Taking a trip to Israel was an eye-opening experience for sure

I recently traveled to Israel as a member of U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres’s Bronx delegation sponsored and masterfully organized by the United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York, or “UJA.” 

The purpose was to send a message of solidarity to Israel. Torres is the strongest supporter of Israel in Congress, certainly on the Democratic side of the aisle. Adding non-Jewish Democratic voices to the list of champions for Israel is critical. I am proud to include myself as one, but we need this from our non-Jewish elected officials, particularly in Congress, who have large platforms.

Here in New York, we fiercely advocate the rights of women and minority groups.  Remember that there are only 16 million Jewish people in the world, about 0.2 percent of the world’s population, with Israel’s people including more than half of them. Israel is also the only Jewish state, compared to 22 Arab states in the world. 

In the Middle East, they stand alone. 

This was something I knew intellectually, but spending time in the country and looking at a map of the Middle East while standing at the border into Gaza drove the point home. We did not have the opportunity to travel to the northern border with Lebanon, where threats from Hezbollah have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes. 

Watching the news, it seems the world has forgotten this part of the story. Or maybe the “news” on TikTok and its amplification of antisemitism has convinced us not to care.

While traveling close to Gaza, we saw the Israeli communities that were attacked, massacred and destroyed by Hamas on Oct 7. Striking were the burned-out homes of Kibbutz Nir Oz. The bitter irony is that this community on the border of Gaza was populated by liberal peace-loving Israelis who considered the Palestinians on the other side of the border meters away their brothers and sisters. 

I use the past tense because so many of those kibbutz members are now dead.

We met with families of the hostages and heard about their lives now as they hope for their grandparent, mother, father, or child to be released. One father had two sons taken. One son was later released and described to his father how hungry they were in captivity; how hungry his brother must still be. 

Elsewhere, we heard from a woman whose job it was to record the evidence of sexual violence found on the bodies of those mercilessly killed after being raped and mutilated on Oct. 7.  It was mostly women — and yes, she confirmed, there were volumes of examples.

We also met with survivors of the Nova Music Festival massacre. One woman who survived by hiding in bushes for hours remembers the laughter of the Hamas attackers who had killed so many around her. 

Somehow, fortunately, they didn’t see her.

I barely slept during the trip thinking of the gravity of the situation and feeling the active trauma present all around us.  I wish some of Israel’s detractors could imagine what they would expect from our government if these gruesome killings and kidnappings were perpetrated here.

But what is the right path for Israel to take at this juncture? On our trip, we also met with several government leaders, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. 

Gallant recounted that Israel is doing all they can to act strategically in their operations, and believe their messaging is right. But they are not winning the information war:  “The music is nice, but the speakers are small.”   

We met with Knesset member Mansour Abbas, who is a leading Israeli Arab politician. He condemned with moral clarity the attacks on Oct. 7, talked about the exemplary behavior of Arabs living in Israel at this time, and he confirmed without condition that Israel is a Jewish state, and proffered that a solution for peaceful coexistence with the Jewish and Arab communities both within and outside of Israel is needed. 

We met with Yair Lapid, former prime minister and leader of Israel’s opposition party, who is receiving growing support in the country.

Perhaps U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer is right that the solution to protect Israel’s standing in the world and allow for continued unwavering U.S. support would be for Netanyahu to step down. For the good of his country, Netanyahu could remove himself from the equation and allow different leadership to finish the military operation, protect Israel from the threat of annihilation, and forge a new path for peace with the Arab world. 

Certainly now, following the grave military error that took the lives of the World Central Kitchen workers, would be an appropriate time for him to do so while still preserving the overarching legacy of his long history of service to his country. 

But we would then also need those who believe in a two-state solution to concede this could not happen until Hamas is eliminated and a reasonable government established. One that does not believe the killing of all Jewish people is appropriate to include in the new country’s charter.

It’s hard to know what to do on a smaller scale. Maybe as individuals and smaller communities, we can be the change we want to see and solve our own seemingly intractable small-scale disagreements. We get dug into positions and convince ourselves it’s more important to win than to find common ground. 

Peek at the local Facebook group pages or read some letters to the editor in our local media if you don’t know what I mean. 

I say this with deep humility. We want for good, but struggle to open ourselves to the possibility that we do not know everything. 

We see those who disagree as the other instead of part of the beautiful tapestry of our community. 

Perhaps if we can find ways to resolve our local quarrels, resolution on a larger scale is within reach.

The author is president of the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club