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The skies above us are undergoing a makeover from their naive, casual blue, transforming into sinister copses with saturnine streaks. Heavy droplets of rain splash into ripples on the surface of the river. We are on the deck of a boat with some Hungarian name that means “Fishermen’s Bastion.” We are all dressed in white – all, meaning a group of some twenty IDF soldiers, injured in body and soul, some of whom survived only by a miracle, but all of whom chose to continue serving in the army. At this point in time, they are at the beginning of their journey to Budapest and Vienna, in the footsteps of some guy or other named Herzl, who used to hang out around here about one and a half centuries ago. This journey combines workshops about Zionism with Jewish heritage tours focusing on tracing identity and roots – tracing justification and explanation. But first of all, before we shake the dust off the beard of the Zionist vision, we need to clean up more recent events: to say “Tashlich” - a New Year prayer recited over running water – and throw away the bad. The group’s task is to encapsulate the baggage they wish to throw away into one word and inscribe it on a pebble. But how does one distill an entire, encyclopedic period of tragedy and pain into a single word? Is it even possible? Well, apparently, it is. Because now, they are all standing at the ship’s bow with a stone in their hands. Breathing deeply, focusing. The vessel sails under a golden bridge as a train crosses it above them. On the right, lie the Houses of Parliament, its lights casting a 24-carat gold sheen on the Danube, its pinnacles piercing the Draculean firmament above. A vista bewitched. The universe around us is redolent with fragrance, while we rack our brains trying to work out what to throw away first. One after another, the pebbles, their weight far greater than their physical mass, fly through the air. Lt. Col. Elad, 42, commander of the delegation, blows the shofar. God willing, may the Gates of Heaven open up, may the river consume our suffering, may these stones yield results from the depths of the Danube. Because how much can one really cope with? For Lt. Col. Elad, a father of three from Rosh Ha’ayin, this journey completes a circle. On October 7, 2023, he was supposed to depart on a journey similar to this one – but, instead of Budapest, he found himself in Kfar Aza, where he was head of a section in the IDF’s Gaza Division. Early in the morning, he received a message from a member of the kibbutz: “My mother’s been murdered and the army’s not here.” As he sped toward the South, he picked up three other guys, carrying their weapons, at different junctions. At the entrance to Kfar Aza, he passed a stationary vehicle and noticed a man with his head lying on the steering wheel. “I’ll never forget him,” he said. He and his companions realized it was better to leave their vehicle and continue on foot. At which point, they came into contact with hostiles: dozens of terrorists surrounded them – and, in a split-second decision, they climbed up onto a roof. “It was as if a ladder had been waiting for us since the dawn of Creation by one of the houses,” says Lt. Col. Elad, relating how they fought a holding battle for hours from higher ground, pelting down bullets to prevent them advancing, creating a deterrent. “And all the time we were fighting, we didn’t even know each other’s names – we just called each other ‘bro.’” A ship with its Las Vegas-bright lights passes us by. The rain shower has stopped a fawning breeze strokes us gently. Lt. Col. Elad, the man who felt desperate that morning in Kfar Aza, wrote the word “despair” on his stone. “Because it’s frightening to go there. There are better days – and others, less so: the important thing is to push forward, like this ship, not to despair,” his hand points toward the horizon, the waters of the river beneath him lie tranquil – as if they had swallowed two Clonex. "Don’t despair, don’t despair," they echo. As if I’m getting sedated / Yuval Yuval Rifkind begins his story in Israel, continues in Hungary and concludes it in Austria. Maybe, it’s actually better that way. This is a story about matters of the soul – and one cannot hurry the soul. I stood next to him in the queue at Ben Gurion airport. He was checking his text messages it was only 4 a.m. “It’s for my trainer for the Iron Man Contest, he’s helping me arrange my schedule,” explained Yuval, aged 26, from Tel Aviv. The Iron Man Contest is for extreme competitors only – a 3.86 km swim, a 180 km bike ride and a 42 km run. “People say that when you train, you release endorphins,” he tells me, “It’s as if