At the age of five, I had a strong sense of invincibility. I would beg my mom, to no avail, to let me stay in the car alone when we went to shop for groceries. She said I’d be stolen, which I thought was ridiculous. I could fight any punk that tried to kidnap me.

My sweet and shy exterior countered my interior sense of immense strength and ability to self-defend, creating a convoluted self-image that made me feel untouchable. The power I felt within gave me the mentality that at my vulnerable age, I could do anything. I could protect myself from criminals, I could fight off the wind blowing against me as I walked around my neighborhood, and I could stop wars.

While many little girls my age daydreamed about marrying a prince and riding a unicorn, I fantasized about bringing peace to the Middle East. I envisioned myself flying to the battlegrounds on a helicopter with a megaphone so everyone could hear me proclaim a ceasefire. After having a long talk with the terrorist organizations and countries attacking Israel, they’d realize the error of their ways and leave my country alone. All guns would be put down, and the land of milk and honey would be free to thrive without the fear of a terrorist attack lurking around every corner.

Then I grew up and lost that sense of supernatural fearlessness. In high school I was mentally protected by the walls of my small Hebrew day school, surrounded by like-minded Jews who enforced my feelings of invincibility. The strong community that I was engulfed in was well educated on current events in Israel, and could filter through skewed messages from the media, which painted Israel as an aggressor despite violence being initiated by terrorists.

When I entered my freshman year of college at Indiana University, I left the “Jewish bubble” I had grown up in and was exposed to people with different agendas than my own. I was exposed to the reality of Israel’s miniscule importance for the average person, stripping me of the assumption that Israel would survive against all odds. Realizing that Jews supporting Jews wouldn’t be enough to sustain a barrier of defense over an entire country punctured a hole in my force field, deflating my sense of invincibility.

A wave of Palestinian terror has hit Israel, and their need for overseas support has become more prevalent than ever. But when the media publishes biased news reports on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, how could someone without the ideological tie to Israel and extensive educational background on the country be able to filter through the false press like I can? It’s difficult not to trust journalists who have dedicated their lives to exposing the truth, but they have failed to uphold that public service in the multitude of faulty headlines that depict Palestine as the victim to Israel’s terror.

On October 17, 2015, The Telegraph published an article with the headline,“Israeli security forces kill four more Palestinians.” To the uninformed, this illustrates Israel as hungry for Palestinian blood; but the headline failed to mention that security forces did not instigate the aggression, but rather retaliated it in self-defense.

USA Today released an article the same day, enforcing The Telegraph’s depiction of Israelis as stone cold Palestinian murders.

On October 18th, The Los Angeles Times reported an ambiguous headline that read, "Man opens fire in crowded bus station in Israel; 1 killed, 9 injured," failing to indicate that the tragedy was a result of Palestinian terror.

The flood of horrific news updates of violence in Israel on my Facebook feed drives my naïve childhood feeling of insuperable power further into the ground. The rest of the world, however, has held onto the attitude that Jews in Israel are invincible. The media paints Jews as all-powerful bullies, and sympathizes and forgives Palestinian terror and violence. But, it’s time for the world to grow up like I did, and realize that Israelis are humans trying to live in peace and harmony, just like everybody else.

Stepping on the shattered glass of my broken force field made my feet bleed. But, the pain of realizing Israel’s mortality woke me up from the illusion that suicide bombers were no match for the small, yet all-powerful country. The comparisons I made between Israel and Harry Potter became obsolete, because the power of a mother’s love can’t stop terrorists from murdering innocent children.

Israel will suffer greatly from the increase in Palestinian attacks if the Jewish diaspora does not step in. Israelis are literally fighting for their lives amidst a sea of adversity, avoiding suicide bombers and axe stabbers in Jerusalem, a holy place that is no longer regarded as a safe zone. The Israeli Defense Force is one of the best militaries in the world, but the small country cannot rely solely on its soldiers for protection. A friend of mine who joined the IDF after graduating high school recently reached out to my class with a chilling message, urging us to advocate for Israel.

“What’s going on in Israel now is terrifying and there’s nothing anyone can do. Palestinians are stabbing Jews left and right. You don’t know what to avoid because the stabbings are by Palestinian men and women, adults and teens. For soldiers, wearing a uniform is like having a bulls-eye on your back. If you hear anti-Israel things at your campuses, speak up about what’s really going on!”

It is the duty of Jews in America to support their ancestral land by combatting the twisted messages of the media. If more people understand what is going on they will be able to close an eye to biased news and open the other to understand the actual existential threat that Israel is facing.

The most powerful weapon that Zionists in the United States posses are not machine-guns, but knowledge. America has a large influence on world affairs, and as citizens of America we have some say in what our country does. If college students advocate for Israel and inform their campus of the severity of unjust violence in Israel, then they as future world leaders will be equipped with the education and motivation to bring peace to the Middle East.

The role of the Jewish people to inform, advocate, and protect their ancestral land is now more important than ever. Speaking up for Israel won’t stop a bomber from murdering our brother’s roommate’s second cousin’s best friend, but it will strengthen our Jewish identity and raise awareness. The dehumanization of Jews in Israel should not just be a concern for Jewish people, because ideology is not the primary motivation for advocacy. Social justice, however, is.