Surrounded by danger, yet the only safe space

I know how it looks from the outside. For decades Israel has made the biggest headlines globally for the violence in our conflict, peaking since the terror of Oct 7. Unfortunately, the violence here is sensationalized by much of the world’s leading media, and therefore, understandably, from the outside it appears that we here live in a total warzone; way too dangerous for all but the most adherent to visit. But in the first half of 2024, it became clearer than ever to me, since moving to Israel 20 years ago, that this small country is the only safe space for Jews in the world.

It’s a dichotomy that Israelis have learned to live with well, and I’d argue, even overcome. I was born, raised, and lived in America into my 20s, where random shootings, stabbings, robberies, and other forms of unthinkable violence have no limits. It was startling to me from the beginning, arriving in Israel as an experienced first responder EMT over two decades ago, that even with the looming threat of terror attacks and mass casualties, Israel really felt like a much safer place to go about one’s day to day than the vast majority of the world’s populated regions.

This year so far that concept has taken on an importance that the sovereign state of the Jewish people was always intended to provide; it is the only safe space to be ourselves. And most importantly in this moment, its the only truly safe space to mourn and face our staggering losses of October 7 and since, without the threat of harassment or worse.

Look what happened in NYC recently. The situation has reached a new low when terror slogans and supporters appear in public en masse to menace an attempt to mourn. Look what’s happened across the US and so much of the Western World, on probably every campus to varying degrees of intensity and hate.

And importantly, look at what’s happened inside Israel at the same time. Across the country, especially stark on its most densely populated Tel Aviv boulevards, as public places have transformed into often large-scale and very emotional tributes and memorials to the lost, kidnapped, and fallen since October. Only in Israel, as has been made painfully clear to us, can we peacefully mourn our loss in public without threat of ugly, aggressive, hate-driven protests and thuggery.

Embed from Getty Images

The Dizengoff Fountain area, in just one impactful example, is a hopping central Tel Aviv revamped social gathering point in recent years, and has been completely overtaken by pictures, personal tributes, and of course the painfully ubiquitous personalized bumper stickers of this conflict, elegantly highlighting something beautiful about each smiling individual lost. Sites such as this across Israel feel holy right now. There is a strong, often overwhelming energy and heaviness at these hard-hitting memorial sites, set up ad-hoc by the local community, by the very people most affected.

Photo taken by author

In Israel, the general public is intertwined with, and facing the war up close. It always has. The army isn’t some abstract thing here, carrying out its missions in a far off land, as it is in many countries. Again I look to the experience in my native US, with less than one percent of the population enlisted in the military at any given time, the vast majority of Americans understandably don’t know someone in the service. Wars and the military’s activities can be disowned in such a circumstance. Not so in Israel. The vast majority in the Jewish, and many in the country’s Druze and Bedouin communities have no more than a degree of separation from someone actively serving.

The Israel Defense Force is a real army of the people. This connects the home front to the warfront in a profound way, and is one of the reasons for the IDF’s extremely high moral character, behavior, and effectiveness on the battlefield. Don’t believe the haters. I can tell you from over 20 years in the IDF’s fighting corps that the most important units of the army, and certainly the ones on the front lines, are truly comprised of the country’s best. Most recently I served over five months in Gaza with the reserves. The average guy next to you out there makes you want to be a better person. That’s how it is. And I returned home from one outstanding part of society to another. The home front had transformed into a uniquely visceral, authentic effort to pay real and personal tribute to our lost, offering support to those in service, and to our grieving, and providing some way for us all to mourn, heal, recover, and persevere despite everything.

At Dizengoff Fountain, like all the other powerful sites of vigil, you can actually quietly lower your head in genuine grief and mourning, and know that no one is going to heckle, or try to intimidate you or deface the memorial. For all its looming external and existential threats, which we’ll face together, Israel is the only reliably safe space for the world’s Jews. And there’s nothing guaranteed about it if we don’t value that above all else. The continuation of this place depends on all of us who care. If you haven’t recently, I implore you to get past the abhorrent headlines, and come visit Israel in these fraught times. I can guarantee it will lift your spirits about our collective plight, and will certainly lift up those living here, directly immersed in the fate of this indispensable nation.