A family is fighting to survive as bombs fall in Gaza
An audiobook review of Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, their families and the lives of Palestinians: Judith Ackerman and Peter Beinart
You can listen to the entire conversation in its entirety on the NYT Audio app, Apple, or wherever you have an audio device. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.
Together we discuss the goals behind Hamas’s initial attack on Israeli Jewish civilians, how the attack changed the psychology of Jews living in and out of Israel and what Israel is trying to achieve in its military response.
My approach is going to be to try to cover it from many different perspectives, but I wanted to start with the one I’m closest to, which has felt particularly tricky in recent weeks: that of the Jewish left. So I invited Spencer Ackerman and Peter Beinart on to the show.
The author of “Reign of Terrorist: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump” was an award-winning columnist for The Nation. Peter Beinart is a professor of journalism at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and an editor-at-large of Jewish Currents. And they’ve each taken up angles I think are particularly important right now: the way that Sept. 11 should inform both Israel’s response and the need to empower different kinds of actors and tactics if we want to see a different future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The 85-year-old woman, who was freed after 17 days of captivity by Palestinian militant in Gaza, said that she was beaten while her attackers took her away on a motorcycle.
The four hostages that were released by Hamas included Judith and Natalie Raanan, American-Israeli citizens. Ms. Lifshitz is the first released hostage to speak publicly about her ordeal.
She sat in a wheelchair at a hospital in Tel Aviv after her release and said she had gone through hell.
She was freed along with Nurit Cooper, 79, on Monday and transferred from Hamas custody to Israeli forces via the International Committee for the Red Cross and Egypt. Both of their husbands are still being held hostage in Gaza.
Her account of the tunnels offered a glimpse of the difficulties facing Israel as it weighs whether and how to launch a ground invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas, which led the devastating Oct. 7 attack against Israel.
Hamas has built a labyrinth of underground passages in Gaza for its fighters, military analysts said, complicating both Israel’s anticipated ground operation and any attempt to rescue the hostages.
Palestinians are killed and buried in Gaza, but a missile did not hit the hospital: Ms. Lifshitz, the Israeli army, and the Israeli military
“Many people stormed our homes, they beat people, some of them they abducted, like me,” Ms. Lifshitz said. They took the elderly and young, it did nothing to make a difference.
She said her abductors beat her in the ribs and stole her watch, making it hard for her to breathe. They drove off through the fields surrounding Nir Oz.
She said that they took her through the network of tunnels to a large hall with 25 people in it. After about two to three hours, they separated five people from her kibbutz into their own room, where they were overseen by guards and a medic, she said.
Ms. Lifashitz said that she and others were well taken care of by their abductors, with the exception of food and medicine. Fearing that she would get a disease, her captors cleaned the area and doctors would go to check on them occasionally. She said that they were treated very well and fulfilled all of their needs.
Ms. Lifshitz at times criticized the Israeli military, saying that it and the Shin Bet domestic security service had ignored warning signs of the threat to towns near Gaza. The Israeli military failed to live up to their mission of protecting the citizens of Israel, as acknowledged by the chief of staff.
The Palestinians started a fire in southern Israel when they blew up the Gaza border fence in the weeks leading up to the assault.
Palestinian activists, lawyers, professors, and other people get interrupted and baited on air, if not silenced altogether. They are being made to sing for the supper of airtime and fair coverage. Reporters are being told to do basic tasks. At the same time, Palestinians fleeing from bombs have been misidentified. They need to be costumed as other people in order to elicit humankind. Even in death, they cannot rest — Palestinians are being buried in mass graves or in old graves dug up to make room, and still there is not enough space.
A missile did not hit the hospital but it went to the parking lot. Abundant evidence, confirmed by U.S. intelligence and independent analyses, indicates that the explosion was caused by a missile fired from Gaza, which was intended to kill Israelis but malfunctioned and fell to earth. There isn’t much reason to believe the death toll was 500. A Hamas-owned organization called the “Gazan health ministry” is promoting whatever the terrorists want, even though it is a political body.
The story of Hani al-Agha: The alleged Israeli atrocity in Gaza is a tragedy for Palestinians and Israelis
The Palestinian territories are a republic of fear because of the fear of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza. Palestinians are neither more nor less honest than people elsewhere. The risks of straying from the approved line are similar to those of any tyrant or fanatical regime.
