Aftermath of Israel airstrike on Khan Yunis. Video / AP
New Zealand journalist Thomas Mutch travelled through Israel and the occupied Palestinian West Bank a month after the Israel-Hamas conflict began and gives his account of the fear, hatred and smattering of hope he encountered
OPINION
Look west, from the ruins of Kibbutz Be’eri, destroyed in the Hamas attack on October 7, and you can just see the outline of a memorial to the Anzacs. The concrete structure, funded by Jewish communities in both Australia and New Zealand, was finished in 1967 and is dedicated to our soldiers who fought for the British in the Sinai and Palestine campaign of 1917. Behind it, black smoke rises from the modern Gaza City, as Israel inflicts an extraordinary toll on the strip.
Rakelle, a 22-year-old Jewish New Zealander, would have never imagined that 100 years after the Anzacs, Kiwis would still be fighting here. “It is scary, we try to stay brave but, lots of people, my friends, have died,” she told the Herald over a Zoom call from an Israeli Defence Force base in southern Israel.
“There are rockets in the sky all the time,” she said.
“You have a few seconds to run to the nearest trenches. We duck down with helmets on our heads and hope that there is nothing that falls. It is really taking a toll on everyone. Being out on the field for a month straight is hard.”
Rakelle, a 22-year-old Jewish New Zealander, at her military base in Israel. Photo / Supplied
Born and raised in Northland, she moved to Israel more than three years ago by ‘making Aliyah’, the law in which any Jewish person abroad has the right to move to Israel. After that, she took up the compulsory military service that is mandatory for almost all young people in Israel. She was on leave when the attacks began, but said: “I was woken up by my commander, checking to see if I was all right … I checked Instagram and started seeing all these awful videos and I was shocked, terrorists entering bases, taking over army bases, taking over police stations.”
She was immediately called back to military service and has been fighting on the frontlines since Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza several weeks ago.
“My family support me 100 per cent, they know I’m defending my country, but they are worried sick. Often, I’m without my phone, I get to call them maybe once a week. It is very important to me and my family. They are always saying they are proud of me. So, I’ll be ringing in the middle of the night, and they’ll answer straight away. Just seeing their faces really gives me strength,” she tells me.
Soldiers walk past the Kibbutzim that were destroyed on the October 7 attack. Photo / Thomas Mutch
The monument is a reminder of the complex and tragic history that has condemned this land to centuries of violence. Seven Kiwis were killed and 81 wounded in the Second Battle of Gaza, a British-led assault that tried to seize Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The first attempts failed but by the end of the war, the British, with Anzac help, would end up taking control of all the territory of Palestine, and the government would issue the Balfour Declaration, which called for a Jewish state in the territory.
World War 1 was supposed to be the war to end all wars, and the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East was to ensure peace and security for an endlessly persecuted people, while, in Balfour’s words, ensuring “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
All these hopes were to be dashed. Well into the 21st century, the region is still gripped by death and destruction. Hamas militants would have ridden past the monument on motorcycles on their way to their rampage in Kibbutzim and towns near the Gaza border that killed over 1200 people and left peaceful communities in ruins. Now, Israeli warplanes and artillery have sent hundreds of tonnes of bombs and shells in over it every day as they kill and maim militants alongside civilians in their thousands.
It is a military operation that, as a former senior Israeli military adviser admitted to me in a TV studio in Tel Aviv, is being carried out “with no mercy.” It has already killed more than 11,000 people, according to the Gazan health ministry, whose figures are broadly trusted by the United States and the UN.
As I’ve travelled across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and spoken to many people on both sides, I’ve found little expression of hope. What Palestinians and Israelis have expressed to me is hatred for the other side, a deep distrust of their governments and institutions, and huge grief for their dead. All are deeply worried about the future.
Broken and bleeding
For the residents of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, October 7 was supposed to be a celebration of peace that turned into a day of unmatched horror. For years, there had been a ceremony where residents would build and fly kites in a nearby park. Some of them would write a message of peace and solidarity to Palestinians that they let fly over the border fence to Gaza, less than 2km away.
“Before the Hamas attacks, it was like a marae, a really beautiful place we shared holidays together like a community,” said Zohar Lupo, a 25-year-old Israeli currently on a working holiday in New Zealand. He was in Whanganui when he first saw scenes of destruction and messages of panic coming through his WhatsApp channels. It took him hours to contact his parents and siblings, who had hidden throughout the attack. He later found they were alive and uninjured, but his sister’s boyfriend had been shot twice while they escaped. His aunt, however, was murdered in the attacks.
“The community works together; everyone has known each other since you were born. I knew most of the people who were killed since the day I was born; they were around me for most of my life. They were around me during my coming of age. It is a big impact that you know so many people who got killed or kidnapped most of your life.” Lupo says.
When I visited Kfar Aza last week, it was a picture of devastation. All around, you can see the husks of burned houses. Those dwellings that are intact are murder scenes. Militants murdered more than 50 Israelis in this Kibbutz alone. In one house, a large teddy bear lies over a bed, its bottom half covered in blood that has seeped onto the floor. First responders described walking into buildings to find entire families executed. In a 45-minute video presentation entitled ‘Bearing Witness’ that the Israeli government has shown to journalists based on footage filmed by the attackers themselves, we see dozens of civilians killed in the most gruesome ways.
