Last Friday, I returned from a weeklong trip to Israel. I travel there at this time every year for meetings related to my work. More so than in the past, this was an emotion-filled experience, as I seemed to be confronted at every turn with the difficult situation facing this country, and, indeed, Jews around the world. Many of you have asked me for my impressions after the trip, but I have found it hard to summarize this in a few sound bites, so now that I am over my jet lag, I sat down and wrote this letter last night.

I will begin by saying that the decision to go was not made lightly. The days preceding my trip saw almost daily suicide attacks in Israel, including the horrific incident that has come to be known as the "Passover Massacre." I received phone calls from concerned family members telling me not to go. The reality of life in Israel, as I witnessed when I was there, and as I knew before I left, is that life goes on. People go to work and school and live their lives as best as possible under the circumstances. For me, I kept coming face to face with the notion that I was breezing in there for one week, while my colleagues and family who live there have been and will continue to face this situation for the next week, month, year – however long this goes on. Given the sacrifice that they make to build a Jewish homeland for the benefit of all of us, who am I to say to them that I can't be with them for one week? I would not be able to face them or myself if I had done otherwise. So, I will take taxis instead of buses. So, I will avoid restaurants. So, I won't go to busy public places. They do the same. But, the least that I could do was show up, if asked to.

Now, that I am back, I can tell you that there was another reason that I don't think that I realized before I left. I needed to connect. I needed to feel that I was not simply sitting here in New York. I needed to feel a part of the reality of life in Israel, if only for a short time. And, now I feel compelled to pass that reality on.

I began my trip as I often do, staying with Grandmother's first cousin, Tzipora, a secular woman in her late 60's who was born in Poland, survived World War II in Siberia and came to Israel in 1957 along with many others seeking refuge from the wave of anti-Semitism that was sweeping Poland at the time. She and her husband live in Cfar Saba, a leafy, middle class suburb of Tel Aviv. It is also the site of a recent shooting rampage by a Palestinian, which resulted in the murder of an innocent teenager who chose to hang out on the street with her friends after school. I learned from her and from her kids about the duality of life in Israel today. One minute, we were watching the heart wrenching bios on television of those recently murdered (very reminiscent of 9/11), and the next minute, we were chatting about the wonderful post-bar-mitzvah vacation that her son and grandson had just taken to western Europe and the great computer games that they purchased while there. Life goes on. There are millions of people in this country – Jews and Arabs. Several hundred lives have been viciously blown apart, but that still leaves millions who must find a way to cope with their reality.

It's not always so hard to forget about the reality of this war. The weather was gorgeous while I was there, and everything is in colorful bloom this time of year. Despite the fact that there was fighting close by, all was extremely peaceful, as I played soccer outside with my young cousin.

The beauty of my surroundings was nowhere more apparent to me than during the taxi ride to Jerusalem, the site of my meetings. I always forget what an awesome-looking city Jerusalem is, situated on several mountains, ringed by lush greenery and extremely uniform in appearance due to a law that all buildings must be made with same stone, known as Jerusalem stone. I have traveled to many cities in the world and objectively speaking, none looks more spectacular than Jerusalem. This fact, of course, stood in stark contradistinction to the fact that I was not coming to the same Jerusalem. I had come to a place that had become the epicenter for the madness perpetrated by the Palestinians on their youth, convincing them that blowing themselves apart in a blaze of fire and nails in the middle of Jerusalem was the way to secure eternal bliss.

My Polish-born taxi driver talked about the situation with me for most of the ride. He is very supportive of Sharon's entry into the West Bank to rout out terrorists and to destroy their infrastructure. Sharon's ratings have soared as he is finally doing something to gain control of the situation. The taxi driver stated what many people now feel. Why did it take the "Passover Massacre" to do this? What about the Dolphinarium last summer? Isn't the murder of 15 innocent teenagers hanging out at a disco enough cause to put a stop to the suicide bombers? Of course, there are many factors at play, and I pointed out to him the new world in which we live after September 11th that has a much lower threshold for terrorism. There is also the symbolic effect of murdering people as they celebrate their right to be a people free from oppression. The taxi driver made clear to me that no matter what the political, social and other factors at play are, many people lost their lives as Israel waited a year and half to do what most countries would not have waited a day to do.

By that afternoon, I was welcomed warmly by Sasha, another first cousin of my Grandmother's. He and his wife Fela immigrated to Israel from France in 1990. They are much more religious than Tzipora and certainly more Zionistic. They make their home in the Old Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem. They told me how they have been preparing and delivering food to the Israeli soldiers fighting nearby in Bethlehem. They have been very impressed by the wave of voluntarism that has swept the country. Rather than allow the situation to paralyze them, many Israelis have tried to be constructive. We talked about an organization of high school students that are visiting and helping fellow students orphaned by the war.

