Countering the Denial of October 7 Rapes and Massacres: The Israeli Witnessing Project

Posted on April 30, 2024 by dianabletter

Susan Sarandon denies the rapes of October 7 even happened. That’s the same as denying the Holocaust, and perhaps she does that, too, proving her anti-Semitic ignorance. In any event, there’s an Israeli group that began a few days after the October 7 genocide. That was when Hamas-led terrorists stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 253 more to the Gaza Strip.

This is my article from Times of Israel. You can read it on the website here.

Adele Raemer, survivor of the October 7 Hamas attack from Kibbutz Nirim PHOTO CREDIT: (Courtesy: Edut 710)

Sharon Weisberger was watching the sun come up at the Supernova Festival on October 7. Moments earlier, she had a conversation with a photographer about music and love, and how “you only live once, and you have to fulfill your dreams.”

Then everything changed as Hamas terrorists began their brutal attack on the festival, killing 360 people at the nature party and kidnapping 40, some of whom are still being held hostage in Gaza. The festival attack was part of a wider terror onslaught in which thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 253 more to the Gaza Strip.

Weisberger managed to escape, but she’s lost her inner “fire” and she no longer knows if there’s a place in the world for the things she once loved.

Weisberger is one of the more than 700 eyewitness survivors of the October 7 massacres to give video testimony for Edut 710, the largest grassroots organization of Israeli documentary filmmakers, scholars and mental health professionals who began filming testimonies within a few days of the October 7 atrocities. The group’s name draws from the Hebrew word for testimony and the massacre’s calendar date.

“We realized very quickly that we wanted to record the primary witnesses who were in the firing line,” said Edut 710 cofounder Sagi Aloni. The group has about 400 volunteers involved in the project. Each witness tells a raw, fresh story, adding to a collective outpouring of trauma, fear, uncertainty and survival.

“We have to think about the future and how people will try to find proof and deny that the event even happened,” said another founder, Itay Ken-Tor, a documentary filmmaker and producer of the award-winning documentary, “A Film Unfinished,” about a Nazi propaganda film shot in the Warsaw Ghetto.

“Because I have researched the Shoah and collected a lot of evidence, I know the importance of firsthand testimony,” Ken-Tor said. “It’s very important that the quality of our videos are really good so they can be seen in the future, preserved for 100 years.”

The art of listening

Edut 710’s ethos is guided by the teachings of Dr. Dori Laub, a Holocaust survivor who collected testimonies of other survivors and taught the art of listening to people who had undergone trauma.

“We aren’t ‘interviewing’ the survivors,” said Talya Avishai, one of the founders of Edut 710. “We are listening, deeply listening. We aren’t doing anything else. We pay attention. We do it ethically so we won’t hurt people who are still in the midst of their trauma.”

Avishai, who said she has listened to more than 70 survivors, said that the words survivors try to use don’t encompass the depth of their pain.

“We can’t use words that have existed for so long to describe something that never happened before,” Avishai said. She pays attention to a survivor’s tone, body language and looks that have “nothing to do with words.”

“I’m looking in their eyes,” she said. “I’m looking into their souls.”

“They tell their story as part of Jewish history,” Avishai said. “The fact that I sit and listen to them is a success. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s a happy ending because they’re still alive.”

Bat-El Segev, a mother of six, including a one-month-old baby, survived the onslaught in her garden apartment in Sderot. She spoke to Avishai while videographer Kfir Amir filmed her a few months after October 7.

“The days when we are all on a shipwrecked boat, the people of the project are for us an anchor, a listening ear and a refuge for pain,” Segev said afterward. “The very act of talking, telling, listening was a source of finding renewed strength and the first step of returning to life.”

The videos show how “people go from survivors to witnesses,” said Ohad Ufaz, a filmmaker and one of Edut’s founders.

Ufaz directed the movie “The Listener” about Laub, who “enabled Shoah survivors to deliver their testimony and to experience true listening for the first time.”

“We have a protocol at Edut, a method of approaching survivors,” Ufaz said.

“There is a slight risk that we might trigger Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD], so we give survivors as much time as they need to lead and witness their own story. We’re very sensitive. We never interrupt.”

Ufaz said that the videos also let survivors introduce themselves as “regular people” who describe their lives and the week before October 7.

Emotional trauma is like a wound, he said, and “a wounded memory is in pieces.” As much as possible, the goal is to help survivors “gain agency over their stories and memories.”

Pay attention and ask no questions

Edut 710 is posting both one-minute and five-minute testimonies on social media and YouTube, as well as full testimonies on its website to combat the denial of the October 7 attacks.

“There is nothing more persuasive and convincing than someone who shares their point of view, going into details that nobody could imagine,” Ufaz said.

Gil Levin, a photographer involved in the project, used to work as a social worker with neglected and abused children. He volunteers at Edut both as a listener, he said, and behind the camera.

“We’ve learned to pay attention and ask no questions,” Levin said. “We don’t push people to talk. We’re not looking for drama.”

Everyone’s story is part of the larger story, from men who were soldiers and first responders to women hiding in safe rooms with their children. A story of a woman who “held onto the door of a safe room so that terrorists couldn’t open it,” revealed her “resourcefulness and determination to survive.”

“Nobody can talk about these atrocities and tell the story except them,” Ufaz said. Alon Davidi, the mayor of Sderot, gave his testimony “as a citizen” to Edut 710 and urged others to do the same.

“It’s very important not only for future generations but for ourselves,” Davidi said.

Dr. Renana Keydar, Assistant Professor of Law and Digital Humanities
at Hebrew University, along with Dr. Yael Netzer, the lead scientist at the university’s Center for Digital Humanities, have volunteered to build a digital archive of Edut 710’s videos that will be stored at the National Library of Israel. The testimonies will utilize sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence models to make the project sustainable for future scholars.

Keydar observed that there are close to 100 initiatives all over the country to document what has happened on and after October 7. Growing up in Israel, she said that she grew up hearing testimonies. Every year on Israel’s national Holocaust Remembrance Day, for example, she said, “There was always a witness telling you a story.”

The people listening to the story then helped carry the burden of the story.

Does that have something to do with the role of memory for Jews in their tradition and history?

Speaking with The Times of Israel, Edut 710’s founder Aloni said he believes it does. Even after the pogrom in Kishinev in 1903, Aloni said, there was a researcher gathering testimony.

He let out a sad laugh and added, “I guess we’re experts in grief.”

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Despite Hezbollah Rockets, An Israeli Mushroom Forager Hunts for Fungi

Posted on April 14, 2024 by dianabletter

Well, we survived what might be only the first round of Iranian missiles shot into Israel on April 13 through April 14. Relief is an understatement.

Meanwhile, last month, I had the pleasure of joining Nadim Faris, a mushroom forager from the Druze village of Hurfeish in the Galilee, on a walk in the woods despite the war for Times of Israel. The full article is here.

Faris is known as the man who gives Arabic names to wild mushrooms. He has even supplied monikers for mushrooms to foragers in Syria via Facebook, using a combination of Latin, English and Hebrew to create Arabic names that easily slip across borders between warring countries.

