How are you my sister? The story of women in the war
Tama Sapir, Ramat Gan
Ghadir Hani, Akko
Neta Heiman, Haifa
These are times to ask questions and not to shout out exclamations. After 6 months, I feel that I’m collapsing under all the questions I’ve asked.
The beginning was the most difficult. My partner left our house that Saturday for army service, without any hesitation, even though we were part of the protest movement for a whole year, and for two months I was alone amidst the chaos, crazed with worry.
The wedding which was supposed to take place on November 17th, turned into a meal for the close family. We’ll celebrate in the summer; it’s impossible to celebrate now anyway.
Days, a week and a month go by; Hannukah ,Tu b’shvat and now Purim have also gone by. My beloved went back to civilian clothes and then was called up again and every Saturday night we come to the demonstration to shout “NOW”. Is this a life?
The nation that I am part of, the history over generations – who wants to be part of this? Let me live my life quietly; “I don’t want wars”, Leah Shabbat sings. Can you turn your back on the Zionism on which we were raised?
I envy those who have clarity in their lives. They also frighten me. They are so sure their way is right and I always wonder. What is right? What now? What difference will it make?
I’m not here nor there. At first, I was one of the “Leftists who sobered up” because I felt anger, despair and disappointment. But my conscience did not allow me to forget that we’re talking about people who were born into a terribly difficult reality. On the other hand, the anger still exists. All the time. When I go to work, read the headlines, talk to friends, in a coffee shop or bar in Tel Aviv, when I wash dishes or close my eyes at night. Frustration, anger and very little hope… and many questions.
How am I? I am a citizen in a country at war; I function, but I’m torn up inside and want to scream so that the whole world will hear and don’t know at all what to say.
Tama Sapir, Ramat Gan
How are you sister?
The story of Tama Sapir
I’ve been trying to live a normal life for 6 months. Six months of war after the horrible massacre, in which I lost a close friend.
For 6 months I’m dealing with the complexity of being a Palestinian and an Israeli citizen from Akko. At every opportunity I tell people not to take sides; be a human being.
On the 7th of October I lost my dear friend, Vivian Silver, a peace activist. For 5 weeks we thought that Vivian was a hostage. I imagined her laughing that she of all people was kidnapped; sometimes I imagined her talking to the hostages, telling them that we must end the wars and even initiating negotiations.
Since October 7th, I go to work, I eat, I breathe and I’m in a constant struggle to end the war and release the hostages. But actually, not everything is normal. I have friends in Gaza who are in a living hell of destruction, death and hunger. They are also peace activists, and on that Black Sabbath, they asked me about our Israeli friends, and despite everything, they still they tell me about their experiences and their belief in peace. I have friends in the Gaza Envelope and they are in the most trying situation. Even though they are refugees in their own country, they are raising money to help people in Gaza. Some of them faced death and were miraculously saved; some lost parents, children and grandchildren, but still don’t give up.
Since October 7th, I go from one conference to another, from one speech to another, from a rally to a demonstration or a march, meeting with young Jews and Arabs, sometimes alone and sometimes with Jewish partners.
I hold on to hope and to my promise to my friend Vivian, that I will continue in her footsteps together with other friends.
Ghadir Hani, Akko
How are you sister?
The story of Ghadir Hani
How are you, my sister? The voices of women during the war:
October 7th.
Almost everyone in the country woke up to sirens at 6:29, but I didn’t. There were no sirens in Haifa.
Shortly before 8 AM, my daughter woke me up:”Ima, Orit told me to wake you up; there’s a war”. I go into the living room; my husband is there and he explains what’s going on. I call my mother:
-Are you in the safe room?
-Yes
-Is the safe room locked?
-Yes.
A little before 10, my mother stops answering us.
When she doesn’t get back to us, I write in the WhatsApp group of friends with whom I grew up. Some say that they’ve also lost contact; some begin to write about the atrocities at the kibbutz. The only friend who still lives there, doesn’t answer and later on we found out that he was murdered and his body kidnapped.
After hours of climbing the walls, my sister calls – the Hamas answered our mother’s phone. This is the moment of realization that something awful happened.
Over the next few days, the picture became clearer, and only then did a government official tell us what we already knew. My mother was kidnapped to Gaza – words that even today are inconceivable.
We begin to understand the bigger picture; one quarter of the residents of Nir Oz, the kibbutz where I grew up, were murdered or kidnapped. There is an insufferable number of funerals, sometimes 2 a day, and at the same time we have to begin to fight to see how we can bring our mother back home.
After 53 days, she came back home to us, but it’s still October 7th for me, because there are so many more people we have to bring home. It will take years to understand that the kibbutz was abandoned, that the army got there only after the terrorists left. Forgiving is absolutely impossible.
Neta Heiman, Haifa
How are you sister?
The story of Neta Heiman
Dr. Yeela Raanan, Kissufim
Avital Brown, Tel Aviv
Tali Goren Sapir, Kibbutz Gazit
Six months have already gone by. As with all the stories from October 7th, mine also begins with the same sentence: “I woke up at 6:30 to a “Red Alert”, and immediately jumped out of bed and ran to the safe room.”