Then, they told me a very important fact. In their conversations with soldiers in Bethlehem, they heard from them how badly they felt having to enter people's homes to use them as a base. Indeed, they felt so bad that as they left that they put cash on the table to compensate them for the mess that they made and the possessions that they accidentally broke. Sasha and Fela asked, "What other army in the world would do this?" "Certainly not the United States," Fela remarked, bringing up Afghanistan wherein the Americans went in with their planes and destroyed life and buildings in a much more wholesale manner. This was a sentiment that I heard repeated again and again. The feeling is that any other army would not have tolerated such casualties. They would have gone in with their air force and broken their enemy quickly. The Israelis are going house to house in an effort to do exactly what they said they would do – rout out the terrorists and their infrastructure – and no more. That, of course, results in many more casualties on the Israeli side.

They also told me how they have joined the Civil Guard, a group of people who are patrolling neighborhood streets. Sasha is almost 70. He also fled Poland at the Start of the War and survived the War in Siberia, though not in the same town as Tzipora. After the War, he managed to get to France. He has never held a gun in his life. Last Friday, he took lessons in how to handle one.

Finally, the news was filled with criticism from the United Nations about Israel's entry into the territories. Of course, the feeling in Israel towards the United Nations has always been very negative and continues to be so. Israel will never get past the "Zionism is Racism" issue, a stain on the reputation of the U.N., despite the fact that it has been repealed. And, the U.N. circus in Durban last summer made a mockery of all that such an organization should stand for. In particular, Sasha and Fela and many others singled out Kofi Annan as being a complete fool. How, they asked, can he seriously stand up before the world and somehow ask the democratically elected Israeli Government to stop their efforts at routing out terrorists and then somehow equate that with asking a loose band of terrorist groups to stop their suicide missions?

Being in Israel during Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), added its own perspective. I watched the ceremony in honor of this day from Yad VaShem on Monday night. One by one, I heard the stories of survivors who had lived through such hell to reach this place. And, I could imagine the sacrifice that each one of them and their families have made to make the Jewish State a reality. After all that, to be at this low point nearly 60 years had passed was an overwhelming concept. When you think about the terrible anti-Semitism that is sweeping across Europe, the image is even more powerful. There are now an average of 10 acts of major anti-Semitism a day in France. A colleague who knows about the Bulgarian Jewish community was at these meetings and reported to me that the most philo-Semitic (yes, that is a word) country in Europe is now in the throes of a terrible wave of anti-Semitism. We received the word while there that Turkey, Israel's new secular Muslim friend and the country that Israel reached out to so quickly and generously when they suffered a terrible earthquake, had lobbed intense volleys of criticism at Israel. On and on. In the past few days, since I have returned, I have heard of incidents against Jews in Greece, Germany, Ukraine, Belgium and other countries. Indeed, on Tuesday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a warning against Jews traveling to France and Belgium for fear of anti-Semitic attacks.

But, back to Yom HaShoah. On this day, at 10:00 in the morning, the entire country stops for two minutes of reflection. A siren sounds, and everybody stops what they are doing. If you are in a car, you pull over to the side of the road. For my two minutes, I thought about those survivors. And this notion became even starker as we viewed an interview with a survivor from Central Russia who had been interviewed by the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation (Spielberg's Foundation). He was six when the War started in Minsk. He was eventually sent to Auschwitz where they did terrible experiments on him, including castration without anesthesia. He survived and eventually ended up in a camp in Cyprus as he waited to enter Israel. As a teenager, he fought in Israel's War of Independence. But, in 1949, he went back to the Soviet Union in a vain attempt to find his parents or something of what he left behind. He was immediately put in prison – probably as a Zionist spy – although he was never charged and went from gulag (slave labor camp) to gulag in Siberia for 23 years. He was 6 when the War started and 38 when he started his life again. How could a world that allowed this to happen to this little boy be so self-righteous in its criticism of the State that essentially grew out of such horror?

I went back to Sasha and Fela's house for dinner on Wednesday night. Their daughter had just gotten engaged, and they were having a little celebratory dinner. We talked about what a hopeful message they gave to their family and friends by getting engaged. I sort of felt that way every time I saw a woman in Jerusalem who was pregnant (and there are a lot of them). I felt good for a moment, because it is such an affirmation of the future. Most of the talk that night was not about the matzav (situation), as they call it, but about the wedding plans. They even talked about how many kids they want to have. We could see the lights of Bethlehem from their balcony in Jerusalem as we ate.

