What Israel’s Killing Fields Taught Me About America's Wars
Too few Americans know what it’s like to fight—and too few care.
I’VE SEEN HORRORS ON THE BATTLEFIELD that still haunt me. They’ve been getting worse as we near the third anniversary of the fall of Kabul. There are still moments where I relive, moment by moment, all the decisions I made when I picked who lived or died. Those moments scarred my soul.
I’m no longer the man I was before the fall of Afghanistan. While I’m healing from the immediate trauma, the profound moral injury of Afghanistan forever changed me. A deep cynicism about our inability to speak truthfully and honestly about two lost wars enrages and depresses me.
Unfortunately, modern America has lost the ability to talk about war. President Trump spoke about victory in Afghanistan before signing a surrender we euphemistically call the “Doha Agreement.” President Biden, on the other hand, continues to hold hands with the Taliban, even as their hands still drip with American blood. Neither president, like scores of Americans, can comprehend that war is also about honor, violence, and vengeance.
Americans, who have largely been spared from war, talk about it like a Rubik’s cube—all formulas and abstract reasoning and skill. But it’s not. It’s fueled by passions both noble and vicious, but in all cases profound. In a country where only 1 percent serve and even fewer see combat, almost no one understands that war, no matter how pristine you make it, is always killing, and it will always be messy because it’s inherently human. Americans don’t understand that. Most people don’t understand that we lost two wars. That’s why nobody is held accountable.
It’s different in Israel. Almost everyone serves, even for a few years. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is small but mighty. Its elite units—fighter pilots, special forces, paratroopers—are world class. But the larger force can’t withstand a year-long war without relying on its reserves, composed of 465,000 Israelis. Everyone is affected by the war.
During my twenty years of service, I was desperate to feel like the country I was serving—the country my friends and airmen and our allies sacrificed everything for, my country—cared. As the years wore on, Americans’ inattention and indifference became ineluctable. We lost those wars because we didn’t care about winning them.
So, two days after my official retirement from the Air Force, I went to Israel to see what it’s like when a nation unites behind a war effort, as our country once did.
War, especially when waged by democracies, has a purpose. Israel’s purpose is like America’s was in the weeks after 9/11. After 1,500 days in Iraq and Afghanistan and nearly three years helping Afghans escape the prison of our making, I thought I’d seen everything. But what I witnessed in the killing fields of southern Israel was one of the most profound experiences of my life. It was sorrow, love, and rebirth.
I PICKED UP NURI FROM THE TRAIN STATION in Tel Aviv. That’s when I met him. I had asked a friend in northern Israel to recommend a guide to the killing fields in the south, and she introduced me to Nuri. Less than 12 hours later, he was in my car, in uniform, riding shotgun for one of the most intense four hours of my life.
Combat can seem like a dream. Your body’s reactions make time slow down. Bullets might be whizzing by you, but an explosion of endorphins and adrenaline will do bizarre things to your sense of reality. People forget what they do when they’re in a war. Memories come and go until there’s a time to process the carnage. It’s been nearly three years since the fall of Kabul, and I’m now just coming to terms with its horrors.
My tour guide, Nuri, was still knee-deep in the fight. On October 7, his “unit,” composed of men from scattered IDF organizations, got into vehicles any way they could and made their way down to the killing fields. He had not returned there since that fateful day. While he provided me with details of the events, he was also processing what had happened and what he had done.
Nuri is a young man in the prime of his life. He has a beautiful, bright, and intelligent fiancée. They are planning their future—or, more accurately, they’re planning to plan their future when the war ends and thinking about the future becomes possible again. When your life is dictated by war, you’re living in a different reality.
“Americans don’t understand war,” I repeated to Nuri dozens of times as he quizzed me about America’s reactions to the pogroms. He explained the tunnels and how hard they are to fight in. He provided graphic details of the dead women and children he encountered during his fight.
“Don’t they understand Hamas?”
“No,” I said resolutely. “My countrymen don’t. But they never understood the Taliban or Al Qaeda either. They’d rather live in an alternate reality where terrorist groups can be reasoned with.”
Nuri chuckled, then fell silent.
BY THE TIME WE’D MADE IT past Be’eri, where nearly a quarter of the population was either kidnapped or murdered, we had learned parts of each other’s story.
