I fell asleep on the couch and woke up at around 12:30 a.m. I didn’t feel right; my body ached, my heart hurt. As I slowly got up, I turned off the lights, gave Charlie, my chocolate lab puppy, a kiss, and went upstairs to bed. I felt terrible and thought it must have been the ice cream I had for dessert since sugar doesn’t really agree with me any longer. In the morning, at 6:33 a.m., I awoke with tears in my eyes—literal tears. This is incredibly rare, as the last time this happened was when it felt like my dad came to visit me while I was sleeping. None of this made sense until I remembered what day it was: October 7th. Three years.

Three years ago, my life was very different. I was running a major organization, my life was incredibly busy, I had a tremendous amount of stress and pressure in my life, I had physical health challenges, I was worried about the rise of Jew hatred and had become a regular on the local TV news talking about the growth of hatred, specifically Jew hatred, and how we were being targeted in Central Florida and around the country. Hate groups had moved to Central Florida since it was an inexpensive place to find housing for them, and they could easily drive to major cities in the state in a short period of time. The world was challenging, but the fight was on, and the media was supporting the Jewish community and what we were facing.

On the morning of October 7th, I sat down with a cup of coffee in my living room, turned on the TV and could not believe what I was seeing. The massacre. The cars on the street with doors open, dead bodies on the street and inside the cars. The stories being told by the newscasters. One image remains buried in my memory. The car passenger door is open. The father is in the drivers seat, dead with his head on the steering wheel. His young daughter’s body resting on his shoulder, also dead. I felt the brutality. I heard about the Nova festival but couldn’t imagine what was really happening there.

I started sending WhatsApp messages to my friends in Israel to check on them. They were all in safe rooms or shelters. They were all in WhatsApp groups getting updates. They were all scared and not sure what was happening. I was terrified for my friends, especially those living anywhere in the south of Israel. It was a constant check-in during the day while I sat in front of the television, shocked, scared, angry, and terrified by what I was watching.

My friend, the Consul General of Israel to Florida, called to check on me. He told me to turn off the TV, that it wasn’t healthy to keep watching. I couldn’t. Senator Rick Scott called to check on me. It’s a call I will never forget. He didn’t have an aide call; he didn’t send a message. He picked up his own personal cell phone and called to check on me.

I spent the day working with others in the community to put together a vigil for Sunday. We invited politicians and the community. The room was packed. The politicians showed up, and the community bonded. I thought it was the start of healing, but I was sorely mistaken.

Since then, I have worked with the Israeli consulate to host a showing of the Hamas 47-minute video. I saw things I will never forget: images that cannot be explained. I have been back to Israel seven times and will be back twice more this year, including a trip in just ten days from now. I have been to Kfar Aza three times. The things I saw at Kfar Aza in May 2024 were horrific. The brutality was still visible. It was agonizing. As a friend of mine said, it was like being at Auschwitz just after liberation.

I have been the Nova Festival site three times, heard the amazing and heroic Rami Davidian, who saved 750 people from the Nova Festival, speak three times, and been there when it was just some family markers, when it had been upgraded by the families, and most recently when it has been taken over by Jewish National Fund (JNF) and now chronicals what happened. It’s never easy to be there. The first two times I was there, we finished our visit by singing. It felt right to bring music back to the site of the music festival filled with joy that turned into terror and mass murder. It felt like we were honoring those murdered, raped, and taken hostage.

I made sandwiches at Shlomi’s food truck outside Kibbutz Be’eri and brought them to soldiers on the base going into Gaza. I’ve spent time at Hostage Square, listened to the stories of hostage families and hostages, heard the stories from survivors of the Nova Festival, and talked with friends of mine who fought the terrorists on October 7th and for the next 3 years. People who have spent over 500 days in miluim (reserve duty). The stories are horrifying. Yet the world remains silent and chooses to push the genocide libel.

Today was filled with deep emotions. I found myself thinking about all that has happened since October 7th. The horror of the 7th. The joy of the hostages coming home. The devastation when we learned a hostage was dead. I saw this video the other day and it haunts me. When we thought the Bibas family was alive, I put their pictures on chairs at my Passover Seder table. As the father of two boys, about the same age difference as Arial and Kfir, it was personal for me. Their murder devastated me. Then I saw this video of Ariel meeting Kfir for the first time. It ripped my heart. As you watch these two beautiful boys, beautiful brothers, remember that Hamas literally choked the life out of them. That’s who we are talking about. Terrorists who not only kidnapped children but strangled them with theri bare hands.

I thought of my friend’s cousin Hila, who was taken hostage at age 12 along with her mother. She was released the day before her 13th birthday, while her mother remained as a Hamas hostage for two more days. Since she and her mother were hostages, we knew there would be no presents, and that was not acceptable. Her cousin and I raised some money, created Amazon lists for people to buy the things she wanted, and used the money raised to buy the things that weren’t available on Amazon. Through a friend and former student who is high up at Rare Beauty, we got a donation from them of the items that Hila wanted. We sent multiple suitcases of gifts to her. Her mother recorded a video of her opening the suitcases and the presents and sent it to us. When I saw the joy on her face, it gave me hope for all the hostages. It’s a miracle that so many of them came home alive.

