Jonathan Dekel is a filmmaker living in New York and Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom, Israel.
On Tuesday, Israelis will vote in the most consequential election of my lifetime. I’ll be one of them, even though I live in New York for now. Israel doesn’t offer absentee ballots to citizens abroad. If you want to vote, you have to be standing in Israel on election day. So my wife and I are getting on a plane, leaving our three children with a babysitter, and praying war won’t break out and strand us.
We’re making the trip because our kids must have a home to come back to. I’m also going because I can’t stand Israel’s current government, and I want it gone. And I’m doing it because I’m a proud Israeli who takes his obligations to his country seriously. When the army calls, I report. When the polls open, I show up. To me, those are the same duty.
We aren’t alone. Through the Fly&Vote campaign, Israelis from Brooklyn to Berlin are booking seats home. The cost of the trip might keep us from a family wedding a few months from now, but we’re going to vote anyway. Many of those flying back left Israel only recently. Some relocated for work. More left because they were disillusioned after three years of fighting — internal and external both.
Many of us plan to go back. My family’s home is in Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom, a village where Jewish and Palestinian families raise their children side by side, and I can’t wait to be there again.
The question I keep asking is what country we’ll be returning to. Three years of protest and war have left Israel isolated, led by a government focused on its own survival. But it is still a place where citizens can vote their leaders out.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza haven’t had elections since the 2006 Hamas victory. Syria and Egypt are under authoritarian rule and neighboring Jordan still has a king. Yet my Palestinian neighbors are Israeli citizens, and on Tuesday they will vote. Israeli democracy is battered and unequal, but it still exists. Crossing an ocean to protect it is something I must do.
Living in the United States this past year has left me aghast at how the world views Israelis. Art and films, including my own satire of the Mossad, are being boycotted just for being Israeli. It seems the world is conflating all of us with our zealot government.
From the United States, this conflict often looks like a morality play with an easy ending. Pick the right side, say the right words, and peace is one ceasefire away. I understand the appeal. It’s a comfortable place to stand when the sirens are going off somewhere else. Israelis don’t have the luxury of closing their eyes and hoping everything works out. We have to plan for the worst in our enemies and our own leaders but keep hoping for better from both.
When we’re in our binational village, my kids go to a bilingual school alongside Palestinian classmates, while I live the paradox of probably seeing them serve in the military, as their parents did. Survival comes first. Every hope I have for peace depends on being alive to work for it.
On the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, as messages poured in from family and friends in the south hiding in safe rooms, I drove to my old reserve unit without waiting to be called. Thousands of us did. When someone comes for your family, you fight.
My value system tells me Israelis and Palestinians can share this land. My nervous system remembers that morning. The two argue constantly, and I’ve stopped expecting either one to win. Most Israelis I know carry the same argument around with them. From far away, it can look like hypocrisy. For most of us, it’s an ordinary weekday.
The war has been ugly. Too many civilians in Gaza have died, and Palestinian families in my village have buried relatives there. Even though I know Israel is not committing genocide, I also know that this is no defense of this government’s conduct. I can hold my ground on the first point and still be furious about the second. That fury is a big part of why I’m getting on a plane. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his partners have offered one answer to radicalization, which is more force, and no horizon past the next round.
Israelis like me are easy to miss because we don’t fit on a protest sign. But we’re everywhere. We serve in uniform. We march against this government. We’re raising kids and building a country with our Arab neighbors. And we vote. Israeli expats might become the October surprise of this tight election.
I’ll admit I almost talked myself out of this trip. One vote against an ocean and jet lag is hard math. Then came the attempted hijacking of the FlyDubai flight. A plane full of Israelis, an attacker in the cockpit, the aircraft heading toward our national airport. The passengers didn’t wait to be rescued. They rushed forward and overpowered the attacker, and the plane pulled up in the final seconds.
My country is in a nosedive too, and nobody is coming to pull us out of it. We must rush the cockpit. On Oct. 7, I showed up for Israel’s survival, and on Oct. 27, I’m flying home to fight for what kind of country survives.
Fight or flight? I’m choosing both.
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