Sabrina Soffer: Where were you and your family on October 7? What was your initial instinct when you heard the siren?

Avishai Berman: It is still not easy for me to revisit that day. We lost so many of our people, including my own friends, and we also lost a certain innocence that we haven’t been able to recover yet. I keep my memories of October 7 in a mental drawer that I hesitate to open, given the emotional strength I need to do so.

For me, the day started at 6:40 AM at home in Yerucham. The siren came as a complete surprise amid the quiet of Simchat Torah morning. My wife and I quickly woke our children and ran to our protected space. I had an instinct that something massive had begun and rushed back to my bedroom for my phone. After we closed the steel door, I needed to understand what was happening and reach the Mechinot (pre-military leadership academies) that I supervise.

That was when it all started for me. What do you remember from the first moments when you heard about what was happening? What were your first thoughts?

Sabrina: I remember waking up at 6 AM in Washington, D.C. I checked my phone, and the first notification I opened was from my friend, Roee. He asked me to share a photo of his friend, Itay, a soldier. At first, I didn’t understand. Then, within a few minutes, breaking headlines began to pop up on my phone, and I knew something was deeply wrong.

My body was overwhelmed with sheer shock. While I am American, I am also part Israeli, and as a citizen, my first instinct was that I should be in Israel on the front lines. I carried a piercing sense of guilt for weeks. But I wouldn’t let it linger. My response was to leap into action and more vigorously advocate for Israel on campus and online.

October 7 spurred me into action. How did that day impact the way you think about Zionism and Judaism?

Avishai: That is a big question. My wife and I were born the same year that Egypt signed a historic peace treaty with Israel, and we grew up during the era of the Oslo Accords. There is a famous Hebrew song, “I Was Born for Peace,” and I feel that, in many ways, we grew up with the spirit of Uzi Hitman’s lyrics. Yet, since the early 2000s, Israel has been drifting further away from the possibility of Israelis and Palestinians truly living side-by-side.

October 7 shattered much of that hope. As I write this, I feel the same way I did at the start of the war, as though we have been thrust back to Israel’s earliest years. We have a state, but for the foreseeable future, we will still be fighting to ensure its survival.

I will say that, throughout the entirety of the war, I have heard story after story proving that the Zionist spirit has not been extinguished. I remember young soldiers scrambling to get flights to Israel at the start of the war and the international aid that supported us during the Iranian attacks. In this sense, the war has instilled in me a profound belief in Israeli society.

That’s my perspective from living in Israel. How do you think October 7 changed you?

Sabrina: October 7 made me appreciate how Israel is a “light unto the nations.” The stories of the October 7 heroes and the soldiers fighting this war highlight our people’s fortitude. What happened that day and the world’s reaction made me realize this war is a fight for the values of truth, discernment, and courage that have sustained civilization throughout time.

When the war started, I was a junior at George Washington University. What unfolded on American campuses was shocking, though not entirely surprising. I had already experienced the anti-Israel climate there before October 7. After that day, I wanted to uncover the roots of the depravity we are seeing in the civilized world, which is fueled and sustained by intellectuals and academia. Afterward, my activism intensified and shaped my studies and the work I have gone on to pursue.

Even on October 7, protestors were already out in force. What’s been your reaction to seeing that phenomenon play out?

Avishai: For a long time, I was too consumed by the war in Israel, including months of reserve duty, to grasp what Jews abroad were experiencing. Only two years later, when I was visiting New York and met a wide variety of Jewish people, did I finally understand the crisis unfolding abroad. I felt ashamed that it took me until then to appreciate the magnitude of what you were facing outside of Israel.

I would also add that what stands out in my memory is the incredible embrace we received from Jews around the world at the start of the war. It is hard to put into words just how meaningful that was. Never in my life had I felt our global Jewish connection and a sense of mutual responsibility that transcends borders as powerfully as I did at the beginning of the war.

Could we have done something differently to gain the world’s sympathy, or are we fighting a losing battle?

Sabrina: Israel’s emphasis on antisemitism is valid. However, the world must know that antisemitism is not a Jewish problem, and that anti-Zionism is not an Israel problem. Today, sadly, truth is less important than political affiliation or popularity, but people may be able to realize, one day, when their societies corrode due to the unresolved issues fueling antisemitism, that truth does matter. I just hope it won’t be too late.

I also saw some organizations in America attempting to shy away from highlighting IDF heroes. This may stem from an effort to avoid further demonization, but it is problematic for two reasons: first, because it is disingenuous and shameful to appear ashamed, not true to who the Israeli people are and what Israel is. Second, because the more that the Jewish people fall into victimhood and refrain from demonstrating our strength, the more hate that will arise. Sympathy is like a salve, but it does not address the festering wound.

Part of combating the hatred global Jewry is facing involves advocating for Israel. From the point of view of an Israeli, what do you think the West still does not understand about your country and the Middle East?

Avishai: The first time I visited the United States, I traveled around New York State, and everything was so green, beautiful, and peaceful. It was clear to me why someone living in such an atmosphere would fail to understand a country that is surrounded by enemy nations threatening its very destruction. A country like America, whose enemies are thousands of miles away, simply cannot grasp how we live. Sadly, the Western world also repeatedly falls prey to the inherent fallacy that “strong is wrong.” Israel is not without fault, but its strength does not make its actions wrong.

To understand Israel, you need to be here. Did you visit Israel after October 7th? How did you feel during your visit?

Sabrina: I visited Israel several times after October 7. On my first visit after that dark day, in January 2025, I toured kibbutzim in the Gaza Envelope, the Nova Festival, Tkuma, and Sderot. I returned to some of those sites during Voice of the People’s inaugural conference in March 2025.

The second visit hit me harder than the first. It’s hard to explain, but my emotions felt closer to the surface. Maybe they had finally started to seep in, or maybe I was finally allowing myself to feel them.

On those visits, I spent time with bereaved families. Those encounters have stayed with me and may have been foreshadowing for my next visit, when I traveled to Israel for the two-year memorial and Hachanassat Torah held in honor of Moshe Yedidya Leiter z’’l. I worked closely with his father, Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, on our book, Of Good Courage: Israel and the West’s Fight for Moral Clarity, an intergenerational conversation between us surrounding the life and sacrifice of his eldest son. There are not enough words to explain how much that visit changed me and how deeply impacted I continue to be by Moshe’s story and his loved ones.

Ambassador Leiter often describes this generation of Jews as the greatest one the world has ever known. It should not have taken October 7 for us to realize that, but this period has reminded me what our people are capable of when courage, vigor, gratitude, and determination are demanded of us.

For me, these past three years have strengthened the bonds between us as a global family. Behind every difficult headline are people, families, friendships, and communities that continue to carry what happened. I think understanding one another begins with being willing to sit with those stories, even when they are painful to hear.