October 7, Two Years Later

Two years ago today, October 6, 2023, I was in a very good mood. Simchat Torah, always a fun holiday, was starting that night. My partner Susy had arrived from America a few days before. Friends and family were arriving in anticipation of a wedding on October 9. There was a sane president in the White House, and even though Netanyahu was prime minister, protests had successfully slowed down the anti-civil rights judicial reforms his coalition was trying to push through. The weather was pleasant. Life, in other words, was good.

And then on October 7, the world changed. All my friends and family who came to Israel for the wedding on October 9, after I’d assured them Israel is safe, spent the day running to the bomb shelter. Instead of being in the synagogue dancing with the Torahs we were in my living room doom scrolling, daytime drinking, and regularly hustling down two flights of stairs to the bomb shelter.

We were in shock. How could such a thing happen? And then, on October 8, something truly miraculous happened. It seemed like every single person in the country wanted to do something. To volunteer. The center that had been set up by tech people to coordinate protests became war rooms to coordinate volunteers. Everyone I know volunteered. I drove a soldier to her base in an area that Waze said was a little dangerous. I drove food to a family that had been evacuated. My kids worked in the war room. The country was mobilized, and all political divisions were put aside. We were facing something that threatened all of us, and we really showed that when the chips are down Jews and Israelis really are one big family.

At first Israelis were united in believing we needed to hit Hamas hard militarily, and there was general agreement we had to do whatever we had to do to make sure Hamas could not hurt us in that way again. That spirit of unity lasted maybe six months, but after that the old political divisions started coming back. There were protests in support of the hostages early on, and for a while I did not go. Mainly because I didn’t know what the right answer was. “Surrendering” to Hamas to get the hostages back didn’t seem like a good idea.

But as time went by, it felt to me, and to many other Israelis, that it was time to end the war with a real “day after plan.” But the Netanyahu government never put a day after plan forward. It was all “we need to destroy Hamas.” But by a year in, Hamas was already relatively destroyed. All the leaders in Gaza had been taken out. Command and control was disrupted. There’s no such thing as “complete victory” over a terrorist organization. See the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the war dragged on, seemingly with no purpose other than to keep Netanyahu’s coalition together, so that he could remain in office and attempt to obstruct the corruption cases against him by rigging the judicial system. I started going to protests because it was clear we needed a path out of war that the government was not pursuing.

Israelis were feeling worn out by it all. You’d ask people “how are you doing?” and they’d reply, “as well as possible.”

Now here we are two years after that horrible year, Israelis and Palestinians having lived through two years of war. I am cautiously optimistic about Trump’s peace plan. Anyone who follows me knows I am no fan of Trump. I think what he’s doing to America is inexcusable, and he’ll go down in history as the worst president ever because of elevating loyalty over competence, using the Oval Office to line his pockets and punish his enemies, destroying many of the things that have made America great, sowing flames of division, eschewing science, and pursuing misguided economic policies. But if he does actually manage to pull off bringing peace to the Middle East, I would happily say he should get the Nobel Prize. Even very flawed people can occasionally do something great, and credit should be given where it’s earned. He’s the only one who could have pressured Netanyahu into accepting a deal that includes a provision that there is a path to a Palestinian state.

There’s a maxim in Israel that only a strong right wing government can bring peace, and it’s more often true than not. If a left wing government tries to bring peace, the right wing will often oppose them. But if a right wing government makes the rare decision that they want to pursue peace, of course the opposition will support it, and it happens.

Please pray hard, or if you’re not the sort to pray, send positive vibes into the universe or whatever you do, that this peace deal will happen, the hostages will come home, the war will end, and we will be on a sustainable path for peace between the two peoples who live between the river and the sea.