Shattered Lives and Illusions: October 7th Five Months On
One American's dispatch from Israel, March, 2024
Editor’s Note: Pamela Paresky has spent significant time in Israel since October 7th, working hard – like so many of us – to understand the evil that befell Israel on that day, and every day since. Hers is a perspective of someone who does not live here but feels deeply connected to what happens in Israel.
This piece is a tour de force, reflecting Pamela’s personal experiences and emotional reactions as well as reporting on the unthinkable. She does so unflinchingly and with empathy. It is overwhelming at times. Also riveting. And graphic. But always dignified. Thank you, Pamela, for being with us in body and spirit and doing this difficult but important work.
All photographs featured in this essay (with the exception of one) were taken by Pamela Paresky and are reproduced here with her permission. The image of the graves of the Kutz family is the work of Ziv Koren, perhaps Israel’s most brilliant photojournalist who is renowned internationally. State of Tel Aviv published a photo essay of his work in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack on November 4th, 2023, and have made it accessible to all subscribers for the next few days. You can find it here.
A longer version of this essay will be published in The Jewish Journal early next week online and on Thursday as a cover story in the print edition.
Shattered Lives and Illusions: October 7th Five Months On
When Israelis speak about October 7th, they frequently say “there are no words.” But one word they consistently use is “shattered.”
Israeli psychologists have been treating severe trauma, complex trauma, and collective trauma. The word “trauma,” however, fails to convey the scale, the savagery, or the sadism of events that day. The term does not encompass the complex mix of disorientation, anguish, emotional overload, and the experience of utter brokenness after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
There is no word for the shock felt by Jews around the world when Israel was suddenly and without warning attacked by thousands of rockets targeting civilians from the north to the south and “from the river to the sea.” There is no word to describe what it is like to be a Jew kidnapped by terrorists indoctrinated since early childhood to believe that murdering Jews is rewarded in Paradise. Or to know that the people you love are in the hands of terrorists who delight in rape, torture, and slaughter; who enjoy forcing parents and children to watch as they inflict horrors on loved ones.
There is no word to convey the terrifying ordeal suffered by survivors of the attempted genocide that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th. There is no word that communicates the panic, betrayal, horror, and distress of those who hid for hours waiting for help to come, reading WhatsApp messages about terrorists inside their neighbors’ houses. Hearing terrorists break into their own homes. Hearing the screams of injured and dying friends and relatives. Hearing sounds of gunfire and exploding RPGs punctuated by ecstatic shouts of “Allahu Akhbar.” All the while knowing they were being hunted.
Everyone in Israel is just one or two degrees of separation from someone who was murdered, injured, or kidnapped on October 7th. And everyone knows someone who sped to the rescue that day, many of whom never returned.
There is no word to describe the grief of a country still holding its breath while more than a hundred hostages remain in Gaza, and while hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many in their late teens and early 20s, go to battle. Some returning badly injured. Some returning to be buried.
Approximately 200,000 internally displaced Israelis are refugees in their own country—some in hotels and even dormitories. Just over half of these people have been evacuated from the north because of escalating Hezbollah terrorist activity in Lebanon. Many displaced families are unsure how long it will take before they can return home. The government has signaled that they will remain homeless at least through the summer. Some refugees from the south have returned home. Some don’t have homes to return to. Some don’t know if they want to return.
There is no word in the psychological lexicon for what happened on October 7th or the new world in which Israelis now live. But “shattered” comes closer than “trauma.”
The Kibbutzim
Early in the morning, Hamas began their barbaric rampage. Thousands of rockets were launched from Gaza at civilian targets across the country, and Israelis took refuge in their mamads—their “safe rooms”—as they always do.
They could not have imagined that at that moment, thousands of terrorists were breaking through the border wall and invading their country, intending to murder, rape, dismember, and kidnap as many Israelis as possible. Or that terrorists knew exactly where to find them. Or that their “safe rooms” would become death traps.
