Writer Becky Sarfati Korich Won't Give Up On Israel.

Becky Sarfati Korich
Brazil

When I first set foot in Israel as a teenager, I was not prepared for the impact I felt. It was at that moment that I stamped my identity without needing a visa, passport or citizenship. Every time I go back there, this feeling does not fade-it takes on more vivid colors.

Difficult times make us dive into the core of our identity and move us to make choices towards our purpose, which in everyday life tends to go unnoticed. At such times, we are touched and transformed by a greater truth than even we ourselves have previously recognized. Paradoxically, it is precisely in these moments of uncertainty that we ratify our greatest certainties-the non-negotiable principles.

Israel is a non-negotiable certainty for me.

Without fear and with pride, I wear my Star of David outside my shirt, kiss the blue and white flag, even though I live in another country, and reaffirm the freedom to be who I really am.

It’s impossible to separate the physical land of Israel from the concept of the Jewish State. Our people are one: Judaism encompasses all accents, customs, colors, religions and ideologies equally. Israel embraces all of this and opens itself up to accommodate even more within its democratic space:  it manages to turn this diversity into unity.

Since October 7th, our souls have been sadder, the world has gone backward. Morality has changed sides, truth has been inverted, decency has been diluted by hatred, the victim has become the guilty party, rape has become a weapon of war, and cruelty has been relativized. The sadistic and merciless triumph of denialism forcibly removes the anguish and trauma that lives inside each Jew; it not only violates their past, but tramples on their suffering.

Like a latent virus, antisemitism has returned with a new strain and reveals itself in every corner of the world in the most cowardly way possible, camouflaged as anti-Zionist discourse.

Criticizing Israel's policies is legitimate, but what is not legitimate is advocating the elimination of the state.

Two of Becky’s recent articles from the Folha de Sao Paulo Newspaper.

There is no honest identity movement that can justify this. Israel was created precisely to be a home for Jews who are considered "intruders" and infiltrators in other countries. The only explanation for this nonsense has one name: antisemitism.

And the world is silent again—we are witness to the same silence that in the past opened the doors to the darkest side of humanity. A complicit silence, not at all innocent. But the proof that we are a unit is that the more hatred grows, the more our love for the nation increases.

We will never give up on Israel, because Israel will not give up on us.

Becky Sarfati Korich is a writer, lawyer and columnist for the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

Photo by Ruth Hochheimer Engelberg