After heavy rains on a late March morning, the 62-year-old mycology enthusiast was eager to go out to forage for chanterelles and other mushrooms in the woods by Hurfeish, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Lebanese border, despite the constant threat of rocket attacks by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group.

Hezbollah has attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border almost daily, killing 10 soldiers and seven civilians, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there. That war broke out on October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, mostly civilians.

Unlike many of the communities in northern Israel, the 7,000 residents of Hurfeish have not been evacuated, yet the village, usually bustling with visitors, feels empty. Druze men serve in the IDF and many of them are away; so far, two soldiers from Hurfeish have been killed in fighting since October 7.

In Israel, the mushroom foraging community brings together Druze, Muslims, Christians and Jews who exchange information about wild mushrooms — both edible and toxic — and where to find them. People from around the country often join Faris for foraging in his familiar woods but few are willing to make the journey now.

When he invited The Times of Israel to go foraging, Faris, a former IDF soldier, said that although “there is danger,” he wasn’t afraid. The wooded hillside, which Faris has known since he was a little boy, seemed eerily peaceful although it is so close to the border. Still, throughout the two-hour walk, he was alert, aware of where he was in relation to the north. Not entirely joking, he said that if there were sirens indicating incoming rockets, there was shelter behind the largest tree.

Then, pointing to Mt. Adir in the near distance, he said, “On an ordinary day, we could go there and find lots of mushrooms, but now we’d only find anti-tank missiles.” Nowadays, Faris sticks close to his village, where he and his wife were both born and where they raised their five children.

The Druze religion was founded in the 10th century as a divergent branch of Islam. There are about one million Druze living mostly in Syria and Lebanon and an estimated 150,000 in Israel. It is a close-knit community.

Broad-shouldered with white hair and a thoughtful smile, Faris wore a flannel shirt, his pocket knife hanging from a string around his neck as he walked. He said that foraging for edibles in the woods is a tradition he learned from his parents and grandparents. He worked for many years as an instructor of industrial engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and now teaches technology at two Arabic-speaking high schools.

“Isn’t that the most important thing in life?” he asked rhetorically. “To teach other people and to learn from them?”

aris took knowing steps around massive boulders, under branches of oak trees and circumventing brambles. He said that he belongs to the “third group of hunters” — after those who hunt for fish and animals, there are those who hunt for mushrooms. Indeed, the popularity of foraging for mushrooms in Israel has risen dramatically in recent years. A group on Facebook now has 60,000 members; the WhatsApp group for foragers in northern Israel numbers 200.

The air in the woods was damp and cool, the bare trees glistening with dew. Splashes of purple cyclamens and red poppies were scattered here and there. Walking slightly bent, observing the ground layered with acorns and fallen leaves, he stopped to examine a patch of tousled dirt.

“The boars passed through here,” he observed. “I’ve found black truffles that boars have dug up. They dig for them, but don’t eat all of them.”

There were no truffles to be found and few other kinds of mushrooms, but Faris wasn’t disappointed. “I just like being in nature,” he said. “Sometimes I go out during a break at work and don’t even pick anything.”

He held back a thorny branch and then apologized.

“I try to make a path, but the forest grows at a faster pace,” he said. “After the rain, everything wakes up.”

Wild mushrooms are fungi, originating from minuscule spores that are carried by the wind or fall to the ground. After rains, they pop up as if by magic, sometimes doubling their size overnight. He pointed to a purplish mushroom, Lepista nuda, that was nameless in Arabic until Faris chose its new name, “Banafsagi ailaziz,” or “Tasty purple,” which he has heard is now being used in Syria as well as Jordan.

Faris follows the way of his parents and never collects more mushrooms than he needs for that day’s meal. He added that the taste changes when he puts mushrooms in the freezer.

He recalled foraging as a boy and bringing home a box of mushrooms for his father, who then weeded out the inedible and poisonous varieties.

The Society for Wild Mushrooms in Israel reports that there are some 750 known species of mushrooms in the country. About 135 are edible; the others are sometimes edible or suspected to be toxic.

In December, a woman was hospitalized at Rambam Hospital due to severe poisoning from a wild mushroom that she picked. She was treated and released. There are several cases of mushroom poisoning each year. Faris emphasizes the importance of looking for mushrooms with people who have experience and can distinguish between the edible and the toxic.

Faris, like other villagers in Hurfeish, also forages for wild plants and herbs. He stopped to pick some end-of-the-season wild asparagus and then offered a taste of a plant he called “Cours ani” in Arabic, which he said cleans out toxins in the body and is good for salads.

Then he knelt down and cleared away some leaves. There, underneath the dirt was a mushroom called Helvella crispa. It was only recently recognized as edible, but he now eats it after sauteeing it in oil.

ut I’ll die from a mushroom,” he joked.

In addition to foraging for wild plants, Faris also has a nursery, Bustan HaShemesh, or Garden of the Sun, where he cultivates and sells blueberry, raspberry, blackberry and strawberry seedlings. He said he wants people to come to Hurfeish, but since October 7, visitors are rare.

The local council of Hurfeish has joined with other non-evacuated municipalities in the north to demand government compensation for the economic impact caused by the ongoing conflict. Until then, the villagers live under constant threat. During the last war with Hezbollah in 2006, a rocket exploded 30 feet from his house, which sustained heavy damage. Yet Faris still forages in the woods, sometimes twice a day.

“This knowledge that I have is a treasure, passed from generation to generation,” he said. “It’s how we increase awareness of Mother Earth and how much she can give.”

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Israeli Arabs, Jews and Druze Play Chess Together During War

Posted on February 11, 2024 by dianabletter

The news you might never hear about from Israel.

This is not fake news. An Arab girl and a Jewish boy play chess in a tournament as a Druze girl looks on. Credit: Olga Volkov

I love posting hopeful news from Israel. My article appeared in Times of Israel here.

Amid the war against Hamas, 132 chess players ranging in age from 9 to 78 competed in the Israeli Open Championship from January 21 through January 29 in Acre, northern Israel, including about 20 international masters and grandmasters, considered the highest ranks in the world of chess.The nine-day Israeli Chess Federation tournament drew people from all over Israel, including children from the Druze villages of Beit Jann and Peki’in in the Galilee. Despite the war — or maybe because of it — everyone was there to play chess.

“Instead of sitting around worrying about the war, it’s therapeutic,” said Avi Cohen, whose son, Israel, the tournament’s youngest competitor, won the eight-and-under Israeli chess tournament in 2022. “Chess is like an escape.”

The organizer of the event, Olga Volkov, runs the chess club in nearby Nahariya in addition to coaching chess players in Shlomi, a town on the border with Lebanon.

In the weeks after the war began on October 7 with the Hamas-led massacre that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, and saw 253 more abducted to the Gaza Strip, Shlomi’s residents were evacuated due to sympathy attacks from the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization stationed in southern Lebanon.

