I’m stuck abroad. This war caught me, along with some family members, in the middle of our vacation in Thailand. At first glance, you might think how pleasant it is to “miss” a war.
But the truth is: all I want right now is to go home. No place in the world, not even the most dreamlike one, feels right to me anymore.
It’s a huge paradox. Who would actually want to be in a war zone? And yet right now, different questions matter to me: Where do I feel safest? Where is the place I’m really supposed to be? Whose side do I want to stand on in such difficult moments?
For me the answer is clear: I want to be at home. And my home is Israel.
We experienced the beginning of the war through a series of Home Front Command alert notifications on our phones while sitting at the edge of a breathtaking infinity pool that flows straight into the sea. From that moment on, something inside me changed.
Photo: Anat Schneider
The landscape around me stayed exactly the same. The sea is still the same sea, the sun is the same sun, the streets are calm. But inside me there is no longer any peace.
The geographical distance is almost unbearable. The news arrives here faster than airplanes can. Images and voices cross continents in seconds. And there is something especially heavy about watching from afar.
At home, even when there is fear, there is a sense of shared experience. Everyone is in the same story, speaking the same language, feeling the same tension, the same pulse. Here I am a stranger – and a stranger cannot truly understand.
The world around me continues as usual. People smile, go for walks, plan their day. And I keep checking the news again, reading another update from Israel, and calling my family over and over – my mother, my mother-in-law, older women for whom this situation is especially hard.
A strange feeling of alienation arises. My body is here, but my thoughts are completely somewhere else.
In the hotel, Channel 12—one of Israel’s main television stations—is constantly playing in the TV lounge. The screen stays on for hours – almost like a small piece of home.
What I feel is not really fear. It’s more a sense of not belonging, of foreignness.
My son Moran is serving in the reserves, his wife Eden is in her ninth month of pregnancy and alone at home. No matter how often I ask how she’s doing and try to make her feel that I’m by her side – she is there in the middle of the war, and I am far away.
And yet, despite the chaos inside me, there are also things in these days that bring me a little relief – and they too are connected to the war.
Even from afar, we can make a small contribution. And this time it concerns our neighbors.
We have wonderful neighbors – and that’s not just a phrase, it’s reality. Now that we’re not at home, they are taking care of our dogs and cats. At the same time, we have the chance to help them too.
Some of our neighbors don’t have a proper bomb shelter in their apartment, while we do. So a couple with two babies has moved into our shelter. For them it means at least some peace at night – they no longer have to run back and forth with the babies to reach a safe place.
Another neighbor couple, whose shelter doesn’t have a functioning door, also comes over at night.
So our house – even though we’re not there – fills up with people and helps them get through these difficult days.
At the same time, other neighbors who are stuck in Venice, just like us unable to return to Israel, are asking us for a completely different kind of help. They hope, through contacts of my husband Aviel, to find a solution via Bedouins in the Sinai. They are considering flying to Sharm el-Sheikh and then driving across the Taba border crossing into Israel – and for that they need a driver.
To be honest: we are also thinking about returning that way ourselves, as soon as it becomes possible.
In this way, even from afar, we still feel part of the story – part of the family and part of the same people.
What I’m learning from this situation is how deeply I long for the sound of my home, even in difficult times. For the language on the street. For the unspoken glances between people who don’t need to explain anything.
We understand each other with a nod, a look in the eyes. That mutual understanding creates closeness and connection.
There are also people who tell me: “Stay there, it’s safer.” And technically, they’re right.
But safety is above all an inner feeling.
I don’t romanticize wars – there is nothing beautiful about them. But they reveal a truth: home is not the place where things are most pleasant. Home is the place where you want to be – even when it’s hard.
Now that the skies are closed and flights are being canceled, I understand even more that a home is not something to be taken for granted. It brings me a little closer to the feeling of Jewish exiles in earlier times, whose prayer was to return to the Land of Israel.
Because I have no other country – a line also sung in the famous Israeli song “Ein Li Eretz Acheret.”
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