‘Lone Soldier’

The Israel-Hamas con­flict through the eyes of an IDF para­troop­er, who left his job as UConn Hillel’s assis­tant direc­tor to return to mil­i­tary ser­vice

By LAURA AUGENBRAUN | UConn Jour­nal­ism
Sep­tem­ber 3, 2024

Jared White explains his ‘light­bulb moment.’ It hap­pened 20 years ago when he was sit­ting in a car in an emp­ty park­ing lot in North Car­oli­na. He was liv­ing there tem­porar­i­ly while work­ing at a Jew­ish sum­mer camp, a job he took after return­ing from a post high school grad­u­a­tion gap year in Israel.

He was speak­ing with his friend, Xan­der, who recent­ly decid­ed to ‘make aliyah,’ a term that describes the move­ment of Jews from the dias­po­ra to the Jew­ish state of Israel.

“We were sit­ting in a Taco Bell in the mid­dle of nowhere,” White said. “It was 11 o’clock at night. We were exhaust­ed. We were talk­ing about mak­ing aliyah, we’re speak­ing a cou­ple of words in Hebrew.”

“Jared, why are we whis­per­ing,” Xan­der asked.

“What do you mean?” White recalls say­ing, slow­ly real­iz­ing they were whis­per­ing even though they were the only ones in the park­ing lot.

“Why do we have to be afraid to be Jew­ish,” Xan­der said. “Why do we have to hide who we are?”

Just a cou­ple of months lat­er, White returned to Israel. He car­ried a back­pack and $200. After sev­er­al months, he began train­ing in the Israel Defense Force, Israel’s mil­i­tary, more com­mon­ly known as the IDF.

Since then, no mat­ter if White was liv­ing in or out­side of Israel, he’s kept a loy­al­ty to his coun­try and mil­i­tary unit, the Para­troop­ers, a group known for being the goody-two shoes of the IDF. It’s a very fit­ting posi­tion for him, White explained, because while grow­ing up in west­ern Flori­da, he was com­mon­ly referred to as “the ted­dy bear.”

In his Flori­da home­town, White’s fam­i­ly was one of just a few who were Jew­ish, and he recalls reg­u­lar­ly hear­ing anti­se­mit­ic remarks from his peers. He found an out­let for his Judaism through Young Judaea, a Zion­ist youth orga­ni­za­tion. After grad­u­a­tion, he spent a year learn­ing, study­ing and work­ing in Israel while con­sid­er­ing what direc­tion to go next. By the time he was back in the Unit­ed States work­ing at the camp in North Car­oli­na, it was clear to him his future was in Israel.

While it’s com­mon for many Jew­ish young adults to make aliyah and join the IDF, White want­ed to go because of his love for the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try. Israel is the world’s only Jew­ish state, and to many, one of the few safe places for Jews. Its roots lie with the cen­turies of oppres­sion Jews faced in coun­tries around the globe, includ­ing the mass slaugh­ter of the Holo­caust.

In 2021 alone, more than 20,000 Jew­ish peo­ple made aliyah, or moved to Israel and received Israeli cit­i­zen­ship, a num­ber that has been steadi­ly increas­ing over the years. Since the cre­ation of the coun­try, over three mil­lion peo­ple have made aliyah, includ­ing White, who did so in March 2005 and served in the IDF for over three years.

After com­plet­ing his IDF ser­vice, White start­ed The Lone Sol­dier Cen­ter in Mem­o­ry of Michael Levin, a non-prof­it focused on sup­port­ing ‘Lone Sol­diers,’ the term used to describe those who, like White, move to Israel alone and serve in the IDF. White also focused on Jew­ish edu­ca­tion for com­mu­ni­ties both in Israel and abroad.

White’s wife, Tom, describes this work as “his soul, his entire being.” It was this, and their even­tu­al deci­sion to move out of Israel, that poten­tial­ly saved White’s life, and yet simul­ta­ne­ous­ly chal­lenged almost every aspect of it, turn­ing every­thing he and his fam­i­ly knew com­plete­ly upside down.

