“Be prepared, everyone in Israel is depressed now,” a journalist friend warned me before my husband and I landed in Israel on Aug. 7, exactly 22 months after Hamas perpetrated the terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which incited the Gaza war. Although she tried to arm me, nothing hit home like experiencing Israelis’ ongoing trauma, war weariness and despair with my own eyes.

According to the latest statistics, approximately 63,000 Palestinians (according to the Gaza Health Ministry) and 2,000 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, with an estimated 50 Israelis (both living and dead) still being held hostage.

For five days, we toured Israel with a delegation of seven other San Diegans on an American Jewish Committee fact-finding mission. We officially met with 17 Israelis, ranging from

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