Haaretz journalist, Lee Yaron, 10/7: 100 HUMAN STORIES
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[0:42]Lee Yaron is the author of October 7th, 100 Human Stories. Lee has been a journalist with
[0:49]her ex, Israel's oldest and most award-winning newspaper for nearly a decade.
[0:53]Her investigative reporting has resulted in the founding of state-level commissions and the changing of substantial bodies of Israeli policy and law.
[1:01]She is an elected member representative of the executive committee of the Union of Israeli journalists.
[1:07]She has also written and directed acclaimed theater productions, notable for their use of found materials, including official government texts, to bring attention to marginalized communities, both in Israel and throughout the Middle East.
[1:20]Born in Tel Aviv, Yaron spends her time between her native city and New York.
[1:25]Well, Gunley, thank you so much for coming on.
[1:27]I'm starting to have time to read books to discuss 10, 700 human stories.
[1:31]Thank you.
[1:32]Thank you.
[1:33]It's a pleasure to be here.
[1:34]Lee, this book, it just slayed me as I knew it would.
[1:39]You're reporting and the wit breadth of people that you spoke to and the intimate moments that you recreated here.
[1:48]In not even that big a book, you packed in so many perspectives, so many horrific moments and also inspiring moments.
[1:58]Like you saw these glimmers of connection and helping people and all that.
[2:02]Like, Tel listeners about the book, the framework for the book, just the backstory of the book and just, wow, I was like, I almost, after I would read it, I was like having trouble sleeping as I have for the last year.
[2:17]Basically, not install of us.
[2:20]Anyway, okay, tell, give me a little more about it.
[2:23]I started writing it in the end of October while I was very much still overwhelmed with just grief and anger and so on.
[2:34]And I felt like I needed to do something for the victims and there's not much you can do for for the dead.
[2:41]And the thing I could do was to write what I've always done.
[2:46]I'm a journalist for our arts, which is the Israeli liberal newspaper for the last decade.
[2:52]And I've always been focused in human stories and in the people in the margins of Israeli society.
[2:59]If it's asylum seekers, the LGBTQ community, women's rights and just trying to to tell the story from the bottom up.
[3:11]Because it's time and again, I've seen how these politicians that are shaping the policies that affect these people's lives are also telling and miss telling their stories.
[3:22]And I came to understand that if I truly want to reflect the political reality, the real story lies through the real people.
[3:32]And I've been thinking about it from October 8th basically because from the beginning, we've just been flooded with all of this information and misinformation and this information about Israel and Palestine.
[3:47]But it was again, the people in power that were also telling spreading their agendas, you know, the same radical politicians.
[3:56]And I felt like this book is my attempt to reclaim the story of 10, 7 from the people who created the crisis and return it to the people who suffered from me to go.
[4:09]You know, beyond the numbers, the calls statistics and the political agendas to just the hearts and the homes of the people that were caught in the crossfire and to tell their story from their perspective.
[4:23]So that's the framework.
[4:26]So how did you go about this? 10, 7 happens. We're all just, you know, flattened by it.
[4:33]You decided to take on this project. How did you do it? Did you just get right out there? You start in the field knocking on doors like how did you and how did you hold all of the grief and all of the trauma that you heard throughout the interviews where I reading it is dramatic.
[4:51]And I'm sure there's so much stuff that you didn't include. And what was that like for you? I guess that was 1,000 questions. But how did you go about it? And then what was it like for you?
[5:01]Okay. I mean, from the beginning, I felt like I want to represent the amazing diversity in the Israeli society. I think in American media and European media, you know, people speak about Israel is as this one thing, but this book is covering so many communities that were heard.
[5:20]And there's a chapter about refugees from Ukraine that just fled with his aggression and see Israel like so many other Jews have seen it through the years as a place of refuge of safety.
[5:32]And then one year later, they need to flee again from Hamas rockets or the battery community. You know, when you 2% of Israelis are Israelis plus in Israel is nobody is speaking about them.
[5:44]Holocaust survivors that were also heard or of course the kibbutzian, this amazing peace community is that it's so much to promote it to state solution.
