Ani M'Shuga

Jacob Rubin, University of Georgia

“You’re crazy,” is the reaction I got from most people when I told them I would be going

to Israel this summer, while they were actively in a conflict fighting against multiple different

fronts. In the past couple of weeks, that reaction has changed from “you’re crazy” to “you’re

insane”. And honestly, they are right.

Ani M’shuga.

I am crazy, because I would turn around and go right back if I could.

There is truly no nation that is more resilient than the Israeli people, and that was made evident to me over and over again. Everyone has a switch that they can effortlessly move between at a moment's notice. If you were to take a walk on Tel Aviv beach on any given Saturday, you would not guess that it is in the middle of an active war zone, and it is jam-packed with people playing soccer and beautiful women everywhere. All of those same people with short notice can flip the switch and go through life being in and out of bunkers. It is ingrained in daily life there and is part of the assimilation process I had to go through while living there. It is an otherworldly duality of life.

I arrived in Israel on May 14, and the wartime chaos had already affected our trip before I even left Atlanta. On May 4, a missile launched by the Houthis managed to evade Israeli air

defense and impacted right next to Terminal 3 of the Ben Gurion airport. Our scheduled Delta flight from JFK to Ben Gurion was immediately cancelled, and Birthright went through the effort to book us an overnight layover in Paris and then put us on an Arkia flight to Israel the next day. On our second night in Israel, while staying in Jerusalem, we experienced our first of many sirens to come. I felt that I was less stressed than my parents back home, as I became desensitized to these sirens relatively quickly. Even before Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran, the Houthis were launching one missile a day around 10 PM every night, probably knowing it would get intercepted but just to inconvenience Israel’s most populated area. It’s a psychological warfare tactic of forcing people to enter these protected spaces once a night and interrupting their evenings, knowing in all likelihood they won’t make it through the Iron Dome.

The night that Israel launched Operation Rising Lion will always be ingrained deep in my

memory. It was a Friday night in Tel Aviv, the absolute peak time and place to be a 20-year-old. After welcoming in Shabbat, our apartment hosted a party with many of our friends from other schools doing Onward. My friends and I went to Jimmy Who until about 2 AM. Afterwards, I had the best slice of pizza I had the whole trip at Mt. Sinai Pizza off of Rothschild, and we walked back to our apartment down Allenby Street. I walked back up to the apartment around 2:45, and then, out of nowhere, a siren went off.

There was no warning in our Homefront Command app, so I immediately noticed something was off. At this point, there were talks of Israel planning a strike on Iran, and the day before, the United States told all non-essential employees at the embassy to come home. 20 minutes later, a soldier who was in the bunker with us confirmed that Israel had indeed struck Iran, and this was a siren to make sure the country was on high alert for the imminent response Iran would send. And that response came no less than 15 hours later. Right where we walked back from Jimmy Who, a missile from Iran landed on Allenby Street and destroyed businesses we would frequent, including Norish Cafe, where some of my friends would go to work and have coffee.

This experience showed me the importance of staying light-hearted and making jokes and memes. To stay level-headed, you just have to be able to joke about some things. Israel

is one of the least politically-correct places I have ever been, and it was kind of refreshing to be in a place where everyone just says what is on their mind. There is no reading between the lines; everything is blunt and given to you straight. This bluntness presented itself many times in the form of humor, and it is honestly comforting to just laugh about how ridiculous what we went through is sometimes. Laughing is not a sign of disrespect or disregard for what is happening, and the real lives being compromised and lost in this conflict. Laughing is a sign of resilience that you can never kill the spirit of the Jewish people, and especially the State of Israel.

I also need to acknowledge how lucky I was to be under such amazing care through the

whole process, where no expense or effort was spared by Birthright to keep us safe as the

conflict was escalated. Another missile directly hit the Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, and one day later we drove directly through there to get to the port of Ashdod, where a ship was waiting for us. Another night of missiles, and we were on a ship on our way to Cyprus.

Saying that the logistical nightmare that Birthright pulled off was impressive is an understatement. I am incredibly fortunate for all of the new relationships I made while being in Israel, and will never forget the emotional rollercoaster of an experience this was. We really got the true Israeli experience in every facet, and the strongest feeling I’ve taken away is the urge to go right back.