I’m getting sedated this way. Inducing myself to feel good.” “Your passport, please,” says the ground hostess. “Put your suitcase here.” And then, “Just like that.” And from there, the route leads to the Duty-Free lounge. His gait is lumbering – that’s what happens when you’re carrying a kitbag full of trauma on your back, a kitbag of guilt. Shortly before October 7, Yuval was the deputy commander of a company in Sayeret Givati, the Givati Infantry Brigade’s elite reconnaissance unit. At the time, they were assigned to "hold the line" – security duties – in Nablus. It was their job to make arrests, one after another – until, at some point, he went to see the battalion commander. “Sir, look, I have no quarrel with what we’re doing here, but it’s hard for me,” he told him, “I find it hard to wake up little kids at 3 am, in the middle of the night.” And then they lost their first man, killed in a terrorist shooting near Kedumim: Staff Sgt. Shilo Amir. Commander Yuval’s force arrived immediately after and neutralized the terrorist. “I was speaking to Shilo only a moment before it happened,” he recalls, “and then one of my soldiers comes to me and asks, ‘What – Shilo fell?’ and starts crying on my shoulder. And the sound of his crying goes round and round in my head.” A black hole in time opens up, the skies above us become distorted, land and sea exchange places – and, suddenly, we’re landing in Hungary. Roads submerged under greenery, old churches, a huge wheel on the horizon. Except that Yuval still carries the serious gaze from before – his eyes retain their piercing glare. We have now reached the point in his story when he’s inside the Gaza Strip, during the first week of ground operations. His company commander, Maj. Yehuda Natan Cohen, and two other combat soldiers, Staff Sgt. Gilad Nehemya Nitzan and Staff Sgt. Yonadav Levenstein, fell in battle. “Yehuda and I were very close, we shared a room,” he explains, “there were things you only share with him.” They are located in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. They set up camp in one of the houses. Yuval cut his finger on a sharp fragment of iron. While they were discussing whether to stitch up the cut, a bullet whizzes past, right in front of his eyes. He realizes someone’s shooting at them from the neighboring house. He gets on coms to Yehuda, but there’s no response. He tries again – no response. “There and then, from my point of view, I’m now the commander in charge of the incident,” he says and explains in detail how they strafed the house next door, and then an officer, who had climbed up to the roof to shoot from there, reports seeing three wounded. He understands that Yehuda is down. “On any army training course, the first rule is safety. If there are live terrorists, the priority is to deal with them and then run to attend to the wounded. But that only works in training – because you know the commander’s been hit and he’s down, and 15 seconds can mean the difference between life and death.” He remembers running into the line of fire, with other soldiers following him, and the terrorists right opposite them. “Just like from here to over there” – and he indicates a bus stop, ten meters away from us. He recollects that they first saw Yondav – then Yehuda, with Gilad lying underneath him. “It was obvious to me that Yehuda was dead then I pulled out Gilad from underneath him. It seemed the most logical thing to do,” he recalls. "How does it feel?" I ask. “Complete disconnect, like a robot. Later on, you say, ‘Hey, man, if only I’d reacted faster, if we’d been more focused on the position of the forces, stuff like that.’” Another hole in time, the skies become distorted, land and sea change places again, and suddenly, we’re in Austria. We’re walking around the Jewish quarter of Vienna. Only, in Yuval’s story, despite his reassignments to other posts and sectors, he’s still locked inside the same incident in northern Gaza. One example is when he was appointed company commander on a Givati Brigade training base. He’s at home, after dinner, needs to prepare a slide show for his first day in his new position. “I shut the door to my room, take out my laptop, haven’t a clue what to write. I’m just saying, ‘Oh, hell, it’s my fault they’re all dead.’ Then, I feel like I can’t breathe, everything’s imploding.” Next, right there on the training base, he goes to his room and loses it. “I’ve no idea if it was a dream, a hallucination or a flashback. I see myself trying to save my commander from the line of fire. I’m pulling at him, but he’s stuck. I’m shouting for help, but nobody comes. And suddenly I wake up, and my pants are wet. I go to the office of one of the commanders, asking him, ‘Dismiss me: I’ve lost it, I’m unfit for service.’ His reply is: ‘There’s no such word as dismiss in the conceptual word bank. Go back, go see the mental health officer.’” Another time, in another assignment as operations officer in Gaza, in Deir al-Balah, Yuval is sitting in a room watching the combat on plasma screens. “Suddenly, I see myself there, or maybe my commanding officer – and I call them on coms, ordering them to rush this over here, move that over there. Fortunately, I was on the wrong wavelength. Then I come back to myself and start freaking out. That evening, I leave Gaza, never to return. I didn’t say goodbye to everyone, because it’s horrifically humiliating. As I leave, the mental health officer says to me, ‘You can cut up your military service card here and now.’ To which I say, ‘Nah, let’s just agree that I won’t be going into combat any more, but I’m staying.’” We’re descending the Herzl steps. It’s a small, grubby-looking, outside staircase covered in graffiti scrawls, not far from where the visionary of the Jewish state resided. When he wrote “Der Judenstat,” Herzl could never possibly have imagined that, someday, an Israeli officer with piercing eyes, carrying a kitbag full of the very land he sought for us, would walk down the staircase named after him. After leaving Gaza, Yuval remembered an old dream. He contacted the commander of the base at the Hashomer Farm, which trains soldiers with challenging records. "I don’t expect officer pay," he said, "I’m even ready to stand guard duty at the front gate." He was so enthusiastic, this Yuval, to the point of pain. If only, if only, if only the incident that holds him in its relentless grip had ended differently. If only the deputy battalion commander who ran into the line of fire had been able to stop running after the incident was over. But only what can be, will be. Shortly after a period as the officer in charge of the transition to combat service at the Hashomer Farm, Yuval was sent to study at university, which he did with a clear goal in mind. “I want to be discharged from the IDF as commander of the Hashomer Farm,” he promises, “When the IDF has my 6, the Jewish people have my back.” Six frozen expressions / Eyal Wherever Eyal Korach goes, he takes a picture with him: a collage of photographs of the six fighters from 8207, a reserve infantry battalion that fell in Lebanon. If he’s on a bus, they are with him when he’s walking along the banks of the Danube, they are there. When he sits down at the foot of the Hungarian Parliament, by the black lion statues, they also have a rest. Eyal is the company commander: they fell on his watch, and the fact they are no longer here does not mean his responsibility has ceased. The previous day, on the third floor of the Israeli Cultural Center in Budapest, where the Jewish Agency photographic exhibit was on display, there were exclamations, “Yo, I can’t believe there are people like that.” Eyal was standing in front of a photo of some bearded guy with greying hair and a determined look in his spectacled pupils, engaged in a rehabilitation exercise. “This man, Roni, saved my life,” said Eyal and went on to describe how, when he was wounded in Lebanon, Roni lay down beside him and covered him. “He was hit by a bullet in his foot,” and here, he taps his shoulder to demonstrate. For the moment, anyway, while we walk through Budapest, still holding the collage in his hand, he is beginning to describe the battle in greater detail. He sighs, rubs his eyes. “I find it a little difficult,” he says. October 26, 2024. They had just set out to conduct an attack on Kafr Aitaroun. Eliav Abitbol, the deputy company commander, called him on coms to say they had identified ammunition in one of the houses. Korach arrives: the clock shows 2:31 p.m. The moment is forever etched in his memory – as is the house. It’s a one-story building, with an entrance hall, a covered corridor and doors opening onto the street, and a wall or a roof that is partially collapsed on the southern side, where two terrorists are apparently concealed. The force that went in came under fire. Eyal engaged in a gunfight at the entrance until a grenade was thrown. “I didn’t hear the call that it had been thrown, I only heard the explosion,” he explains, “I flew backward, a burning sensation between my legs, I see blood I aim the barrel of my rifle at the entrance and say, ‘If a terrorist comes, he’s not getting to kill me.’” He illustrates his story about the battle that lasted several hours with photos and videos. This, for example, is the documentation of the house: on the left, is the entrance through which the force broke through. “I