[5:57]And war in some kibbutzian, 10% of the population was murdered or taken hostage. So the first thing I knew was that I'm gonna represent them all and also the underprivileged communities. I think people are also overlooking that. I mean, so many of the cities that fell victim to Hamas are among Israel poorest.
[6:22]I'll tell you later in some of them, I finally leave and was under this attack that morning, we truly see these that are homes to also create populations of misracking what we call in Hebrew or Jewish Arabs that needed to flee our countries when Israel was founded like Tunisia and Morocco in Egypt because they were deported and came to Israel and many of them are still struggling just to make a living.
[6:50]So these were the first two principles and then I just let its story to lead me to another. I chose a few stories in every community that I felt like I had to tell.
[7:02]And then in every interview I would ask the family that lost their loved ones about their relationships, the victim had with other victims.
[7:13]And I would hear this amazing stories and amazing connections and this web of connections became the backbone of the book. And I feel like it's, it was important for me not to tell individual stories.
[7:28]And the state and the media that we always hear it like, oh, this person died and this person died. But so many of them were actually friends or neighbors or, you know, in one chapter, I discovered that a daughter of them of the Holocaust survivor that that passed away and maybe we'll speak about him was the English teacher of the two kids and writing about them in captivity.
[7:50]So you understand that it's, it's not individuals. It's close need communities that were destroyed and people that are mourning their families and also their friends and their neighbors.
[8:04]So there was that and it was, it was incredible. I was so many times just shocked from the things I discovered.
[8:12]How did you on a personal level handle all of it? How did you handle the conversations and then go back to, you know, your own life or I mean, I know that is your life and it is life for so many people.
[8:26]Just how do you bet? How did you handle the heaviness without feeling hopeless? Oh, I felt hopeless. But in the beginning is a journalist, you know, you try to keep your boundaries between your professional life and your private life.
[8:41]But on 10th, seven years from the beginning, I, 10% wasn't possible. I mean, then that morning, I discovered that 20 hamster risks were opening fire in the streets were my aunt and uncle leave in the small town of a king, one of these poor small communities.
[9:01]And because people there are don't have the money to have a shelter in their home, even though they suffer from hamster rockets from Gaza for nearly 20 years, when there is a rocket.
[9:15]A siren like 10, seven started, people didn't know terrorists are coming. They thought it was just another, another rocket attack. So people ran to the streets.
[9:25]And on that day, just made them easy targets for the hamster is that we're waiting and 49 residents are for for came died that morning.
[9:35]And the terrorists control the city for 48 hours, so we were very nervous. But in the end, my family was saved only because they were lazy.
[9:44]They were so used to this rocket attacks, so they decided to stay home and just hide home and staying home, save them.
[9:53]So started like that and then two months later, I was in the middle of an interview.
[10:00]the mother that lost her child and her daughter-in-law
[10:03]and is now taking care of their two little daughters.
[10:07]And in the middle of this interview,
[10:08]I got a call that one of my dearest friends,
[10:11]Galizin Cott, who is killed in Gaza.
[10:14]He was in a mission to rescue hostages.
[10:17]He was a reserve soldier or a student.
[10:21]His father is, of course, his guardian is in court
[10:24]that was the head of the AGF and a minister,
[10:27]but Gal wasn't a military man.
[10:29]He wanted to be a doctor and save people.
[10:33]And he just went to the army on October 7th,
[10:35]like so many other young Israeli men
[10:38]that wanted to defend their country
[10:40]and bring back the hostages.
[10:44]And after Gal died, it was really,
[10:46]I found myself among these people.
[10:49]I was documenting.
[10:50]I was, some days it was unbearable to just do.
[10:56]I wrote this book really.
[10:57]I needed to write it very quickly.
[10:59]I had already, like I said,
[11:02]I started in the end of October and by November and December,
[11:07]the book doesn't only came out in English.
[11:10]It's also French and German and Dutch
[11:12]in so many countries.
[11:14]And I understood from my editor
[11:16]that I have to write it quickly.
