There’s a story a good friend of mine often tells about how his dad had one of the best holidays of his life in New York in the weeks after 9/11. The flights were cheap, the planes empty and tourist sites, usually full of flashing Nikons, were eerily silent. A normally fractured, spiky city was warm with the unity that follows a moment of horrendous trauma. It was, in his telling at least, the perfect time to visit.

Much has been made of the similarities between Israel and America in the aftermaths of October 7 and 9/11.

Americans measuring things in terms only they understand is hardly new. Buildings are five football fields long, animals are as big as 600 hamburgers, shootings are four Sandy Hooks. October 7 was ten 9/11s.

I think that most of these comparisons are unhelpful. America’s plotters lived thousands of miles away; Israelis can see theirs from a hilltop. But there are some similarities. The unity Israelis are describing in their country is arguably unprecedented. Just days before the attack, the country was riven in two and even before October 7 you’d struggle to find two Israelis who agreed on the best falafel on a street in Tel Aviv, let alone find consensus on how to run the country.

But trauma has a way of pasting over these differences, of flattening people to their basest identities. As the late American novelist David Foster Wallace wrote in the aftermath of 9/11, people who had never been to New York, never seen it more closely than on a TV screen, suddenly felt a connection to the city. New Yorkers’ pain was their pain.

I think it’s the same for Jews and Israel. Many progressive Jews, those whose relationship with their Israeli cousins was often tense, sometimes verging on an embarrassment, have undergone a Damascene conversion, raising money for Israeli victims. As antisemitism rises worldwide, they are softening their language in the realisation that the Jewish state is a necessity, not a luxury.
While this is lovely and indeed necessary, I think this moment of global Jewish unity might be short-lived. We Jews have too much friendly disagreement in our history. Something tells me that the truth in the maxim “two Jews, three opinions” means this state of calm won’t last.

Which means that now is the perfect time to visit Israel. Not only is the weather mild enough for even the most Ashki among us, it’s also a chance to see an unprecedented display of resilience and unity, to see the Jewish people at our unstoppable best. Tourism will eventually return properly to Israel when the war ends: American evangelicals, Russian Orthodox, Nikon-wielding Japanese, they will all flock back to Jerusalem, to Tzfat and the Dead Sea. But by then, they’ll have missed the moment. It’ll be back to normal.

I’ve been to Israel many times in my life for organised trips and family holidays and weddings, and each time I find something new to love about the land. Yes, Israel is unquestionably necessary but the Jewish state is also simply a fun and vibrant place to be, a country populated with people who care deeply about the place and who are always working on it.

After Covid, Israel was one of the first countries to return to normality. Through technology and a population that was desperate for life to return, the speedy deployment of vaccines allowed Israel to open its doors faster than pretty much any other Western country. And people returned in huge numbers.

Yes, Israel has its flaws. Show me a country that doesn’t. But it will rebound. It will emerge from this war as it does after every threat: stronger, tougher and maybe even more dedicated to ensuring its survival for a future generation of Jews who need it. I can’t wait to be there when it does. But I also can’t wait to be there now.