meet Eliav at the entrance, place my hand on him, and he goes in.” Another photo, to which he points, shows him with Roni, who covered him on the ground until they were dragged away. “This is where my rifle dropped, this is the blood,” he explains – and then he describes how it felt: “Out of control, helpless, frustration. From the position of the commander leading the force, and then it’s you they need to deal with.” And here’s a video of the engagement. Members of the force are discussing how best to evacuate the fallen even as the fighting is going on. “Nobody gets to die because they extract a body,” says one of them. And in the end – the collage. Six expressions, six smiles frozen in time. Maj. (res.) Eliav Abitbol, Capt. (res.) Rabbi Avi Goldberg, Master Sgt. (res.) Guy Shabtay, Capt. (res.) Gilad Elmaliach, Maj. (res.) Amit Chayut and Sgt. Maj. (res.) Shaul Moyal. “It stays with me every moment, every day,” says Eyal, “Before I fall asleep, in the morning – even when I lace up my army boots, I remember the company and the fact that I am going out – whereas there are those who do not.” From the parliament, surrounded by statues of warriors on horseback, we descend to the banks of the river. We stop at the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial monument, commemorating the Jews of Hungary who were forced onto the riverbank and shot into the waters of the River Danube in 1944-1945 by the Hungarian, pro-Nazi Arrow Cross militia. We gather in a solemn circle to hold a ceremony. Passersby stop and listen. All the soldiers take turns in reading memorial texts. Then, fast forward another 80 minutes, and each of them talks about friends he lost in battle. And it all happens at the same time, under a sun focused by its rays, with Korach standing there, holding the collage and another flag from the 1865 Avshalom Battalion, which he helped found. “You are making history,” he relates with emotion, a compliment he recently received from the father of one the fallen fighters. “The fact that I’m managing to grow gives you strength – as does the fact that he also understands it wasn’t all my fault.” "And do you understand that?" I ask. He is quiet for a moment. “I’m working on it,” he responds. Suddenly – green ribbons / Almaz There is no security guard at the entrance to the Hungarian Jewish Theater in Budapest, whose official title in Hungarian means “truth,” and there are no curtains over the windows. The anti-democratic ambiance here is favorable to Israeli interests, which makes Hungary one of the most secure places for Jews on the planet. For the moment, anyway. Earlier, in a presentation by Gusti Yehoshua Braverman, the leader of this journey and Head of the Department for Organization and Israelis Abroad on behalf of the World Zionist Organization, she showed data from a 2024 survey about feelings of belonging and identity among Israelis living in the Diaspora. Only 22% responded they were interested in returning to Israel. And now, inside the theater, around a long, rectangular table, a pointed dialogue is underway about the Kürtős trap this country offers. It is led by Adam Breuer-Zehevi, 40, an interpreter, diplomat and the editor-in-chief of Hungarian Jewish TV and András Burgola, 50, the theater’s artistic director. The first of the two – Adam, the son of parents who made aliyah – returned to Hungary with his mother at the age of 12, after she discovered how difficult it was to get a divorce in Israel. The second – András – is a Jew who was unaware of his Jewishness until he answered a chance telephone call at age 14, from someone who was searching for Chaim and Malca, their grandparents. András came to Israel as a Lone Soldier and left after eight years. “In the morning, I attended Tel Aviv University at 4 p.m., I began rehearsals at the theater and at 19:00, the performance opened from midnight, I worked as a hotel guard. I felt I had no future in Israel,” he says. And now, in cold, sober manner, Adam weighs the balance between Hungary and Israel, setting items down on each side of the scales. Economy, security, self-realization, buying an apartment. Hungary is homophobic and he and his husband are not allowed to raise a family. Israel is a country that cannot exactly promise security. Not to mention the fact that life in Israel is hard. He has thought about returning more than once, checked out employment opportunities, and discovered that he has less of a future in Israel, Other voices cut across the discussion. The group of IDF fighters listen and find it difficult to accept this. "Maybe it’s hard in Israel, fine. Only bread goes hard. Anyway, why would anyone who’s Jewish not want to live in Israel? Why