[11:19]So I had like six months to do all the interviews and write.
[11:23]So I was just interviewing all day,
[11:26]almost not sleeping like you said.
[11:27]You can't even sleep after you hear all of these stories.
[11:31]So it was, it times too painful,
[11:35]but I have to say it also gave me strength
[11:38]and it gave me a purpose.
[11:40]I think it saved me in many ways from depression
[11:43]because I had a mission.
[11:46]I could be their voice, the voice of the people
[11:49]that wore silence and have this mission
[11:51]of telling their stories from their perspectives
[11:55]and make them remembered for who they wore
[11:58]for their lives and not their death.
[12:00]It's very, it was very important for me
[12:02]that this book will not be a book about death,
[12:05]will be a book about your lives.
[12:07]And after, after God's death and God died
[12:12]because of his father, he came this political symbol
[12:15]in Israel, you know, and all these politicians
[12:18]came to the funeral and were speaking about him
[12:21]in this way and that way.
[12:23]And I just felt like, I lost my friend
[12:25]and now all of you are like stealing him again
[12:28]and I can't recognize him in all of these articles about him.
[12:33]And I wanted to do for this victims
[12:35]what we couldn't do for a girl,
[12:37]to just remember them for who they wore.
[12:41]I'm so sorry for your loss of girl.
[12:44]You may personally affected you and everything else.
[12:48]I'm just so sorry.
[12:49]I mean, it's just horrific.
[12:52]It's really horrific.
[12:54]When you mentioned the town where you're in an uncle
[12:57]where that was the story with the man
[13:00]who worked in the cemetery, correct?
[13:02]Was that right?
[13:03]So that was such a visual immersive experience
[13:08]where he is going to bed, has to get up.
[13:12]Wasn't it the Sabbath and he has to go and work
[13:15]because you have special dispensation
[13:17]to do this kind of death preparation on the Sabbath?
[13:20]And he used to take a long time with each body
[13:23]but they were literally bringing him trucks,
[13:26]like refrigerated trucks with body parts
[13:28]that he was assembling and oh my gosh.
[13:32]And each body, he said it only took like a minute
[13:34]or two, he had to prep and was just,
[13:37]I mean, the immediacy, the pain,
[13:41]how he didn't even stop for 50 hours.
[13:43]I mean, that was so, it's just all, it's so powerful.
[13:48]You know, there is, you're completely right,
[13:51]but there is two characters in the name of Hayam in the book.
[13:56]And both of them are Hayam in Hebrew, of course, it's life.
[14:00]But both Hayam has the job of dealing with the bodies,
[14:04]with the dead.
[14:06]So one Hayam is Hayam only,
[14:09]which is the manager of the cemetery
[14:11]of the Fakim, the city-like family came from.
[14:15]And then he is this religious man, 55 years old.
[14:18]He goes to the Moroccan synagogue every Shabbat
[14:21]and on 10 seven, you know, it was in Qatarites.
[14:24]It was a holiday, he was so excited to do,
[14:26]he woke up early and was preparing to, you know,
[14:29]sing and dance and sing a God.
[14:32]And he began his day there.
[14:34]And after that, he went to his nap
[14:37]and then people are knocking in his door
[14:40]and going to go to the cemetery
[14:42]and start bearing his neighbors and friends.
[14:46]So in this chapter, it's kind of like,
[14:48]get to know the people when Hayam is surprised to see,
[14:52]to see his friends.
[14:54]And then there's another chapter
[14:56]that is a very difficult one of the novel parties
[14:59]in which I have, and the chapter is mostly about the lives
[15:04]of these people.
[15:05]I'm going back and forth with the stories of 20 survivors
[15:09]and make them when they chose to start it.
[15:12]And I was thinking a lot about whether it's too difficult
[15:15]to read or not with the story of the other Hayam.
[15:19]And that's what you described that is just going there.
[15:23]It starts when he's also a religious man.
[15:26]He's hosting his parents, his parents-in-law
[15:29]for the holiday when he gets this call from a rabbi
[15:33]he never met once before.