In August 2023, White, his wife, and their three kids; 7‑year-old Eshel, 5‑year-old Eyal, and their youngest, Alon, who just turned 3, moved from their kib­butz in south­ern Israel to a qui­et neigh­bor­hood in Mans­field, Con­necti­cut. Here, Jared worked as the assis­tant direc­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Hil­lel, where he ded­i­cat­ed his time to sup­port­ing Jew­ish stu­dents.

Two months after their move, on Oct. 7, Israel endured the blood­i­est day since the Holo­caust. Hamas, a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion con­trol­ling the Gaza Strip, a small strip of land bor­der­ing the west­ern side of Israel, attacked the coun­try and bru­tal­ly slaugh­tered, dis­mem­bered, set fire to, raped and kid­napped about 1,400 Israelis.

“Jared always wakes up before me,” Tom says. “He’s this crazy ear­ly bird. He wakes me up at 6 a.m. on Sat­ur­day — ‘Wake up. There’s a war. There are ter­ror­ists every­where’.”

White’s unit in the para­troop­ers, his friends, he refers to them as, were imme­di­ate­ly draft­ed. And at once, White want­ed to be along­side them. But since they were in the Unit­ed States, White with a full-time job and the kids in school, there were now what he con­sid­ered “a thou­sand rea­sons not to go.”

The two weeks fol­low­ing Oct. 7 were filled with long con­ver­sa­tions between hus­band and wife. White want­ed to go to Israel. Tom want­ed him to stay.

“Jared has a very keen sense of oth­ers before him,” she said. “We are includ­ed in the him, not in the oth­ers. I under­stand that is part of his DNA, and part of his mis­sion in life is Israel and pro­tect­ing Israel.”

White reach­es his hand out to her, rest­ing it on her leg.

“But it’s def­i­nite­ly not the right thing to do for our fam­i­ly,” she con­tin­ues. “Def­i­nite­ly not.” But the deci­sion to stay took its toll. White couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t func­tion. He was con­stant­ly on edge. He com­pared him­self to the sound a heart mon­i­tor in a hos­pi­tal makes when it goes flat.

“Beeeeeeeep…,” White said, mak­ing a flat line motion with his hand.

Tom described what she saw: “the man is suf­fer­ing. He is a shell of him­self. He will nev­er for­give him­self for not going and no mat­ter what I say or how right I am.”

For some time, White focused on his job, sup­port­ing the Jew­ish stu­dents on UConn’s Storrs cam­pus while they dealt with an explo­sion of anti­semitism and anti-Zion­ism. But he was strug­gling. He referred to it as a “lim­bo stage. Like a pen­du­lum swing­ing back and forth.”

While he under­stood the UConn stu­dents’ pain, he also found him­self feel­ing angry when lis­ten­ing to them com­plain about things like the newest anti­se­mit­ic slo­gan spray paint­ed on the university’s ‘Spir­it Rock’, more anti-Zion­ist posters that were hung up around cam­pus, or what was being chant­ed at the most recent pro-Pales­tin­ian ral­ly.

Tom said, “he should under­stand that it’s his fam­i­ly first, but he’s not under­stand­ing. So might as well offer him to go for a lit­tle while. And that’s what hap­pened.”

White arrived in Israel rough­ly two weeks after the Hamas attack. He told his kids he was leav­ing only short­ly before his sched­uled flight. He cried with them.

The flight was emp­ty besides two oth­er reservists. When he arrived in Israel, his unit had just fin­ished serv­ing in one of the kib­butz­im that was attacked on Oct. 7.

“To see my friends, like…” White trails off. “You see the bod­ies on the side of the road.

You go into people’s hous­es to see if they’re alive or not. You go into a baby’s room and there’s blood every­where. It sucks.”

White stayed in Israel for just two weeks. He was sta­tioned in North­ern Israel, away from Gaza. Every­one was frus­trat­ed. They want­ed to go into Gaza.

