What Israel can do about Israel, Syria, Yemen and Iraq during the last day of the Gaza war? A year after Gaza, Israel was in crisis
Israel is in a state of crisis a year after the launch of the war in Gaza. It is a shrunken country, with tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from northern towns and kibbutzim, as well as southern border villages, as it fights a multifront war that is only intensifying and expanding. And, in addition to having to cope throughout the year with loss, shock, rocket fire and overwhelming fear for their safety from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran itself, that anxiety is compounded by turmoil from within.
It was the deadliest day in Israeli history. It started a war that was the worst in Palestinian history. It was a regional war one year later. Every day keeps surprising us.
And what story is Iran telling? It may be possible to create states in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq in order to destroy Israel under the U.N. Charter. And by what right has Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel that the Lebanese people and government had no say in and are now paying a huge price for?
Israeli Civil Disobedience during the September 7 Violations: The Fate of the Israeli Hostage Regime and the Internal Crisis in the Gaza Strip
Thousands of Israelis have chosen to leave Israel and others are considering or planning to leave. Many thousands more have also taken to the streets week after week, engaging in acts of civil disobedience, which began before the Oct. 7 attacks with protests against the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul and, after a brief pause, resumed with a new focus on the hostage crisis and demand for early elections. In September, images of the former Israeli army chief of staff Dan Halutz being forcibly removed by the police from the street at a sit-in in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence, and of relatives of hostages being roughed up by law enforcement officers, were a further manifestation of the internal crisis.
The Israelis were whispering to the radio people, why don’t anyone come? What are the locations of everybody? Where is the army? They’re in my house, they’re shooting at me.’ We will remember this for the rest of our lives, all of us,” Roth says.
At a recent mass demonstration in Tel Aviv, one protester held up a sign with the words “Who are we without them” written on it. Another placard read: “Give me one reason to raise kids here.”
“Questions from [the] inferno, really,” says Merav Roth, a prominent Israeli psychologist, and the sister of former Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid, who has counseled the kibbutz members all year long.
The survivors were able to survive the attack on the day of it. Silence is what they carried out of hiding from their safe rooms along the Gaza border to a hotel on the Dead Sea that took them in.
More than 31,000 Palestinians were killed in this year’s conflict in the Gaza Strip, making it the bloodiest war in Palestinian history.
The Israeli village mourning the biggest loss from Oct. 7 one year later: Beeri-hamas attack on the kibbutz
According to the head of the kibbutz, he is exhausted after each funeral and has to deal with it again. “Because it brings [back] everything, and we cry again.”
This tight-knit Israeli community near the Gaza border is digging up its dead from temporary graves further away and reburying them back home, where it is safer to gather now, a year into the Gaza war.
Then she saw the man she had heard all day loading gun cartridges in her home. He was sitting outside, she says, stripped naked by orders of the military, and guarded by an Israeli soldier.
She and her husband locked themselves in the shelter room at home after she grabbed her gun. The safe room they had installed a sliding bolt on. The attackers failed to open the door. Her neighbors had standard locks on their safe rooms.
He says those who survived the attack are taking sleeping pills to cope with the trauma and are not able to see the destroyed homes. “I believe we’ll have to take them all down in the end.”
A short walk away, though, are the homes that were attacked last year. Bullet holes, shattered windows, a pair of children’s shoes in the debris: Oct. 7 frozen in time.
Source: The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7, one year later
A Tribute to a Mom and Dad, whose Body was Exhumed in the Kibbutz Be’eri Cemetery
A number of families have moved back to the area. Cohen, the head of the community, is overseeing an ambitious project to bring the residents back within two and a half years.
“I said to myself, what do you want? To continue living? I can not as well. I thought a lot about it. And then I decided that I wanted to continue to live,” she says. I have a family and a bunch of kids. I draw. I’m trying to deal with all my fears by kayaking. I do everything to give some meaning to life now that they’re gone.”
She wanted to be with his body at the moment it was unearthed. She had not lived on the kibbutz any longer and felt guilty she wasn’t with her brother and family in their worst moment on Oct. 7.