[15:35]And this rabbi is telling him, you know, Hayam,
[15:39]they put me here in this party
[15:41]to guard something like 200 bodies.
[15:44]And I know what to do.
[15:46]And Hayam is like, can you open the video?
[15:50]Like, I don't, he was having a hard time to even
[15:55]believe this rabbi when he saw what happened,
[15:59]he started driving there.
[16:01]And just on his way, he gets like 70 volunteers
[16:05]that are leaving everything under fire
[16:08]and just coming to his system.
[16:10]And as we know in another party,
[16:12]that just the non-barrel victims was too much
[16:16]and they needed to do it and horrible, horrible work.
[16:19]Oh my gosh.
[16:21]Yes, sorry for conflating two chapters, both.
[16:25]No, no, that makes so much sense with the two Hayams.
[16:30]You also sort of shine the light on lesser-known stories,
[16:34]regions, the tour bus with all the elderly people
[16:37]who people watch, just get this one man,
[16:40]I think Danny watched out his window as helpless
[16:43]as he explained why they were on the bus
[16:45]and how they were just trying to go to the Dead Sea
[16:47]for the day and how there was nothing that could be done
[16:50]and how people said run and of course they could barely walk
[16:54]and how basically just how the towns,
[16:58]each place had this white van come through
[17:01]and just unleash destruction in so many ways
[17:05]and the terrorists everywhere.
[17:07]And I think that the media or here in the US,
[17:10]like I feel like we hear about the festival all the time
[17:13]but so much less about the other people
[17:16]and the other neighborhoods and the other groups
[17:18]and tell me a little more about that,
[17:21]how you tapped into that whole group
[17:24]and that was and how you ended that chapter saying
[17:26]that the two people who he had kicked off of,
[17:29]how the organizer had kicked two people off the tour
[17:31]because there was enough room and they called to say,
[17:33]thank you at the end.
[17:33]I mean, the whole thing is so heartbreaking.
[17:35]Oh my gosh.
[17:39]It's a very difficult and honest story.
[17:42]I mean, it's a group of these elderly immigrants
[17:46]that came to Israel in the 90s from the former Soviet Union
[17:50]and they're also living like this.
[17:53]They lived a hard life so it's like working
[17:55]in this minimum wage jobs after they came with Russian
[18:00]and needed to learn to improve
[18:02]but they're all retired and they wanna enjoy.
[18:06]and they're, you know, at your last years they're all
[18:09]and there's this guy, Alexei,
[18:11]that is offering this like very cheap tours to the Dead Sea.
[18:16]It's only 20 bucks, there is a deal
[18:19]if you buy like three or seven trips at the same times
[18:23]or they all have this little deals
[18:25]and it's like no meals, no guide
[18:27]but they're taking you to the Dead Sea
[18:30]and it's like little families, couples
[18:33]and older women and our sister and they dress up
[18:36]for these trips and they get so excited
[18:40]and on that job out of 10, seven,
[18:42]a lot of people fought like each other
[18:44]who's gonna get into the bus
[18:46]because there were only 19 spots.
[18:50]So Alexei was trying to tell some of them like okay,
[18:54]we'll push you to another week
[18:56]and they said no, we're regular customers.
[18:59]So in the end, this group of 19 showed up
[19:03]and then the chapter, I mean like going between
[19:06]the different seats and selling each of their histories
[19:10]which is like just here in the stories of people
[19:13]like one, one man was one of the soldiers
[19:17]in the Red Army that was in charge of cleaning Chernobyl
[19:21]that came to Israel and here like hearing all of this
[19:26]amazing, amazing life stories
[19:29]and you know, there's strength the way they struggle
[19:31]to build their life for their kids in Israel.
[19:35]And how you point out that for all of his exposure
[19:38]to Chernobyl, he gets $2,000 or $2,000,
[19:41]it's just ridiculous.
[19:43]So many unfair things, it's just so unfair.
[19:48]All of it is just egregious.
[19:51]Like exactly exactly the amount of really,
[19:53]he struggled all of his life but still, you know,
[19:56]he comes the day with his hat and he's excited,
[19:59]he's trained.
