By Danielle Rose Gilson
AURORA, Illinois — Wait before you judge a country.
Wait until you have seen it.
Wait until you hear cheering and celebration as your plane lands.
Wait until you see fields of mines next to fields of sunflowers and cows.
Wait until you stand on the border and hear explosions from a neighboring country in the midst of a civil war.
Wait until you see a house of worship still standing after a bomb went off outside.
Wait until you hear about how everyone inside that temple was bowing in prayer during the explosion and no one was harmed.
Wait until you sit inside the hall where independence was declared while listening to a recording of the event.
Wait until you visit the Kotel and watch a bride and groom take pictures and a boy become a bar mitzvah.
Wait until you visit Yad Vashem and hear the reciting of all the children that did not survive.
Wait until you visit the grave of the first prime minister and learn about his hope for turning the desert into prosperous land.
Wait until you see a military cemetery where the majority of the soldiers are around your age.
Wait until you hear someone you have gotten to know well stand in front of the grave of their friend and tell their story.
Wait until you hear the story of a soldier not much older than you who sacrificed his life by jumping on top of a grenade to protect those around him.
Wait until you see the grave of a soldier with your birthdate that did not live to see nineteen.
Wait until you see the grave of a thirteen year old who sacrificed his life to help fight for independence.
Wait until you see young soldiers visiting the graves of friends who have passed.
Wait until you learn about how their army takes in soldiers with special needs.
Wait until you help out in a warehouse and inventory supplies that go out to disasters around the world.
Wait until you help count boxes of suits used in areas exposed to chemical warfare.
Wait until you meet child refugees from Eritrea who traveled hundreds of miles, were kidnapped and tortured, and whose families paid high ransoms all to get to a safe country.
Wait until you find out that one of the people in your group was running late and therefore wasn’t at the bus station when a bomb went off.
Wait until you get to help out at a school composed of almost all refugee children.
Wait until you learn how the country helped Ethiopians get out of their tumultuous country.
Wait until you learn about how much time someone in your group has spent living in bomb shelters.
Wait until you learn that ‘dangerous’ neighborhoods are not dangerous by American standards and have no gun violence or gangs.
Wait until you are able to have a deep conversation with a stranger you met on the street.
Wait until you learn of the kidnapping of three boys while in the country.
Wait until you can hear people at the Kotel praying for their return from your hotel.
Wait until you learn of all of the electricity, water, and medical care supplied by the country to people who don’t think the country should exist.
Wait until you hear that the army has called up tens of thousands of soldiers from the reserves.
Wait until you know people your age in the army.
Then you can judge Israel.
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Danielle Rose Gilson is a 19-year-old college student in Aurora, Illinois, who recently returned from a visit to Israel