The last time I had been to Israel was a decade ago, when I lived in Jerusalem after college. I was young and hungry, and I devoured the country. ...

I also felt safe there, both in a practical sense (I would walk the streets alone late at night without hesitation) and also in a deeply emotional sense. I was safe in Israel as a Jew. And as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors who once had no place to flee, I realized how precious and profound that feeling was.

Now, months after Hamas invaded the country, I knew that Israel was gone. What I would find in its place, I didn’t know. 

But I went. I went because I wanted to know.