The door to a mamad (usually the children’s bedroom) doesn’t lock. It is meant to protect people from rockets and mortars, not terrorists. Entire families were gunned down in their children’s bedrooms. Or they died from smoke inhalation. Or they were burned alive when terrorists set fire to their homes. In many cases, terrorists shot their victims through mamad doors as Israelis tried desperately to hold them shut.
That is how 18-year-old Maayan Idan was murdered in front of her family as her father, Tsachi, held the door closed. Terrorists livestreamed the family’s ordeal on Facebook as Maayan’s parents and young siblings tried to process what was happening.
Tsachi was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz and is still a hostage in Gaza. At Maayan’s funeral, her mother, Gali, described being “shattered into pieces.”
Sixty-nine-year-old Itzik Elgarat was shot in the hand through the door of his mamad. He called his brother, Danny, who thought the handle had somehow injured Itzik and told him how to create a tourniquet. Just before the call was disconnected, Itzik became hysterical. “Danny! This is the end!” he said, “This is the end!”
Not understanding what “end” it could be, Danny called a relative who lived in the same kibbutz, asking him to go check on Itzik. That is when he learned the kibbutz had been taken over by terrorists. He opened his phone tracking app and watched Itzik’s phone enter Gaza.
Danny’s sister lived in the same kibbutz. She spent 7 hours holding her door handle in the closed position, saving the lives of the two grandchildren who were with her. Terrorists kidnapped her ex-husband, Alex Dancyg, a 76-year-old world-renowned scholar of the Holocaust and Polish Jewish history, and the son and brother of Holocaust survivors. He has trained Israel’s Auschwitz guides for over 30 years, and is a beloved fixture at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial museum of the Holocaust.
According to released hostage Nili Margalit, for at least the first 50 days, Hamas held Dancyg and others, most of them elderly, deep in a tunnel. To keep their minds active, they took turns giving talks about their areas of expertise. When Dancyg lectured about the Holocaust, the others asked him to speak about something else.
Margalit, Dancyg, and Elgarat were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 46 residents were slaughtered. By the time the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrived, the terrorists were gone, and had kidnapped approximately 80 people. About one quarter of their close-knit community was either kidnapped or murdered.
Thirty people from Nir Oz are still held hostage in Gaza, including Dancyg and his brother-in-law Elgarat. Also kidnapped were Elgarat’s next-door neighbors, four-year-old Ariel Bibas, his 9-month-old brother, Kfir (who, if alive, spent his first birthday as a hostage), their mother, Shiri, and father Yarden, who was taken separately after trying to protect his family. Images (shot by a Palestinian “civilian” who worked as a photographer for the Associated Press) show Yarden being kidnapped on a motorcycle, blood gushing from his head; a terrorist with a hammer in one hand, holding Yarden by the throat. Hamas streamed the kidnapping of Shiri and her boys, all of them wrapped in a blanket. A screenshot of the terrified mother and her red-headed babies has become an iconic image of the October 7th kidnappings.
About 100 residents of the larger Kibbutz Be’eri were also murdered that day, and about 30 kidnapped—together, ten percent of that community. Brothers Yossi and Eli Sharabi were kidnapped there. Yossi’s wife and three daughters survived the massacre, but Yossi was murdered in Gaza. Eli remains a hostage. His wife and two daughters were murdered. Yossi and Eli’s brother, Sharon, says his family is “shattered.”
The Nova Dance Festival
Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on motorized paragliders swarmed the Nova “peace rave” at a campground near Kibbutz Re’im. (Re’im means “friends.”) With assault weapons, grenades, and RPGs, terrorists mowed down hundreds of party-goers who fled on foot and by car, many of which were incinerated. Of between 3,000 and 4,000 attendees, 364 were murdered and many more injured. Forty from the festival were reportedly taken hostage.
