This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

Every morn­ing, as I walk my daugh­ter to kinder­garten, we pause to check on the giant snails liv­ing on the half-rot­ten but leafy tree at the cor­ner where Jabotin­sky and Sokolov Street meet in Tel Aviv. 

These snails are enor­mous, and, prob­a­bly, gourmet — but it’s weird to think of them as food. They for­age, rest, and make love in the old foliage. Such snails are a com­mon sight here, espe­cial­ly in the win­ter months.

Also com­mon are peo­ple with white stick­ers on their cloth­ing, each inscribed with a num­ber writ­ten with a thick black mark­er. It’s Hanukkah now, and the num­ber has grown to 801. That’s how many days our hostages have been held in Gaza since the Octo­ber 7th mas­sacre.

There’s only one body left there for now: that of Ran Gvili, a twen­ty-four-year-old off-duty police offi­cer who was killed after help­ing res­cue peo­ple from the Nova music fes­ti­val.

I turn left onto a pas­sage­way before a build­ing that, until recent­ly, dis­played a huge ban­ner that pro­claimed, ​“Great to have you back!” That’s where Eden Alexan­der, a twen­ty-one-year-old New Jer­seyan, lived before he was tak­en hostage. Upon his release, TV crews camped near the entrance, and I passed them on my way home.

Kinder­garten ends at half past four when I fetch my daugh­ter and we move to a play­ground. In the alley, I pull my dog clos­er to pre­vent him from pee­ing on anoth­er ban­ner — one that shows faces of hostages, most of them released after the cease­fire took effect. Many I know now by name. 

My dear­est are Eden Yerushal­mi and Hersh Gold­berg-Polin. Hersh, a Jerusalemite, had a ​“Jerusalem belongs to every­one” sign in his room. 

Trag­i­cal­ly, both were killed in cap­tiv­i­ty. A few days ago, a bit­ter­sweet moment: a video, shot by their cap­tors in 2023, show­ing the two still alive and light­ing Hanukkah can­dles.

They are all fam­i­ly now. But before day 101, I bare­ly felt a con­nec­tion. This was changed by a trip South, and what fol­lows is my account of that jour­ney. I need­ed to be an observ­er to process what I saw, and pro­cess­ing made me a wit­ness. 

______

Day 101.

All is green on the sides of the road. Euca­lyp­tus­es mark the bor­der between grey asphalt and emer­ald hills, rem­i­nis­cent of the wall­pa­per on a Win­dows com­put­er. The road is free of traf­fic as we dri­ve past vil­lages and a city resem­bling a set from Stephen King’s hor­ror minis­eries The Lan­goliers: emp­ty, silent, eerie. A con­struc­tion crane with a dan­gling chain hangs idly over an unfin­ished apart­ment block. 

We are in the so-called Enve­lope, a Gaza-adja­cent region in Israel, where rock­ets take sec­onds to reach. Its com­mu­ni­ties have been evac­u­at­ed after the Octo­ber mas­sacre and the start of the war. 

I’m behind the driver’s wheel and next to me is Asya, a TV jour­nal­ist who moved to Israel just a few years ago. 

We are acquain­tances, shar­ing a desire to go on this trip, (which was dis­missed by our respec­tive roman­tic part­ners). For me, who came to Israel too old for army ser­vice, the calami­ty seemed some­how remote — I had no draft­ed friends and no con­nec­tions in the coun­try’s south. Soci­ety out­side of my immi­gra­tion bub­ble has been trau­ma­tized, and the observ­er stance I devel­oped felt wrong and isolating. 

Asya, on the oth­er hand, wit­nessed too much suf­fer­ing and pain as a break­ing news reporter, which left her feel­ing numb inside. Today, how­ev­er, she’s not on an assign­ment: Octo­ber 7th hit so close to home she felt it as a per­son­al tragedy and we both felt a moral duty to wit­ness the after­math firsthand.

By ground­ing each oth­er in our dif­fer­ent back­grounds, we made a good team.

“Are these olive trees?” asks Asya, point­ing to a man­go or avo­ca­do grove. ​“No, Asya, if some­thing looks like it could grow on your Moscow dacha, these are not olives.” To an eye accus­tomed to plants flour­ish­ing where water is abun­dant, olive trees look alien with their waxy, metal­lic-shade leaves and weird, deformed trunks.

