One minute I was standing awkwardly at Jerusalem’s historic Western Wall wondering what I was doing there. As instructed, I had just stuck a note on the ancient structure bearing my scrawled prayers for peace and prosperity, but now what?
Flanking me on both sides, bearded Orthodox Jews in black coats and top hats hurriedly mumbled Hebrew phrases I couldn’t understand. Many held little black books, bending mechanically at the waist as they chanted. Some even pressed their foreheads against the cold old stone as if expecting a bolt of enlightenment to come crashing through it into their brains.
I’m Jewish, sure, but what did all of it mean? I’ve never been overly observant, don’t know Hebrew, and this was my first visit to the strange country touted as the Jewish homeland. So, what exactly was I supposed to feel?
Then, in an instant, everything changed. Something welled up inside me like an inflating balloon. Starting somewhere in the lower intestine, it made its way slowly up towards my heart. And suddenly I too was pressing my forehead to the wall as its power overwhelmed me. And then I started sobbing, not just in bafflement but in wonder. And realized with a start that I had become a cliché; someone literally wailing at what Christians call the Wailing Wall.
I had come to Israel as part of a media delegation of journalists based in the Philippines. Guests of the Israeli government, our mission was to see what there was to see and report what there was to report.
And believe me, there was plenty to see and report.
We began the trip with a jolt, surprisingly prescient of what was to come. In fact, the original journey had been canceled three days prior to our scheduled departure in deference to a sudden war between Israel and Iran. Then, the second trip almost got sidetracked by a nearly missed connection. Luckily it didn’t, however, and so the impressions began.
My first one: Oh my God, everyone here is Jewish! That wasn’t literally true, of course, but for so-called “diaspora” Jews like me, well, seeing so many fellow tribesmen in one place can be jarring.
Less orthodox Israelis have responded to the religious fervor of their fellows in ingenious ways. Can’t turn on a light switch or operate an elevator on Shabbat because God forbids you to “kindle fire [read electricity] in any of your dwellings…”? No problem, Israeli hotels are routinely equipped with lights that turn on and off automatically and elevators that stop at every floor on Saturdays.
It was one of those elevators, in fact, that delivered me to an event that was to form the backdrop of our entire stay. I was going to dinner but instead got swept into the core of a loud protest demonstration right outside our hotel, complete with drumbeats, cheers, and wild-eyed protesters chanting “BRING THEM HOME!”
They were referring, of course, to the 50-plus hostages still held in nearby Gaza by Hamas, the terrorist band that savaged Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, torturing and murdering more than 1,200 innocent Israelis.
“We must get the hostages back,” one marcher practically shouted into my ear. “At any cost!”
It’s a refrain one sees and hears everywhere in this war-torn country, not only in protest marches, but on posters speckling otherwise innocuous walls—memorials to those murdered or still held captive—and in the somber tones of pianists and bassoonists playing dirges in Israel’s parks and town squares.
The pain is especially clear in the mournful tales of people like the dark-skinned Ethiopian Jew who, standing at the site of the Nova music festival where nearly 400 young Israelis died, told us how she barely survived the onslaught herself while tearfully caressing the picture of a beloved friend who didn’t survive at all.
“I love and miss you every day,” she whispered, kissing the dead girl’s smiling portrait amidst the distant explosions of an ongoing war.
Or the Filipino caregiver who saved the elderly woman in her charge by holding the door of their safe room shut with her bare hands, barring the bloodthirsty terrorists from entry. Today, nearly two years later, she still suffers from frequent panic attacks and recently broke into tears watching the red liquid emerge from her boyfriend’s punctured arm during a routine blood test.
And then there’s Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the hardest-hit communities just a few kilometers from the Gazan border in southern Israel. Today it’s a veritable ghost town, bearing the eerie remnants of once-prosperous homes now in ruins with walls pocked by bullet holes and foundations shattered by grenades. At the entrance of each house hangs the likenesses of those who died there, including Paul Vincent Castelvi, the beloved Filipino live-in aide who spent several years in Israel prior to Oct. 7. On that day he stayed with the elderly Israeli couple in his care, helping them hide inside their safe room until terrorists set the house ablaze killing all three.
Castelvi was just 40.
Like most Filipinos, he was a Christian probably enamored of the Holy Land’s lofty and legendary role in the founding and history of his religion. That too was overwhelmingly clear as we toured this heart-piercing country. Even as a Jew, I couldn’t help but marvel at the very room in which Jesus and his disciples celebrated the Last Supper nearly 2,000 years ago. Prior to Oct. 7, we were told, the place teemed daily with Christian pilgrims and tourists. Now it was utterly devoid of visitors, though still resembling Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic masterpiece depicting the historic event it once hosted.