In one house in Kfar Aza, a large teddy bear lies over a bed, its bottom half covered in blood that has seeped onto the floor. Photo / Thomas Mutch
While cities in Israel have started to regain a sense of normality, with cafes, bars and other business mostly reopened, the signs of war are still regular. Most days in Tel Aviv, you can hear air raid sirens and see rockets from Gaza fired over the city, although most of them are destroyed by the Israeli Iron Dome defence system. Many civilians on the street carry assault rifles, having been called up from the reserve for military service.
All the pain inflicted on October 7 has caused a desperate need for vengeance among some in Israel I spoke with, and many Israelis in conversations with me expressed no concern for the plight of Palestinians, however uninvolved in the attacks. These sentiments did not just come from far-right extremists or West Bank settlers. “To be honest with you, I don’t care about civilians over there. They all support Hamas, otherwise they would have left Gaza or overthrown them”, one bartender in a Tel Aviv café told me. This is even though half the population in Gaza are children, and that it is almost impossible for Gazans to ever leave the crowded strip, which has been under Israeli blockade since 2006. In a progressive city full of gay bars and vegan cafes, it was disturbing to me to hear such disregard for the mass death of civilians.
Despite his personal loss, Lupo opposes this black and white thinking. His first priority, he says, is ensuring the return of the hostages held in Gaza. “The truth is that we are fighting a terrorist organisation in Gaza. But not all the Palestinians are terrorists. I hope for a political solution, a negotiation with the world and with the Palestinians. I am sure they would also like to have peace … my aunt taught don’t fight fire with fire, fight with water.”
Unimaginable horror
From the Israeli border town of Sderot, now nearly emptied of its pre-war population of 30,000 people, you can watch Gaza burn in real time. From a ridge overlooking the strip, you can see constant flashes from the explosions of bombs and shells and hear the screech of fighter jets streaking overhead.
Sometimes parachute flares explode over Gaza, illuminating the streets below so Israeli artillery and airpower can more easily target them. There are ten to twenty reporters always camped here, as access to Gaza itself is restricted. From the distance of several kilometres, it can look like a fireworks show, but we know that each flash of light represents more Palestinian people and their homes incinerated, blown apart, or buried under rubble.
Samira Zaiton, a Kiwi of Palestinian heritage, believes what we are watching is “a genocide being live streamed on our phones”.
“Israel is offering [Palestinians] the choice of expulsion or extermination. How can killing a Palestinian baby help? How can cutting off food and water and fuel for the hospitals, how can that be proportionate, how can burning men women and children to the bone be proportionate?”
Israeli officials have frequently used dehumanising language to describe Gazans. A senior IDF spokesperson said of the bombing campaign that “the emphasis is on damage, not accuracy” and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the country was fighting “human animals”.
Samira Zaiton, co-convenor of "Justice for Palestine", at a New Zealand protest. Photo / Ted Black
Zaiton is the co-convenor of the “Justice for Palestine” movement and is clear that New Zealanders should have a role to play in building a movement to end the violence.
“Kiwis know what is happening in Gaza … I want them to practise unlearning the dehumanisation of Palestinians. Kiwis have to know the power and privilege they hold not just in their in their individual voice but also in their collective voice. They need to demand a ceasefire now, write to their MPs, join us in solidarity.”
Rakelle insists “this is not a fight against the Palestinian people, it is a fight against Hamas”. For her, the military campaign is a tragic but necessary response to the terror inflicted on October 7.
“We are defending ourselves from everything that has happened … in war, whether we like it or not, there are going to be civilian casualties. We have tried our best, we have notified the Palestinian people when there will be fighting or rockets so they can move … Hamas are the ones endangering civilians. They have their headquarters under the [Al-Shifa] hospital. They place the locations where they fight from near civilians on purpose. Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and would you want to live next door to this?”
Zaiton is frequently frustrated by what she says is a struggle to convince people Palestinians have the right to live. ‘Palestinians don’t want revenge; they want justice and liberation. That does not mean violence or harming anyone. It means equal rights and human rights, the opportunity to live and to exist. A ceasefire is just the beginning … what we need to see is an end to the siege on Gaza, the drawback of these land grabs and settlements being built, the end of occupation and the end of the apartheid.”
Despite the unimaginable suffering, there are people on both sides who are pushing doggedly for a peaceful solution. I saw a little of this last Tuesday in the form of a protest in front of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. It was to mark 30 days since the start of the war and demand the return of the Israeli hostages taken from their homes and held in Gaza. Moaz Inon lost both his parents on October 7 and told me that despite his loss, he wanted nothing more than an immediate ceasefire and the return of the hostages.
Zohar Lupo, a 25-year-old Israeli, was on a working holiday in New Zealand when he heard about the October 7 attacks. His aunt was killed in the attacks. Photo / Supplied
“I learned many of those lessons while I travelled in New Zealand,” he told me “And I have many great friends in New Zealand. Your generosity brought a lot of hope when I was in my youth. I want to bring this hope that Israelis and Palestinians will live together. In peace. Under the values of equality, of justice. This is the message I’m crying, when my parents were killed, and I’ll keep crying it until the end of the conflict and we reach a lasting and sustainable peace.”