Since then, Volkov travels to Haifa each week, where she coaches her chess players who have taken up temporary residence there.

“We worry about the players and make sure to take care of them,” she said.

Volkov works at various schools in northern Israel as part of the educational program “Chess in School,” which began in 2016. The program has introduced chess to more than 300 schools around Israel, in the Jewish, Arab and Druze sectors.

Volkov says there are thousands of Israeli children now playing chess — a phenomenon that was well underway even before the popular Netflix TV series, “The Queen’s Gambit,” about a female chess player.

“She found that it suited her character in all respects, whether it’s patience, thinking, or competition,” Halbi said. “For her, it’s more than just a game, it’s a matter of falling in love, and it’s an addiction.”

During the competition in Acre, Halbi found herself in a match against a man more than four times her age. Her coach, Andrei Gurbanov, said that Halbi had a “big advantage during the game,” but her opponent won. Competitors in the tournament play a total of nine games, receiving 90 minutes for 40 moves. After that, each player receives an additional 30 minutes for the game’s duration.

Melan Halbi playing against Yuri Khokhlov at the Israeli Chess Federation tournament in Acre, January 2024. (Courtesy)

Chess has grown in popularity in Israel in recent years, said Gurbanov, who is the vice-chairman of the International Physically Disabled Chess Association (IPCA) and the founder of IPCA Israel, which he established in 2022.

Gurbanov, who was born with one arm, is a three-time winner of the Physically Disabled Chess Association Championship. And now, with so many soldiers wounded during the war, he feels that chess can help them. A few years ago, he helped to establish a chess club in the Beit HaLochem, the soldiers’ rehabilitation center in Haifa.

Playing chess during the war shows that we continue to live,” Gurbanov said. “We don’t talk about the war, we talk about other things.”

Many of the chess players at the tournament learned the game from their parents. Gurbanov said his father taught him to play when he was 6 years old; he has been a coach for the last 17 years.

Gurbanov is passionate about introducing the game to new players. With the help of IPCA Israel, he has opened clubs in many Druze settlements in northern Israel, including Peki’in, Yirka, and Beit Jann. Last year, he organized an international chess championship in Peki’in, attracting players from around the world, including Jordan. There were also tryouts for the national championship in which nearly 100 Druze participants participated.

“There is no Druze community without chess right now,” Gurbanov said.

The Druze speak Arabic, but they opted against mainstream Arab nationalism in 1948 and have since served in the Israel Defense Forces and the Border Police. Since about 1050, the community has been closed to outsiders. During the reign of al-Hakim (996 – 1021), the Druze creed came into being, blending Islamic monotheism with Greek philosophy and Hindu influences. 

I love writing about things in Israel that most people don’t hear about. Please share what you read and speak up for Israel. There will be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza if Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders, giving up its totalitarian dictatorship in Gaza.

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The Prayers of Two Mothers

Posted on February 4, 2024 by dianabletter

I wrote this article for The New York Times in 2007 and I feel compelled to repost it. Hamas’ brutal massacre of men, women and children on October 7 left 1,200 dead and some 235 people dragged across the border where many of them are still being held hostage. The death toll for soldiers killed fighting ISIS-like terrorists is 225. So I was thinking of all the grieving mothers . . .

I wrote the piece a year after the Israel-Hezbollah War in 2006. . . And sadly, there might be another war soon.

The border between Israel and Lebanon from a town that has been evacuated due to Hezbollah rocket attacks. Credit: Diana Bletterama

The other day, two mothers who had never met before stood on the Israeli side of the border that separates Israel from Lebanon.

Harriet and I were looking at a Lebanese village where our two sons fought during last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah.

My son, Shlomie, and Harriet’s son, Michael, were in the same paratrooper unit of the Israeli Army. During combat, Michael was hit by sniper fire. Shlomie, a medic, also received shrapnel wounds. He did everything he could to save Michael – but Harriet’s son died in my son’s arms.

I had never met Harriet until that day. After the war ended on August 14, I wrote a letter of condolence to her in Pennsylvania from my village in Israel’s Western Galilee. We began to correspond with each other and then, during a recent trip to Israel, she came to meet me.

We knew it was important for us to drive to the northern border, about a half-hour from my house. There we would be as close as we could get to the village where our sons – American-born Jews who had enlisted in the Israeli Army – had fought their fateful battle.

It was a bright, clear day. Except for an occasional house with shattered windows, you could not tell that a war had taken place just months before. Thousands of Hezbollah-fired Katyusha rockets had fallen around the region, yet everything was tranquil now. The sun was shining; birds sang and the air was filled with the aroma of blossoming orange trees.

Along the border, the road dipped through the green hills. We turned around a sharp bend and there, in the distance, was Aita al-Shaab, the Lebanese village where the battle had taken place. It sat on a hilltop, beyond a rolling valley. It looked so beautiful and so, well, peaceful.

Harriet got out of the car and took some photographs. Then she began to cry.

I thought of the night that my son had called to say he was about to leave for the war. After he said goodbye, I fell down on my knees by his bed and prayed. At the very same time, Harriet must have also been praying for her son.

When two mothers pray for their soldier sons during a war, does one mother’s prayer cancel out the other’s? And why does one son return and one son never comes back?

An Israeli Army jeep approached and a soldier told us we had to move on. He explained that if we stopped for too long, we could be targets for Hezbollah soldiers who might have returned to their positions just beyond the border. I said we needed a few more moments and we’d be on our way.

I then remembered Shlomie recounting that right before going into battle, he asked to borrow Michael’s knitted green kipah, his skullcap, to say the holiest Jewish prayer, “Shma Israel.” When Shlomie finished, Michael asked, “Are you ready now?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready.”

I looked at Harriet standing next to me. I wanted to ask, “Are you ready now?” but I knew that she would never be ready. No mother can ready herself for the loss of her child.

We gazed at the village one last time and then turned to the car. As we continued along the road, I wondered how many mothers on how many roads around the world have to take a journey like ours.

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Inching along, as she awaits his return, a sister of a Hamas hostage stays on course

Posted on January 23, 2024 by dianabletter

“This is a fight between good and evil, between light and darkness, between truth and lies.”

Adi Kikozashvili, the sister of Hamas hostage Shlomi Ziv by his photograph in Nahariya, Israel

Here’s my article that appeared in Times of Israel here.

Adi Kikozashvili says the only reason she can go on with her life is because it is what her older brother would want her to do.

That brother, 40-year-old Shlomi Ziv, was kidnapped on October 7 (he turned 41 on Sunday, January 21, 2024), while working as part of the security detail at the Supernova desert rave festival when Hamas terrorists stormed into southern Israel, brutally murdering 1,200 people — including 360 at the festival — and taking 253 hostages into Gaza.

Ziv’s wife’s cousin, Aviv Eliyahu, the security manager at the festival, was among those slaughtered there.

On January 14, Kikozashvili started her final year of studies at Haifa’s Technion in food bioengineering. She has difficulty concentrating, she said, and has to “study how to study again.”

