When I saw the first videos of dead Jews in southern Israel, my mind immediately took me to my late father. Many a night, before I went to bed he would talk to me about the world.
“They will always want to kill Jews,” he said. “That sickness will never end.”
I’m not a very observant Jew. My path toward Judaism was a journey through my father. But he was not your prototypical Jew—he was a full-throated Zionist. I grew up reading about Ariel Sharon, Menachem Begin, David Ben-Guiron, and Golda Meir. I memorized all the Prime Ministers and began a lifelong love affair with Israeli politics.
Zionism runs through my family’s DNA. But the religious side never really stuck. I tried a few times, but it didn’t feel natural.
Then I lost G*d in the streets of Baghdad. What I saw on those streets are the things that nightmares are made from. So many dead little girls—raped and tossed aside like rodents. And I was helpless to stop it.
There’s no coming back from stuff like that. The savagery of war is soul-shattering. Yet, I returned to it like a long-lost lover. On subsequent deployments, I returned the favor to hundreds of Al Qaeda, Taliban, and Islamic State fighters. The vengeance that it provides mixed with purpose provides an addictive high that never goes away.
I stayed in the fight, even after most of America turned their backs on my Afghan brothers and sisters. It’s been over three years since the fall of Afghanistan, and I’m still fighting the war.
The war has wrecked me in many ways. But it has also given me my Afghan family. Through them, I find strength. I find the strength to endure the war—and the responsibilities I have to my brothers and sisters in arms.
When I’m with the Afghans, I feel at home. But when I’m in America, I feel alone.
Less than ten days after I retired from the military, I returned to Zion. It had been nearly a decade since I was in Israel.
Following the death of my father, I took my mother to Israel. We mourned him in the old city. Then, of course, I went back to Afghanistan and left a grieving widow alone. My mother dealt with the death of her love—and then I left to fight a losing war.
Throughout our ten-day journey, we explored my favorite country. What I saw filled me with joy and pride I’d never experienced. In conversations with mental health providers, soldiers, retired generals, and others, I learned that this proud country would endure.
They mourned openly at the Nova Music Festival memorial. Women, men, children, and the elderly wept. It was the most beautiful memorial I’ve ever witnessed—and I’ve seen them across the world. But even amidst all of that suffering, I felt G*d’s love for the first time. It enveloped me. And I wept along with my fellow Jews, mourning the unimaginable—and remembering something my father told me.
“Love is the reason for the fight, son.”
I hadn’t experienced that on previous trips to Zion. I had partied until dawn in Tel Aviv with a Jewish Afghan combat veteran after I survived my fourth deployment. The war would go on to nearly destroy my friend partly because he had to “transition” into a country that has never been affected by war, even though it has been fighting for 20 years.
However, my war in Afghanistan had ended this time, but theirs had just begun. And I was so happy for the soldiers I met that they would adjust to life in Israel with people who have been affected by war, too. The Israelis are already banding together, coming up with new, innovative ways to care for their combat veterans. In America, we fill them full of drugs, give them some money, and tell them to “adjust” or “transition” into a society utterly devoid of war.
When I left Israel, a part of me cried. I wanted to stay with them. But when I returned home, my Afghan family reminded me that there are people in America who understand me—and they never judge me.
That is G*d’s blessing.
War is a horrible thing. It shatters lives and destroys everything it touches. It haunts me at night when the demons come. I remember it daily when I’m startled or grieve another friend murdered by our enemies who we let defeat us. Killing, seeing your friends murdered, and even seeing young girls brutally gang raped never leaves.
But even then, war is still, tragically, necessary—because we are human and are inherently flawed.
Yahya Sinwar murdered, raped, and ethnically cleansed more Jews than anyone since Hitler.
But his death while a military victory is more than that. It is the enduring call of my people exclaiming, “Never Again.” And for Israelis, when they say, “Never Again,” they mean it.
I was thinking about relocating to our old homeland in Georgia and I asked one of my cousins why none of the family went back. He said "our people are buried here now" and I wonder how many such conversations will take place in the Afghan exile community in the next 150 or so years after the U.S. betrayal.
Beautifully written. Take care.