Batya Ofir was present at the funeral. She exhumed her brother’s body after viewing it in a funeral home, and re-buried them in the kibbutz cemetery.
At the cemetery at Kibbutz Be’eri, after a funeral for a mother and her son, a few teens and their parents walked out of the cemetery.
The trauma of the Dead Sea, a village where many Israelis and Israelis have been affected by the Kibbutz be’eri massacre
At the beginning, I said, smile and say, how are you? Because these people don’t know that it still matters. They need to know that their wellbeing remains relevant. The life instinct wants to see that someone calls him back.”
They’re anxious about the future of this place. Many of them leave the country. Because their parents told them that in the Holocaust, those who didn’t leave, died,” she says. Hopelessness and helplessness are very strong. The trauma is national.”
“For instance, there is a boy in the kibbutz who lost four members of his family, two parents and two siblings. So do we tell him about each separately or do we tell him about all of them together?” She says so.
Roth has also counseled former hostages who returned from Hamas captivity in Gaza, families whose loved ones were killed in captivity, and Israelis who didn’t experience a personal loss but still suffer from sleeping difficulties, anxiety attacks and depression.
It took many weeks to account for everyone: who was dead, who was captive in Gaza. Roth sat with the survivors of Kibbutz Be’eri in the Dead Sea hotel basement as the village secretary read the names of 27 identified bodies and 108 people unaccounted for.
When the Israeli military eventually published its investigation into the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, it found about 340 attackers had infiltrated the community and that it had taken about seven hours for significant numbers of Israeli forces to arrive to fight off the invasion there.
Up First: A Year of Israel-Hamas War Disrupted Lives. And, Key Factors for Michigan Voters
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He often meets a young girl named Habiba at the hospital in central Gaza. She’s been colorblind since birth. One day, she told Anas she saw a man drowning with water coming out of his nose. It wasn’t water; it was blood.
I was at a hospital in southern Israel. The waiting room was full of parents who had to wait until the following day to find out if their children were OK after being attacked at an outdoor techno rave. In Gaza, our producer Anas was taking photos of families fleeing their homes as Israeli airstrikes rained down.
I think about Batya Ofir, a woman my colleague Itay Stern and I met the other day at Kibbutz Be’eri, the Israeli village that suffered the greatest loss — 102 people there were killed. Her brother was killed along with his family. She felt survivor’s guilt, and she told us she asked herself whether she wanted to keep on living.
Source: How a year of Israel-Hamas war disrupted lives. And, key factors for Michigan voters
How a Year of Israel-Hamas War Disrupted Lives. Key Factors for Michigan Democrats and the Democratic National Committee’s Special Series
Michigan, a “blue wall” state, is part of Vice President Harris’ clearest path to the White House. But the victory won’t be easy. Donald Trump and Harris are both in a close race. Key factors could decide the direction of Michigan’s movement.
The war has upended the lives of people in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. There will be more coverage on NPR’s special series page.
The war in the Middle East is personal in the swing state of Michigan. The Republicans and Democrats are focusing on Arab and Muslim American voters in the state, as well as the largest Lebanese American population in the country. Many families in the state have families in areas of Lebanon that are being bombed.
A new report has found that both Harris’ and Trump’s economic plans would increase the national debt. According to the nonpartisan nonprofit Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, Trump’s plan would add an estimated $7.5 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next decade, while Harris’ proposals would cost the government an estimated $3.5 trillion. The committee has cautioned that there could be a future fiscal crisis if politicians do not take more decisive action on the national debt. The details of the economic plans can be seen in the picture.
Source: How a year of Israel-Hamas war disrupted lives. And, key factors for Michigan voters
NPR’s Morning Edition Focus on Key State Predictions for the 2018 Grand Unification Vote: Six Key Swee States
NPR is visiting six key swing states that will likely decide this year’s historic election. This week, Morning Edition is in Michigan to listen to voters about what matters to them and how that will affect their vote.