wouldn’t anyone not want to share a Kabanos sausage at an IDF assembly point?" Strange that those who have sacrificed their physical and mental health for this country of ours find it difficult to accept the security factor as an issue of substance. Next day, on the coach, as the sky turns gray in front of our eyes, ageing visibly, the dialogue is still resonating. I sit next to Almaz Pikado, 26, a captain in the Home Front Command. Her eyes are following the fading urban vista through the window. "What was missing for me in terms of substance in weighing the balance for and against Israel in yesterday's conversation," I tell her, "was the ideological element." “The yearning to return to Israel needs to come from somewhere that is whole, from the inside – and then you’re prepared to do everything in your power for it,” she responds. “Both my grandmothers always tell me about how they left everything behind because what they were missing was Jerusalem.” Her parents, who made aliyah from Ethiopia, recognized the importance of Israel. She grew up in Sderot and, until October 7, had been renting a home in the Young Generation neighborhood of Kfar Aza. On that fateful morning, she was sleeping over in Sderot: she woke up to the sirens, left for the army and, at the Shaar Hanegev Junction, found there were terrorists lying in wait. “As I get closer, I can suddenly see green ribbons,” she relates. “I pulled up for a moment and then I hear a loud boom in the car. They had hit the right rear window. I got into reverse, made a hard left, mounted a traffic island and just drove. The bullets rained down relentlessly, while around me a lot of other drivers weren’t so lucky with the same maneuver. People are lying all over, on the ground, horrific scenes.” She returned home to Sderot, where she remained in lockdown until Monday. On a TV video, she absorbed the image of what was left of her home in Kfar Aza. Despite the fact that she managed to reverse her car and escape, the fact that she is here now means she did not really get away. The scenes she saw, the sleepless nights, the fears. “I find it complicated - you know, it’s complicated to come and tell everyone, ‘I managed to make it out of there, while others didn’t.’” The junction may well continue pursuing her as far as it wants – but, for her, leaving Israel is not an option. “My mother, my father and my grandmother came all that way – not so that I should give up,” she says, her face still glued to the window, her expression still peaceful. Tracking the trauma / Maher Maher is reading a text out loud. He does this while leaning on a small table. The visor cap on his head is back to front. His walking stick is to the side. It’s a letter from his father. His dad, a paratrooper who lost a leg in the First Lebanon War when he stepped on a mine, found himself fighting for his son’s leg after he was injured by a UAV (weaponized drone). “To my dear son,” Maher muted’s voice is full of emotion, “You’ve managed to get back on your feet, move ahead and be part of the IDF. This journey is not only a unique experience but bears witness to the immense strength, faith and drive that you possess.” Maher’s eyes are damp. Two moons from another galaxy sparkle within. Beneath them lies a smile that powers the turning of planet Earth. "Which words in the letter move you most?' I ask. “Get back on your feet,” he answers. “I was sedated, almost an amputee. For my dad, there’s nothing more precious than his child. It’s thanks to him I’m back on my feet. At the hospital in Nahariya, he yelled, ‘I’m an amputee, there is no way that Medicine hasn’t advanced since then.’” Around Maher, in the other corners of the room, sit the rest of the IDF soldiers, each introspecting on a letter from a loved one – a kind of message from home. We are wrapping up a workshop about Herzl’s wife, Julie, who was suffering from depression during the years while he was waltzing around the world with his dreams for a state. It’s interesting but, somehow, it’s kind of sad although, frankly, Julie is a pretext to focus on the loved ones of the injured soldiers here – those who pay a price that no one wants to talk about – and don’t always manage to cope with the demands. One of the fighters, a company commander who lost eight of his soldiers from an exploding charge in Rafiah, discloses to us, as we’re sitting here in a circle on the “how’s” of coping, that his wife has left him. “’I’m dying on the inside,’” he says, repeating her words to him, while we all cry internally, around him. Back to Maher. Next day, en route from Hungary to Austria, while the bus winds its way westward along the A1, at the pace of the National Insurance