October 7: When Hamas targeted Israel's peaceniks on kibbutzim - opinion

It is so easy to march for peace when you rehydrate at a San Francisco café or proclaim righteousness from the ivory tower of Columbia University. But what if the same marchers and their children were living under a deluge of rockets, mortars, and fire balloons?

What if their grandchildren were the fifth generation of their family to be living under that threat?

How long would the cry for a shared society hold up?

Let those who defame Israel compare their peacenik credentials with those of the kibbutz members who live on the Gaza border.

Who are the peaceniks?

I refer to those remarkable men and women who have, for generations, been the target of hostility in their potato fields and carpets of red anemones, who have brought up children to know the names of every flower and then go on to be officers in the IDF, and somehow, still, to become activists for peace.

These may be the best people in the world. That’s how I describe them to those who may question their actions or the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

Those of us who live here, no matter our political opinions, have to admire the kibbutzniks on the Gaza border for their courage and tenacious clinging to their ideology. We all hope, in our heart of hearts if not in our mind of minds, that they are right and that one day we – or our grandchildren – can have that dreamt of utopian cooperation with our neighbors.

And before you scoff at these idealist Israelis or call them naïve, let us hear what a kibbutznik friend told me: “My grandparents founded our kibbutz to be a protective buffer for Israel, and that’s what we have been.” He’s a Hadassah pediatric cardiologist who has saved the lives of hundreds of Gazan children.

When I phoned him after sunset on Oct. 7, he still had his gun aimed toward the door of his safe room. “I’m an expert cardiologist, but I’m also an IDF sharpshooter,” he said. “No one is getting to my family.”

Thankfully, no one did.

In the days that followed Oct. 7, one voice kept repeating itself in my head, that of Batia Holin. I heard her speak on the radio.

She’s a survivor from Kfar Aza.

Holin, 71, is a gifted photographer. She began her hobby on a march, not a protest march but the daily dawn stroll around the beloved kibbutz she moved to in 1975, marrying kibbutznik Nachum two years later. Their son, Itamar, who suffers from shell shock as a result of his military service, lives in Kfar Aza. So does their daughter Rotem, who served as an IDF officer and has two small children.

In 2018, Holin appeared before the Human Rights Commission in Geneva with her detailed photographs and maps of the fires caused by the incendiary balloons from Gaza. She received a personal invitation to attend after documenting the fires with a friend from Kibbutz Nirim and publicizing the damage on Facebook.

Nonetheless, she continued to see the light around her. Below is her description of her wanderings and photographing as published on her website before Oct. 7.

“I walk along the paths and collect moments of kindness, a ray of sunshine coming out of the cracks in the clouds, a large puddle in which the colorful sky is reflected, a tractor that goes to work at sunrise, and lots of friends who pass me by with a smile and a kind word. This was the life that I immortalized in my photos and that I presented with such great pride, photos of inspiration and optimism.”

While ambling 500 meters from Gaza, she wondered if there were amateur nature photographers like her on the other side of the fence.

In her words: “I turned to the big world with the help of a Facebook group dealing with life on the border of the Gaza Strip. I received several inquiries from photographers from Gaza and in the end, there was one photographer who kept in touch with me. I asked him if it wasn’t too dangerous for him, wasn’t he scared?

“He said he was aware of the danger but must continue because he has no future in Gaza, and he wanted something of his to reach the big wide world. According to him, it was important that people realize that not everyone in Gaza was a terrorist, and that there were people who wanted to live in peace and quiet.

“As I was afraid to take responsibility for his life, I conditioned our continued cooperation on the condition that he remain anonymous and his details be confidential. He agreed and in the exhibition he appears under the name Mahmoud.”

Thousands of Israelis came to see the photo exhibition, titled “Between Us.”

Where? On Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where 15 kibbutz members were murdered and eight kidnapped on Oct. 7.

Holin wasn’t unusual in her desire to reach out to Gazans. Her fellow kibbutzniks petitioned the government to allow Gazans to enter Israel to work. The late Vivian Silver of Kibbutz Be’eri worked to make sure conditions and wages for Gazans working on the kibbutzim were fair. Other kibbutzniks, such as the above-mentioned cardiologist, drove Gazans to hospitals for treatments. Long-time Gazan workers became part of the  community, even bringing their children to kindergarten.

When the workers couldn’t get into the kibbutz during times of tension, the kibbutzniks would gather funds to send to them. Many of the kibbutz founders hailed from Left-leaning youth movements, from Israel and abroad, and over the generations they passed down their values, remaining bastions of Israel’s peace camp.

Holin shared the success of the exhibition – particularly the optimism it inspired in many who came to see it – with “Mahmoud,” who wrote back a glowing letter, saying, “I know there are people around me who don’t like our cooperation, but I take this risk in the hope that this project will influence and improve understanding, quality of life, and security on both sides of the fence.” They continued to correspond until March 2023, when there was silence from his side.

On Oct. 7, Batia and Nachum, whose modest kibbutz home is close to the border, spotted terrorists outside and hurried to their safe room. They lost contact with their daughter and grandchildren when terrorists entered their daughter’s home, but they were able to stay in touch with their son. Among the incoming calls, one was from an unknown Israeli phone number. (Remember how Hamas members activated dozens of Israeli SIM cards around midnight, just hours before the Oct. 7 attack?) At 10 a.m., after they had been cowering in their safe room for three and a half hours, Batia heard a man with a strong Arabic accent speaking to her. It was “Mahmoud.”

“He started asking me a lot of questions – mainly about our army, about the soldiers and their movements. At this point, I realized that his questions were wrong, and it was time to end the conversation.”

She understood that he was targeting her.

After 26 hours in their shelter, Batia and her husband were rescued under heavy fire by courageous Givati Infantry soldiers. She and Nachum joined the line of Israelis literally crawling through an agricultural trench out of the kibbutz.

To their enormous relief, their daughter, grandchildren, and son were rescued later.

Holin has a new exhibition now. It’s called “Fracture.” She shows the beautiful before photos and horrific after photos of her cherished kibbutz.

Fracture.

A perfect word to describe what we have experienced. Even if our hope for peace was fragile and distant before Oct. 7, it was there.

The exhibition was displayed at Kibbutz Shefayim, to which Holin’s family was evacuated. That’s where I spoke to her this week as she was dealing with the many, many requests to tell her story and share her photographs.

Sixty kibbutzniks were murdered on her kibbutz. At least 18 were kidnapped.

I’ve just returned from a speaking tour in the United States. Wherever I spoke for Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, I was, of course, embraced by strong supporters of Israel. After all, “Zionism” is this organization’s middle name. But when I ventured outside of that circle, I was more cautious. I needed different tools. I needed to be heard.

Telling the stories of these righteous kibbutzniks was a good place to start.

The writer is the Israel director of public relations at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her latest book is A Daughter of Many Mothers.