Published: 13 April 2026
Last updated: 17 April 2026
My first trip to Israel was when I was 11 years old, my pre-bat mitzvah gift was a trip to a country that I already loved despite never having visited. More than 20 years later, I can still remember the texture of that visit: my first view of the Western Wall bathed in the soft late-afternoon light, vending machines stocked with kosher food, climbing Masada and thinking about the people who had held out there under Roman siege and eating falafel that tasted fresher than anything I had ever eaten in Melbourne.
I fell in love with that version of Israel. Or more honestly, I fell in love with the way I experienced Israel at that age, uncomplicated, immersive, and entirely certain of its meaning.
I have been back to Israel many times since, usually for something significant, like my sister's wedding or accompanying an Australian parliamentary delegation as a staffer. I am not Israeli; I am an Australian-born Jew with a deep family history here. My family has been in Australia since the 1860s, and my mother's ancestors are buried in the Jewish section of the Ballarat cemetery.
And yet, when I arrive in Israel, there is a relief at not having to explain the basic contours of my Judaism. For once, I am not the "interesting Jew", as I am to so many of my non-Jewish friends and colleagues at home. I love being in a place where my religious practices require no translation, where kosher food can be assumed and where Shabbat is built into the structure of the week.
The Israel I fell in love with and celebrated feels vastly different from the one I am watching today.
For a long time, I have found it easy to sit inside my dual identities. I am Australian, but I have a deep love of Israel. I speak Hebrew, I follow Israeli news, and I understand, at least in part, the national sensitivities that shape Israeli public life. Yet, despite this love, I do not want to move to Israel, and I feel culturally very Australian.
Comments10
Rachel Sussman23 April at 05:33 am
Hi Nomi
I identify with much of what you are trying to express. It is important to understand that loving and supporting a country is not subject to agreeing with everything the government does at a particular time, even though it is much easier when we are aligned with a particular government.
Like you I am worried about Ben Gvir and Smotrich and the violence of some extreme right youth on the West Bank towards the Palestinians. Like every country Israel has its shares of social and political problems, these needs to be addressed, without deserting the country if you know what I mean.
It is also important not succumb to misinformation. I also dislike the death penalty, nevertheless, it does not project discrimination nor apartheid. Palestinians are not Israeli citizens and fall under different juristriction, this must be clearly understood. Discrimination is if Israeli citizens have different sets of laws due to religion or race.
Likewise with Bart’s comment that current behavior is extension of 1947-48 ethnic cleansing, the fact that the Israeli Arabs population grew to more than 2million, answers this ‘misinformation’.
So lets stay diligent, strong, fact full, and unapologetic in our love and support.
Bart18 April at 02:15 am
Hi Nomi, I think your article captures a significant and under-discussed aspect in the debate. Although you don’t name it, I think you capture what most diaspora Zionist Jews understand as their ‘Zionism’: an emotional attachment to Israeli people, places and culture that is both shallow as the contents of a political ideology but also very deep as an identity.
One aspect of that identity is this perception that the current period is an aberration, what you describe as a new extreme “version of Israel” contrasted with a vanilla Israel you were taught about.
While this belief is necessary to maintain an ideology, it is insulated from the facts. Extremist-right governments have been in power for 40 of the last 50 years in Israel, their values are the dominant values of Israeli society, and Revisionist Zionism has long since buried Labor/Liberal Zionism.
Israel’s actions today are just an extreme extension of the war crimes, ethnic cleansing and apartheid structures introduced from 1947-48 and reinforced every decade that followed.
A starting point has to be acknowledging Israel as what Israelis have chosen it to be, not what diaspora jews imagine it once was or dream it to one day be.