Until October 7, my relationship with Israel was an ambivalent one. To me, Israel was like your slightly embarrassing uncle. He was family, and I was glad he existed, but I didn’t want to hang out with him, and I didn’t appreciate a lot of the things he did.
I merely tolerated him. That all changed when Hamas launched its murderous assault, killing 1,200 people – including one of my relatives – and kidnapping 200 others. Suddenly, like many diaspora Jews, I felt personally attacked – a visceral reaction that is hard to articulate, but which I can only describe as a re-ignition of a Jewish collective consciousness spanning centuries of persecution and pogroms.
This was an existential threat, and it altered my relationship with Israel overnight. In memory: the site of the Nova festival in the western Negev desert, three miles from the Gaza-Israel border Credit: Tomer Neuberg So when, as a journalist, I was offered the chance to visit post-October 7 Israel, on a trip with the Jerusalem Press Club (JPC), I jumped at the chance. I hadn’t been to the country for over a quarter of a century, and I wanted see for myself how the Israel I remembered had transformed, and how it was coping both with its trauma and the war raging in Gaza.
It was also a personal journey; would I now love the place in a way that I hadn’t before? My childhood was steeped in Zionism. I went to a Jewish primary school, where we fundraised for Israel, planting trees, and where, in 1979, I sang wit.