Ayala Avraham and her husband, Ilan, although in their 50s, were regulars at trance music festivals, dancing together every weekend. Ilan frantically drove Ayala and a friend away from the Nova grounds while terrorists shot at them, hitting the car. The three made it to Moshav Yakhini, a small community near Sderot, where they hid in a standalone bomb shelter behind a security gate.
When Ilan realized terrorists were approaching, he gave Ayala the car keys, hugged and kissed her, and said “you will be okay.” Then he stood outside the shelter to distract the approaching terrorists, hoping they would not look inside. Several terrorists grabbed Ilan and absconded with him.
Other terrorists soon discovered the women, but left only one to guard them. They broke free from their captor, who shot at them, wounding Ayala’s friend as they ran to hide behind her car. They were not well hidden. If he had come after them, they would have had no chance. But for whatever reason, he ran back toward the other terrorists. The women were soon rescued by the IDF.
For three weeks, Ilan, who wore dreadlocks, was thought to be missing. Eventually, his unusual hairstyle allowed him to be identified—terrorists had completely mutilated his face. It was later revealed that he had refused his captors' demands to knock on doors and tell people in Hebrew that it was safe to come out of their homes.
Meanwhile, near the festival grounds, in tiny roadside bomb shelters, each built to accommodate ten, dozens of terrified festival-goers huddled together as terrorists sprayed them with gunfire and thew in grenades. In one shelter, a 22-year-old unarmed off-duty soldier, Staff Sgt. Aner Elyakim Shapira, caught seven grenades and threw them back out. The eighth grenade killed him.
Some survivors of the blast were kidnapped, including Aner’s close friend, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American whose left arm was blown off below the elbow. His fate is unknown. In the shelters and elsewhere, many young people survived the massacre by hiding under the bodies of their friends and others.
As of this writing, 134 hostages are still held in Gaza. Reports indicate that as many as 50 of those kidnapped alive may now be dead.
Sexual Violence
Survivors who witnessed gang-rapes describe terrorists mutilating women before murdering them. In at least one account, a terrorist shot a woman in the head, killing her while still raping her. Hamas later denied the rapes, but manuals found in the clothing of dead terrorists included a list of Hebrew phrases for communicating with Israelis—including “take your pants off.” And when interrogated, terrorists admitted to the raping of even dead bodies, saying that despite religious prohibitions on mistreating or killing women and children, Hamas leaders instructed them to murder entire families, and permitted them to perpetrate rape.
In testimony delivered at the United Nations headquarters in New York, first-responders and those tasked with handling women’s dead bodies reported that many of the murdered were found partially naked; some with broken pelvises, some with grotesque injuries to their genitals. The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel recently issued a report revealing that terrorists inserted nails, grenades, and knives in Israeli women’s vaginas. The report detailed evidence that the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th was intentional, “systematic, targeted sexual abuse.”
Meanwhile, many women’s organizations around the world have remained silent. Those that eventually condemned Hamas did so only many weeks later. Some have even denied the sexual violence. The director of the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre signed an open letter that referred to Hamas terrorists as “Palestinian resistance,” called Israel “terrorist,” claimed that false reports about the Al-Ahli Hospital bombing were accurate, and asserted that testimony about Hamas rapes amounted to no more than “unverified accusations.”
Such appalling hypocrisy notwithstanding, a recent United Nations report noted a pattern among the murdered—mostly women—that were found naked, at least from the waist down, with their hands tied. Such evidence, along with witness testimony, provides what the report called “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape.”
Regarding hostages, the report is equally unsettling. “The mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”
Antisemitism and Shattered Illusions
If Jews in the diaspora thought the events of October 7th would turn the tide against anti-Zionist antisemitism, it took only one day to disabuse them. On October 8th, while Israel was still collecting bodies and eliminating terrorists within its own borders, more than 30 student groups at Harvard issued a joint statement declaring that “the Israel regime” was “entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence.” Across the country, identical posters advertising a “Day of Resistance” appeared, prominently displaying an image of a terrorist flying a motorized paraglider.