“But he’ll be upset if I don’t finish because of him,” she said.

In various ways, the family members of Hamas-held captive Ziv are doing what they can to inch their lives along, often with great struggle. Ziv’s wife, Miran, who worked in the education department of the Maale Yosef Regional Council before the war is now actively pursuing the release of her husband and the other hostages.

Ziv’s other sister, Revital, also took an unpaid leave from her job to concentrate on these efforts. Ziv’s mother, Rosita, has gone back to her job as head of the cleaning department in a surgical ward in the Galilee Medical Center, while her father, Murady, who does not work, keeps the television on in the background, although he is now able to “watch some sports.”

Kikozashvili said that trying to continue with their lives is a tribute to her brother, who turned 41 in captivity on Sunday, January 21.

On a recent evening at the youth center in Israel’s northernmost coastal city, Nahariya, where Kikozashvili volunteers as part of Netuim, a community leadership group that awarded her a college scholarship, she sat with me 

We sat together in the office. She had her hair pulled back. On her neck, just below her ear, were two Hebrew letters, nun and samech. Together, they form the word, nes, or miracle.

“We certainly need a miracle now,” I told her.

“Yes, but those are actually my grandmother’s initials. Her name was ___. She was a big part of my life. She died when I was in my early twenties. She was a large woman with a large heart.”

I thought about her grandmother. Then I thought of a story I had read, about a man who had lost his faith and didn’t believe in God. His older friend asked him if there was anyone he had ever believed in. The man replied, “My grandmother. She always gave me love and made me feel secure.”

“So then pray to her,” the friend said. “And remember, the first letters of the words, ‘good, old, dead,’ spell God.”

I related the story to Adi who nodded seriously, paying attention. She studied science; I wasn’t sure if she thought my story was farfetched or silly.

Then she spoke about her brother and what happened on October 7.

Ziv went to work at the Supernova Festival with distant family member Eliyahu, the festival’s security manager, on October 5. He loved to work at “nature parties,” she said, because there are “high-quality people,” and the campground was very organized.

They received permission to hold the party there, she explained, even though the party was held close to the Gaza border.

“What’s the difference between Tel Aviv and Kibbutz Re’em?” she asked. “It’s within our borders, in our own country?”

At 7:30 a.m., on Saturday, Ziv called her. He was very calm, she said, explaining that there was some kind of “terrorist invasion,” but he did not want her and the rest of the family to worry about him.

“There’s a traffic jam,” Ziv told her, not explaining that cars were bottlenecked trying to flee the terrorists. At 8:14, Adi’s sister, Revital, called Ziv who sounded breathless, running. The phone conversation lasted eight seconds and he told his sister, “I’ll call you back,” and then he hung up.

“We’re still waiting for him to call back,” Kikozashvili said. Tears filled her eyes. 

We moved on to talking about the Israel Defense Forces. She told me that she believes the IDF is “doing everything they can to rescue the hostages.” While some families of hostages are understandably angry, she said she and her family were not. 

“We weren’t educated to be angry,” she said.

“What’s important now is to strengthen the government,” she said. “When the war is over, then everything should change.”

She said that she squeezes in talks with the media whenever she can because “the hostages can’t talk.”

“We’re on the outside and we’re their voice,” she said.

For a few weeks after the start of the war, the family left Nahariya and stayed in Netanya, where someone allowed them to stay in an apartment for free so that they could be closer to the other families of hostages and protests at Hostages’ Square in Tel Aviv.

Kikozashvili said that although she tells people, “We need to celebrate life,” she finds it almost impossible to do so.

“My heart isn’t whole,” she said. “It’s broken.”

After October 7, it took her six weeks to listen to music, and another few weeks to be able to go out with a friend and sit in a café. She no longer watches the news, although in the beginning, it was “24/7.” But every morning, as soon as she wakes up, her first thought is, “When will they return,” and she switches from desperation to hope and back again in a matter of seconds.

Kikozashvili had planned to get an apartment in Haifa to be closer to the university and potential work, but she is staying with her parents so that they can all be together.

“Everything has been put on hold,” she said.

On January 14, marking the 100 days of war with Hamas, the Technion halted all activities and held a rally in solidarity with the hostages being held in captivity in Gaza.

“Please spread unconditional love and reduce the amount of gratuitous hatred,” Kikozashvili implored the crowd. “Pay attention to the friend sitting next to you in class, look people in the eye, see what is good in them, support one another, hug one another.”

She wondered out loud how it would be possible for her to return to her studies in these circumstances, “and the truth is that I have no idea. But we will do it with all the help and support that the Technion is giving us.”

Her parents rarely speak to the media anymore, and she chooses to do so when she has the emotional strength and the time.

“I want to tell people outside of Israel, ‘Wake up!’” she said. “This is a fight between good and evil, between light and darkness, between truth and lies.”

She stood next to a poster of her brother and then turned to a display of notes and prayers that children at the youth center had written for the hostages. The display with all the kids’ notes reminded me of the prayers that people stuff into the cracks of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. 

The October 7 slaughter, she said, has united Israelis in their faith, hope and prayers.

“I’d like to take a moment to say a prayer with you,” I said. “Would that be okay?”

She nodded. 

I closed my eyes. What could I have said? I prayed, “God, please watch over Adi’s brother and all the other hostages. It feels so dark now but I want to believe, God, that you are here . . .”

I opened my eyes. Maybe I’d expected some sort of magic, some answer to my prayer, but everything was the same. The next day, when I wrote to thank her for meeting with me, I added that I hoped she didn’t think I was weird for praying like that.

“Mamash, mamash, lo,” she replied in Hebrew. Really, really, no.

“Because what else do we have if not prayers?” she asked.

About her older brother, Kikozashvili said that he had just finished a course in interior design and was supposed to pick up his certificate on October 10. He knows so many things about history, archaeology, geography, “he can find something to talk to with everyone,” she said.

She said that Hamas caused Israel to crack, but out of that crack will come strength.

“You see it happening, how Israelis are together, religious and secular, right and left, there are no differences,” she said. “Hamas broke us, but they won’t break us completely.”

—————–For more news, go to Times of Israel Do NOT be fooled by media reports that journalists are being killed. Most of them are not journalists and work for Hamas. Do NOT be fooled into giving money for “Palestinian children.” It all goes to buying weapons. After all, the UN and charities have donated billions to the Gaza Strip and Hamas stole the money to build tunnels. Do NOT be fooled that Israel is committing genocide. Hamas committed genocide when it stormed into Israel and killed 1,200 people and raped women and girls.

As Adi said, above, this is a fight between good and evil, between truth and lies.

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Uprooted and Unsettled in Northern Israel

Posted on January 14, 2024 by dianabletter

Here’s my article from The Jerusalem Post about the more than 120,000 refugees within Israel who have been evacuated from the northern border with Lebanon because of Iran-led Hezbollah attacks.

When Karin Nathans Gefen was evacuated with her children from Kibbutz Matzuva on October 18 due to possible attacks by Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, she said that the “worst thing of all” was the uncertainty of their situation.