I was at home, in Kissufim, with my 12 year old daughter Shani. My partner was abroad. We have 2 safe rooms because we have an old house. As a result of the blast, the outside handle of the safe room fell off. I tried calling out for help to the head of security, to a neighbor. No response. I opened the window in order to try to crawl out. On the path, I saw a man in military uniform, in a car, sitting on the window with a rifle; they were driving very quickly past my window. I didn’t understand – what’s going on? It doesn’t matter. I closed the window. The next day I understood that I had seen Hamas in Shlomo Mansur’s car; he is still being held hostage. I crawled out of the window, ran around the house, got Shani out of the safe room and then we moved over to the second safe room. Apparently, this saved our lives.
The terrorists were inside our house; they made a lot of noise; shot the windows, broke the door with a hammer, threw glass bottles on the floor, broke the refrigerator, turned closets upside down, and stole things.
Shani and I are in the safe room, hugging each other in the bed, whispering:
“Mommy, will they kill us?
“Maybe”.
“Mommy, why are they here?”
What can I answer? So I said, jokingly –“Because I made coffee. They smelled it and wanted some.”
“Mommy, what will you do if they open the door?”
I wanted to give her a bit of hope, so I said: “I’ll talk to them in Arabic, and tell them that I am one of the good guys.”
They did not open the door, apparently because the first safe room had clear signs that we had been there. The second safe room is in an illogical place and they had no reason to look for it. We were saved.
The next day, after soldiers took us out of the house, and I talked to my partner, he asked – and what did you plan on saying to the terrorists? He surprised me with the question. I hadn’t planned on saying anything to them. I didn’t believe it would help. My response to Shani was to calm her down a bit, in such a threatening situation.
My two adult sons live on the border: one in an apartment without a safe room in Kissufim, and the other one with his young family in the Southern Gaza Envelope. At 6:30 they all said they were OK. But, an hour later, my son at Kissufim “disappeared”. It was unbearable to be 5 minutes from his apartment and not be able to go to see how he was. Only at 3:30 PM was he able to contact us. He survived.
During the 24 hours in the safe room, without electricity, with any mean of communication, and a war outside – I did not perceive the immensity of the disaster. Days later, I began to understand the catastrophe as well as the game of Russian roulette which we had won. A matter of luck.
Six months later, after months in hotels, Shani and I moved to a small apartment in Omer where we’re waiting for a neighborhood of caravans to be built in Omer for the community of Kissufim. It will probably take a year.
Will we go back to Kissufim? I don’t know. It’s difficult to go back to such a traumatic place. It’s especially difficult when the government does everything possible to prevent peace.
Dr. Yeela Raanan, Kissufim
How are you sister?
The story of Dr. Yaala Raanan
How are you, my sister? The voices of women during the war:
Six months!
Hostage square. I’m standing with my friends from Women Wage Peace in our daily vigil, in solidarity with the families of the hostages. A woman approached me and we started talking.
She: All of them are Hamas.
Me: And what about compassion? What about uninvolved citizens? Women?
She: There is no such thing as uninvolved. They’re all Hamas.
Me: And a young child? Is he also Hamas? Do we have to kill him as well?
She: He’ll grow up to be Hamas. Today’s Nukhba were children during Operation Protective Edge.
And we’re all caught up in a zero-sum game. It’s either them or us, black or white, total victory or destruction.
Is this actually the case?
Is it not possible to show compassion for the hostages as well as for uninvolved citizens who are suffering in Gaza?
Is it not possible to look at security not only through the sight of the rifle?
Will anger, fear and despair conquer the hope that it is possible and important to work towards a better future?
Does “sobering up” mean understanding that victory is living by the sword? Or does it mean that we must end the conflict and not just manage it.
The personal and the national are intertwined.
I am worried about my sons who were called up. I’m worried about my friends’ sons, about all the soldiers and the hostages; I’m concerned about the insensibility of the public towards someone else’s pain. I’m worried about the fate of our country.
And I’m angry –
At the Hamas who succeeded, at those who murdered Vivian, at the Women’s and Human Rights organizations worldwide who deny or minimize the massacre on October 7th, at the extremists here, at the awful government, at the lack of leadership, at the main person responsible for this situation.
So, how am I?
I have to be totally exhausted in order to fall asleep.
I have to stop and breathe deeply in order to allay my anxiety.
I’m worried and angry, but I’m fighting an all-out war against despair. Because despair is not an action plan.
I look for hope and pray for the end of this madness and the release of the hostages NOW.
This, and only this, will be the true victory which will bring me some kind of consolation.
Avital Brown, Tel Aviv
How are you sister?
The story of Avital brown
How are you, my sister? The voices of women during the war:
Saturday morning, October 7th, my partner’s phone receives alerts, one after the other, on the application of the Home Front Command.
“There’s a war”, he says to me.
Our youngest son comes home and within a few hours he’s called up to reserve duty.
He has to get to Mt. Hermon. How?
He got his things together, we got into our car and drove him to the Hermon. This is how the Army gets organized?
We didn’t yet know how the army wasn’t organized anywhere and the high price we would pay for that.