Institute, he recounts the story of his injury at the outpost in Moshav Ya’ara in northern Israel, a little over one year ago. It was 05:30 in the morning. He was sleeping in the living accommodation, a kind of container, with Chief Warrant Officer, Mahmood Amaria. Then the siren goes. Maher will never remember that – he only heard about it after the fact. Mahmoud gets up, sits on the cot, he says, "Good morning," Maher answers, "Good morning," Maher walks to the entrance to the room, opens the door, bends down to fasten his shoelace, and there’s an explosion. “My panic in that moment was enormous – huge,” he says. Outside the coach window, the time zone changes. Creation sheds layers for the sake of simplicity. Fields of wheat and corn, bundles of produce, wind turbines. Maher shows a photo taken after the explosion. Here, in the ceiling, is a yawning hole through which the UAV penetrated – and here is where Mahmood’s bed once was, completely destroyed – and here’s the threshold into the room, where the doorpost has been pierced by shrapnel. “A picture that tells a story,” he concludes. "No," I say. "This isn’t the full story. There’s no answer about how it’s possible that there were two people in a room, one and a half meters apart from each other, each with a different outcome. That's fate, Maher has no doubts – at least, not about this. “Everyone has their destiny, predetermined, right from birth. And my fate was not to die in this incident.” It’s liberating, this fate. From guilt. From the desiderata that others on this bus are dragging along behind them, like weights attached to their ankles. “You can’t live your life with the wisdom of hindsight,” Maher concedes. Droplets of rain gather on the windows, the road beneath us is wet and the coach sometimes surfs across it – the only thing missing is opening a sail. Everyone’s asleep all around – only Maher’s eyes remain open. He is married with three children and lives in the village of Sallama, in the Misgav region of northern Israel - a career army officer and a Bedouin tracker. Being a tracker means you pay attention to minute details. The color of a stone, a bent tree branch, the shape of a hole in the fence. Being able to distinguish footprints in the ground and know whether they were made by a cat or a heavy man, whether he was running or walking. Maybe it’s the tracker in him that gives me no respite. Over and over again, Maher relates the story of the explosion, lifting new details from the scene around it, the circumstances of the fate that saved his life. He recalls the soldier who rushed to his assistance. After the fact, it will be remembered that he left him for a moment because he ran somewhere or other to fetch a tourniquet. He looks at the door frame, inspects the dimensions of the shrapnel pieces and their locations. “Had I been standing up, it would have caught me in the neck,” he concludes. "Why is it so important, all these tiny details?" I ask. “Because it’s like a jigsaw puzzle – one piece here, another there, and you fit the whole picture together,” he replies. His left leg and arm, fractures of the spine, internal injuries, twenty surgical operations, eleven months in rehabilitation, two months on the orthopedic ward. At this point, while attending day care rehab, he is starting a master’s program in Political Science. From a wheelchair, he moved to crutches and then to a walking stick. And very soon, not even that, he promises. “It takes time,” he adds, “for the kids to understand that dad isn’t the same as he used to be. Dad can’t run, can’t play football with them, and on their birthdays in kindergarten, when they play musical chairs, dad can’t lift them up. And it’s just heart-wrenching.” We reach the border crossing. There are borders without mines in the world. A small checkpoint, a border guard, and suddenly, you’re in another country. One with exactly the same vistas, wind turbines and whatever – just with a different name. Meanwhile, the entire coach has woken up – and they’re singing: “Od yoter tov, ve’od yoter tov,” (Better and better), next a medley of Marom mimromim, (From the highest Heavens) and a song from the Selichot (penitential) prayers. "What’s a Bedouin’s connection to Zionism?" I ask. Maher has his one-sentence reply down pat. “Not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jewish,” he answers, quoting something someone else in the delegation said the day before. “You live here you serve here. You’re a partner. It’s a natural thing. Coming here and asking questions – now, that’s not natural.” Rifle beneath his head / Yakir Yakir, a Combat Engineering Corps company commander, is one of the most compelling characters you could