Despite such dispositive evidence to the contrary, on March 1, a New York Times news article (not an opinion piece) reported that this campus movement “began as general protests against continuing Israeli retaliation” (emphasis added).
Even as the depth of Hamas depravity and brutality is revealed, students, faculty, and other illiberal activists continue to assert that what happened on October 7th was not terrorism—it was “resistance.” And resistance, they insist, is justified, “by any means necessary.” Hamas is an Arabic acronym for Islamic “Resistance” Movement.
A favorite campus chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a Hamas slogan—a call to annihilate the Jewish state, which is bordered by the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Some demonstrators prefer the Arabic version, which is more explicit: “From water to water, Palestine is Arab.”
By “Palestine,” they mean Israel.
Some protesters may not understand which river or what sea is referred to—and apparently haven’t bothered to find out. But other slogans are less ambiguous: It’s difficult to see how “globalize the intifada” and “there is only one solution, intifada revolution” are calls for peace rather than violent attacks on Jews everywhere. As if all that weren’t enough, many of the increasingly disruptive and even violent demonstrations in the United States and elsewhere incorporate the word “flood,” reflecting the name Hamas gave their sadistic orgy of atrocities: “Operation Al Aqsa Flood.”
In a particularly cruel example of global anti-Zionist antisemitism, when posters of kidnapped Israelis appeared, they were quickly vandalized or torn down. At Harvard, a photo of baby Kfir was defaced with the words, “evidence please” and “head still on.” On a picture of 4-year-old Ariel, graffiti read “google dancing Israelis,” a reference to an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. And many of the faces of other kidnapped Israelis were obscured with red paint on a multi-part display.
After more than 150 days, anti-Israel rallies have continued on- and off-campus across America. As hostages languish in tunnels and in the homes of terrorist-captors (some of whom, like an UNRWA employee and a physician, have been referred to in the media as “civilians”), many demonstrations include calls for a one-sided Israeli “ceasefire,” with no calls for Hamas to surrender—nor even release the hostages.
The Oakland, CA City Council even voted down a condemnation of Hamas when passing a ceasefire resolution. Oakland residents argued that “the notion that this was a massacre of Jews is a fabricated narrative,” “Israel murdered their own people on October 7th,” and “Hamas isn’t a terrorist organization.” One went as far as to say, “I support the right of Palestinians to resist occupation including through Hamas.”
In other words: It didn’t happen. But if it happened, the Jews did it. And anyway, they deserved it.
Meanwhile, video footage taken from a CCTV camera in Rafah on October 7th was released in February, showing Shiri Bibas and her two young boys with six terrorists in civilian clothing. On February 12th, the IDF pulled off a spectacular rescue of two hostages held in a private home in Rafah. Days later, students at Columbia University held an “all eyes on Rafah” rally. The demonstration was not to celebrate the daring commando rescue. Nor was it to demand the release of other hostages being held in Rafah.
It was organized by anti-Israel campus groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University Apartheid Divest—to protest “Israel’s recent attacks on the city of Rafah.” The groups instructed members to obscure their faces with masks “for security.” During the rally, someone broke the glass in a door to the library.
Shattered Hopes for Peace
Though well aware of Hamas’s murderous intentions, many who lived near the border believed there was a bright line between Palestinian civilians and their violently oppressive, terrorist government. Residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz like survivor Irit Lahav, and of Kibbutz Be’eri, like Vivian Silver, who was one of the founders of the organization “Women Wage Peace,” devoted time to driving Palestinians from the Gaza border to hospitals in Israel, where they received the same, high-quality medical care available to Israelis. For over a month, Silver was thought to be among the kidnapped, since no body was found in her house. Eventually, however, her remains, found in the debris of her badly burned home, were identified using techniques borrowed from archeology.