The nightmare just began; our married son who was expecting the birth of his first daughter, was called up to the South. There is no way to believe that what we’re seeing on the TV is really happening. I started cleaning the house, washing windows, cleaning the stairs and all the rooms, incapable of sitting even for a minute.
As to our son up North, we’re worried that he might be too cold. On Friday morning, we were able to drive to see our son before he went into Gaza. We fill up bags with all kinds of goodies and drive to Beit Kama. Such a sad and tense meeting. Our only thoughts are that nothing bad will happen to him.
In order not to see the reality on screens, I look at books and try to build a parallel universe. Every now and then I wonder where our sophisticated army is. What about the most advanced Intelligence Service in the world? Our special unit 8200? Where are they?
My son is in Gaza, I am totally focused on this threatening fact and even though, usually, I am a rational woman, I decide to direct my thoughts to an unknown area – imagination, and I create a type of shell made out of impenetrable, pink netting and I place my son inside and accompany him.
I’m a bit amazed with myself, but I know there is no way for me to protect my son who is awaiting the birth of his daughter. An insane world, and just before I go crazy, I create in my imagination a kind of casing.
And no, I did not sober up. I couldn’t understand anyone who once held the belief that there is no other way to achieve security other than reaching an agreement between two nations and suddenly, they believe that only warfare will solve anything! The only thing that I saw was how this terrible war causes more and more bereavement, destruction, fear and an urge for revenge, and how warfare will never lead to security.
I don’t dare continue asking. Because there are no answers even to the unasked questions and I can no longer contain them.
Tali Goren Sapir, Kibbutz Gazit
How are you sister?
Tali Goren Sapir
Gili Zivan, Kibbutz Saad
Nurit Hajaj, Holon
How are you, my sister? The voices of women during the war:
I was at one of the hotels for the evacuees at the Dead Sea, for three months with my daughters and grandchildren, along with friends from my kibbutz, Kibbutz Saad.
Despite the loving shield around me, I felt detached from everything I once had.
I awaited the moment when I could go home.
To my study, to our bed, to the family kitchen, to the easel, to the grass, to the lemon tree behind the porch, and to the feeling of independence and freedom.
Now I’m here. In the house I love. But I hear harsh sounds from the land I returned to.
The voice of my brothers' and sisters' blood cries up to me from the ground.
Every morning, I hear the cries for help of friends who waited in vain.
I hear a deafening silence from those who were speechless in locked safe rooms, full of smoke, hoping to be saved from the rifles of murderers.
I smell the stench of death from the neighboring kibbutz which blends in with the scent of our blossoming citrus tree.
Sounds of speeding motorcycles blend in with the happy chirps of blackbirds every morning.
I hear the earth which opened its mouth to take the blood of my brothers and sisters, groaning from the burden of the pain.
Soot lands on my porch and wipes away the scent of the newly mowed lawn.
I hear the senior members of Beeri whispering: “You drove us off the face of the earth today”.
The days go by.
Split.
Torn.
Around me – the wheat turns golden
Will the land of the Negev know any consolation?
Gili Zivan, Kibbutz Saad
How are you sister?
The story of Gili Zivan
How are you, my sister?
I didn’t wake up to sirens on October 7th. What luck. I was spared from long moments of pressure and anxiety to discover that my nephew was at that party.
“I’m at a party”, he responded to my invitation to join us at a restaurant in Tel Aviv for a holiday eve meal.
How lucky for me that he didn't tell me where the party was.
If he had said something I would have most likely told him that “You know that I have friends at Re’im, if you need anything”. I might have sent him to a death trap. He was saved.
Kibbutz Re’im, which had once been my home, and then a source of longing, has become a synonym to a huge disaster.
“Where were you, exactly?” I ask him. I still didn’t know that he had been at the Nova party.
“At a party. Tomorrow I’ll fill in the details.”
And then he disappeared for a long while.
My daughter in Athens calls and asks that I go to family in Tel Aviv, the safest place near the government campus. I went there.
Days of shock and silence. I sink into despair.
My brother had been a POW in Egypt during the Yom Kippur War and I know the feeling of living with uncertainty. At first, he was missing and then we received a postcard from the Red Cross. Then he came back, traumatized for life.
I tried to hold on to the hope that people come back from captivity and not everyone is cruel in the same way.
I am a bereaved sister from 1977. Many years of bereavement. I know what it’s like to be close to death. That explains the silence, I thought to myself.
I remember stories that my father told about the Jabalya refugee camp, when he went there after the Six Day War to open a police station. How can a war with the name “Six Day War” go on forever?
And how can I, as a peace activist, react to inconceivable evil? What can I say now?
I found no peace.
So many people I know were hurt, murdered, kidnapped. How can I breathe?
It’s not very nice to think about yourself during these awful times, but I decided it was crucial for me.
I was born in 1955. I dug tunnels, I lifted sacks, I ran to shelters, I was in darkened rooms, I wore my gas mask, I hoarded things for an emergency, but for the most part, I was just scared.
Lately I relate to the political aspect of the fear and try to manage it and to hold on to the fact that endless war is not mandatory.
Nurit Hajaj, Holon
How are you sister?
The story of Nurit Hajaj