This photo shows a recent attack by Hezbollah forces on Kibbutz Metsuva. Beyond the smoke is the northern border and Lebanon. [Shay Zalel]

Gefen, one of more than 120,000 residents who have been evacuated from communities near the border in northern Israel, is now staying in a hotel in Tiberias with her two children (a third is doing a year of Sherut Leumi [National Service]), while her husband, Ran, a reservist, remains on the kibbutz, where he serves as part of the emergency standby squad.

Uprooted, having to live in one room in a hotel, driving long hours to her job – those factors are difficult enough. But to Gefen, living in the unknown is the most challenging.

“I don’t know how we can ever go back to the kibbutz,” she said, which is not much more than 2 kilometers from the northern border. “We don’t feel safe there. How will we ever have a sense of security?”

While not all northern Israel towns and settlements have been evacuated, residents across the region feel unsettled and uneasy as they struggle to accept what’s become the new normal.

Life after October 7 for the evacuated

Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have launched hundreds of rockets, drones and anti-tank missiles into northern Israel, in support of Hamas amid the war in Gaza. In the past week, there has been a dramatic uptick in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah since Israeli airstrikes killed several top Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. Residents have no idea when – or if – they can ever return to their homes, some of which have been destroyed in Hezbollah attacks.

Gefen said that residents of five kibbutzim from the Mateh Asher Regional Council, where a total of eight settlements have been evacuated, are now lodged at the same Tiberias hotel. They’ve set up a gan and a nursery school and have banded together to hold activities for children.Advertisement

“It’s a real community; we’re all here together. But it isn’t home,” said Gefen, 47, who was born on Kibbutz Matzuva and has lived there her whole life.

“It breaks my heart when I see how the kibbutz now looks so abandoned,” she said. “And I don’t see how the situation is going to change.”

Her older daughter rides a bus for more than an hour each way to study with her former schoolmates, but they are no longer in their usual school, which is too close to the border. Even students who have not been evacuated feel a sense of upheaval.

“A lot of students have lost their direction,” said Rami Glaser of Shavei Zion, whose son, Alon, is in eighth grade. Middle-school students from the moshav have been transferred to a different school where they can study only in the afternoons; elementary students use the school in the morning.

“For kids who find it difficult to study, now it’s really difficult for them to stay motivated,” Glaser said. Some teachers are in the reserves, and there is nobody to replace them; others have been evacuated, so they can’t come teach; still others leave school early when their child or spouse gets a sudden leave from fighting in Gaza.

Glaser said that parents try to protect their children but they still know “something serious is going on.” The entrance to the beachfront moshav is now lined with sandbags, concrete barriers, and guards. And the beach is closed indefinitely. Glaser and his wife, Esti, take their two children on day trips to get them away from the region, “trying to show them normal life.”

“But I see that so many kids have lost their self-confidence in every aspect of their lives,” Glaser said.Ordinary routines are no longer taken for granted. 

Saeed Saeed, who manages the avocado groves in Rosh Hanikra on the northern border, said that he and his staff try to go to work each morning as usual, “but then the army tells us to stop because it’s too dangerous.” In December, Saeed said, he worked only five days the entire month. 

“We can’t care for the trees, so they aren’t healthy,” Saeed said, a fact that will damage next year’s crop. He can’t harvest the avocados, either, and they’re left hanging on the trees. But most worrisome to Saeed is how he’ll protect his family members, who live in Sheikh Dannun.

“Every explosion is frightening,” Saeed said. “My granddaughter is so scared, even though her father – my son-in-law – is a reserve soldier.

“Hezbollah rockets don’t make a distinction between Arabs and Jews,” he said, pointing out that in the 2006 Second Lebanon War, 13 Arab civilians were killed by Hezbollah Katyusha rockets. 

So far, Hezbollah forces have killed nine soldiers and four civilians.

 Saeed also said there are only two regulation bomb shelters in his village; one at the school and the other in the senior citizens’ center. Most of the houses in the village were built in the 1990s, before the new type of bomb shelters were required.

“No one is safe,” Saeed said. 

Despite the mandatory evacuation of Metulla, and even when the town was declared a military zone, Helen Bar-Lev, an 82-year-old artist and poet, didn’t want to leave. Bar-Lev, who has lived there for the past 16 years, wanted to stay in her own house, with her cats. 

“More or less everybody had left before me,” Bar-Lev said. 

Head of the Metulla Local Council David Azulai picked her up from her house on October 17, after the mandatory evacuation was already in place, and drove her out of the town’s gate. 

“I didn’t want to go, because I didn’t think that any place in Israel was safe,” Bar-Lev said. At first, she, too, stayed in a hotel in Tiberias, but since then she has found an apartment to rent in Karmiel.

“It’s very traumatic to move at this age,” Bar-Lev said. With the aid of a social worker, she has finally sorted out “a lot of the bureaucracy.” Still, she isn’t sure her house will still be standing after the war, or if she’ll be able to sell it, or if she’ll feel safe enough to move back to Metulla.

Hezbollah “fires on houses in Metulla deliberately,” Azulai said. Some 140 houses have been partially damaged, and about 10 houses have been destroyed. 

“In the south, the IDF is fighting,” Azulai said. “But in the north, the IDF hasn’t gone 1 centimeter into Lebanon.”Since early December, the IDF has started destroying much of Hezbollah’s forces and assets within firing range of the northern border. But, Azulai said, “Hezbollah keeps attacking, and we’re on the defensive.

“We don’t want a war,” he said. “We want the United Nations Resolution 1701 – signed by Hezbollah in 2006, which stated that the terrorist group must stay north of the Litani River – to be implemented.” 

“Right now, citizens can’t come back here,” Azulai said. “It hurts. It’s very painful.”

He has stayed in Metulla since the war began with the emergency standby squad and a few citizens who haven’t left. But, he wonders, with Hezbollah forces so close, residents might never feel safe there again.

“I loved living in Metulla,” said Ari Singer, who was evacuated from Metulla with his girlfriend, Shoham Shlomi, a student at Tel Hai College. “But since October 7, I think about what could have happened if Hezbollah fighters had infiltrated the border or come in through tunnels, like Hamas did in the South. It would have been even worse here because there’s only one road into town, and it would have been completely closed off.” 

Even before October 7, Hezbollah terrorists would shine laser lights at people in Metulla at night, Singer said. “Whether it was a sniper, someone trying to blind you while you’re driving, or just trying to intimidate you, it was very distressing.”

He would love to move back to Metulla “because it’s the most beautiful place in Israel,” but only if Hezbollah is pushed north of the Litani. 

AT THE outbreak of the war, Galilee Medical Center General Director Prof. Masad Barhoum instructed the hospital’s medical teams to move critical departments, followed by other in-patient wards, to the protected underground complex. 

In addition, the medical center outfitted a second trauma room in the emergency department to treat trauma patients wounded on the northern front. 

