- June 15, 2025
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My first tears on my first trip to Israel came on a warm afternoon walking around a kibbutz in the southern part of the country called Nir Oz.
This kibbutz — Oz translates to strength in Hebrew and is pronounced like the last syllable of Oreos — was decimated Oct. 7, 2023, when the terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel. About 25% of Nir Oz’s 400 residents were either killed or taken hostage Oct. 7. Several, me and my group of people from Sarasota later learned, were burned alive in their homes — including children.
Maybe it was the red and white baby’s pacifier sitting on a recliner, amid a house of debris that brought the tears. Or maybe it was the first thing I saw that day, April 28: three bullet holes the size of nickels in a glass door that led to the kibbutz community center. Or it could have been the mailroom a few feet behind those shattered doors. That’s where some 400 gold mailboxes sat. If you were murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7, your mailbox had a red sticker. Black stickers were placed on mailboxes of people kidnapped who hadn’t come home — even after 569 days. One of every four mailboxes was either red or black.
It’s hard to use the word highlight when describing what I saw and felt in Nir Oz that day. But, back in Sarasota for a few weeks and the trip having marinated in my mind for a bit, it’s what I think of first when people ask me: how was your Israel trip? It’s Nir Oz. And those tears.
I’ve long wanted to go to Israel. I’m proud of being Jewish, proud that my wife Elyse and I have raised our son, Aaron, in a Jewish household, proud he has embraced both the religious and cultural aspects of being a Jew. There’s a phrase many Jews say at the end of a Passover Seder dinner, “Next Year in Jerusalem,” meaning, basically, a wish that someday all Jews can live and prosper in Israel and Jerusalem. I took that phrase literally — thinking I will do it ‘next year.’ But I never did.
So when Sarasota entrepreneur and philanthropist Deb Kabinoff, who is also board chair of the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, called me Feb. 20 and asked if I would like to join her, Federation CEO Shep Englander and a dozen or so other local residents and FOIs (friends of Israel) on a mission trip to Israel in late April, my answer, in a word, was yes.
The trip was designed to coincide with three significant Israeli holidays: Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day. The goal of the trip was to show Israelis that Americans, and Floridians, support Israel more than ever after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, where 1,200 people were slaughtered and 251 were kidnapped.
But my desire to go to Israel was about more than being proud to be Jewish.
It was also a way, I thought, to enhance my pro-Israel/Zionist voice. I’ve long had the belief that Israel’s right to exist, to defend itself against all enemies, is just as sacred as any other country. But in the days, weeks and months after Oct. 7, with the rapid rise of antisemitism, especially on social media, in big cities and on college campuses, the need for people defending Israel is pressing.
(Consider how many U.S. college campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Israel demonstrations and protests. From UCLA to Harvard and Stanford to Columbia, they chant and scream fact-deficient slogans of ignorance. Sometimes it’s phony calls of genocide. Often it's chants of “From the River to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This anti-Jew rhyme translates to Palestine — which is not actually a country — eliminating Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.)
On Dec. 6, 2023, I wrote a column for the Sarasota Observer opinion page, “What never again means to me,” after the Federation invited me to meet an Israeli official and watch a never-before-seen video about the Oct. 7 atrocities. At the time, I hesitated: I’m a business news editor and reporter, having worked for the Business Observer and the Observer Media Group for 20 years. Why would people want to hear what I think about a country 6,633 miles from Sarasota?
But the response to that column was a resounding reassurance. I received texts and emails for days, from strangers and friends, thanking me for using this platform to defend Israel. More validation: That column won the 2024 Sally Latham Memorial Award from the Florida Press Association, the top honor in the serious column category.
Now back in Sarasota for a bit, I’ve been thinking a lot about my pro-Israel voice, why I feel it’s more important than ever to speak up and to share the stories people we met on those 12 days — what I am calling the heroes and heartbreak.
We saw, and heard from, lots of both.
Heroes like Ori. He’s a 20-something tank commander in the Israeli Defense Forces we met. He drove nine hours in a tank, on the streets of the country, desperate to get from the north to the south the night of Oct 7 and engage the enemy. His unit rescued a family of four being held hostage.
Then there was our tour security guard, Yair, another hero. Like Ori, he has an acute sense of his why and why Israel matters. He was one of five or six soldiers I met — most only a few years older than Aaron, our almost 17-year-old — who doesn’t look at mandatory IDF service as a have-to chore. He looks at it like a get-to, that he gets to defend and protect his country. Yair told us how, when he read on WhatsApp that terrorists had infiltrated his girlfriend’s apartment community Oct. 7, he got there fast. Then he engaged with the terrorists, where, he told us, he “took two of them out.”
Back in Nir Oz, we met another hero: Yossi. He lives in Nir Oz and was our tour guide. Yossi told us he’s part of a nine-person QRF — quick reactionary force — Nir Oz set up to respond to situations like Oct. 7. Like Ori and Yair, Yossi defended his family and home Oct. 7. He told us a harrowing story of, after killing several terrorists during the attack, he was in his home’s safe room with his wife and three children. His mother-in-law, who had been shot by Hamas and was hiding in trees and bushes, saw Yossi go into the home. She soon followed. She knocked on the door of the safe room. But Yossi’s wife, at first, pleaded with him to not open the door: What if it’s a trick, she told her husband, and this was Hamas holding her mom at gunpoint to get access to the safe room. Yossi eventually did — slowly — open the door, weapon pointing forward. His mother-in-law, it turned out, was alone. She survived. We met her that day.
On that tour, Englander, CEO of the Federation, noticed a torn and tattered Israeli flag hanging outside Yossi’s house. Englander asked Yossi, disbelievingly, “in the middle of all this (fighting) you stopped to put back up the flag of Israel?"
Yossi answered quickly, and somewhat matter-of-factly: Of course he picked up the flag. And of course he hung it back up. “You can’t see the flag,” he said, “from the ground.”