“I didn’t want to go into Gaza and kill peo­ple or do any­thing bad,” White said. His goal was to find the 240 hostages and fight ter­ror­ists. “1,400 peo­ple were killed in two days. Mur­dered, maimed. I saw the bod­ies. Chil­dren, moth­ers, old peo­ple, peo­ple at a par­ty. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for mur­der in that way.”

When the time came to return to Con­necti­cut, he did so reluc­tant­ly. He had felt bad for leav­ing his wife and chil­dren. Now, he had a sim­i­lar guilt for leav­ing his unit. Once back in Con­necti­cut, he tried to make sense of it all.

In ear­ly Decem­ber 2023, he attend­ed a mul­ti-day nation­al gala and con­fer­ence for his com­pa­ny.

“I went to this gala event,” he said. “Got all this S.W.A.G. All this bull­shit.”

White said he couldn’t believe what he refers to as ‘the Jew­ish-Amer­i­can mind­set’ — when anti­semitism is on the rise, Jews sim­ply hide their Star of David neck­laces and con­tin­ue on with their lives.

At the con­fer­ence, as he was the only one stand­ing in front of a poster of Israel to show his sup­port and con­nec­tion, he final­ly spoke out.

“Lis­ten, I’m sor­ry, I have to speak. And you all have to hear me,” he began, spark­ing a con­ver­sa­tion in which he learned that Amer­i­can Jews are afraid to call them­selves Zion­ists. Through­out his life White has always iden­ti­fied as a Zion­ist. His wife, Tom, explained that even though he’s lived in Israel for almost longer than he lived in the Unit­ed States, there’s times when he acts as though he has some­thing to prove about his Israeli iden­ti­ty.

Push­ing to go fight for his coun­try dur­ing one of its dark­est hours is one of those times. Tom, on the oth­er hand, comes from a Jew­ish fam­i­ly whose lin­eage goes back nine gen­er­a­tions in Israel. Hav­ing served in the IDF when she was 18 and being raised by an Israeli fam­i­ly in Jerusalem, she views her duties dif­fer­ent­ly. They have a fam­i­ly now they need to take care of three chil­dren they’re rais­ing in Con­necti­cut. For Tom, the focus is on keep­ing the chil­dren and their fam­i­ly togeth­er.

“Look at all of you, you want to be done with it now,” White said at the con­fer­ence. “My best friends right now are inside Gaza look­ing for ter­ror­ists and tun­nels and hostages, and you guys are talk­ing about what’s going to hap­pen in the 2024 elec­tions? Sor­ry, but who gives a fuck?”

When he returned from his two weeks’ ser­vice in Israel Tom said she knew it wasn’t enough for her hus­band. “He came back extreme­ly frus­trat­ed, extreme­ly angry, unset­tled.”

Says White: “On Oct. 7, I should’ve gone back that day.” While UConn stu­dents were home for win­ter break in Decem­ber 2023, White had time off from work. He planned to return to his unit in Israel dur­ing this time. He told his wife he was going 48 hours before his flight.

Arriv­ing in Israel a sec­ond time, White noticed a heav­i­ness had blan­ket­ed the coun­try. His unit was now in Khan You­nis, Gaza, the then-epi­cen­ter of the war. He described the area as a “hellscape.” Build­ings in ruins. No civil­ians any­where. Sol­diers liv­ing in con­stant fear. Gun­shots and bombs.

“You go into Gaza, past the fence, and it’s like a skele­ton world,” he said. “You cross the bor­der, it’s death, it’s destroyed hous­es. I go flat.” He explains that while some of his friends’ hands begin to shake when they enter Gaza, his go com­plete­ly still.

As he describes this, his phone buzzes, sig­nal­ing a text. He opens and plays a video his wife had sent him of his three chil­dren singing. He plays it twice, his face soft­en­ing into a smile as he watch­es his chil­dren sing.

But then, he shifts back to think­ing about Gaza. His smile fades.

