Ahead of planned day of rage, Israelis in NY battle fears and try to cope with loss

NEW YORK — The Israeli staff at 12 Chairs, a restaurant that serves as a popular gathering place in Manhattan for Israelis, visibly grieved as they waited their tables.

It was a crisp fall Monday and the restaurant was packed — many Americans had the day off from work for Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day. And while diners drank coffee and ordered meals, two staff members — one Israeli and one not — comforted a sobbing Israeli colleague outside.

After Hamas launched a terror onslaught on Israel on Saturday, the restaurant had hired a security guard, who watched as the staff embraced. “Did she lose someone?” the guard asked me.

The security guard is a new fixture at the eatery: After a kosher restaurant in London was vandalized following the Hamas incursion, the restaurant’s owner initially was so hyperaware of the possibility for violence that he didn’t want his establishment identified. Later, he changed his mind. “We’re done hiding,” a restaurant manager texted. However, the Israelis interviewed still requested that their last names not be used out of safety concerns.

The death toll in Israel from the massacre is estimated at over 1,350 and continues to climb as more bodies are discovered, battles continue to rage and rockets fall. Well over 100 hostages are believed to be held in Gaza and over 2,900 have been injured since Saturday. The bodies of 1,500 terrorists had been located around southern Israel, while the IDF says that a small number of gunmen remain in the country even as the rockets continue to rain down.

When speaking with The Times of Israel, Israelis in New York struggled to find words to communicate the scale of loss and the level of anxiety they now possessed. Those at the restaurant described a state of shock, fear, and grief since learning of the Hamas attacks. Many had friends who had been at the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im and were now missing or killed. Over 260 bodies have been recovered from the festival site.

Twenty-five-year-old Assaf (name changed to protect his identity), a waiter, was trying to find a flight from New York back to Israel. A reservist in the army, his former unit had already been deployed. Because he has spent the last two years living in the United States, Assaf did not receive an emergency call-up notice.

“I called shalishut [the center for deployment orders] today and they said they can’t send any tzav shmoneh [emergency deployment order] because I live abroad. If I want to come it’s going to have to be independently,” Assaf said.

As he spoke, he checked his phone, where he’s a member of several Whatsapp groups with hundreds of Israelis in the US who are trying to organize flights home, fundraise, and purchase the protective gear that they’ve heard units are missing.

Assaf said he was looking for a place to buy flak jackets and helmets to bring back with him but didn’t know where to start. Later that day, he planned on heading to the airport with the hope of getting a seat on a flight to Israel, though he didn’t yet have a ticket and flights were being canceled. When we parted ways, he had tears in his eyes. (Two days after I spoke to him, his colleague told me he was on his way to Israel.)

Even those who weren’t planning to fly back to Israel found their regular lives upended. Amit, 24, is a student who moved to New York in July. “I have two tests this week and a lot of work to do,” he said, but added that studying was impossible. “[I] said okay, let’s disconnect, but then [I’d] get a message that another friend has been killed or kidnapped into Gaza.”

For many Israelis at home and abroad it is almost impossible to turn off the news. Kate, 24, a staff member from Jerusalem, said she and her Israeli friends in New York were together “all the time,” watching the news at each other’s houses after work.

“It’s hard for me that everyone’s there and I’m here,” Kate said. Her family wanted her to stay in New York where she was safer, but Kate felt vulnerable as an Israeli abroad.

“I feel that I’ll walk on the streets and speak Hebrew and something is going to happen to me,” she said. Across WhatsApp groups for Israelis in the US, reports were circulating about a former Hamas leader calling for a global day of rage on October 13.

When speaking with The Times of Israel, news of a rocket barrage toward Jerusalem came in and she called her father.

The manager at the restaurant, Rotem, 35, sat outside smoking, talking about what was happening back home with Israeli customers and friends. Originally from Ramat Gan, she’s lived in New York for 12 years.

