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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
I’ve taken that flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv before.
Same route. Same destination. Probably the same ordinary rhythm: people half-asleep, headphones in, children restless, Israelis heading home.
You board a plane in Dubai and a few hours later you are supposed to walk through Ben Gurion Airport, grab your suitcase, complain about the baggage claim, get into a taxi, and continue with your life.
On Wednesday, the people on that flight almost didn’t.
An Omani co-pilot stabbed the captain and tried to crash the aircraft as it approached Israel. The plane plunged thousands of feet. Israeli passengers intervened, subdued the attacker, and other pilots aboard helped take control. The aircraft eventually landed safely in Saudi Arabia. More than 170 people who expected an ordinary flight suddenly found themselves fighting to make sure there was a home to return to.
When I read about it, I didn’t picture an airplane on a television screen. I pictured myself sitting on that airplane. Because I have.
There was also a bar called Ilka on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. I used to go there. When I visit Israel, Dizengoff is not a geopolitical concept to me. It is a street I know. I know the noise. I know the bars and cafés and restaurants and flower shops. I know what it feels like to sit outside on a warm Tel Aviv night while scooters scream past and Israelis somehow manage to have three conversations at once.
On April 7, 2022, a Palestinian terrorist from Jenin illegally entered Israel and opened fire at Ilka. Three Israelis were killed.
Again, I didn’t have to imagine the place. I knew the tables. I know the bartenders and waitresses. I know the street. I knew what it was like to sit there.
And then there is October 7th.
I knew two sisters who were murdered at Nova. I know the parent of an Israeli hostage who was murdered in Gaza. Those sentences are almost impossible to write because we have become accustomed to turning human beings into categories: “Nova victims.” “Hostages.” “October 7th casualties.” Numbers scrolling across the bottom of a television screen.
But people are not categories. They have names, mothers, dad jokes, WhatsApp conversations, favorite restaurants, and plans for the weekend. They have people who still have their phone numbers saved years after they will never answer again. That is the part of Israel that disappears when Israel becomes a debate.
For millions of people around the world, Israel is a quasi-intellectual or quasi-moral exercise. It is something to discuss over dinner, something to argue about in a college classroom, something to dissect on a podcast, something to turn into an Instagram infographic between a skincare advertisement and a video of someone’s lunch.
For me, it isn’t. I have been on the plane. I have sat at the bar. I knew people who were murdered. I know someone who had to wake up every morning wondering whether their child was alive in a tunnel beneath Gaza. So forgive me if I no longer have much patience for people who approach Israel like it is an amateur seminar.
I am tired of listening to people who have never experienced any of this explain, with astonishing confidence, what Israelis should fear, what Jews should tolerate, how Israel should defend itself, what constitutes an “acceptable” response to being attacked, and at precisely what point Jewish self-defense becomes morally inconvenient for everyone else.
There is something “luxurious” (if you will) about discussing another person’s survival in the abstract. You can demand restraint because you will not pay the price if that restraint fails. You can miscalculate the intentions of Israel’s enemies because your children will not die if you are wrong. You can construct elegant moral theories about terrorism because you will close your laptop when the conversation is over and go to sleep thousands of miles away.
Israelis do not get to close the laptop. That is the difference.
Israel is a country where the hypothetical has an irritating habit of becoming real. The restaurant you visited can become the site of a terror attack. The music festival your friends attended can become a killing field. The road you drove down can become the site of a shooting. The airplane route you personally flew can become the scene of an alleged attempt to send more than 170 people falling out of the sky.
And somehow, after every one of these things, the rest of the world assembles around Israel like a jury.
Explain yourselves. Justify yourselves. Prove that you are frightened enough, but not too frightened; angry enough to be human, but not angry enough to make anyone uncomfortable. Defend yourselves, but only in a manner approved by people who will never have to make the decision themselves.
I have increasingly come to believe that this is one of the deepest divides between Israelis and many of the people who judge them. It is not simply a difference of politics or perspectives or even morality. It is a difference of consequence. One side gets to theorize; the other side has to survive being wrong.
And Jews know something about the consequences of being wrong. Jewish history is filled with moments when Jews were told that their fears were exaggerated, that the threat was not quite as serious as they believed, that perhaps they were being paranoid, that the civilized world would intervene, that authorities would protect them, that things could not possibly become as bad as they imagined.
Then they did.
Israel was built around a radical Jewish conclusion: Never again would Jewish survival depend entirely on convincing someone else that the danger was real. That is why something about that flydubai flight hit me so hard.
When something apparently went catastrophically wrong in that cockpit, passengers did not have the luxury of convening a panel discussion. They did not wait for someone somewhere else to save them. Passengers acted. Pilots aboard the flight acted. And because they acted, families who could have spent the rest of their lives staring at empty chairs instead welcomed their loved ones home.
There is an entire Jewish history contained in that instinct. Help may come, but sometimes it doesn’t. The cavalry may arrive, but sometimes there is no cavalry. The world may understand only afterward, but afterward is too late. So Jews act, survive, carry one another, and refuse to die politely.
That is Israel to me.
Not an Instagram reel. Not a map on a professor’s lesson plan. Not a morality play in which Jews are assigned a role by people who discovered their interest in the Middle East two weeks ago.
It is the place where people I love live. It is the place where people I knew died. It is the airport I have landed in dozens of times, the streets I have walked, the bars where I have sat, the Hebrew I hear when I get off the plane, the country whose tragedies increasingly intersect with my own memories.
Maybe that makes me incapable of discussing Israel with the detachment some people demand. So be it. I do not want to be detached from people whose lives matter to me. There are subjects on which detachment can masquerade as sophistication. Israel has taught me that sometimes detachment simply means someone else is paying the price.
So when someone thousands of miles away tells Israelis what they should have done on October 7th, what they should do when rockets are fired, how they should respond to terrorism, or how much danger Jews are morally obligated to absorb before protecting ourselves, I no longer indulge them.
It is easy to be philosophically generous with Jewish lives when they are not your lives. It is easy to lecture Israelis about proportionality when your children are not running to bomb shelters. It is easy to demand patience with terrorism when you will never receive the phone call. It is easy to insist that Jews take one more risk for peace when you will bear none of the consequences if that risk ends in another massacre.
I have taken the flight. I have sat at the bar. I knew the murdered sisters. I know the hostage’s parent.
These things have changed the way I listen to people talk about Israel. I no longer hear every opinion as equally deserving of my attention simply because it is delivered confidently, dressed up in academic language, or wrapped in the vocabulary of morality. Some people are debating an idea. Israelis are living with the reality.
Wonderful piece. Very powerful. Thank you 🙏🏻
Good stuff! I've told many Israel-critics: "Spoken exactly like someone who never had a jihadist try to plunge a knife into his/her neck, or lost a loved one to Pal terror. It's easy to be an armchair general when it's not your ass on the line!" They rarely even try to respond to that - at most, they strike back with a slogan and a buzzword chaser.