Or take the case of Hani al-Agha, a Palestinian journalist who was jailed for weeks and tortured by Hamas in 2019. In that case, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate took the extraordinary step of condemning al-Agha’s arrest and torture as “an attempt to intimidate journalists in Gaza Strip, who are subject to repressive police authority.” Yet, outside of a few news releases, the story received almost no coverage in the wider media.
The news media still needs help to tell the story in war zones. But people consuming that media should know the threats, pressures and cultures that these journalists operate in — not because we necessarily distrust them individually, but because we appreciate the dangerous circumstances in which they find themselves.
The next time there’s a story about an alleged Israeli atrocity in Gaza, readers deserve to know how the information was acquired and from whom. Hamas is bad enough that it tyrannizes Palestinians. We don’t need it to say the wrong things to us.
The legacy of displacement also loomed large inside Israel, said Nathan Thrall, author of “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” a book about the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. “Beyond the shock and atrocities of the attack, it played to the deepest Israeli fears — that all these Palestinians, who live on the other side of the wall, are going to come back and try to retake their villages and homes,” he said.
Mr Abujayyab had a close call with his grandmother. The residents of 25 apartment blocks were ordered to leave by the military early Friday. A small drone strike on a rooftop reinforced the message.
There was a split within the family group. His grandmother was still defying the Israeli order to evacuate, even though Israel’s military would soon warn that residents who stayed risked being considered a “a member of a terrorist organization.”
His sister, Doaa, wasn’t sure. The brothers argued about whether she should stay at her grandmother’s apartment. Or risk the short but dangerous journey south?
Mr. Abujayyab’s sister or grandmother likely didn’t hear that news. His sister said in a voice message that they were without power, internet and bombs were falling.
Why a child is a girl: That’s a kid, not a murderer or an atrocity? The real story of a Palestinian family
It is an effective strategy. If those being slaughtered are dehumanized in the media through policy for years, a slaughter isn’t a slaughter. Nobody can be a victim if they’re not a civilian.
In 2017, I published a novel about a Palestinian family. It was published by a respectable publisher, got a lot of lovely press, was given a book tour. I spoke on panels, to book clubs. I answered questions after reading them. There was a refrain that was repeating itself. People kept commenting on how human the story was. You have made the conflict more human. A human story is what this is.
People are attempting to write about the children. There is an incomprehensible number of dead people. We are in bed at night, staring through our phones at the flickering light, trying to figure out what the metaphor is, and how to prove a child is a child. It is an unbearable task. Will this be the image that finally does it? A child is on a rooftop. A video that was reposted by Al Jazeera had an inconsolable girl screaming, “It’s her, it’s her,” as she looks at her dead mother. I swear it’s her. I know about her hair.
Take it from a writer: There is nothing like the tedium of trying to come up with analogies. There is something humiliating in trying to earn solidarity. I’m seeing many scribblings trying to appeal to American audiences. Imagine most of the population of Manhattan being told to evacuate in 24 hours. Imagine the president saying all people are, on NBC. Look! Here is a strip by the Mediterranean Sea. That is Gaza. It is the same size as Philadelphia. Or multiply the entire population of Las Vegas by three.
This is demoralizing work, to have to speak constantly in the vernacular of tragedies and atrocities, to say: Look, look. Remember? That other suffering that was eventually deemed unacceptable? Let me hold it up to this one. Let me show you the numbers. Let me earn your outrage. Let me earn your memory if it’s not there. Please.
I don’t hesitate for a second to condemn the killing of any child, any massacre of civilians. It is one of the most easy questions in the world. And it is not in spite of that but because of that I say: Condemn the brutalization of bodies. By all means, do. Donate money to condemn murder. All forms of oppression must be condemned. But if your shock and distress comes only at the sight of certain brutalized bodies? You speak out but not when Palestinians are murdered and imprisoned. It is worth asking which brutalization is acceptable to you, silently, subconsciously, and which is not.
Asking for freedom is simple. Palestinians have the right to equal rights, resources, and fair elections. If this makes you uneasy, you should ask yourself why.
Here is the truth of the diasporic Palestinians: They are not magically diasporic. Their diaspora-ness is directly a result of violent, intentional and illegal dispossession. One day a house is yours; one day it is not. One day a neighborhood is yours; one day it is not. One day a territory is yours; one day it is not. The same mind-set is playing out in Gaza, and it is grounded in the same kind of dispossession.
In the meantime, Palestinians continue to be cast paradoxically — both terror and invisible, both people who never existed and people who cannot return.
