I’m perhaps not the typical American Zionist who decided to make Aliyah. Since I was a wee high schooler, I was extremely left-wing and generally leftist. I devoted myself to learning about the suffering of various minorities around the world, and I was a fierce feminist. Naturally, the friends I gravitated toward in college shared my values.

When October 7 happened, I slowly but surely began to understand the deep current of antisemitism that had seeped into liberal elite universities. I couldn’t understand how certain ideas had taken root in people I had considered intelligent and compassionate. Most of all, I couldn’t understand how people I had called friends could cheer on, justify, or minimize the suffering and atrocities experienced by Israelis.

I had never spent much time in Israel. In fact, before making Aliyah, I had spent only five days of my life there. But Israel had always been present in my life. I went to Jewish day school, where all my Hebrew teachers were Israeli and many of my classmates had family there. Even half of my own family lived there. And my grandfather’s story was deeply tied to the country.

My grandfather lost seven siblings, his mother, his first wife and two children in the Holocaust. After the war, he was denied entry to the United States because of a lung condition he had developed in the camps, under the discriminatory immigration policies then in........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)