Israel at war: Time for Jews around the world to stand, stay with us - opinion

My mind is scattered; our reality has become too shattered for me to concentrate on crafting an intro, punctuating it properly, and sliding into the main thrust of my thoughts. I have just come home from a mind-numbingly terrible funeral; it feels like the end of the world.

We are reeling with death and disbelief; Maj. Benji Trakeniski is the face of our pain. Benji, who served in the 7th Armored Brigade, was born here 33 years ago to two immigrant parents – his father from the former USSR, and his mother a Brit. 

Benji was a poster child for the ultimate Israeli: ferociously handsome, as his heartbroken mother said, kind, funny, loving, and devoted to his family, friends, and country. He was killed bravely battling devils from hell as they butchered babies and families on Kibbutz Be’eri, in our unspeakable new reality. 

I stood in the translucent air of a late-summer Israeli noon – our sun is friendlier in October, our skies are so very blue – as the weeping father intoned Kaddish, as the torn-apart fiancée told her supposed husband-to-be what she’d planned to say to him under the huppa, as the stunned mother noted that he’d been handsome enough and cool enough to play the next James Bond, as his army comrades and lifelong friends spoke about him, numb with shock that he wasn’t there to listen.

Thousands of people, sobbing silently, listened to the Home Front repeating that in case of a siren we should all lie on the ground and cover our heads. We stood at his funeral and, to state the obvious and unreal fact, wondered which funerals were still in store; what would tomorrow bring.

There are so many dead. Some florists are donating wreaths; workers around the clock are weaving flowers into tributes. 

It's like Babyn Yar all over again

Israel is a tiny country; there isn’t anybody who doesn’t know someone who has been murdered or is missing. It’s Babyn Yar all over again; it’s the pogroms our grandparents fled in Lithuania; it feels like the Holocaust.

I thought to myself at that funeral, as I thought to myself while sheltering with my kids and so-young, so-innocent, so sweet little grandchildren in our protected room as rockets flew above our heads:

Should I apologize to my family for choosing to live in this dangerous part of the world? Was I wrong, when at 17 I decided not to move from immoral, impossible South Africa to a country that would be safe: America, Canada, Australia, Britain?

Is it too late for us now – should we check passport options, work possibilities, and finances, and leave?

I caught myself with these thoughts, and that was the moment I broke down, took some deep breaths, and started to regroup.

Because this isn’t the Holocaust, and it’s different from the pogroms that plagued our grandparents for generations. Of course, it is. We were caught off guard, and our appalling government of crooks and cultists will have oceans to apologize for when this is all over. Now is not the time.

All of us, all of us! who rallied week after week against our incompetent non-leaders have now rushed to defend our homeland; we are not dependent on anyone else to stop the slaughter of Jewish babies. Israel is an ongoing miracle; its people are strong, and we stand united now in the face of such barbarism that we don’t even try to find words to articulate our revulsion.

AND AS I stood there thinking about the endless, endless wars we have experienced – the First and Second Lebanon Wars; Operation Protective Edge, and so many other Gaza wars that I can’t even remember the names; the Gulf War, when we bundled our babies into gas masks and wondered whether we would all die; the Second Gulf War; the First and Second Intifadas – I realized that yes, even with the foresight of all that lay ahead, I would still have chosen to live exactly here, in our tiny bit of land in the center of the Earth… because really, where else would I want to be?

And then I thought of something that might sound inappropriate, or patronizing, or pathetically out of date. I thought to myself that it’s warming, it really is – I’m not just saying it – it’s supportive and lovely that friends and family check in daily from around the world to see how we’re doing. We are not doing great is the truth, but we believe we’ll get through this in the end.

But as embracing as it is to get the virtual hugs, what I think would be a stunning and appropriate response is if our concerned friends and family would this time come and join us. What an answer to this heinous crime: you kill one of us and 200 other Jews, or 2,000 – educated, established, able to contribute, dedicated – will come and set up their homes to replace each one you destroyed. 

Sane people, with liberal democratic values, who are polite and drive carefully and bring a good business ethic to our battered land – imagine what a difference they could make. Doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists, nurses, poets, dancers, and cooks. Shopkeepers, architects, builders, lawyers, sportsmen and women, and businesspeople. 

Israel has long been a haven for our huddled masses; they have come in their millions seeking shelter, and our melting pot has coagulated into an energy that is unparalleled anywhere, an in-spite-of-it-all life force for good.

Now is the time for the Jews of the free world to join in – not because they are fleeing anything but because they, too, want to be part of this unique Jewish miracle. Let’s see them flow in their tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands – to vote for a proper government, to work, to ensure we remain a liberal, even lovelier place than we are now – a glowing light unto the nations in these dark and terrible times.

When I interviewed Dara Horn, author of People Love Dead Jews, and asked her why, with her worldview, she was working out of New Jersey and not Jerusalem, she chuckled. “Are you saying Western Jews should make aliyah en masse?” she smiled. “How Seventies!”

Maybe the 2023 fear and sadness have got to me; maybe I’m temporarily delusional. 

But healing thoughts are flooding through my brain in these unprocessable times. 

Let’s show them what happens when you slaughter Jews in our own country. Other Jews, from every part of the globe, rush in to continue our exceptional nation-building.

When we prevail – and we will prevail – we will vote in the government we deserve, we will reshuffle our national priorities, and we will fly. Come and join us.

May this be a Shabbat of shalom. ■

The writer lectures at Reichman University. peledpam@gmail.com

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