Mission Recap: Heartbreak and Inspiration in Israel

Here in Israel, every day is Yom Kippur. Who shall live and who shall die in this unfathomable conflict? How much longer? On the 100^th day of captivity of our hostages in Gaza, I am on a plane heading back from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles. As a rabbinical student, I came to Israel last week with the Sinai Temple Rabbinical Fellowship Volunteer Mission to work, support the people and the country and find answers to many questions after the fateful Simchat Torah attack. I find that I am returning with even more questions than before.

Israel has been part of the fabric of my life for the past 63 years. During childhood, we would visit our relatives there regularly, I spent my summer after high school in an Ulpan learning Hebrew, Judaism and Zionism, our daughter attended Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv, I came on Bnei Mitzvah trips, Passover and several missions. I am no stranger to life in Israel both from a political, social, and religious perspective. Over the years, I learned to not love Israel blindly, but appreciate it for its diversity and all the difficulties that come with it.

Our group came here in June. We were prepared because we had learned about Israel for an entire year hearing about the history of Zionism in the U.S. and Israel relations, Palestinian history, why the progressive left has adopted the cause of the Palestinians, and other engaging topics. In June we witnessed a divided country, most prominently about the humane treatment of the Palestinians and judicial reform. On this trip, however, I saw an entirely different Israel with a changed narrative.

Our volunteer mission took place in the south of Israel, where we worked at Be’er Milka, about 3 kilometers from the Egyptian border. We picked dates, sorted olives, made carob juice, and cleaned the orchards. We visited the cemetery at Mitzpe Revivim, where many of the civilians who perished on Oct.7^th are temporarily buried, until they can be reburied in Kibbutz Be’eri. We heard the heroic story of Ido and Alon Even, two brothers shielding their younger brothers to protect them from the attacks. The Ido and Alon perished with their parents; the younger ones survived. We visited Soroka Medical Center and heard the deputy director of the hospital, Tzachi Slutsky, tell us about their medical responses on Oct. 7^th, as most of the wounded were brought there due to its proximity and being the number one trauma center in Israel. We heard testimony from residents of Kibbutz Urim located near the border of the Gaza Strip. We visited Sderot and saw buildings impacted by missile attacks. Most horrifyingly, in the Sderot war room, we saw security footage of how a family was trying to escape in their car was stopped; the father was shot and the three-year-old was running around crying. We heard more testimony from displaced families and concluded the trip with a lecture by our leader, Yisrael Klitsner, on the current geo-political situation. We heard many facts, but I will never forget personal stories.

This trip was conflicting, heartbreaking, and inspiring.

I believe we cannot assume that people of similar race, religion, gender, country, or background think uniformly. I, myself, sometimes break the mold. Therefore, I hoped to find stories of Gazans who helped the wounded, much as we heard of Righteous Gentiles in World War II. I refuse to believe that all Gazans or Palestinians are evil. But the stories I heard broke my belief. Granted, my account is skewed. I only heard from those Israelis who were directly affected and yet, I am bound to see the truth of their stories. While I previously believed that only Hamas terrorists infiltrated, raped, and murdered, we heard eye-witness accounts to the opposite. Gazan civilians came over the border to rape and murder Israelis. Some came to plunder, engaged in looting without any moral regard. One Gazan, who had been employed by one of the attacked Kibbutzim for 30 years, gave detailed directions to Hamas as to where families lived, which houses were occupied, etc., so that the terrorists could kill the maximum number of people. I further thought that terrorists had a mission to exclusively attack Jews, whom they regard as the oppressors. However, I learned that the first trauma victim at Soroka on October 7^th was a Bedouin woman who was at full gestation and was shot directly in the abdomen. “The sky was red, there was smoke in the air, and it smelled like burning flesh,” Orit, a displaced mother of five, told me with pain in her eyes as she remembered that fateful day. What should we believe when we see such random violence and animalistic behavior?

I hoped to find stories of Gazans who helped the wounded, much as we heard of Righteous Gentiles in World War II. I refuse to believe that all Gazans or Palestinians are evil. But the stories I heard broke my belief.

Israel has suffered losses on so many levels. Above all, there is the loss of life. For all Israelis, even though they have always been on alert, there is a loss in their sense of security. There is an unsettling nervousness to which Israelis wake up every morning, hearing accounts of further deaths. After all, the IDF and the secret service failed significantly to protect its citizens coming up to October 7^th. Among the displaced families, there is the current loss of their home and stability. Tamar Razon, a teacher in the community of Shlomit (in the Gaza Envelope, 0.5 km from Egypt and 3.5 km from the Gazan border) reports that their 80-family community is being housed in the Carmit Hotel in Jerusalem. This is a religious community, averaging six children per family. Many men are off at war and the women have taken charge. Families and relationships are broken because of so much trauma. Furthermore, perhaps not a quantitative loss, but a deep, weighty, and enduring one is the loss of friendship and trust among Jews and Arabs. A Jewish doctor recounted that, while she reached out to her Arab friends, they showed no sign of compassion to her or any of their staff who had lost or kidnapped loved ones. Many displaced people mentioned they could no longer trust the Arabs, even if they were friendly, because they doubt their sincerity. How can we move onto peace without some measure of trust?