“I think this is it,” he said, “I’m sorry, I haven’t been here since October 7.”
We parked a bit from the site, passing a “Bring Them Home” sign—like the innumerable others all over Israel—on the path on a small ridgeline.
As we trekked up the sand, the first sound of outgoing artillery shook the earth.
“That’s ours,” Nuri cautioned.
“Yeah, I know,” I responded with a chuckle.
“Right,” Nuri said. “Of course.”
After that, we were two soldiers bound by happenstance. Nuri is a young, energetic, brilliant commando who talks matter-of-factly about gruesome events. I feel at ease with his demeanor. I would never wish on anyone the experiences that make someone so comfortable with violence, suffering, brutality, and death. But I wish more Americans understood.
“When I pulled up in the vehicle,” he said, “We drove over so many bodies. I mean, ya know, that stuff happens.”
“Yeah, I know how that feels.”
He hasn’t fully processed his war because he’s still mired in it. I’m sure those memories will haunt him later, when he has time to think about them. For now, to survive, he’s burying those sounds and smells as deep as he can—but they will resurface.
It’s the sounds that haunt me. The screams of pain that reverberate inside my consciousness. When my daughter screams, I can quickly go to some deep, dark places. Nuri doesn’t know that feeling yet. I pray he never does, but I’m afraid he will.
THEN NURI SHOWED ME something I wasn’t ready for. As we walked to the site of the Nova Music Festival, I was immediately overwhelmed.
I have been to many killing fields in Iraq and Afghanistan. Part of fighting terrorists is visiting the sites of their massacres. During the Sunni-Shia civil war in Baghdad, Al Qaeda would conduct high-profile suicide attacks. Iranian proxy groups would respond with killing sprees throughout Sunni neighborhoods. Every morning, another group of Sunnis would litter the roads.
But this was different. The unspeakable atrocities on those happy, optimistic young people—not just Jews, but Arabs and others, too—inspired an extra level of grief and anger. I had seen young lives cut short in horrific ways before—many times—but never because they were trying to enjoy life. Never with this level of nihilism and cynicism.
Here, in this patch of desert, 364 people were massacred and 40 more were taken hostage. Most of them were Jews murdered for being Jews, but some were gentiles who were murdered just for being around Jews. As is often in war, some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The terrorists, who didn’t know about the festival beforehand, marveled at their fortune to descend upon young, helpless Jews celebrating life. And what followed was bloodlust in full array. Men, drunk with violence, luxuriated in massacring Jews.
“We came here, and to be honest, all the bad guys were already gone,” Nuri told me, “but there were all the bodies. They were everywhere.”
Unlike the gruesome fields I saw in Baghdad, Israelis had created something beautiful. In a place filled with sorrow, memorials of all those killed grew like flowers from the sand. Once I stepped into the field of remembrance, I was overwhelmed with grief and sadness, but also love.
The desert bloomed with memorials, and it wasn’t barren. There were mourners everywhere. Families weeping and wailing by the memorials of their loved ones. Brothers mourning sisters. Husbands mourning their wives and wives mourning their husbands, all too many to count. There was grief and sadness, but no despair. There was too much love for that.
I felt intoxicated by a profound sense of love. In the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan, I only felt agony. The cries of those dying. The puddles of blood on a crowded street. And the wailing of fellow soldiers learning that their buddies were dead. Those cries of despair are hard to tie to anything good. The cries I heard in the killing fields of Israel were those of a determined people being reminded that many of their neighbors just really want to kill them. They weren’t cries about the past, but also about the future.
The closest experience I’ve had to the Nova Music Festival site in the United States is section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where many of my friends are buried. It is hallowed ground, and I feel at home there at times. But it’s a place of somber remembrance. And the vast majority of Americans don’t know about it, don’t visit it, don’t think about it, don’t care.
AS WE LEFT, I SAW new IDF recruits coming off a bus. During my two previous trips to Israel, between deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, I had seen this before at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum.
These recruits were learning their story—what happens when you let your guard down. You start at Yad Vashem and continue to the Nova Music Festival. Never Again.
As a survivor of nearly 1,500 days in Iraq and Afghanistan, I never feel this sense of brotherhood with my fellow Americans. I hate admitting it because it’s true. Americans have been spared history by a small percentage of the population that is straining to defend the country. So when I come home, people are overwhelmingly pleasant and thankful, but most will never understand what war does to people. And that lack of knowledge is what drives veterans to feel like strangers in their own country.