wish to meet. Bank-guaranteed. A perpetual smile, kind of softly spoken his green eyes that have encountered horrific scenes still mark him out from afar, like a lighthouse. His step is also kind of light, successfully concealing the 22 shrapnel fragments remaining in his body and his three comrades from the company who fell, whose names are tattooed on his right leg in the form of a bear’s paw: the company sergeant, Staff Sgt. Neria Ben David, who fell on October 7 in the battle in Kibbutz Be'eri Sgt. Maj. Jonathan Dean Chaim and Sgt. Oz Shmuel Aradi. We are on a walkabout near the Hofburg Palace in the heart of Vienna – a historic palace that never ends, surrounded by museums, fountains, Roman antiquities, relics from the age of Emperor Franz Josef, the famous Spanish Riding School with its stables, and suchlike. It’s easy to get swallowed up here among the selfie sticks. Possibly, even preferable. The world is not exactly showing us a welcoming face. A group from Israel with shrapnel injuries will not impress a single tourist here. For them, we are just a headache. A complexity, such as the scenes Yakir’s green eyes have witnessed, doesn’t go down well for them with red wine. The day before, over dinner at Malka Vienna, the Jewish restaurant, David Roet, the Israeli ambassador to Austria, spoke with the soldiers about his fear that antisemitism would linger on here for years after the war comes to an end. “It’s become cool to be antisemitic,” he says. Later, he showed me a PM he received on Instagram, that same day, at 10:51 in the morning. “Your hands are soaked in blood, we already know who you are,” sent to him in English by someone or other named Angie. “One of very many,” sighs the Ambassador and asked to sit down. His back aches. At the same time, he describes the dire reality prevailing in Vienna, a place that one would have expected to recall its own history. Ejection of Israelis from an Uber, pizzerias antisemitic graffiti. “Children are told not to speak Hebrew here, not to wear a kippah.” At the same time, in the restaurant, Yakir was sitting with his back to the wall, facing the door. Calculating distance, positions, response options. He wasn’t the only one. “Pulse is audible, but the brain has developed some kind of survival mechanism,” he explains as we move along the Hofburg’s pristine, white brick avenues. December 8, 2023 – Khan Yunis. Intel received about a terrorist mosque: the mission - destroy it. They advance in its direction, accompanied by a force from the Golani Brigade, with tanks covering them from their periphery. “People talk about having a gut feeling – well, I had one, and it wasn’t good,” recalls Yakir, “On the way, two clicks from us, we could see people running.” Then, while they were inside the mosque, on the ground floor, an anti-tank missile was fired at them, striking a support pillar five meters from the wall and showering down large quantities of shrapnel on them. Two of their unit were killed – Sgt. Maj. Jonathan Dean Haim and Sgt. Maor Cohen Eisenkot there were 12 wounded. Yakir remembers thirty seconds of screams. “Not something I experienced,” he says, “the natural instinct is to feel your body. I feel heat, something wet, but all in one piece. Then, you try to think about what to do next - and understand that if you don’t start giving orders, there won’t be a next.” He organizes the wounded, checks to see no equipment has been left behind, asks the combatants to signal green to go one by one – meaning, that no one gets forgotten ensuring covering fire, evac. in small groups at a time, climbing into the carrier, another solid head count moving out forlornly. With fewer troops than they started out with. He is focused – fueled by adrenaline and responsibility. It is not until he arrives and starts arguing with the doctor – yes evac./ no evac. (to hospital) – that he notices his uniform has been cut away, and he has been bandaged all over. 26 shrapnel fragments – mainly in his left leg, hands, neck and nose. Hospitalized for six days at Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva, with his rifle beneath his head. “I hung onto it. I said that if I have to return it, I won’t be returning to combat service,” he recollects. Then, on his way to a processing session with the mental health officer, one moment before he returns to Gaza, he gets a call. There’s been another incident in the company, an IED (explosive charge) fixed onto the side of an APC (armored personnel carrier): race to Soroka. “200 kph, I abandoned the car right by the front entrance,” he describes how he met the incoming soldiers from the crew closest to him - the deputy company commander and the coms operator, who