“We are maintaining a very high level of preparedness in order to respond appropriately to a significant escalation on the northern border,” said Dr. Tsvi Sheleg, deputy director. 

There’s traffic, shoppers, and people sitting in cafés along the main boulevard in Nahariya. But Shoshana Varga, a lifetime resident, said “everyone is tense and alert.” 

“The war has started, even though it hasn’t started officially,” said Varga.

She works as a caretaker in the home of Bina Markowitz, 91, who has difficulty walking. When sirens went off at the start of the war, she and Markowitz had to take shelter in the stairway of the apartment building since they didn’t have enough time to reach the ground-floor bomb shelter. 

“We left Nahariya in 2006 because we didn’t want to be in a bomb shelter 24 hours a day,” Varga said. “And that was only one month. This war is going to be worse.” 

According to a Nahariya City Hall spokesman, the municipal administration holds meetings early each morning in conjunction with the army and security forces, and then administrators decide on the schedule for the city’s schools.

Shops and businesses remain open, the spokesman said, but they close earlier than usual.“The streets are empty in the evening,” Varga said.

Yet after work is the only time that landscape designer Fikri Yihie can go to the gym at the country club in Kibbutz Evron, near his village of Mazra’a.

“I work out so I don’t think too much about the war, the hostages, and all the people who were killed,” Yihie said. He doesn’t let his eight-year-old son watch the news on television for that reason.

“I don’t want him to see all this,” he said. “I want him to just be a child and play with his friends.”

[This is the end of my article. But not the end of my hope. Two of the people I interviewed here are Muslms who live here. We have a diverse, wonderful community and we are standing together in the face of enemies who want to destroy us.]

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Jewish and Muslim Roommates (And Friends) Share a Group Home in Northern Israel

Posted on December 24, 2023 by dianabletter

Here’s a tiny shimmer of hope in a very dark time during the Israel-Hamas War. At this group home for young people with special needs, a Muslim young woman and a Jewish young man share a special friendship. From my article in Times of Israel, which you can read here. By the way, Times of Israel, published in Israel, has up-to-date news you won’t see in most other media sites.

When the Israel-Hamas War broke out on October 7, Aya Jaber was afraid. As a Muslim Arab living in a group home in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya with her Jewish friend, Elad Kornhauser she wondered if she’d be seen differently or suddenly mistrusted.

After all, Jaber knew that workers from Gaza had taken photographs inside Israel and sent them to Hamas before the October 7 massacre, providing information that helped the thousands of terrorists who invaded Israel and brutally killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

“I understood the fear,” 22-year-old Jaber said on a recent afternoon in their apartment, which is run by Kivunim, an organization that helps young adults with disabilities. “The Hamas attack made Jews look at Arabs differently.”

Kornhauser, 24, listened as Jaber spoke in the bright, cozy living room that they share with two other roommates — one Muslim, one Jewish.

“I am here with you, Aya, as always,” Kornhauser told her. “We’ve lived together for more than a year. Two months can’t ruin it.”

Kornhauser and Jaber share a deep connection because they understand each other’s challenges and limitations. Kornhauser has Familial Dysautonomia, a rare genetic mutation also known as Riley-Day Syndrome. This causes malfunctions in the nervous system, including nerves that regulate involuntary functions, such as body temperature, blood pressure, breathing and salivating. The genetic mutation occurs in people with Ashkenazi Jewish or Eastern European Jewish heritage.

“It’s an antisemitic disease,” Kornhauser joked.

Elad Kornhauser, left, and Aya Jaber, flatmates and friends at Kivunim. (Credit: Diana Bletter)

Jaber has Cerebral Palsy which, she explained, is not a disease, but rather a group of disorders that cause neurological and musculoskeletal problems that affect posture, sensory perceptions, movement, and other functions. Able to move about in her wheelchair, Jaber serves in the Israeli National Service, volunteering in a senior citizens’ center in Nahariya. The program has been temporarily suspended, however, because there is not enough space in the protected rooms for all the residents and employees.

Hamas and Hezbollah ruined my plan,” Jaber said.

Instead, she participates in a vocational training center in Kibbutz Lochamei HaGettaot which is run in cooperation with Kochav Hatzafon, a non-profit organization for young people with disabilities. The participants learn employment skills, engage in social activities, and celebrate different religious holidays.

Jaber, from Haifa, is vivacious and talkative, with a quick sense of humor that equals the wit of Kornhauser, who’s from Ramat Gan. He calls her by her last name, Jaber, and she calls him Hauser. They like the same music, including the Beatles, Abba and Barbra Streisand. They enjoy teasing one another — as well as offering support. When they spoke about their experiences swimming, Kornhauser said he didn’t know how. Jaber responded, “I don’t know how to swim either. So?”

Then Jaber added that the few times she’s been in a pool, she didn’t like it when her family took photos of her in the water. “I look ugly,” she said.

“You don’t look ugly!” Kornhauser gently scolded her.

Jaber and Kornhauser share the apartment with two other roommates, Maya Ronen and Maysoon Samaka. The four young people, all graduates of high schools for children with special needs, help with household chores such as cleaning, cooking (Jaber said they made gnocchi the previous night), and grocery shopping. They also receive care and assistance from a live-in staff.

Over the last 20 years, Kivunim has established 45 apartments in Nahariya and Haifa which now house approximately 120 participants. Of the organization’s 210 alumni, 76 percent are employed, 34% are married, and 82% are living independently. The organization helps individuals with physical disabilities, vision and hearing impairments, chronic illness and associated disorders, as well as high-functioning young adults with autism.

Because of the war, some of the participants have been evacuated to other apartments, and many activities, such as educational day trips, have been curtailed. A social worker, counselors and various staff members are available so that the young participants can share their wartime feelings and experiences.

Alon Cohen, 21, a Kivunim counselor, said he guides Jaber, Kornhauser and the others as they learn important life skills, such as how to navigate public transportation on their own, including using an app. The goal is to help them learn to live independently.

“If they want to learn to cook a certain dish,” Cohen said, “I help them with the recipe.”

The apartment is spacious and sunny, filled with artwork, books and board games. On a recent afternoon, while Kornhauser went to take a walk, Jaber participated in a dance session with other young women.

Jaber hopes to return to her original mission of performing her national service at the elder care facility in Nahariya.

“It depends upon Hezbollah and Hamas,” she said. She added that the October 7 massacre wasn’t only an attack on Jews.

“The terrorists killed a Muslim woman in a hijab,” she said. “It didn’t matter who it was. It was that they live here in Israel and it’s seen as a betrayal.”

Kornhauser is currently taking a course at the Open University on popular music in Israel. He isn’t sure what his future goals are, but Jaber said she wants to go into acting or communication.

“They’re both very smart and very capable of doing everything they want,” Cohen said. “I help them find the ways to get there.”

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Writing My Life Story During the Hamas War Against Israel

Posted on December 3, 2023 by dianabletter

The war between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and Iran and Syria continues. Meanwhile, I wrote this piece for the Jewish Book Council’s Paper Brigade Daily. You can read it here where there are other writers on the war or continue here.

