My chest feels tighter, more painful than usual. I went to my doctor last week to get an echocardiogram because I thought I was dying. No heart attack, just panic. It’s not the first time I’ve come in for heart problems and left with an anxiety diagnosis.
Some write poetry, others make signs. I make עם ישראל חי bracelets, the nation of Israel lives. “Selling beads for the war effort,” I text to the many WhatsApp chats that have been converted into Israel-focused spaces. I feel like a wannabe Rosie the Riveter, except my forearms are weak and I don’t have a bandanna.
People thank me. “It's so nice you're doing this!” they say, when it’s really just a way to feel a little less guilty when all I’ve really been doing is wallowing in bed, wishing I could shut my brain off.
I don't want to move on. I don't want to stop mourning each and every one of those deaths. Judaism believes every person is a world. Twelve-hundred worlds were destroyed that day. Thousands more have been diminished, crumbled, unsure how to sustain themselves.
Hamas killed children, babies. People who don’t yet understand the concept of death.
Reports from ZAKA, an Israeli organization helping with search and rescue, reveal the most cruel parallels to the Holocaust, only 79 years ago. And people want to argue in exactitude how beheaded babies were beheaded. As if there is an acceptable way to murder a child. I saw my Holocaust studies professor from two semesters ago at the water fountain on the third floor yesterday. “How are you?” we asked each other, the answer obvious in our tired eyes, haunted by news and hate that keeps on getting worse and worse.
I saw an elderly Jewish couple on the train. The wife was fretting with her husband’s scarf, making sure it was secure. We gave each other small smiles, a reminder we’re not alone. Hitler didn’t care about what type of Jew a person was when they were taken to the gas chambers, or branded with numbers to work until death, or shot dead in a ditch they had been forced to dig moments before. Hamas didn’t care what type of Jew a person was when they burst into people’s homes, killing and torturing indiscriminately. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
When Jews suffer, we suffer together. “I think therefore I am doesn't mean anything; we've been thinking for 5,000 years and we still don't exist. I defend myself, therefore I am,” said French writer Herbert Pagani in 1976. We take care of our own when we have been shown time and time again that nobody else will.
On October 7, Hamas, the terrorist regime that has controlled Gaza since the election in 2006, violated the ceasefire, like they've done every other time before, setting around 3,000 terrorist militants on unsuspecting civilians in kibbutz communities along the northern border of Israel. While they attacked some military bases as well, the main goal, written in their own plans, was to torture, violate, murder, and kidnap as many men, women, and children possible. Sparing nobody. On a Jewish holiday.
In 2005, Israel forcibly removed the 8,600 Jewish residents of Gaza, or what Israelis called Gush Katif, and unilaterally withdrew from the strip. In 2006, elections were held in the Palestinian territories, and in 2007, Hamas won, beating out the other major contender, Fatah, better known as the Palestinian Authority. The PA still controls parts of the West Bank.
“Have you read Hamas’s charter?” I ask people calling to globalize the intifada. Shamelessly they say no, as if it’s OK to support a terrorist organization without even reading their basic literature. As if it’s weird to expect people to be educated on the topic they are so ardently protesting for and rallying behind. Suddenly everyone's an expert in geopolitics, but they can’t tell me what river and what sea they are chanting about. And where will the 9 million people—Jews, Muslims, Druze, Christians, and unaffiliated—currently living there go? “Israel, go to hell,” some Hunter students chant.
The news is unrelenting: Children tortured in front of their parents, parents tortured in front of their kids. A grandmother witnessed her granddaughter’s rape and murder. A father was forced to watch his daughter’s murder before being taken hostage. Hersh Goldberg-Polin texted his mom “I’m sorry, I love you.” His phone’s last known location was somewhere in Gaza.
In a video from the 7th, brothers, Kfir Babis, 10 months old, and Ariel, 4, are held tightly by their mother, Shiri, close to her breast. She begs, pleads with the terrorists not to take her babies. She was taken too.
I take care of a 10-month-old boy. He started standing on his own a few weeks ago. He gives me sloppy cheek kisses and bites my nose. It only recently started to hurt once his top teeth came in. I think he said my name once. I try to give him all the love I wish I could give Kfir. He should be learning his first words and taking his first steps. I see Kfir’s face on the poster announcing he’d been kidnapped, his little head with wispy red hair, perfectly kissable cheeks, a slight smile I just want to make bigger by blowing a raspberry on his chubby belly or twirling him around in the air until he squeals with happiness, his shining eyes filled with wonder.