“Not know­ing how long it’s going to be is the scari­est thing,” White says out of nowhere. When he went in, sol­diers had been in Gaza for a month straight. They hadn’t tak­en off their shoes for a month straight. They hadn’t show­ered for a month straight. The sol­diers were stay­ing in what remained of the bombed-out res­i­den­tial Gazan hous­es, with win­dows cov­ered in plas­tic tarps to keep light from get­ting out.

One time, as they sat inside a house, a bomb land­ed across the street, blow­ing the tarps out of the win­dow. To ease the ten­sion, he and his friends joked about how close it was. A com­mon response to near miss fatal­i­ties.

Part of White’s job was to go through hous­es in Gaza, left by res­i­dents but poten­tial­ly boo­by-trapped or hid­ing ter­ror­ists. While going through these half-stand­ing hous­es in Khan You­nis, he found assault rifles hid­den under children’s beds or parts of rock­ets and guns packed along­side a pile of win­ter blan­kets. In one house, he found a bag of a man’s per­son­al belong­ings left behind. It held a wed­ding album, pho­tos of chil­dren, an ID, a pass­port, and a book in Ara­bic on how to kill peo­ple.

Back in Con­necti­cut, White finds him­self enter­ing rooms with the same cau­tion, as though he’s still prepar­ing him­self for a poten­tial face-to-face with a Hamas fight­er. He con­tin­ues to pon­der the sit­u­a­tion in Israel and Gaza.

“Hamas destroyed Gaza’s abil­i­ty to become some­thing. Hamas took all the fund­ing fun­neled into that place to make it bet­ter, and used it to cre­ate weapons, tun­nels, to destroy Israel,” Tom said. “Their core being is to ensure that I don’t exist. That Israel doesn’t exist. Israel’s agen­da is to make sure that Israel can exist. That’s the bot­tom line of all of this.”

White added: “You come across the bor­der on Oct. 7 to mur­der, rape, muti­late, men, women and chil­dren. We saw it. It’s not fake news. It’s unpro­voked. When you have to destroy these hous­es, it wasn’t a ques­tion.”

“Am I pro-Israel,” he said. “Yes, but I’m also Pro-Pales­tin­ian.”

The over­all mes­sage the Whites share is one for peace. The Israeli peo­ple want peace. They want their fam­i­lies who are held hostage back. They want to live with­out the con­stant threat of bombs and rock­ets. They want a safe space for the Jew­ish peo­ple. “This will be some­thing that will affect the his­to­ry of the Jew­ish peo­ple for decades to come. We all just want to be human beings.” White said.

Tom leaves to go pick the kids up from their Mans­field bus stop. White sits back and sighs, glanc­ing at their tele­vi­sion that’s been qui­et­ly play­ing Israeli music.

“At the same time, my kids are going to come home in five min­utes, they’re going to want to go for ice cream, and that’s the vic­to­ry,” White said. “To hug your kids, fall asleep with them at night, that is a win. The sim­ple things.”

His chil­dren sud­den­ly burst through the door with Tom, all of them scream­ing and laugh­ing and recit­ing the joke, “Why was six afraid of sev­en? Because sev­en eight nine!”

The heav­i­ness in the room dis­ap­pears, as though a gray cloud hov­er­ing over the house just gave way to sun­shine.

Four months lat­er, in June 2024, White, Tom and their three chil­dren moved back to Israel.

 “It’s crazy to be back here,” White says through a voice mes­sage. “You actu­al­ly feel a lot of stress go down even though we came back into a war zone.”

He com­ments on how beau­ti­ful the birds sound on his kib­butz and says the move back was the right thing to do, and that he’s still look­ing for ways to help the Jew­ish peo­ple.

Cur­rent­ly, that way is by pro­tect­ing them. By the end of Sep­tem­ber, White had been with his para­troop­er unit in North­ern Israel for sev­er­al weeks. He went home for a cou­ple of days to cel­e­brate his 10-year anniver­sary with Tom, only to return to his sta­tion less than a mile away from the bor­der with Lebanon. The town White is sta­tioned in, Metu­la, is the fur­thest North pos­si­ble in Israel.

“The vil­lage is destroyed. White relays in a text. “And every­thing stands still from Oct. 7, 2023.”