My library books are long overdue. 

I took them out from a kib­butz library near where I live in the West­ern Galilee, a few weeks before the Octo­ber 7 mas­sacre. Most of the peo­ple on the kib­butz — four miles away from the bor­der with Lebanon, where Hezbol­lah, Iran’s proxy ter­ror army, has more than 150,000 mis­siles and rock­ets aimed in our direc­tion — have left. And the library, with its sur­pris­ing col­lec­tion of Eng­lish books, is closed until fur­ther notice. 

That’s just one of the many ways my life in a beach vil­lage on the Mediter­ranean Shore has changed so abrupt­ly, a place I’ve lived with my fam­i­ly since 1991.

I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t con­cen­trate enough to read a book. And I’ve always loved read­ing! But what could I read, any­way, dur­ing the war? From my book­shelf, I picked up John Le Carre’s The Lit­tle Drum­mer Girl, and leafed through it, find­ing a few sen­tences about a char­ac­ter who mused about Israel, ask­ing, ​“What are we to become… A Jew­ish home­land or an ugly lit­tle Spar­tan state?” I thought about how we returned to Israel after an exile that last­ed near­ly 2000 years. We revived the Hebrew lan­guage. We wel­comed Jews from all over, from Afghanistan to Yemen. We became the start-up nation, fueled by a Do-It-Your­self inge­nu­ity and cre­ativ­i­ty. We have a diverse pop­u­la­tion of almost ten million. 

As a writer, I want my nov­els to reflect a per­fect­ed real­i­ty, and I want real­i­ty to be as redemp­tive as a nov­el. But liv­ing in the Mid­dle East has crushed my roman­ti­cism. Israel still has to act like Spar­ta, even though since its found­ing in 1948, we’ve kept dream­ing about how to beat our swords into plowshares.

So what have I read dur­ing the war? The only book I’ve been able to focus on is Daniel Jon­ah Goldhagen’s The Dev­il Nev­er Dies: The Rise and Threat of Glob­al Anti­semitism. It con­firms what I sus­pect­ed: Israel does not cause anti­semitism, but rather, anti­semitism caus­es the demo­niza­tion of Israel. I’ve come to under­stand that, before Octo­ber 7, I lived in denial about the pow­er of that hatred. Now, I can no longer pre­tend that there are those out there who don’t real­ly mean it when they use the same words that Hitler used. Anni­hi­late. Exter­mi­nate. Eliminate.

But it’s wartime and there’s lit­tle time for reflec­tion. There’s too much work to be done. A few days ago, I start­ed vol­un­teer­ing at a local school to teach Eng­lish to junior high school stu­dents. They come in the after­noon; ele­men­tary school kids study there in the morn­ing. The schools where the kids usu­al­ly study have been closed because of the threat of Hezbol­lah attacks. There is also a lack of teach­ers: many of them have been called up for the Israeli Army’s reserve units while oth­ers have moved far­ther south.

The Eng­lish teacher, Mari­na, explained to me that the stu­dents do not yet have books or study mate­ri­als; they’re all stored in the school that is now part of a closed mil­i­tary zone. So Mari­na set up her com­put­er to project vocab­u­lary words on the board in the front of the class­room. I didn’t bring a com­put­er; instead, I took a pho­to of the words with my phone and then sat with a group of eighth-grade stu­dents in the bomb shelter. 

The kids were row­dy, unruly, bois­ter­ous. Still, I wor­ried about the words they had to learn for a sto­ry: crime, scene, blood, evidence.

I asked the stu­dents to write sen­tences using the words, hop­ing they wouldn’t write about Hamas or the war. They didn’t. They wrote about crim­i­nals, rob­bers, and detectives. 

They laughed. They sang ​“Head, Shoul­ders, Knees and Toes.” They joked. Some of the kids didn’t have pen­cils. One asked to go to the bath­room because he didn’t want to read his sen­tences out loud. I’ve giv­en pri­vate Eng­lish lessons but I’ve nev­er taught in an Israeli school before. I impro­vised the way a neigh­bor who owns a sec­ond-hand cloth­ing store now guards the entrance of our vil­lage, or the way high-pow­ered tech exec­u­tives are now pick­ing lemons and cher­ry toma­toes in south­ern Israel because of the short­age of farm workers.

After school was over, I walked out­side and sud­den­ly there was an explo­sion. The boom sound­ed close.

“If it is out­go­ing, you don’t have to wor­ry about it,” my hus­band always tells me.

Out­go­ing means Israel is shelling Lebanon. Incom­ing means a rock­et or mis­sile from Hezbollah.

I rode back to my vil­lage on the shore of the Mediter­ranean on my 250-cc scoot­er, the one I usu­al­ly ride to the library, and tried to act as if I’m a char­ac­ter in a nov­el who doesn’t give in to fear. 

I thought about the books I want to take out and read once the war is over. I thought about the books I want to write. I thought about the his­to­ry of the Peo­ple of the Book and the present moment. Some­thing enor­mous is hap­pen­ing right now, and I am part of it. I am writ­ing the sto­ry of my life. I am writ­ing the sto­ry with my life.

I took the photo on the beach in nearby Nahariya early one morning. It’s amazing to find beauty in the midst of war.

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Fighting for Israel on New York Streets, on Social Media, and On the Battlefield

Posted on November 19, 2023 by dianabletter

This article originally appeared in The Times of Israel here.

Snir Dayan has fought for Israel on the streets of New York City and on social media. And now, the 29-year-old has left behind his successful New York business to return to Israel to fight once again in the Israeli Army.

Dayan was watching the news at midnight on October 7 and saw that there had been a Hamas invasion from Gaza. At first, he didn’t think much of it. He had seen attempted incursions when he served in the Israel Defense Forces’ Golani Infantry Brigade on the Gaza border in 2014. He said he was calm at first, and went to sleep, but a few hours later, his phone “exploded” with messages from friends in New York and Israel.

He learned the extent of the Hamas terrorists’ atrocity: 1,200 men, women and children slaughtered, thousands wounded, and 240 taken into captivity in Gaza. Dayan, who has a company that provides personal security as well as a shop selling security equipment in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, was soon giving a speech to raise funds for Israel at an event in Hudson Yards Mall.

“I helped raise $70,000, but I stood there in the middle of this cocktail party and I just didn’t feel right,” Dayan said. Feeling powerless and helpless, he knew he “just had to go back to Israel.”

Dayan called someone in charge of the Israeli Army reserves who informed him that when the army sent out 150,000 emergency induction notices for soldiers a few days after the October 7 attack, 300,000 responded. Since then, the army has mobilized approximately 360,000 reserve soldiers. From New York, Dayan called a good friend who arranged a phone call with Dayan’s former Golani unit. The commander asked a few questions and then said, “Welcome to the reserves, and get here as fast as you can.”

Like thousands of other Israelis who were traveling or working abroad, Dayan returned to fight. He landed in Israel on October 20, and was already in his uniform on the northern border with Lebanon on October 21, fighting against Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy terror army.