AFTER WE LEFT THE SITE of the Nova Musical Festival, Nuri took me to his old stomping grounds in Sderot, where his unit deployed. Sderot is the biggest city in southern Israel. It’s been subject to intermittent—and occasionally intense—rocket barrages for years. Many of the residents suffer PTSD and related disorders. Many of the residents would like to leave but can’t sell their houses. In the first few hours of the bloodthirsty pogrom, Sderot suffered many casualties.
“Just pull up anywhere, Will,” Nuri said in typical Israeli bluntness, “Drive like you’re an Israeli.”
We stopped on the side of the road near an overlook to peer into Gaza.
As we stepped out of the car, Nuri began giving me a short brief on his unit’s position.
“We were dispersed alongside this little area,” Nuri began, “There was that little shelter where we could hide in case of indirect fire, but it’s hard to make it into the shelter in time.”
“Yeah, I know that feeling,” I responded, “sometimes it’s just going to have your name on it, no matter how hard you try.”
Nuri’s face lit up, “That’s right!” He wasn’t happy, but he was happy to be understood.
That’s the secret of the battlefield: accept your own mortality and try your hardest not to be killed. That’s it. If you can do that, then you can be effective.
That moment of understanding further bonded us. We were two combat veterans who, though we fought on different battlefields under different flags, fought the same terrorists. Hamas is not dissimilar to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or the Haqqani Network. It’s no wonder the other Sunni jihadist groups are blaring Hamas propaganda on their social media.
Once Nuri understood my story, he became more comfortable with me. Perhaps I wasn’t like all the other Americans he’d helped tour around the battlefield.
“Will, walk up on the hill and tell me what you see.”
I started walking up a small ridgeline, and about thirty meters into my walk, I barked out, “Kill shot.”
“That’s right!” he exclaimed.
Over the next thirty minutes, Nuri gave me a blow-by-blow of what they did that day. His rag-tag collection of IDF soldiers fought to hold the line against a bloodthirsty enemy drenched in blood.
It was magical listening to Nuri come back to the battlefield. He was processing it, and he was remembering it. I will never have that blessing. All of my battlefields are in far distant lands that my country abandoned to the killers of their children. That betrayal has injected me with a dark cynicism that Nuri does not have. That’s because he knows what he’s fighting for—home.
WE DROVE TO TEL AVIV for a quick bite before I departed.The cafe was bustling and hip.
As we finished eating, Nuri looked pensive.
“What’s up Nuri?”
“I have a question, Will.”
“Please go ahead.”
“Do you like it when people call you a hero?” he asked pensively.
I sighed. “No, I still don’t like it when people call me a hero,” I said. “But, try to remember that they mean it as a compliment, though that’s hard to remember.”
Few combat veterans want the limelight. They’d rather just do the job and go on with their lives. For many, what they did was not extraordinary because they knew many of their brothers and sisters did far more than they did.
“You have to understand that even here in Israel,” Nuri said. “Where everyone serves, not all of them are in combat units.”
I smirked.
“Yes. Not everybody has driven over dead bodies, Nuri,” I said matter-of-factly. “It’s hard to tell them what that’s like,” I said.
He sighed, appreciating my imitation of Israeli bluntness.
“But, it’s also important to realize that you should try, nonetheless.”
All soldiers deserve their stories to be heard by the people who send them to kill on their behalf. Whether you’re an Israeli, an American, or an Afghan, we just want our stories to be heard so that you understand the trauma we endured on your behalf.
That’s all any soldier wants. I hope Nuri gets that. I’m confident he will.
This war may define Nuri’s life. It may end it. With the likelihood of a war with Hezbollah increasing by the day, it’s almost certain that there will be more killing fields in the future.
War is corrosive. It destroys everything it touches. However, it is also a force that gives us meaning. It can intoxicate us. Once a war starts, it often has a logic of its own. It’s not controlled by bureaucrats cranking out the best policy paper. It’s fought on the ground with ruthless violence spurred by vengeance and anger.
But it can also unite people around a noble idea. War isn’t just against an enemy; it can also be for something.
That’s war’s paradox. Something Israel knows far better than we do.
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