had been injured. And how he lost Sgt. Oz Shmuel Aradi, the company medic. “I was the one who recruited Oz,” he relates, “a kid from a kibbutz, with tractors and field crops. In the final analysis, I’m the person responsible for his path in the army.” The sun is overhead, at its zenith, starting to make us feel uncomfortably hot. Only yesterday, the universe was pelting us with rain and we were walking around drenched through – now this. On Sunday, Yakir threw stone, inscribed with the words “personal guilt” into the Danube. They were asked to choose one word, but this was the closest he could manage. “I don’t think it’s something bad, this personal guilt, but it’s educational,” he says and then adds: “it always will be.” In terms of his processing, delving into his soul, the company commander with the green eyes is not yet there. He is still in the responsibilities of combat. ‘What will you find when you look inside?’ I ask. “That’s a question I don’t know how to answer,” he responds, “A lot of stuff, I expect.” Around us are buildings with statues of angels holding golden shields. On the right, a group of Asian tourists has halted there’s another in front of us. Languages intermingle. The world here is worried about squashing a whole cathedral and a smile into one photo. Yakir is worried about how to contract two words into one. It’s a good time to take out one’s frustration on the world, if we’re already assembled. "What don’t they understand?" I ask. “That we are honestly and truly fighting evil,” he replies, “That we’re doing them a favor.” Curating conclusions There are a few other figures on this Journey whom I cannot stop myself describing. For example, Lt. Col. Adi Attia, head of the IDF’s Telem Command for the disabled in the Division for Wounded Soldiers. It’s a new section, from about half a year ago, and it supports wounded soldiers with family, technical and medical issues – plus a lot more, besides. "It helps them hang onto hope in tough moments," says Adi. Only once the plane is in the air, does this hope-portfolio holder admit that she hadn’t slept well at night because the narratives around her were so overwhelming. One day, she will deal with it, she promises. “But now is not the time.” Or Gusti Yehoshua Braverman, leading the Journey on behalf of the World Zionist Organization, who on the eve of its departure, expressed trepidation about venturing into the vast unknown. Because there is no way of knowing. Maybe someone will fall apart, maybe things will open up so that it might be impossible to close. And now that it’s time to go home, she sums it up by saying that, over and beyond delving into issues related to Zionism, the most meaningful thing to transpire here was legitimation. The soldiers’ legitimation to be weak, to say: Yes, something happened to me. “They said that in one thousand and one different ways,” notes Gusti, “They said: We can talk about the most profound issues, survive them, and walk away strengthened by it all.” That’s it – time to go home. We are now at the airport in Vienna – a propitious point to curate conclusions. From Yuval, for example, the one of the serious expression and the kitbags, who says he hadn’t planned to open up like that – but after hearing the others, he understands he’s not schlepping alone. Or Yakir, the company commander in the Engineering Corps who, in addition to opening up on this journey about matters buried deep within his soul, discovers he found answers to his own personal "why?" Why had he sacrificed so much? – and why he chose to carry on fighting. Or Almaz, who speaks of a new Zionism – one whose essence is not based solely on fighting for one’s home, but also about transforming it into a better place. Or Maher, a Bedouin who declares he admires Herzl. “Just think - a guy creates an Idea, mobilizes an entire nation, and he’s successful! Think about other people at that age – what kind of visions do they have?” Or Eyal Korach, now waiting for the airplane. He’s sitting in a chair at Gate D28, with a book in his hand, entitled Sleeping in Your Shoes, by Erez Katz, a battalion commander in the Givati Brigade. “Right at the beginning of the book,” says Eyal, “there’s a description of an incident at an outpost in Lebanon. Three casualties. It reminds me of my own story, so I’m hanging on this,” he explains. In a short while, El Al flight LY364 will power its way through the dark night clouds. Their compassion. Eyal will board the plane, take his seat, the six others alongside him – those who fell in Lebanon, under his command. “They’re always with me, sitting next to me, speaking,” he remarks. And Yosef asks: "Does this responsibility last a lifetime?"
