MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Alyssa Kleiner says her life changed after a trip to Poland in 2017, when she toured the sites of the Holocaust and saw the death camps.
"I really felt like … 'I'm Jewish, and I have done absolutely nothing,'" she says. "Like, these people just died — brutally murdered for being Jewish — and I felt like I hadn't lived for them."
Kleiner grew up in Merion Station, Montgomery County, but after she graduated from Penn State, she applied for dual citizenship and began living in Israel in 2019. Then she voluntarily joined the Israeli army at the age of 22.
"It's something in the culture here. So a lot of times, like in America, it's 'Where did you go to college?' but here, they don't go first to college. So a lot of the questions for job interviews and stuff is 'Where did you draft? Where did you serve?'"
Kleiner is one of an estimated 3,500 people in the Israeli military who moved from abroad and are considered 'lone soldiers.' After learning Hebrew on her base, she joined a special forces unit and fought in conflicts until her years of service ended.
Then came the horror of Oct. 7, which left more than 1,400 Israelis dead and more than 200 taken captive.
"It was chaos, and it was painful, and it's still painful. I came back a few hours ago from my good friend's funeral. She was 22 years old. She was an officer there in the region, and she was murdered. And it's insane to me that that's just normal here now."
Kleiner is now among the many reservists Israel has called upon in its campaign to destroy Hamas. Thousands of civilians in Gaza have been killed. Gaza City is being turned to rubble. And a humanitarian crisis has unfolded, with limited supply of food, water, fuel and electricity.
How does Kleiner grapple with that side of it?
"It's horrible," she said. "And I don't agree with the conditions that the people of Gaza are living in. And it's so unfair, and I really feel for them. Innocent people are being thrown in the wake here because Hamas is hiding behind its own people.
"But the problem here is Hamas, it's not Israel."
Keren Keshet heads up the Philadelphia-area chapter of the Friends of Israel Scouts. She also served in the army as a teen living in Israel. And her daughter is also a "lone soldier" there now.
"She believes she's doing something meaningful," Keshet said of her daughter. "And that's the experience that those kids have. There's something bigger out there, and you're part of it, and it's amazing. It just makes them better, better people in my mind."
And although Kleiner admits that she is in uncharted waters, she says she's ready for the fight.
"I feel proud to be a part of the Israeli people, and I feel proud to be Israeli and to be Jewish," she said. "And this is personal. This is completely personal."
With all of the destruction and all of the lives lost, she says, there is only one way Israel can feel safe.
"People are suffering and it's awful. It's really awful. This past week and a half has been horrific for Palestinians, Gazans and Israelis — and the solution is to take out Hamas," she said.
"And I really hope the people of Gaza find the strength to turn against them as well."
United Nations chief António Guterres called last week Wednesday for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Middle East to ease the "epic human suffering" in the Israel-Gaza conflict. The same day, the United States vetoed a U.N. resolution to condemn all violence against civilians in the Israel-Hamas war, saying it was too early to issue an appropriate Security Council response.