Asya gives me a half-heart­ed smile. She’s a friend of my spouse’s, and this is the first time we’ve been alone, just the two of us, for more than a few minutes.

The car’s wheels start mak­ing an unnerv­ing, vibrat­ing sound. It feels like the road sings, and we don’t know the song. We stop for gas behind an old, small Mit­subishi, the same car we drive. 

Its occu­pants are two dark-skinned, olive-drab-dressed men and a woman. Prob­a­bly army reservists, dis­patched here to bol­ster secu­ri­ty in the area swarmed by ter­ror­ists just 101 days ago. 

The trio, all car­ry­ing assault rifles, head towards the sta­tion, like­ly to grab a snack or coffee.

Inside, a beard­ed, uni­form-clad employ­ee loud­ly speaks in Ara­bic. He points me to a toi­let, and, once out of sight, I allow myself to think over who he is: ​“Might be a bedouin,” reas­sur­ing­ly, I say to myself, feel­ing shame for my para­noia and the need to con­vince myself that a ran­dom speak­er of Ara­bic is not a blood­thirsty murderer. 

Dozens of bedouins were killed when Hamas ter­ror­ists breached the sep­a­ra­tion fence and flood­ed adja­cent com­mu­ni­ties, mas­sacring every­one they could get hold of, irre­spec­tive of cit­i­zen­ship, moth­er tongue, reli­gion, skin col­or, or sex. 

I return to the cashier’s desk and, still uneasy, decide to check some­thing with one of the sol­diers from the car. ​“Excuse me,” I ask a mas­sive man in his for­ties, ​“Do you know how we can get to the car graveyard?” 

He gives me a bewil­dered look, and I explain, ​“The place where they col­lect­ed shot, burned, and destroyed vehi­cles of peo­ple hit on Octo­ber 7.” 

The sol­dier can’t help, and I hope we’ll be able to spot it on our own.

Most of the buried cars belonged to peo­ple com­ing to dance at a psy­che­del­ic trance music fes­ti­val, some five kilo­me­ters from the bor­der with Gaza. 

What was meant to be a peace­ful gath­er­ing turned into a blood bath as Hamas ter­ror­ists descend­ed, some of them lit­er­al­ly, using paraglid­ers to cross into Israel. 

We get back into the car and dri­ve south. Our des­ti­na­tion is at Re’im — the grounds of the Nova fes­ti­val, or, accord­ing to Wikipedia, the Nova fes­ti­val massacre. 

All is green on the sides of the road. ​“This could be South of France,” says Asya, ​“so pas­toral.” We pass a long shed shel­ter­ing trac­tors and oth­er agri­cul­tur­al machines. Part of its very long roof col­lapsed, with uneven, rusty slopes burned and pierced by shrap­nel. Prob­a­bly a direct hit by a Hamas rock­et, one of the tens of thou­sands indis­crim­i­nate­ly fired since the war started.

I quick­ly look at the nav­i­ga­tion app and my heart stum­bles. Kib­butz Be’eri is the next right turn. Before, I knew it by the local cheeses — they were served in one of my favorite lodg­ings in the Negev desert. 

Trag­i­cal­ly, Be’eri became known for some­thing else — as a site of a mas­sacre with some of the worst atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against the Jews since the time of the Holo­caust. We don’t make a right turn now. We know the set­tle­ment is closed off, and we aren’t sure we have the guts to go there anyway.

On to the fes­ti­val grounds. ​“Re’im Pic­nic Area,” reads the brown sign. In Israel, brown sig­nage is reserved for tourist areas. Now it looks like a bad joke. The entrance is blocked by a mil­i­tary police vehi­cle and an old civil­ian-look­ing sedan shed­ding paint from its hood. I come out of the car to ask the sol­diers for direc­tions. ​“First turn to the right,” they say, ​“this is the closed mil­i­tary area.” 

We cross a mud-filled turn off by the side of the road a few dozen meters fur­ther and dri­ve into a Euca­lyp­tus for­est. The car moves like a boat on a wavy sea — the hood bob­bing up and down, and I get nau­se­at­ed. Soon, we emerge into the open, and I see the first of the many ceno­taphs dot­ting the place. We exit the car to con­tin­ue on foot.

