Eyewitness to Hamas

Last night I spoke with an Israeli-American friend who traveled from the United States to Israel on October 7, to join family for her brother’s wedding.

It was a long anticipated moment of beauty as members of this Jewish dynasty gathered from around the world on the high holiday of Simchat Torah, in their homeland of Israel to celebrate the birth of a new family.

Nothing went as expected.

Before the evening was over bombs were dropping from the skies. Gunfire was everywhere. People were screaming.

Much of Israel was disconnected from telephones, news and the Internet when Hamas and Islamic Jihad began their reign of terror. This allowed the killers to retain the element of surprise as they massacred entire households.

My friend had arrived in Israel from the United States hours before the attack. She told me the crippling fear she felt when the sirens began to go off and she realized something terrible was happening.

She and members of her family found themselves running and hiding in bomb shelters while the sounds of missiles and other harbingers of death permeated the air around them.

She is the first eyewitness to the Hamas invasion with whom I have personally spoken. I count it one of the more precious dialogues of my life

She is eerily calm. Measured. But it’s the kind of calm one exudes after having been shaken to the core, and now attempting to speak every word with deliberation.

From time to time she corrects herself to make sure she is completely precise.

This isn’t an interview. It’s a dialogue between friends. And yet we both understand that there is a sacredness to the words spoken after a massacre. They last. They must be accurate.

She described the scene of the invasion as the most horrifying moment of her life. Scared out of her mind. Not knowing if she would live or die. Realizing that others were being murdered not far from her. There were moments of hope followed by a sense of impending death. 

The narrative ends. It’s too hard. Reflection begins.

“I have always been a person of peace. But all I can think of is the Holocaust. We are all grandchildren of the Holocaust here. It occurred to me that I might not have Israel if it had not been for the Holocaust…I can not allow myself to even speak what has happened here…this weekend…I won’t even describe it. I can’t.”

I just listened.

For the last two decades I have been interviewing the WWII generation and making films and documentaries on the subject. I have spoken to Holocaust survivors. I have spoken to more than a few soldiers who found themselves as liberators of concentration camps on those unforgettable days of April 1945.

It takes a lot of time and trust before a British or American soldier who found himself at the gates of Dachau or Bergen Belsen or Auschwitz is willing to speak openly.  And when they do, their communications are understated. A few words about the moment of entering the camp. Seeing the walking skeletons. Fighting the urge to give them a single loaf of bread knowing it might actually kill them. Processing the enormity of the crime. The sense that they have experienced the darkest conception of Hell which ever entered their minds.

Humans are not designed to manage cruelty at such a scale.

It is strangely comforting that my friend is thinking of the Holocaust now. It’s a reminder of a much bigger story. She now is part of that story — a paragraph of a chapter of a book which is more than 4000 years old.

She is a not only an accomplished artist, but she has an artistic mind. On the scale of “peace, love and understanding,” on one side, and “fight to the death,” on the other, the scales of temperament weigh heavily on the peace side for my friend. On another day she would have been a participant at the music festival where hundreds were summarily executed by Hamas.

Never in my life have I heard her speak well of guns or military. Today is different.

“We have the greatest army in the world…I am so thankful for Israel’s army…”

I remind her that she once served in the Israeli army (like all Israeli citizens).

That seems to mean more to her now than it ever has before.

It is now 4 am my time. On the other side of the world a new day begins.

We are still talking.  More details are emerging. But the impact of death and bombs and murder is too much. She needs time to just sit in chairs with her family and cry.

Just before we end our dialogue she says: “But what am I supposed to think now? I am a woman of peace.  But what do we do with our enemies? They won’t let us live?…Tell me what you think.”

Today is not about what I think, so I say very little except that I am overjoyed with relief to know she lives. We agree to chat more after the dust settles a bit. The discussion ends.

Now it’s my time to cry.

One thing more.

Following the attack my friend joined thousands of others on message boards, phone calls and every way possible, trying to track down missing people. Trying to assess. To share experiences.

As news of beheadings, kidnappings, on-line executions, rapes and atrocities continued to emerge, the human spirit reaches capacity of what it can process in the moment.

But one thing is clear for every Israeli - they will not allow their enemies to deny the truth of what happened. Not this time.

And what of the wedding for my friend’s brother? The generations of her family had assembled in Israel. None died in the attack.

Do you hold a wedding when the land of Israel is covered with the blood of the innocent — babies, the elderly, children and parents?

What do you do?

From the fog of battle clarity returns: You are a child of Abraham. For millennia they have attempted to blame you. To steal from you. To drive you far away. To exterminate you.

And you never give up.

You know that when they are long gone, your tribe remains.  And now you do what Jews have always done - live to fight another day with thanksgiving to God and hope for the future.

It’s the prayer of hope spoken after Passover Seder - L'Shana Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim

“Next year in Jerusalem.”

So the wedding proceeded. A coming together of man and woman. A moment filled with the bitter herbs of oppression and the sweet honey of hope. A micro-study in the story of the Jews - persecution opening up doors for new beginnings. There were tears upon tears. Laughter also. And a resolve that the generation to be born from this union will never forget.

Thus it has been. Thus it will always be for the children of Abraham.

Shaalu Shalom Yerushalayim