responsible—it’s not responsible to be here!”
It's not.
What happened in the south out of Gaza could happen tomorrow in the North, or in Judea or Samaria?
But my kids rejected it, outright.
I ask Neil how he felt that night, after his children had left his apartment.
His answer encapsulates so much of the complications and contraindications of Israeli life—as everyone here struggles to cope with the ongoing traumas from October 7, from the continuation of the war against Hamas, from the constant rockets fired from Hezbollah, from the threats and missiles and drones launched by Iran, and most of all from the fact that 133 of their fellow human beings are being barbarically held hostage, for over six months now—simply to torment the Jewish people of Israel—and the world doesn’t seem to care.
Neil’s answer as to how he felt after his children refused to even consider his plea for them to gather up their children and leave the country makes perfect sense, and no sense at all.
I felt pride. I felt pride that I had given them a Zionist education.
I felt pride that they have something they believe in, that they have something they feel connected to.
My daughter is in Chicago right now looking after a sick child that she helps take care of. And she said to me over the phone, “There's nothing like the air of Eretz Israel.”
“The air of the land of Israel.”
The day after my visit with Neil, I left Israel after four months.
In the airport security line, as I and hundreds of others snaked our way from the curb to the baggage check, I found myself waiting in line alongside a young couple in their early thirties. The wife was pregnant.
After chatting about our destinations and our reasons for leaving Israel that day—they were going to visit friends in Milwaukee—and about the turmoil and Jew hatred on American college campuses and in the streets of London and elsewhere in the world—after about 15 minutes of conversation, I asked them my thought experiment:
Let’s say that somehow you know with certainty that Israel and her hostile neighbors were all going to be turned into a nuclear parking lot. It doesn’t matter how you know this, but you know it with certainty, the way Noah knew there was going to be a flood.
Would you still stay in Israel?
Or would you leave to save yourself?
The wife put her hand on her stomach and smiled.
“We’re Jews,” she said.
“Where else can we go and be safe?”
.
The tragic reality of Israel—and all of Jewish existence—is that for more than 2,000 years, there has never been a place where Jews were truly safe, no matter how desperately they wanted to believe they were.
I am now “back home” in the United States where not long ago, Jews once felt safe. Back in New York City where, as Natan pointed out at the bar, Jews once culturally owned the city.
How lucky was I, once upon a time?
I was born a Jew in Manhattan in the late 1950s—after the end of McCarthyism, a fever driven in no small part by antisemitism—and I got to grow up, live, laugh, learn, love, work and create, and feel safe and secure here until the rise of Trumpism in 2015 (“Jews will not replace us!”). For 65 years I’ve been one of the most fortunate Jews in the history of the world. Full stop.
And I got to grow up feeling a part of American history.
Starting in the early 1900s, American Jews ferociously assimilated, not because we were ashamed of our Jewishness, though some of us were, but because of our sense of gratitude for finally finding a home. As a result, American Jews made our mark on American culture—in literature, music, theater, film, television, comedy, education, science, politics, civil rights and the law—and we believed our cultural contributions were exactly that, contributions to the American Dream.
Until recently it was possible for American Jews to parse Anti-Israel sentiment from antisemitism by attributing Anti-Israel sentiment to anti-Netanyahu and anti-Israeli politics, or to sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians.
That was possible until October 7.
Or, maybe, if one is both generous and foolish of heart, until October 8.
But the level of Jew-hatred around the world and the fecklessness of American politicians and college administrators, who are unwilling to call it out—the fact that they cannot deign to denounce clear acts of antisemitism with the same clarity with which they denounce other overt acts of racism—makes one thing abundantly clear to me:
I have not come home.
Nor do I think I ever can.
.
Epilogue
Shortly after this dispatch was published, I received the following email from a very wise and accomplished Israeli, who has become a new, dear friend of mine:
Neil's story about his discussion with his family brought tears to my eyes.
We really live in an abnormal place but we are Zionists!And only those who understand our history can understand why this is our home and why we will not leave it even knowing that the game is over.
.
.
.
.
.
56 years ago yesterday a similar scene was unfolding on the campus of Columbia University. The BIG difference between my generation and the new IDIOTS (which includes the old IDIOTS of our age Doug) is that we had the moral high ground against the Vietnamese war and American racism. and they think they have it but are rooting for terrorists...
I was in Jerusalem when the sirens went off at 1:40. My buddy and I grabbed pillows and our passports and headed 11 flights down the stairs. One floor below, a family stood in the stairwell, waiting for the sirens to keep going which would mean we were under attack. This not being their first rodeo, the woman said" Why are you bringing your pillows?" I had no answer. We got to the miklat, and saw it is a conference room. If there was a podium I could have given a presentation on condo law in Florida. Ten minutes later were were told that we were free to go. That was just before we joined a JNF working trip where we prepared and served150 meals to soldiers, worked on a farm and helped remodel Kibbutz Ehrim in the Gaza envelope, evacuated but not invaded. The residents are stuck in hotels. It was a transformational trip.
I feel that I have a useless life here in the US. Many people are SO concerned that They don't send their kids to day schools, Jewish Summer camps or do Year Course in Israel. Baruch Goldstein said America will save the man but kill the Jew. I think he's right. Inyermarriage late marriages. small families. In 100 years there will still be 5 million Jews in the US, 75& Orthodox, many of whom believe that Medinat Israel cannot come until Mashiach comes. But I digress.
As a result the kids lack the intestinal fortitude knowledge to confront these Pro-Hamas (an oxymoron if there ever was one) demonstrators. They are Kuffirs and their heads would be chopped off, etc., when they're done with us). Demonstrators are useful idiots as Lenin said. Our kids lack critical thinking and are social climbers with expensive clothes, and try to be assimilated. Guess what? They ain't. Yhey are frightened when they see these demonstrations. The people who assault, batter interfere with the right to attend class and falsely imprison Jewish students and faculty need to be sued civilly. Otherwise they have a right to free speech, don't be snowflakes.
I'm just a dumb ol' Florida Gator and my son was a paratrooper in the IDF 2010-2012. I was in Israel with Hadassah during the Second Lebanon War, when we had two minutes to find a shelter. And on top of it I have an anxiety disorder! I guess it comes from centuries of having to run from Paroh, pogroms. Cossacks, attacks, Holocausts. etc.
Israel needs us now. There's no tourist activities due to the war. No tour guides who are all reservists, and no tourists. INSTEAD OF THAT 10 DAY CRUISE, GO TO ISRAEL. I tell them STOP WATCHING THE NEWS! ISRAEL PROPER IS SAFER THAN MOST ALL OF THE EU AND CERTAINLY MORE SO THAN THE US! VOLUNTEER. SPEND MONEY. I HAD TO BUT A NEW CARRY ON TO BRING BACK ALL THE POMEGRANATES I BOUGHT.
There's plenty to do and it's fulfilling. I'm not sure that my wife would be so hot about my packing up and telling her I'm going to Israel for three months.
NO ISRAEL NO JEWS. TAKE YOUR PICK.
I'm sad thinking about this, gotta stop. You rock. Tank