Three hun­dred six­ty-four peo­ple died here — an unfath­omable num­ber. We come clos­er to the first memo­r­i­al, it’s for a young woman in her twen­ties, just like many of the par­ty­go­ers. The air is humid and fresh; it rained this morn­ing, and water col­lect­ed in many glass can­dle jars at the base of the pho­to-bear­ing wood­en poles. I reach into my yel­low hand­bag and bring out Nepalese incense, a tight braid rolled with aro­mat­ic herbs and spices. It reminds me of both chal­lah and a hav­dalah candle. 

Octo­ber 7 was Sim­chat Torah, a hol­i­day when we cel­e­brate the end of the annu­al Torah read­ings and the begin­ning of a new cycle. Those killed here didn’t get to expe­ri­ence the new rou­tine — their new cycle, if it exists, is far more mysterious.

Cold wind blows inces­sant­ly, and we make a ball of our palms to pro­tect the cig­a­rette lighter’s flame. The incense catch­es fire, and aro­mat­ic smoke ris­es around the pho­to­graph on the memo­r­i­al before being car­ried away by a wind gust. 

The clo­sure is not for the dead. It is for us, the living. 

We wan­der among the for­est of poles, each car­ry­ing a pho­to — some from pro­fes­sion­al pho­to shoots, some low-res­o­lu­tion Face­book page printouts. 

“You only live once, so just fuck­ing do it,” reads a stick­er attached to a young man’s memo­r­i­al. His favorite quote, or a mot­to, turned way too serious.

Stick­ers with Shani Gabay’s name cov­er a bench, per­haps con­struct­ed by those who hold her dear. We light incense again and again, and soon, the whole scene smells like a tem­ple in the Himalayas, fre­quent­ed by young Israelis soul-search­ing after their manda­to­ry army service. 

A loud bang fills the air and my ears hurt. I con­tract and instinc­tive­ly lift my shoul­ders. A tank is fir­ing close by. Then anoth­er bang. I can’t stop won­der­ing how it feels in Gaza, where these shells are landing.

On one of the poles, there’s a pic­ture of a long-haired guy with a chest tat­too. ​“100,” it reads. It’s 101 days today. 

I invite Asya for a walk along the ravine, which is cov­ered with lush veg­e­ta­tion. As we come close, we see flow­ers every­where, pop­ping their yel­low and white heads out of the green­ery. Blood-red anemones stand out against the dark, vivid background.

On our way back to the car, we pass an area cov­ered with white foot­ball-sized boul­ders, each marked with a name. It’s a Jew­ish cus­tom to bring stones to the gravesites. 

Hes­i­tant­ly, we decide to go to Kib­butz Be’eri. Unlike the set­tle­ment itself, their cheese shop out­side the gate is now open. We return to the car and dri­ve a few min­utes before turn­ing right at the slid­ing yel­low gate, mark­ing the entrance to the kibbutz.

A group from the Hostages and Miss­ing Per­sons Fam­i­lies Forum stands near­by, hold­ing pic­tures of those still held in Gaza. ​“Bring them Home,” reads the banner.

The farm shop is in the old barn with two odd­ly-shaped con­crete rock­et shel­ters placed near­by. ​“ISIS” reads the large let­ters, ​“desert brew­ery” reads the small. I can’t tell if that ref­er­ence to the world’s most bru­tal ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion is a ter­ri­ble joke of some kind.

The shop is staffed by a tall, eye­glass-wear­ing man with an ear­ring and a long pony­tail. We chose cheese (mature, young, some­where in the mid­dle) and asked about the brew­ery. The shop­keep­er hand­ed me a bot­tle with the name ​“ISIS” and a pic­ture of her, the Egypt­ian god­dess who helps the deceased reach the afterlife.

I ask the man how he sur­vived psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. ​“I don’t know,” he answers. ​“I just start­ed to do things and move around.”

We place cheese and beer in the trunk and head to Tel Aviv. All is green on the sides of the road. 

______

Yes­ter­day, I asked Asya, who had just returned from a jour­nal­is­tic assign­ment in India, for the pho­tos she had tak­en on that day. She hand­ed me the best ones, along with a gift bag of masala chai. 

Of all pic­tures, the most heart-wrench­ing were the anemones.

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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