I thought of all the people who deny October 7th happened. Who deny the murders, the kidnapping, the conditions the hostages were held in, the rapes and sexual assault. The brutality of the murders. How important it was that General Eisenhower demanded his soldiers take pictures of the concentration camps they were liberating because in the future people would try to deny it. Here, Hamas took the videos and posted them, yet people still deny them. I thought today about how we need to share the videos once again. That we can’t be afraid of the trauma of watching them. The world must see what really happened. Most will not ever get to Israel to see it first hand. They are watching Fauda and seeing episodes 7 and 8. They are reporting how they never understood October 7th until they saw those episodes. Our words haven’t worked. The images and videos can. I remember seeing this video of the IDF first discovering what happened at Nova. The despair in the IDF soldier’s voice as he discovers everybody is dead haunts me.

It’s hard to believe it has only been 3 years ago. It’s also hard to believe it’s already been 3 years. The changes I have seen in Israel on each visit since October 7th are astounding. As I prepare to go back in 10 days, I’m not sure what to expect. The country is dealing with the trauma of October 7th. The election will happen while I’m there. As a number of former Israeli diplomats have said to me, this election is for the soul of Israel. Israelis are flying in to vote. It will be yet another experience that helps me understand the realities of Israel.

People want Israel to be black and white. It’s not. Like my emotions related to October 7th, Israel is complicated and nuanced. October 7th isn’t. Hamas brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped, and mutilated people. They burned people alive. Those they took hostage were treated inhumanely. Sexually assaulted. Beaten. Starved.

Three years ago my life was filled with stress and health issues. Three years later, I no longer have that stress. The health issues all resolved. My career takes me to Israel 3 or so times each year for between 1 and 3 weeks each trip. I have come to understand Israel much deeper. I spend time in the West Bank on these trips, meeting with Palestinians who are now colleagues and friends. I understand them much deeper as well.

October 7, 2023 ripped away part of my soul that will never return. The scarring and the fracture is there forever. It has given me new insights in the Jew hatred that is around us. It will always be around us. When things in the world aren’t going well, the world always looks for somebody to blame. Throughout history, it has been the Jews. It will continue to be the Jews. That’s our reality. The difference this time is that we have Israel. Unlike in the past when we have been defenseless, we are no longer those people. For many of the Jew haters this makes it worse. They’d like to hate us, have us go away, blame us for whatever the problems they are facing, and if many of us die, they don’t care. Israel has changed the reality. We aren’t going away. We aren’t going to be silent.

We also can’t go to the extremes. I’ve seen friends go to the far left, blaming Israel and the Jews for everything. I’ve seen friends go to the far right, believing that there are no good Palestinians, no good Muslims. I call them both out. That simply isn’t true and only continues the cycle of hate. Yes there are terrorists who are Muslim. As I said to a friend of mine on this issue, if you have 2 billion muslims and 1 percent are terrorists, that’s still 20 million terrorists. If it’s 0.1 percent, that’s still 2 million terrorists. That means there are 99% or 99.9% that are not. We can not generalize. Yes the Palestinian Authority is corrupt. Abbas has not held elections in over 20 years. If we look at Israel and the United States, are our governments so much better? We have plenty of corrupt politicians in Israel and the US. Smotrich and Ben Gvir match up to any of the Arab or other world corrupt leaders.

What I have learned from October 7th is that it is all about people. People to people connections. Getting beyond the stereotypes. Getting beyond the lies every community is told about ‘the other’. Not everybody thinks the way the west thinks. We need to understand and accept that. Not everybody has the same values, morals, and ethics. We need to understand that and then find those who share ours and work together with them to make a better world.

Nobody is going to fix the world for us. Nobody is going to solve the worlds problems by blaming and working to eliminate the group they think are responsible for the world’s problems. It is up to each of us to do our part, however small it is, to repair the world. To build relationships that change the daily lives of those we can impact. I won’t fix America’s problems by myself. I won’t fix Israel’s problems by myself. I won’t solve the Palestinian’s problems by myself. But I can make some American’s lives better. I can make some Israeli’s lives better. I can make some Palestinian’s lives better. Let’s each look at what we can individually do. Get others to join us and our groups do more together than each of us separately. Despair, anger, and hate is not the answer. Love is. Community is.

It is now October 8, 2026. The start of year 4 since the horrifying events of October 7th. My committment is to spend the next year doing what I can to change and improve the lives of those that I actually can. I hope you will join me. Together we can change and save the world. Or we can allow it to devolve and implode. The choice is ours. I hope we all hear the classic words from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. “You have chosen wisely.” Each of our actions will determine what happens.