That night, I watched a controversy unfold on television, as people spoke about what to do for Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Independence Day), now that Yom HaShoah had ended, and this was coming up the next week. Should they celebrate as they have always done with dancing in the streets, or is it not appropriate? Mayors from all over Israel were weighing in. One said that it was not appropriate, and besides, there is a great security risk. Another said that there should be a ceremony but subdued. While another said that there should be dancing, and we should leave it up to people to decide whether or not to come. I was most moved, though, by a woman who had been in the Hotel in Netanya when the Passover Massacre occurred. She was very shaken as she spoke about it. She said that the scene was unbelievably horrific. Blood was everywhere. She ran crying from the Hotel. But, she couldn't stay away. Two hours later, she returned. Why? She said that it was so horrific that she could not believe it. Her mind couldn't process it. She wanted to go back and see if it had really happened, or if she had imagined it. She was very clear that all celebrations should be cancelled. She was terribly afraid of another bloodbath.

On my last day, I had perhaps what was the most difficult and most emotional experience of my weeklong visit. I did the mitzvah (good deed) of bikur cholim (visiting the sick). I visited soldiers in the Hospital who had been injured over the past few weeks of fighting. This was not my initiative. We were meant to have day out of the office, hiking and biking in the Galilee region in the north. That was cancelled for security reasons, as well as the apparent inappropriateness of such an outing given the circumstances. Instead, we had a yom heetnadvoot (volunteer day). Some people played with Ethiopian-Jewish kids in a kindergarten, some sang songs with the elderly, and a third group painted a new classroom at a home for delinquent teenage girls. I chose to visit injured soldiers.

I had no idea what to expect, having had no experience with this. I spoke with a colleague about my concern that I would encounter people who may be bitter over their circumstances. He looked me in the eye and said, "this ain't Vietnam." These people believe in what they are fighting for and know that they are all that stands between the terrorists and the soldiers' families. They are fighting for their homeland, and if they do not do it, nobody will. And, you know what, he was 100% right. I heard the injured soldiers say it, and I could feel the sincerity in their words.

I met four soldiers – two who had been in Ramallah and two who had been in Jenin, two cities in the West Bank that the Israelis had entered to rout out the terrorists. The first soldier was very grateful to be alive. He was in Jenin with the group of 13 who were killed last week. They were all elite soldiers, trained to do exactly what they were doing, but they were overwhelmed. At one point, a wall came tumbling down and that killed many of them. This soldier was steps away, as most of those around him perished. He simply had some shrapnel in his leg. His father, who was sitting there with him, went on and on about how wonderful it is that somebody who does not know his son should come and show concern. "We are all one big Jewish family," he said. It sounded like a commercial for a Jewish organization. But, never did I feel it so strongly.

The next soldier was in Ramallah. I said to him that I was going home to the United States that evening, and I asked him if there was any message that he wanted me to pass along to Americans or American Jews, in particular. He said to me that he thinks that Israeli soldiers have been portrayed as "killers" in the media. "Is that true," he asked. I said that I believed that it was true. He said, "You tell the Americans that we are not killers." He went on to say that if they were killers, they would have killed indiscriminately, rather than going in in the "surgical" way that they have to only go after terrorists or their infrastructure. This is self-defense, not murder. He did not view himself as a killer and was terribly afraid that somebody else should believe this about him.

The third soldier who was in Ramallah related a harrowing story about being shot in the throat, then holding his fingers in the opening to stem the flow of blood, holding the fingers of his other hand in his mouth to keep air coming in, and then jumping from the third floor of a building to escape from fighting on the lower floors. He will be fine. It became very clear to me just how real and just how hand-to-hand this war is.

The most disturbing encounter, though, was the fourth one. It was from a soldier shot while in Jenin. He said that he saw Palestinian parents pushing their kids towards the Israeli soldiers telling them to martyr themselves. The soldier said that he and his fellow soldiers felt so sorry for these kids that they started giving them food.

As I left each soldier, I told them that they were not just fighting for Israel. They were fighting for Jews all over the world and indeed for all people who believe in the same democratic and humanistic values. I told them that as both an American and a Jew, I was proud of them, and I thanked them.

Before I left Israel, I had tea with my wife's cousin, Eva, a dignified, bright, cultured, secular Jewish woman who must be near 80. She survived the War by being shipped to Denmark from Czechoslovakia along with her sister. The rest of the family was murdered. We spoke about many topics -- mostly related to the situation. One issue that we spoke about was the notion of fantasy. She explained that the Arabs have always been a people that believed strongly in fantasy. Just look at the issue of the martyrs, she said. They tell their young men that if they blow up Jews in a marketplace, they will ascend to a wonderful place where there will be 72 virgins. "Come on," she said. "Who believes in this stuff?" But, it's serious. They do believe in it, and its results are catastrophic. We wondered what they have told the young ladies who have chosen to be the latest suicide bombers.

