With the plight of Gaza’s civilian population so much in the public eye, it feels almost politically incorrect to talk about the highly traumatic experience of Israelis in the wake of Hamas’s devastating October 7 terrorist attack. I just returned from a visit to Israel, where my father passed away in February. I grew up in Israel, and now make my home in Santa Barbara, and wanted to share some of my perceptions at this extraordinarily challenging moment in Israel’s history.
My father was Dutch and my mother is Polish. I grew up in a European household, raised on humanist values, embracing cultural diversity. My aba (father) grew up in a home that was both Zionist and at the same time extremely progressive. My siblings and I were taught from a very early age to view and treat all people as equals. My father’s friends included many who were Palestinian, Bedouin, and Arab Israeli, and one of my earliest memories is going with my father to midnight mass in Bethlehem. Aba spoke and wrote fluent Arabic, along with seven other languages. He also danced and played flamenco, and from him I got a love of music that was truly international.
Since moving to the U.S. many years ago, I’ve visited Israel countless times. But this visit felt very different. I arrived on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel). When you grow up in Israel, Yom HaShoah is a powerful part of childhood, marked by a special ceremony in school. I heard many stories from my heroic Polish grandfather, who lost 99 percent of his family. And from my father, sharing his memories as a 5-year-old fleeing Amsterdam on a boat to London, hiding under a tarp with his mother during the crossing. He remembered Nazis trying to bomb the boat, one bomb missing the boat by millimeters. Theirs was the very last boat to make it out.