“This past summer I marked a personal milestone: forty years since moving to Israel.

The summer of 1982 was one of the lowest points in Israeli history. All the ambivalence over Israel that would divide the Jewish people in the coming decades began to coalesce that summer, as Israel was fighting a war that large parts of the Israeli public regarded as unnecessary and deceitful.

I had joined an Israel that was, for the first time, bitterly divided over perception of threat. War had always united Israelis; now, war was dividing them. Inconceivably, there were massive anti-government demonstrations even as the IDF was fighting at the front. Reservists completing their month of service would return their equipment and head directly to the daily protests outside the Prime Minister’s residence. If external threat could no longer unite us, what would hold this fractious people together?”

Read the complete op-ed on Times of Israel