In recent years, Hamas developed a penchant for using kites and balloons to launch Molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices into Israel, often killing wildlife and damaging agriculture. Some airborne packages carried brightly colored toys in order to appeal to children, and if all went as planned, blow them up as they reached for the toys. In spite of this, every year, members of the kibbutzim near the border would fly kites bearing messages of peace, signaling their hopes for the future to their neighbors across the border.
Saturday, October 7th was meant to be the day of the kite festival.
For the last 15 years, the “Kites for Freedom” celebration in Kibbutz Kfar Aza was organized by Aviv Kutz. On October 7th, Aviv, his wife, and their three children, were slaughtered by terrorists.
Nili Margalit, a pediatric nurse who worked primarily with Arab-speaking patients at Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva, had planned to fly kites for peace that day. Instead, she was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz and spent 54 days in a tunnel. Her father was murdered at Nir Oz and his body taken to Gaza.
For 12 hours, in the same kibbutz, Natali Yohanan and her family hid in their mamad, listening as Palestinian “civilians,” including a woman, rummaged through their belongings, and when the Palestinians tired of trying to get at the family, heated and ate the food Natali had left on the stove, and even switched the Netflix to Arabic to watch some shows before finally leaving with their booty. Once the family emerged, they found that the looters had stolen everything from electronics to Natali’s jewelry and makeup, to the family’s clothing—even Natali’s underwear.
In the aftermath of the massacres, residents of several kibbutzim were shattered to learn that Palestinians they had employed created maps of their communities for the terrorists, detailing the names of the residents, the locations of their armories, and even which homes belonged to members of security teams—the first to be murdered.
“Are these the people I wanted to help? These are people who want peace?” Irit Lahav now asks herself. She was equally astonished that after murdering her neighbors, terrorists took their dead bodies into Gaza—and sometimes only their heads. “What kind of human being would want to take somebody’s head…?”
After the beheading of 19-year-old soldier Adir Tahar was recorded on video, a terrorist in Gaza tried to sell Adir’s head for $10,000. The boy’s father was finally able to complete his son’s burial after the IDF found the head in a duffel bag—in an ice cream store freezer in Gaza.
A poll by The Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research found that more than 50% of Palestinians in Gaza and 85% in the West Bank support the October 7th attacks. Most claim to not have seen videos of the atrocities and say they do not believe they happened.
Still, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank, pays a monthly stipend to terrorists who slaughter Jews, and the pay scale is based on how many Israelis they murder. According to news reports, the PA recently added 661 of the October 7 terrorists to the payroll, increasing last year's $161,000,000 payments for murdering Israelis by $16,000,000.
These “Pay for slay” incentives are enshrined in Palestinian law.
“This is outrageous,” Adele Raemer, who survived the massacre at Kibbutz Nirim, told the Jewish News Syndicate. “We teach our children coexistence while our neighbors make a living off our deaths.”
It is currently unknown how many of the roughly 150,000 Palestinians who had work permits to legally enter Israel (including 18,000 from Gaza) participated in the attacks or aided terrorists. It is also unclear how many would participate in or aid future attacks if given the opportunity.
Those permits have been suspended indefinitely.
Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told the New York Times, “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders.”
Hamas abhors the democratic and Jewish values that allow equal rights for all regardless of sex, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation… etc. Their intention, which is shared by other Islamist terrorist groups like Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran, is to conquer the West and establish a global caliphate. Israel is just the beginning.
Israeli Antifragility
The red anemones, which have come to symbolize Israel’s south, are in bloom. Seeing them now is hard, Vered Libstein of Kibbutz Kfar Aza told the Times of Israel. Almost 20 years ago, she and her husband, Ofir, founded the annual festival known as Darom Adom (Red South). Annually, more than 400,000 visitors would come to see the red blossoms, celebrate nature, and enjoy the many family-friendly events.