She went on to talk about all of the other fantasies that they fill their heads with, like taking over Israel and throwing the Jews into the sea. If you don't live in reality, how can you deal with the situation realistically? But, this extends further, she said. It also means that they feel comfortable with "fantasies." They are constantly telling lies to the press and to governments, and see nothing wrong with doing so. I heard this from others, and there is a web site now put out by the Israeli Government outlining lies that the Palestinians have told which several days later were disproved by the Israeli Government. But, by then, the damage has already been done. She stated it correctly. Israel is a government that needs to stand by its statements. The Palestinians need not have credibility, and the journalists who spread these lies without checking out facts or providing context are equally guilty.

Then, I asked Eva a question. "I am going home in a few hours," I said, "and my wife and her parents will ask how you are doing. What should I tell them?" She said, "tell them that the situation is bad, but that I am fine. I love my life in Israel, and I love Jerusalem, and I would not have wanted to raise my kids anywhere else, even with all that is going on today. I just hope that they do not have as difficult a life as I had."

As I came home, I heard the news that Colin Powell, whose motorcade passed me on the other side of the highway on my way to airport, had received his answer about stopping suicide attacks from "General" Arafat. A suicide bomber had just blown himself apart, killing several people in a marketplace in Jerusalem within earshot of Colin Powell. A faction directly connected to Arafat claimed responsibility.

I add here that most Israelis seemed to be very satisfied with President Bush. Despite his very clear calls for an "immediate pullout," the feeling was that these statements were made with a wink and nod – that Bush knew exactly why Israel was there and if Bush really Israel to pull out, they would be out. Today's front page New York Times article says as much.

I almost thought that that was the end of my intense Israel experience, but on the plane ride home, I heard about "some rally" that was taking place in Washington, D.C. on Monday. As I went through the weekend, I realized that this was to be a once-in-a lifetime expression of American solidarity with the Jewish state. And, it was. The ride down on I-95 was in and of itself, an experience. Car after car and bus after bus was adorned with signs and flags waving their support of Israel. We gave the thumbs up as we passed them or they passed us knowing that we were all coming together to tell Israelis that they are not forgotten and to tell the administration and our fellow Americans that just as America had a battle in Afghanistan to rout out terrorists, the Israelis have a battle in their backyard for the same cause.

As I stood there, shoulder to shoulder with all manner of Jew, from the Chasidim to the teens with metal in their ears and lips, I thought of the political cartoon from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel that has hung in my office now for about four years. It is a picture of a person in an Arab headdress holding a bomb, and it reads, "Orthodox...Conservative...Reform...I, for one, prefer not to dwell on differences."

As they announced that the numbers had already gone over 100,000 people, I couldn't believe that this was pulled off in just a week. But, the timing was right. I'm not the only one who was feeling powerless and needed to connect on this issue. Jews all over this country were feeling that they just had to do something. So, on a Monday (imagine if it were a Sunday), an incredible number of people took off from work and school, and came from Texas, Chicago, Florida, Wisconsin (they wore these very conspicuous red shirts with the word Madison in Hebrew emblazoned across it), and up and down the east coast to be there. Some traveled for more than 24 hours on buses.

They say that it was the largest rally in honor of Israel ever held. I'm sure that's true, since the numbers that are coming out now from the Washington, D.C. police exceed 300,000. They realized that so many people never actually made it there or got there late, because of the traffic jams and parking problems, and that if you take into account the many other determining factors, you will arrive at this much higher number. That would mean that it exceeded the Soviet Jewry rally in 1987 that everybody harkens back to as the ultimate expression of Jewish solidarity with their brethren.

During our meetings in Jerusalem, we heard from the well-known Jewish educator, Avraham Infeld. He said that when he told his father that he was going to major in Jewish history, his father said, "There is no such thing as Jewish history, only Jewish memory." As a people who continue to be subject to a double standard and who continue to be hurt by the sting of anti-Semitism, we cannot afford to see the past as history, or we are doomed to repeat it. I was thinking of this as I read the full page ad in the New York Times this past Tuesday (April 16; page A23), taken out by a Holocaust survivor who now lives in Guatemala. His message was that we can't be silent the way that so many were in Europe during World War II. He ended his piece by saying that "Israel needs the Diaspora, and the Jews of the Diaspora cannot survive without Israel."

Dear friends and family, I didn't write this piece just as a catharsis to get out my obviously strong feelings about the situation. I felt a responsibility to allow these voices to be heard. The survivor from Guatemala is correct. We cannot be silent, and we will not. There are so many ways to help from buying from shopinisrael.com, to educating your community, to writing of your support of Israel to our legislature or our President, to writing letters to the editor, to educating friends and family. As the Holocaust survivor goes on to say, the "Israelis are giving their sons and daughters. What can you give?" Feel free to pass this on, and please don't be silent.