I tutor a 7-year-old Israeli boy. It’s more for me than for him. He teaches me that his dad is a hero and saves people, but he misses him. To help with his reading and spelling, we’re writing a story about a good monster defeating a bad monster. Recently I asked him if he wants to join the Israeli army. He laughed, giving me a confused look. “I have to!”
It’s debilitating to sit in class after class with people who don’t include Jews in their fight for social justice. “Believe all women,” until she’s Israeli. No matter how much evidence, testimonies, images of dead girls with blood stains on their legs, clothes torn, naked from the waist down.
Naama Levy. Last seen beaten, bloodied, being dragged into a Jeep in Gaza.
I keep smiling. Maybe if I make it a bit bigger, they’ll realize we’re human too.
“Where's the proof!” people say. If only I could extract the most horrible, most vile pictures and footage from my mind and hand them over. Let these people go through my days and weeks of sleepless nights, when closing your eyes can’t help. When I try to sleep, all I see is proof.
Sderot.
Kfar Aza.
Nir Oz.
Nachal Oz.
Be’eri.
Hamas still holds hostages in Gaza. Where’s the Red Cross now?
Bodies were discovered tied together, spending their last moments trying to share as much love as they could while they burned to death.
They raped my sisters. Murdered my family. Holocaust survivors, forced to go through another. They massacred, tortured, set fire to my people–9, then 10, now 11 months old, Kfir has spent 20 percent of his life kidnapped by Hamas. Whole families gone, or halved forever.
Kids taken caked in the blood of their dead parents. Ash and charred remains, bodies so mutilated, they’re still working on identifying people. Forensic experts, archeologists, doctors. Family members are bringing toothbrushes to compare DNA, not sure if they want there to be a match with the remains.
Avigail Idan, age 3, was in the arms of her father when he and her mother were shot dead while fleeing from their home. She crawled out from under her dead father, drenched in his blood, and ran to her neighbor, the Brodetzes, to hide. She was then taken with them. Ofri, 8; Yuval, 9; Uriya, 5; and their mother, Hagar. Eitan Yahalomi, 12. Emily Hand, taken at 8, now 9. Amit Shani, 16. Gali Tarshansky, 13. Her brother, Lior, 15, was murdered. Yagil, 12 and his brother Or Yaakov, 16. Yahel Shoham, 3, and his sister, Naveh, 8. Sahar Calderon, 16, and her younger brother Erez, 12. Yuli and Emma Cunio, twins, 3. Raz Asher, 4 and her sister, Aviv, 2. Ofir Engel, taken at 17, now 18. He was visiting his girlfriend at her home in Kibbutz Be’eri when captured with her father, Yossi Sharabi, 50.
Those released don’t know who from their family is still alive. Whom they will see in the hospital room. Some are only now learning about the depth of the day’s horrors.
I am still within that first week, and I don’t know how to get out of it. My brain does not have the capacity to hold anything other than October 7th and the ongoing horrors. I can’t move on from the present. I can’t grieve an ongoing crisis.
Hamas is a destructive force, for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Hamas takes and takes and takes, leaving its people in poverty while its leaders live safely elsewhere. A people Hamas has openly said they don’t believe they are responsible for. Israelis and Palestinians both have a right to self-determination, a right to the land they come from, a land that is theirs.
I'm scared about what comes next. I dream that every Palestinian will be able to return safely. I want to rebuild Gaza into the beautiful land it can be. I want the next generation to grow up carefree, happy, comfortable. I want UN aid to actually reach the people of Gaza. I want good healthcare with hospitals that are safe from the tunnels of Hamas. I want a proper school system that doesn’t propagate hate for the Jewish people. I want teachers who wouldn’t in their wildest dreams keep an Israeli hostage for a terrorist organization. I have no idea how to realize this dream. I barely, if at all, trust leaders to do anything right. But anything, anything is better than Hamas.
The Jewish laws of burial and mourning are intricate, and the process is one of my favorite aspects of my religion. The body is treated gently, solemnly, lovingly, with care and respect. A group of volunteers cleans the body, men for male bodies, women for females. The room is quiet. One only speaks if it pertains to the task at hand. They are the חברה קדישא, the Holy Society, and this is one of the most important of the מצוות, good deeds, in our Torah. It's called a חסד של אמת, charity of truth, or the truest, purest form of charity, because the deceased can’t thank you.
The holy volunteers guide the mourners through the process of burial, customarily as soon as possible out of respect for the body, and through the week of shiva, a seven-day period where close family takes the time to sit in their grief while loved ones, friends and family, come to comfort them. I don’t understand anything about what comes After, but I hope the dead know how loved they are.
We will not be broken. We will not be destroyed. עם ישראל חי
amazing work, very well-written!!