On October 7th, Ofir was among the 62 residents murdered at Kfar Aza. Their 19-year-old son was also murdered, as were Vered’s mother and nephew—who jumped on a grenade, saving his fiancée’s life. Nineteen from their kibbutz were taken hostage. “Life is stronger than everything,” Vered insists, with typical Israeli resilience, adding, “We’ll need to find the strength to renew ourselves as well.”
Whether observant or secular, conservative or progressive, soldier or survivor, one thing I hear is a fierce determination not to let terrorists rob Israelis of more than what’s already been taken. “It's the first and last time I'm ever leaving,” the owner of a shawarma spot near the Gaza border told American journalist Nancy Rommelmann. He and his wife have returned and reopened their store. “I won't let Hamas win” he says.
Still, the country’s economy has been significantly disrupted. Not only are more than 150,000 Palestinian employees no longer working in Israeli businesses, until recently, more than 350,000 reservists across all business sectors were serving in the IDF instead of going to work as usual. (Now the number is roughly 130,000.) At the same time, tourism, which had been reviving since Covid for less than two years, has nearly ground to a halt.
To make matters worse, many of Israel’s farms are in areas that have been evacuated. The kibbutzim that terrorists attacked provided close to 60% of Israel’s produce, and operated dairy farms, hen houses, and cattle ranches.
Many of the kibbutzim employed people from Thailand. At Kibbutz Nir Oz alone, 11 Thai employees were murdered, five were kidnapped, and only two have been released. But farm workers from Thailand are beginning to return. And there is a fairly steady stream of volunteers from other countries coming to Israel to pick avocados and citrus fruits, package food, and undertake various other tasks disrupted by the war. Some visitors are here to console grieving friends and family. Others come looking for opportunities to donate or invest. Still others are here to participate in solidarity missions.
Perhaps most emblematic of Israel’s antifragility: When everything was shattering and reservists were called to serve, 150% of the number summoned reported for duty. And despite the political fractures of 2023, this war’s young soldiers are proving to be Israel’s new “Greatest Generation.”
Meanwhile, the ethically illiterate and morally corrupt have joined forces to accuse Israel of genocide, an obscene blood libel designed to delegitimize Israel’s war to defeat an internationally designated terrorist organization—one that attempted an actual genocide of Jews on October 7th.
Throughout history, as a small minority group, when Jews in the diaspora were violently attacked, they fled. With an army of Israelis, however, Jews have been able to fight back. Israel's Special Envoy on Combating Antisemitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, told an assembly at the United Nations that people outside of Israel still make the mistake of thinking Israel exists because the Holocaust happened. The truth, she says, is precisely the reverse: The Holocaust happened because Israel did not exist. With global antisemitism at record levels, Jews around the world are awakening to this reality.
Naomi Petel survived the massacre at Kibbutz Nahal Oz with her husband and their three young children because a terrorist’s bullet jammed the lock on her front door, making it inoperable, and looters in the other half of the duplex caused a flood, preventing the house from burning when terrorists tried to set it on fire. Even after their ordeal, she told me, there's nowhere else she wants to live. Israel’s south is her home. Her family, along with the rest of their displaced kibbutz, are temporarily living in the north. They don’t know how long it will take before they can go back home. She and her husband now have red anemone tattoos.
On the Walk-Ins Welcome podcast, she told writer Bridget Phetasy, “What Jews have done throughout history is be kicked out, try to make it again in a different place... contribute as much as you can to society, and [hope that] maybe they'll like us enough that they don't try to kill us.” Over and over. Again and again.
“This time,” she said, “we're not going anywhere.”
Pamela Paresky is a social psychologist with a clinical background. She serves as Senior Advisor at the Open Therapy Institute and Advisor to the Mindful Education Lab at New York University. Her work appears in The Jewish Journal, Psychology Today, The Guardian, Politico, Sapir, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She has taught at Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, and the United States Air Force Academy, and writes the Habits of a Free Mind newsletter on Substack. Follow her on Twitter at @PamelaParesky.
Excellent essay! Thank you very much, I will share it everywhere!