There is a strong sense of emotional instability. Several people reported that they were unable to go to the funerals and memorials of their friends. They refused to call anyone to inquire who had survived. For two to three months, staying away was their coping mechanism. Many are receiving treatment for PTSD, and have renamed the condition Continuous Traumatic Stress Disorder, as they remain living under threat. Soldiers who enter the service compartmentalize their emotions while they serve and fully release them only when they return home. And then, of course, there is the unresolved grief, anxiety, and anticipation of the families of the hostages.

I perceive an irony of fate that some of the victims lived in the Gaza Envelope because they wanted to create peace through assistance and relationships with their Arab neighbor. Vivian Silver was a Canadian Israeli peace activist and women’s rights activist who was killed in the massacre on Kibbutz Be’eri. Bret Stephens reported in the New York Times on Nov. 10, 2023, that Kibbutz Be’eri “had a special fund to give financial help to Gazans who came to the kibbutz on work permits, and kibbutzniks would often volunteer to drive sick Palestinians to an oncology center in southern Israel.” All I can do is wonder about the dynamics of living in Gaza and their level of rage to cut off the hand that reached out to them.

Among all this chaos and pain, however, there are inspiring and heroic stories. The country is united, sadly through war but nevertheless united, in its goal to survive and bring all the hostages home. I witnessed unprecedented resilience in the displaced families and the power of their communities. As soon as families were resettled, they established schools in the hotels and a set routine for their children. This was the only way for them to move on. They needed stability among uncertainty. Tamar Razon shared that many of their men entered military service, and, as a result, her community became a matriarchy. It gave the women an opportunity to be there for one another. Whomever we spoke to was grateful for what they had. Even if they had lost a loved one, they compared themselves to those who were worse off. No one played into the culture of victimization. From a pragmatic perspective, the health and welfare systems worked very well, and people received the monetary assistance they needed. The government also assisted with the logistics of moving. Other organizations such as the Tel Aviv-based NGO Achim LaNeshek (Brothers in Arms), put together a massive logistics effort to serve soldiers, as well as those who were displaced. This is the organization that organized to protest the judicial reforms. Having had a strong administrative structure in place, they used it to support the victims. I saw that, at the time of war, everyone comes together; politically left and right, religious and secular, Israeli and Diaspora Jew.

I pray for and crave peace. I cannot stomach bloodshed and wish that no one had been murdered. That must be very Jewish about me as I subscribe to the Jewish ideal of the holiness of life. Is there a way out? I see Jews building and thriving in the Negev. Tamar shared that living there is an ideological mission for them. Even though the Negev comprises 70% of Israel, it is largely unpopulated and thus it was their Zionist ideal to build a life there. I contrast this to the Hamas ideology off their charter. Article 19 stipulates that “there shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity.” And Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea (Article 20). When Israel moved out of Gaza in 2005, they left behind homes and greenhouses. They had built a beautiful infrastructure which was destroyed by Hamas. I conclude that Hamas’ interest is not in building a peaceful state for its citizens, but in controlling them and inciting hate and violence. At this point, Hamas has been in power since 2007. Seventy percent of the Gazan population is under the age of 30 and have mostly grown up with the rhetoric of hate. It reminds me of the story of the Exodus, where the Jews had to wander the desert for 40 years so that those holding slave mentality would die off. I believe, if we can subjugate and conquer Hamas, it will take generations to change the culture of the Gazans. Perhaps, if they change their leadership and start to flourish, it might happen sooner when there is hope and they see they have something to lose.

There is much rhetoric out there with loaded keywords such as “apartheid.” I would urge us all to educate ourselves with their meaning and linguistic history. “Apartheid” is an Afrikaans word and a policy to separate people based on racial or ethnic criteria. In Israel, all citizens, Jewish, Arab, Christian or Druze enjoy the same rights. Words create our reality. If we misuse them, we misrepresent. I know that Israel is not perfect, but I know that this term does not apply to Israel. I suggest we use our voice engaging in factual interchange to possibly move the needle on Israel’s poor public relations. Of course, that is my personal view and what I have described is my opinion based on numerous anecdotal reports and rooted in the deep ideological belief that Jews have a right to exist and to live in the Jewish State (we can talk about the borders). Nothing about this trip changed that, but my naïve belief that humanity is inherently good is fractured. Oct. 7^th is my generation’s second monumental event, after 9/11. We are on a new page of the Jewish history book.

Angela Maddahi is a second-year rabbinic student at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. Formerly, she was the president of Sinai Temple Los Angeles. She is a mother of three and grandmother of five.