Protesters flying Palestinian flags arrived at Auckland Museum in response to the building being lit in Israeli colours. Video / Supplied
Gili Hazani should be enjoying her dream holiday in New Zealand, instead she is contemplating a return to active duty in her homeland of Israel.
The 22-year-old is in New Zealand on a working holiday visa - a trip she has been planning for a long time.
She sat down with the Taupō and Tūrangi Herald this week to describe the experience of watching from afar, as her country was attacked and to urge people to remember the humans at the centre of the conflict.
Hazani spent the first three months of her planned year-long holiday living and working in Taupō.
“New Zealand has been a dream for me for a long time,” she said.
“I was just finishing work and some news started to pop up.
“I thought ‘This will be alright, a few minutes and they will get a handle on it’.
“Slowly, I was realising what terrible things were happening ... I think this is the biggest nightmare, or the worst scenario that can possibly happen.”
Hazani was born into an already decades-old conflict between Israel and Palestine, but quickly realised this was something altogether different.
“It’s not people fighting people, it’s not Israel fighting Palestine,” she said.
“I think that in this moment, we can’t refer to this, what happened, as the current conflict between Israel and Palestine. That’s not the case. This is [a] war against terrorism.
“We’ve seen these terrible acts that are just not humane.”
Her comments come after Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched a surprise attack against the Jewish state, on October 7, which left about 1400 Israelis dead and thousands more wounded.
A stunned Israel has retaliated by launching airstrikes in Gaza. Those strikes on Gaza had killed at least 2778 people and wounded 9700, the Gaza Health Ministry reported on October 16.
Like most Israeli citizens, Hazani was drafted for compulsory military service after graduating high school.
She was a combat soldier in the search and rescue unit, where her duties included rescuing civilians from conflict-damaged buildings and guiding them to safety.
“Since Israel is so small, there is no war zone, it just goes directly into towns and cities,” she said.
With combat experience, Hazani has an idea of what her friends are up against - all those who complete their service remain as reserves, and many have now been called back to duty.
“One of my closest friends who was in those [recent] fights, he lost many, many, many of his friends,” she said.
“He fought bravely and managed to beat the group of terrorists that was attacking. He’s wounded, but he’s okay.
“I’ve got friends that were assigned to clear the bodies from the towns.
“They’re kids my age, you know?
“They’ve seen those terrible, terrible things.
“It sounds like an insane reality that kids have to do this stuff, but I count on them 100 per cent to the best job they can, in the best way they can.
“I have been called back, [but] it’s complicated to get my way back home and then back here.”
“21-year-old Adam Agmon was a soldier in the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] and was also a Kiwi,” she said.
“He grew up here and he’s a huge rugby fan, he has a silver fern tattoo on his leg and he loves the All Blacks.
“He got a call back to the army in Israel because of the war and he got killed there.
“I want people here in New Zealand to know that it includes them in a way, he’s a Kiwi and I want more people over here to know and remember him.”
Gili Hazani is enjoying a one-year, dream trip to New Zealand but it could be cut short by the conflict in Israel.
For now, Hazani was waiting to see what happened next, but it had changed the mood of her trip.
“I feel like if the situation were to escalate and take too long, I just won’t be able to stay here too long, I’ll want to go back to my friends and family and go back to my unit and do my part, like any other Israelis,” she said.
“I’ve dreamed about [coming to New Zealand] since I was a kid.
“I want to travel and see the world.
“They want me to follow my dreams and not go back to war.
“Which parent would want that?”
After her year of travel, Hazani hoped to study international relations and become a diplomat, to foster ties between nations and ensure others didn’t have to live under the same shadow of conflict she grew up in.
“Making connections between countries across the world, and between people that are different but not really, has always been something that was very interesting to me,” she said.
“I’m just really, really praying that the news will get better and it will be over as soon as possible.
“My goal ... is to tell the world, just use every stream at my disposal to say that this happened. Innocent people were burned alive in their living rooms, kids were kidnapped.
“This has been the biggest atrocity that happened to the Jewish people since the Holocaust 80 years ago.
“We had no way to defend ourselves and no way to tell the world what happened [then], but now we do and this is my duty, to tell everyone what happened.
“Along the way, as long as I’m here on the other side of the world, at least I can reach out to as many people as I can to tell them what’s going on.