“Most of the staff is Israeli so they can’t function like normal,” she said. “Everyone is making a huge effort… They all lost friends. And they all keep losing their friends.”

Rotem said it was distressing to see critical social media posts from people who don’t have a personal connection to the region.

“When you look at the other side, people just don’t get it. I think they’re not educated. They have no idea what’s going on. They go with trends, like Bella Hadid just said ‘Free Palestine’ so we all should say ‘Free Palestine,’” she said. “We’re not fighting innocent people like they’re saying — we’re fighting a terrorist organization.”

She referenced the pro-Palestine rally in Times Square on Sunday where people chanted “Globalize the intifada.” The rally left New York Israelis and Jews scared and angry.

A new level of fear

Antisemitism in the United States has been on the rise in recent years. A March 2023 FBI hate crime report listed 817 antisemitic hate crimes in 2021 in the US, an increase of almost 20 percent from the previous year. Influential public figures such as musician Kanye West and billionaire Elon Musk have been under fire for antisemitism.

Israelis in New York have said they felt exposed — fears of violence that last week would have seemed outrageous now seemed plausible. Israelis learned of the attacks through surreal social media videos that showed how extensively the IDF had failed to stop the Hamas gunmen as they indiscriminately killed, kidnapped and raped civilians. The violence has widened heartbreaking divisions that many Israelis and Arabs have been working to overcome.

Yonatan, 28, a Jerusalemite in New York for work, found the attacks had made him doubt his lifelong belief that peace was possible. On Saturday, he took an Uber with his boss and they spoke in Hebrew about the day’s shocking events until they noticed that their driver was watching TikTok videos of the massacre at the rave.

“It was in Arabic with a lot of laughing emojis,” Yonatan said.

Yonatan said he’s avoiding going to any of the Israeli or Jewish rallies or grieving events in New York for the time being out of safety concerns.

Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is an Israeli who founded the progressive Jewish community Lab/Shul. He spoke at a Simhat Torah gathering in Brooklyn on Saturday night, speaking to the extreme grief and pain he had for missing family members. He said he was pained by the loss of innocent civilian life, both Israeli and Palestinian.

In a phone interview, he said he’d been attacked online by “people [who] refuse to see the nuance.”

On the one side are those who demand standing “only with Palestine right now, [which is] equating Hamas with all the Palestinians, which is just ignorance and awful,” said Lau-Lavie. On the other side are those who “get mad at me for saying I am heartbroken for the innocent Palestinian lives.” He also spoke to the hurt of people not checking in to see if his family and friends were safe and to see how he was doing — a feeling shared by others interviewed.

“This brings up a lot of triggers of trauma and neglect and denial of the depth of the situation. I’m not one to live with fear. And as a son and grandson of Holocaust survivors and victims, and as an Israeli in America, I’m not walking around worried about antisemitism,” Lau-Lavie said.

But now he had concerns. “The fragility is real,” he said.

Bolstering security

Rabbi Misha Shulman at the New Shul in downtown Manhattan said his organization had added extra security to its Hebrew school locations and to prayer services on Friday, coordinating with the local precinct. Two Israeli musicians decided to sit out Friday’s services because they didn’t want to be in Jewish spaces after the reports of the day of jihad.

As a rabbi, he was expected to help others make sense of what was happening, but as an Israeli himself, he said, “I’m finding it really hard to be political in any way.”

“Really all I want to do is be silent,” he said. “I’m aware that I’m in trauma and going through trauma.”

Shulman had to call me back because he was on the phone with family in Israel, checking in. “All the words have been reduced to ‘Are you okay? Is your family okay?’” he said.

Shulman said he’d had a conversation with his teenage son that morning about what antisemitism in school might look or feel like. But, he said, he also told him to watch out for harassment towards any Arab or Palestinian student at his school who “would probably suffer from different types of bigotry.” He advised his son to speak up if he saw harassment against Arab or Muslim students — and he also told him to stand up for himself.