“The IDF lost eight soldiers and a lot of soldiers were injured on the northern border, most of them from anti-tank missiles that Hezbollah was shooting,” Dayan explained. “Another thing that we dealt with was explosive drones and attempts of terrorist infiltrations.” Dayan, who had taken up his former position as a sharpshooter, said that despite all the dangers, he had a “big smile” on his face.

“Fellow soldiers told me, ‘you look too happy for someone in a war zone,’ but the helplessness I had felt in New York left me,” Dayan said. As strange as it seemed, Dayan, who is also a krav maga instructor, felt satisfied being in Israel where “I could help take part in defending my country. This is my natural place. This is where I belong.”

Dayan, now stationed with a Golani unit on the coastline in Northern Israel, said that when he’s not fighting on the battlefield, he’s fighting against antisemitic propaganda on social media. He gives people short explanations about Israeli history that are easy to understand. For example, when people accuse Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians, he tells them to look at the numbers.

“There were 200,000 people in Gaza 75 years ago,” he said. “Today there are 2.8 million.”

Or, when people tell him that Jews never lived in Israel before 1948, he counters, “What about Jesus? He is known as Jesus of Nazareth, which is right here in Israel.”

He also has to explain to well-meaning Western liberals that the concept of compassion “just doesn’t exist in the Middle East.”

“In Western society, you think that if you show compassion to someone, they’ll have compassion for you. But compassion is not a currency in the Middle Eastern market. Here, when you show compassion, terrorists feel it will be easier to eliminate you. The only important currency in the Middle East is strength.”

Part of Dayan’s family is from Morocco; one of his grandfathers can trace his roots in Haifa back seven generations. Dayan has lived in New York City since 2015 and has always been active in self-defense for New York Jews. In In 2021, during an anti-Israel protest in front of a Jewish restaurant, Ess a Bagel, he and a friend went out with Israeli flags and were attacked by the demonstrators.

“It could have ended up in a lynching,” Dayan said. But in a strange twist, Dayan was arrested by a New York City policeman even though he was defending himself.

New York today is even more hostile to Israel, he said, and “it’s the same around the world.” At a recent demonstration in Australia, people were shouting “Gas the Jews.” To Dayan, “it’s clearer than ever that Israel is a miracle that must exist for the safety and prosperity of the Jewish people.” But, he says, “We need to keep explaining why we have the right to exist.”

“We live in the Middle East and we’re the only functioning democracy so we have to be the strongest military in the region,” he said. “If not, we won’t survive.”

He said he feels that Israel—and Jews—will have to keep fighting “forever.” But all that doesn’t deter him.

“I’m lucky,” he said. “I was born into a nation of warriors.”

Dayan, center, holding the Israeli flag, with his friend, Amit Skornik, at a May 21 Anti-Israel protest in New York. (PHOTO CREDIT: COURTESY)

If you haven’t a clue about where to read in-depth news on Israel, check out Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post and Ynetnews for coverage.

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We’re on the Frontline in Northern Israel, Waiting for Hezbollah

Posted on November 16, 2023 by dianabletter

In the early morning on my bike ride delivering coffee to Israeli soldiers, I ran into Daniel Shkolnik. He’ll be 80 in a few months. My husband and I met him in the early 2000s when he worked at Café Carter in the nearby town of Nahariya. He used to grind our coffee.

In August, 2006, Hezbollah—Iran’s proxy terror army—fired Katyusha rockets into Nahariya. The rockets hit the store, with Danny inside. He lost almost all his hearing. He suffered burns on his left hand. He lost his left leg.

He is one of the most cheeful people I’ve ever met. Almost every morning, he walks to the Nahariya Sports Center and works out in the gym. When I saw him two weeks ago, I was pouring coffee for some young soldiers who were on guard duty. (There is a possibility that Hezbollah terrorists might attack from the sea.) The soldiers heard Danny’s story. They looked at him in wonder that he was still out and about. Still smiling. Then Danny joked, “Well, lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice so here I am.”

After he walked away, one of the soldiers said, “Oh, I wanted a photo of him.”

They were up all night guarding and they thought he was brave. He is. He has not stopped living.


This morning, when I saw him, Danny said, “Hezbollah rockets is waiting for us.”

We both looked over our shoulders at Lebanon, about six miles away. Just over the crest of the hill, on the other side of the border, are 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed in our direction.

“My father was born in Israel,” Danny said. “My grandfather was born in Israel. My grandfather’s grandfather was born in Israel. We go back to the 1800s. And we’ve known nothing but war.”

So here we are, unsure when Hezbollah will strike. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has called Israel a microbe that must be destroyed.

And it is the mission of its benefactor, Iran, to erase Israel off the map.

People have threatened to destroy the Jews throughout history. The Egyptians enslaved us. The Italians put us in ghettos. The Crusaders killed us. During the Shoah, they wiped out most of the Jews in Europe. Nazi Germany murdered 80-percent of the Jewish population in Greece alone. On October 7, 2023, Hamas murdered 1,400 men, women and children, wounded thousands, and kidnapped 240 people still being held captive.

But we’re still here. There’s a reason. And our history is proof that we will survive Islamic threats. And Hamas and Hezbollah will be just one more in a long line of barbarians who sought to destroy the Jews. But the barbarians will be relegated to the dark rubble of history while we, the Jews, no matter how much we’re hated, we will continue to be a light unto the nations.

If you want to learn more about what life is like now in northern Israel, you can listen to the Life’s Accessories podcast, where I talk about the situation. Tune in here.

And some of you have asked what you can do to help. Here are a few things:

  1. Put up posters of the KIDNAPPED men, women, children and babies being held captive by Hamas in Gaza. They range in age from 10 months to 85. You can download the photos and put them up on billboards, poles or public stations. Act quickly and don’t provoke officials or anyone else. This is the site that you can get more information here.
  2. Write to your representatives! Tell them you support Israel’s military campaign to dismantle Hamas, a terror organization that aims to “eliminate, annihilate and murder” Israelis.
  3. When people call for a “ceasefire,” you can agree. A ceasefire ONLY after Hamas frees ALL the hostages.
  4. Remember that America, Britain, France and their allies went to war to stop Hitler and Nazi Germany. Israel has every right, and a duty, to defend her citizens.
  5. Find out where organizations that you support (in the arts, in the LBGTQ+ community) stand on the issue of Israel vs. Hamas.
  6. If you graduated from a university or college, you have a voice as part of the alumni. Find out if the university provides a safe space for Jews on campus.
  7. Write to newspapers, magazines or TV stations if you see that they are presenting anti-Israel news.
  8. Remember that the United Nations is controlled by Russia, China, Iran, Arab countries and other states that are antisemites and anti-Zionists. Since 1948, the UN has never insisted that Arab countries absorb the Palestinian refugees, not even Jordan, which is 75% Palestinian. Do not give any money to UNICEF. Do not believe any “facts” coming from any UN agencies, including the World Health Organization, because they are controlled by Hamas.
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