All Here to Stay
Personal Reflections of a Messianic Israeli Soldier from the War in Gaza
BY: BINYAMIN POSTREL
The war is ongoing, the hostages remain in captivity, and the situation on the northern border tips precariously toward full-out war. For the first time in years, we cannot remain at an impasse. The question of how to resolve this conflict has become the most urgent issue in Israel.
Black Saturday
Nearly four months of reserve duty in the IDF have come to a close. This has been, by far, one of the most challenging periods of my personal life, as well as for the entire country of Israel.
It began on what we now refer to as “Black Saturday,” October 7, when Hamas militants and their collaborators in Gaza entered Israeli towns to butcher, rape, set afire, and kidnap whoever they could get their hands on. That same day, I, like nearly 300,000 other Israelis, was called up to join my reserve unit, the 188th Tank Brigade.
Receiving that phone call was an emotional moment. Little was clear at the time. All I knew was that the country was under a surprise attack by Hamas and that hundreds of militants, if not more, were flowing through the border and pillaging Israeli communities. Like many others, I wondered if Hezbollah was on its way from the north. And what about Iran?
What would become of my pregnant wife and 1.5-year-old daughter? I would have to leave them to fight a war of survival that we did not choose, not knowing when I would return. It occurred to me that this could be the beginning of a sad ending—a loving husband, father of a sweet little girl and a baby boy on the way, who would never return. Unfortunately, this became a familiar nightmare for many. I was overwhelmed by the storm of thoughts and emotions swirling through my body.
United against an Existential Threat
On the second day of our deployment, we helped evacuate a family from the Gaza Envelope so they could reunite with a relative who had been critically injured in the October 7 attack. From there, we headed south into Gaza. For the first month, we traveled back and forth from north to south, trying to navigate the chaotic situation. We didn’t know how long we would be there and when we would be able to go home for a visit. We had a vague idea of the threats that awaited us. Some of us even received text messages from Hamas warning that those who go into Gaza would only come out dead or severely injured.
However, we were united: soldiers from various socio-economic backgrounds and political preferences who, like most of Israel, believed that the war was just and that it was forced upon us. We spent two and a half months fighting in northern and central Gaza. Our mission was to bring back our hostages and prevent Hamas from being able to “carry out more October 7s,” as one of our senior officials proudly declared.
In recent years, this kind of unity in Israeli society has been scarce. This, contrary to what pundits around the world have repeated, was not “Netanyahu’s war.” The sheer brutality of Hamas’ attack on civilians in sovereign Israeli territory left little room for indifference among Israelis. More than 300,000 people enlisted as reservists (the largest enlistment in IDF history), and nearly all Israelis supported some form of military response.
The sheer brutality of Hamas’ attack on civilians in sovereign Israeli territory left little room for indifference among Israelis.
The success of Hamas’ attack left many of us feeling vulnerable to similar attacks in the future. We realized that the time has come to believe the extreme rhetoric of our enemies, such as Hezbollah and Iran. Like Hamas, they threaten to wipe Israel off the face of the earth (a literal call for genocide) on a regular basis, highlighting their belief that Israel’s very existence is illegitimate. October 7 made their threats feel far more realistic and imminent. Israelis’ support for this war is fundamentally based on preventing similar attacks on other fronts. Global opinion ignores this feeling of existential threat within Israel because of the false paradigm that a power disparity determines who is morally right.
A Broken Government
The fact that most Israelis support the war does not mean that everyone supports Netanyahu and his government. The very opposite is true. October 7 is about more than Hamas and Iran; it’s about Israel’s political and military leaders failing us. Their theory that Hamas was becoming more moderate and seeking calm and economic prosperity instead of war was false. Hamas remained a hyper-fundamentalist organization that instilled a culture of eternal struggle and war instead of compromise, peace, and state-building. They proved false the idea that the conflict can be quietly managed in a permanent status quo.
At this point, trust in our national leadership has not even begun to be repaired. The war is ongoing, the hostages remain in captivity, and the situation on the northern border tips precariously toward full-out war. For the first time in years, we cannot remain at an impasse. The question of how to resolve this conflict has become the most urgent issue in Israel. I’m afraid that many of our leaders have yet to internalize their responsibility for this tragedy. I’m concerned that we won’t seize this opportunity to reshape the conflict in a way that leads to a brighter and more optimistic future for all.
The Way Forward
What about the future? As things stand, Israelis and Palestinians couldn’t be further apart. Both are numb to pain that is not theirs. That is, perhaps, to be expected from any traumatized society. It’s as if we live on different planets. Palestinians see Israel as constantly seizing opportunities to expand its power, expropriate more land, and displace more Palestinians—a “Nakhba” that never ended. According to this perspective, this is Israel’s goal—a conspiracy to victimize the Palestinian people.
Israelis, on the other hand, see themselves as merely responding to one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in history and the biggest single attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. It is a continuation of a more than seventy-five-year effort to deny our right to exist in this land, an unwavering struggle to eliminate the Jewish state and, as a result, all the people in it.
As a result, it is now almost impossible to mention the word “peace” or suggest any kind of solution to the conflict. This is not an accident. One of the objectives of Hamas and Iran is to remove peace as a plausible idea among Israelis and Palestinians alike. Their goal is a permanent armed struggle with Israel with no end in sight, never to normalize Israel in the region, and continually seek its destruction. So long as conflict flares, their strategy remains relevant. We, on the other hand, need to pursue some resolution and, in the long run, peace as an alternative to the methods of those who seek to destroy us.
Assumptions on either side that violence can compel the other to do what we want are wrong. Israel isn’t France in Algeria. We can’t force peace on someone else, and peace can’t be forced on us. Peace can only be agreed upon.
Israel is here to stay. Jews have a claim on this land, as do Palestinians. Israel needs to be the realist in the region in order to survive and, at the same time, retain their high moral ground by reaching out to offer peace even if it is rejected. We’re all here to stay—Israelis and Palestinians alike. Just recognizing this small but profound fact must be the starting point.
During these difficult days, we have to look hard for a small opening of optimism. People are struggling, people are hurting, and people are mourning. But perhaps things must become bleak for us to work for real change. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars.”