Showing up for one another

I first met the community of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak in November 2023. I had travelled to Eilat to spend time with family friends who had been evacuated there after October 7.

Like so many communities in Israel’s south, they were living in shock and deep grief. Loved ones had been killed. Others were still missing, not yet even confirmed to be hostages.

Life had been compressed into improvised spaces. Classrooms and kindergartens ran from hotel lobbies. Makeshift laundries stood in outdoor tents. Families were trying to rebuild fragments of normal life while still processing a trauma that had barely begun to be understood.

Since then, the Melbourne Jewish community has built a close relationship with Nir Yitzhak. We brought children from the kibbutz to Melbourne for a brief respite from the relentless stress of war and built connections between our communities.

Earlier this month I returned to Israel with a group of Jewish Australians to meet with organisations rebuilding after October 7 and to understand the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Yet history intervened. As the war with Iran escalated, our plans, like so many others in Israel, were overtaken by events. Instead of travelling around the country, I found myself spending the week on Nir Yitzhak with family. The moment the first siren sounded in Tel Aviv, they told me, without any hesitation: pack a bag, you are coming with us.

There was an irony that none of us missed. After October 7, the south had been the most dangerous place in Israel. Communities like Nir Yitzhak were evacuated. Now, almost two years later, as missiles crossed the country, the south had become one of the quieter and safer places to be.

The place that had once needed shelter was now sheltering us.

For the past year and a half many of us in the Diaspora have asked how we can help Israel – raising funds, organising delegations, strengthening connections. But relationships, when they are real, are never one-directional.

This time, I was the one being protected and cared for by people who have already endured more than most of us can imagine. Walking through the kibbutz, we passed parents who had lost children on October 7 – young men who were killed defending their community. I wondered about the strength it must take not only to endure that loss, but to remain.

Yet what struck me most was the determination to rebuild. As we walked around the kibbutz, I could hear it: the sound of children laughing once again. Life was returning.

The kibbutz did not feel frozen in tragedy. It felt like a place determined to live again.

In that moment it felt as though Nir Yitzhak itself was breathing back into life – and perhaps, with it, the whole of Israel’s south.

One afternoon a missile alert from Iran sounded and we gathered in the safe room of the house where I was staying – two babies, a toddler, parents and grandparents. As we waited for the all-clear, the family told me this was the very same safe room where they had sheltered on October 7.

Since that day, they said, they have never opened the heavy metal security door that slides across the window. Rationally they know October 7 will not happen again in that way. But psychologically, the barrier remains.

When the security situation worsened, I knew I would have to return home. Boarding the plane I felt both relief and discomfort – relief because it meant physical safety; discomfort because the people I was leaving behind did not have that option.

Israelis cannot step away from the war. Many are doing the opposite – returning home, putting on uniforms, standing guard, responding to emergencies and quite literally placing their lives on the line.

As the plane lifted off, I felt deep humility in the face of a society that continues to absorb the cost of defending itself on behalf of Jews everywhere. The sense of security that many of us feel in the Diaspora, especially in the face of growing antisemitism, rests, in part, on that burden.

We often describe the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora in terms of support – who gives, who helps, who stands with whom.

But what I felt most strongly that week in Nir Yitzhak was something deeper. Resilience. Reciprocity. A reminder that the bond between Israel and Jewish communities around the world is about showing up for one another, sometimes in ways we do not expect.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, finding shelter in the very place that once needed ours.

Amanda Miller OAM is a representative on Voice of the People and active in the Melbourne Jewish community.