You see it on the posters massed in random places bearing the pictures of those murdered or still held captive. And in the demonstrations erupting spontaneously, like the terror that inspired them. You feel it in the sad overtones of a lone pianist playing dirges at Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square next to a burned car in which someone died.
I expected there would be grief, of course; it’s impossible to live in the world today without knowing of the carnage Israel suffered on Oct. 7. What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the freshness of those wounds, how they still glisten with an uncanny red glow.
I saw plenty of wet bloodstains during a recent week-long sojourn to the Holy Land with a delegation of Philippines-based journalists hosted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
There was the former home of a murdered Filipino caregiver, now pocked with bullet holes behind an enormous banner bearing his likeness. And another OFW from the same kibbutz tearfully recalling how she held the door of a safe room shut with her bare hands, barring the terrorists clamoring for entry. Or the Ethiopian Jew who, after relating how she barely survived the Nova Music Festival, openly wept while kissing the picture of a dear friend who didn’t.
“I love you,” she whispered to the dead girl’s smiling portrait, amid the distant explosions of an ongoing war, “and I miss you every day.”
These stories now feel as if they are sewn into the fabric of this nation, which has suffered so much. And yet there is also a spirit of resilience, the promise and vow of survival that has carried Jews forward over centuries of anguish. You can see that too in the laughing faces of young people jumping and shouting at an outdoor restaurant where the chef dances with them as he cooks.
You also hear it in the voices of the black-coated religionists blandly hurling their prayers against the hard longevity of the ancient Western Wall.
And you can sense it in the exuberant applause of the crowd as it watches a heartfelt Israeli dance.
Israel is broken. Eventually, I believe it will heal, though deep and permanent scars are likely to remain. How far they penetrate and the severity of the limp they leave, is impossible to know.
Golda Meir, the former prime minister, once famously said, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”
And therein lies the moral quandary Israel finds itself in; that its moral strength is also its greatest weakness. That its reverence for life makes it vulnerable to a bloodthirsty gang of jihadists who value neither their own lives, nor the lives of those they purport to represent.
Before visiting Israel, I had come to two conclusions. First, that any “solution” to the present crisis leaving Hamas extant is no solution at all. And second, that it’s probably impossible to achieve such a solution without sacrificing the lives of the remaining hostages.
When I asked an American journalist living there whether he agreed, his answer was telling.
“That’s like asking me to choose between keeping my left hand or my right hand,” he moaned. “I’d really rather keep both.”
Whether Israel emerges from this morass crippled by the loss of a limb remains to be seen. Whatever happens, though, the country will need nurturance and healing.
Will it come from a new prime minister, trusted and beloved by all, who unites the nation to start anew? Or will someone else emerge, a new Messiah, as-it-were, to finally bring Israelis together in mourning, renewal, and hope?
In the land where the likes of Jesus once trod, such an outcome is not hard to imagine. Until then, let us keep that Promised Land and its crestfallen people in our hearts and minds. And always in our woeful prayers.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book, Dark Skies; Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, was recently voted #1 on Goodreads’ list of Best Memoirs Published in 2025. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