From there it was a short walk to Christianity’s holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected. The place where one can gaze upon the long-empty tomb and touch Golgotha, the rock upon which the original cross is said to have stood.
Later we visited the spot on the Jordan River where John the Baptist baptized the future Messiah. As well as the ancient village of Capernaum, where Jesus preached, healed, and lived. And it was there, at the Sea of Galilee in the wind of a hot gusty day, that I imagined Jesus performing the miracle of the fish, filling Peter’s net with sustenance for those ancient Hebrews.
Which brings us back to my people, the Jews now fighting for survival in the land of their birth and revival. Despite streets glistening with the shock, grief, and tragedy of the recent violence, one can also sense, see, and even taste the overwhelming spirit of perseverance, resilience, and joy throughout the streets and halls of this newly traumatized country.
It was evident in Jerusalem’s famed Mahane Yehuda Market, where young people danced, sang, hugged, and jumped to the beat of gyrating waiters mixing Limonana. Or the enthusiastic standing ovation afforded the Israeli dance team performing an original number at Tel Aviv’s Suzanne Dellal Center. One could see it at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, where Israeli researchers and scientists proudly showcased their cutting-edge inventions aimed at making the world a better, and more peaceful, place. And at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital, where doctors have figured out how to transform a 1,500-vehicle parking garage into a temporary 2,000-bed emergency center within hours of any attack.
Witnessing these modern miracles, I wondered—not for the first time nor undoubtedly the last—why the Palestinians of Gaza and elsewhere, rather than learning and benefiting from Israel’s achievements and generosity, are so hellbent on murdering the people who could help them so much. Part of the answer, obviously, can be gleaned from history, a tragic portion of which is displayed at the famed Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center on Mount Herzl’s western slope.
It was there I saw dozens of IDF soldiers gazing mournfully at a pile of shoes left by their ancestors murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka. As well as many other personal effects once belonging to millions of European Jews killed by people tragically convinced that what they were doing was right. And it was at Yad Vashem that I saw the heartbreaking display depicting Poland’s Belzec Death Camp, where my own grandparents and uncle are believed to have perished.
I have often wondered whether, had the State of Israel existed in the1930s, my family might have survived.
From that memorial of the Jewish people’s recent past, we proceeded to sites commemorating a past far more distant. Such as the Tomb of King David, where a dense thicket of Orthodox believers can regularly be seen praying earnestly to their God for deliverance. Or the nearby Mount of Olives, the scene of many prophesies and prayers. And finally, to the sacred Western Wall, where I ended up wailing like a fool.
That ancient structure is worshipped as the last surviving remnant of the retaining wall surrounding the original Temple Mount, site of the First and Second Temples destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. It’s also the closest accessible point to that Holiest of Holy spot now topped by The Dome of the Rock, a mosque revered by Muslims, which Jews may not enter.
But why did I cry there? Why was I—a non-observant Jew—so affected by, of all things, this piece of ancient, weathered stone? It’s a question I have considered often in the days since my return. And so far, the best I can come up with feels like nothing but an echo.
I believe I cried for the excruciating pain suffered in ancient, recent, and current times. For the beautiful young Israelis murdered at the Nova music festival and the older ones massacred at Kibbutz Be’eri. I cried for the hostages still barely breathing in hidden tunnels beneath the streets of Gaza. For the innocent Gazans suffering because of the cruel and unrelenting hatred of their terrorist leaders. And for the baseless charge that Israel is an apartheid nation committing genocide against a helpless foe.
Amplified by unquestioning or intentionally biased Western media, the lie is believed by millions who remain ignorant either willfully or by their nature. And so, the Jews of Israel and around the globe find themselves increasingly isolated, something we have seen all too often before.
Finally, I wept for the lost potential of all the good things Israel has to offer the world.
But my tears were wrought by something else as well: the amazing resilience, optimism, and hope girding a people I was born to love. It is awesomely inspiring, and I think it will pull them through.
In the end I was weeping for the agony, ecstasy, and wonder of it all. And silently hoping for the carnage to stop and an enduring peace to fall. Not unlike, I suppose, praying for the coming of a Messiah at that sacred and crumbling weeping wall.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American author, journalist and columnist for The Manila Times. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This piece appeared originally in the Sunday Times Magazine, to which Haldane is a regular contributor.
