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I have written very little, if anything, on my PSP blog about October 7th.
That has been deliberate. I generally keep politics away from this blog because this is primarily the story of my life with PSP: the disease, the changes it brings, the people around me, and the way I am trying to respond to it.
But October 7th is also part of that story.
I have never hidden the fact that I live in Israel, and I suspect that has probably cost me some readers over the years. I also know that writing about October 7th has become incredibly difficult because almost any discussion of it immediately becomes part of a much wider political argument.
That is not what I want to do here.
What followed October 7th has been horrific in so many different ways: the hostages, the war with Hamas, the destruction in Gaza, the displacement, and the tragic deaths of so many innocent people. There has been suffering on a scale that is difficult to comprehend, and I do not want anything I write here to diminish the pain experienced by other families.
But today I want to write about one day.
I want to write about October 7th as I experienced it, and about three people whose stories became woven into my own.
Not politically.
Personally.
Because three years later, these stories remain part of the background to my life with PSP, even though I rarely mention them.
1. My Son
My son was at home with us on the morning of October 7th.
As the rocket sirens began, he came into the shelter with the rest of us. Like everyone else, we were trying to understand what was happening. We knew fairly quickly that something was very wrong, but we had no idea of the scale of it.
He was serving at the time in an anti-terror special forces unit.
Despite it being Shabbat and Simchat Torah, he did what so many soldiers did that morning. He left home, rushed to his base, and headed south towards the Gaza Envelope.
He fought that day in places including Nahal Oz and Be’eri.
He came home alive.
Five members of his team did not, including one of his closest friends and his commander.
As a father, there is something almost impossible about writing those sentences.
Your instinct is to protect your children. It does not matter whether they are five years old or grown adults wearing uniforms. Somewhere inside you, they remain your child.
That day, there was absolutely nothing I could do to protect mine.
I knew very little about where he was or exactly what he was facing. I simply knew that my son, my flesh and blood, was somewhere inside something terrifying.
He has spoken only selectively about what he saw.
That is his story, not mine, and I have no intention of telling it for him. But I know he saw things that no young person should ever have to see.
He is a strong and well-adjusted young man, and I am immensely proud of him. But I am also his father, and somewhere inside me there will probably always be fear about what he witnessed that day and what memories he carries with him.
2. Nadav
Nadav was a client of mine, although that description does not really do justice to our relationship.
We had become pretty close, and I would go as far as to say we were friends. When I became ill with what I then thought was Parkinson’s, we spoke regularly about it, and he cared deeply about how I was doing.
He lived and worked in Kfar Aza, and I must have visited him there five or six times.
I remember him once taking me to see the border fence with Gaza.
Only a few weeks before October 7th, we had exchanged messages for the Jewish New Year.
Nadav had recently suffered a serious accident himself. He told me that he had been hospitalised for almost six weeks and was going through rehabilitation. He wrote about recovering, about making progress, and about wanting to get back to running 10K.
He knew that I had once set myself the same goal.
His message ended:
“So when we say that health is the most important thing, it is now having for the two of us a different meaning. We speak soon.”
Those words feel very different to me now.
On October 7th itself, I did not message him during the day.
It was Shabbat; he was not family, and, like so many people, I did not yet properly understand what was happening inside Kfar Aza.
That evening I finally wrote:
“I truly hope you and your family and colleagues are ok!!!! Thinking of you!!!”
There was no reply.
Over the following hours and days, we learned why.
Nadav, one of the sweetest men I have ever known, had been murdered together with his daughter.
His wife and three other children had been abducted into Gaza.
They were later released and returned home, but Nadav and his daughter never would.
That unanswered WhatsApp message is still sitting on my phone.
3. Daniel
Then there was Daniel.
The Perez family are our neighbours and friends.
My wife and Daniel’s mother are very close. I am close to his father.
On October 7th, they initially heard that one of their sons had been wounded and that Daniel was missing.
Eventually, they learned what had happened.
Daniel and the other members of his tank crew had fought for hours against overwhelming numbers, helping to hold back attackers trying to move further into Israel.
Daniel was killed. His body was then taken into Gaza. There is something almost impossible, even now, about writing that sentence.
His parents were left not only grieving their son but living with the knowledge that his body remained in captivity.
For two years, they lived with that nightmare. His body was eventually returned to Israel, and he was finally brought home for burial.
I watched our friends live through something no parent should ever have to experience.
There are moments when words such as grief, loss, and pain seem almost inadequate.
This was one of them.
So What Does Any of This Have to Do With PSP?
It would be perfectly reasonable to ask why any of this belongs on a blog about PSP.
The answer is that PSP does not happen in isolation.
Disease does not arrive, politely remove everything else from your life, and allow you to concentrate exclusively on being ill.
Life keeps happening around it. Families keep living. Children grow up. Friends suffer. Whole societies go through trauma.
And sometimes enormous events arrive in the middle of an already difficult journey.
October 7th became part of the landscape in which I was living with PSP.
These stories rarely appear in my posts, but they have always been there.
My son going south while I sat at home terrified. Nadav’s unanswered WhatsApp message. Daniel’s family living only metres away while enduring an unimaginable nightmare.
They became part of the emotional background of our lives.
I cannot quantify what that period of fear and stress did to my PSP. I would not pretend that I can draw a neat medical line between the two.
But I know what it did to me as a person. I know what it felt like to lie awake worrying about my son. I know what it felt like to discover that someone I knew and respected had been murdered. I know what it felt like to watch close friends experience a form of grief I struggle even to describe.
And all of that happened while I was already dealing with a neurological disease that was gradually changing my own life.
Three years later, I still find it difficult to comprehend the chain of events that began that morning.
So much death followed. So much destruction. So much hatred. So much suffering experienced by families on every side.
But for this one moment, I want to stop before all of that.
I want to remember the morning itself.
Families in the kibbutzim were waking up on Shabbat and Simchat Torah. Young people were still dancing at the Nova festival. In our house, we were hearing rocket sirens and trying to understand why my son suddenly needed to leave.
None of us knew what the next few hours would bring.
Good friends would lose a son.
I would lose a man I had come to regard as a friend.
And my own son would see things that I wish he had never had to see.
October 7th does not define my PSP journey. But it is part of it.
It is there quietly behind many of the things I have written over the last three years, even when I have never mentioned it.
Today is not really about PSP. It is not about politics either. It is simply about remembering.
Remembering Nadav.
Remembering Daniel.
Remembering the friends of my son who did not come home.
Remembering everyone whose ordinary Saturday morning became something entirely different.
And remembering, as a father, a friend, and a neighbour, the day when our lives divided into before and after.