[20:00]just to make it the best of what life gave and
[20:03]and to driving just for a few minutes
[20:06]and then they have a tire.
[20:09]And they stop in this past station to try to fix the tire.
[20:14]When Hamas fan is coming and the local shelter,
[20:20]there was a shelter there in the past station
[20:23]and it's supposed to be this like Israeli high tech thing
[20:26]when the shelter is opening by itself
[20:29]when there's a rapid alert, but obviously didn't work.
[20:33]And they were locked and they were calling the municipality
[20:37]but no one answered and they just became these targets
[20:41]for this Hamas fan that was looking for people in the streets.
[20:46]So it's, you know, it's a story that inspires me
[20:50]because these people are so inspiring,
[20:53]but it's also so painful.
[20:55]And you know, it reminds me it's right after the story
[20:58]of eight times we mentioned it,
[21:01]it made the kid from Ukraine.
[21:04]There's a community of about 50 to 60,000 people
[21:09]that fled Ukraine to Israel.
[21:11]And I think our so overlooked, you know,
[21:14]this victims of two wars.
[21:16]And in the book I follow the story of this 15 year old boy
[21:19]is like a tall and some funny boy
[21:22]that grew up in this Jewish amazing place.
[21:26]Now there's with all the rest of the kids
[21:31]and when the attacks started in February of 2022
[21:36]then the put it in the patient,
[21:38]they just flee immediately.
[21:40]They have this rabbi that was one of the first people
[21:43]to be prepared via the bus for all the kids
[21:46]and they just drove for 20 hours
[21:49]and arrived at this abandoned hotel in Romania.
[21:53]They let him pass somehow without their passports
[21:56]and he reunites with his family there after 10 years.
[22:01]This, you know, like it's obviously so scary
[22:04]like to run away for more,
[22:06]but it's just so happy to be reunited with his mom again.
[22:10]And then they decided to get her there,
[22:12]gonna go to Israel.
[22:14]And the mother is asking one of her friends Marina
[22:17]that already did Aliyah before and she's like,
[22:20]where should we go?
[22:21]So Marina is saying, well, there's the city of Ashkelon.
[22:25]It's beautiful.
[22:26]There's this white beach that is really like Odessa
[22:30]and you should come here.
[22:31]And there's a little detail that it's pretty close to Gaza
[22:35]but they felt so safe with the Iron Dome
[22:39]and they knew their, you know, IDF is so strong.
[22:43]So they were sometimes sitting in the balcony
[22:46]and drinking a beer and see like the Iron Dome, you know.
[22:51]Taking out the rockets and they were like,
[22:53]we're safe here, we're in the Jewish country, we're safe.
[22:57]And then of course,
[22:58]Aidan survived and his family survived
[23:00]and they started a new life for the third time in two years.
[23:04]Now in the north of Israel, not that North to be attacked now
[23:09]by Hezbollah.
[23:10]But one of the questions that Aidan asked me
[23:14]that I think about a lot is, you know, I'm only 15
[23:19]and I went to two wars.
[23:20]And what do you think is a safe place for Jewish kid?
[23:25]And I think that's one of the, you know,
[23:27]like I understood quickly writing it
[23:31]that 10, seven is not just about Israeli history.
[23:35]It's truly about Jewish history.
[23:38]And there's this, another layer beneath the immediate suffering
[23:44]that I heard from all the families
[23:45]and it's like the reopening of this wound of generations.
[23:50]No, I know it from my family,
[23:54]my name for my mother's side,
[23:56]my surname is Adato, which is in Hebrew green matriades.
[24:00]It's for letters and it's the year of 1496,
[24:05]which is the year that my family was deported from Portugal
[24:08]with the rest of the Jews of Portugal.
[24:11]And for 500 years, we were wondering
[24:14]between Italy to Turkey and to Israel,
[24:17]but it was so important.
[24:18]I remember my grandfather telling me the story
[24:21]and it was so important for average generation
[24:24]to speak about that, about their injustice.
[24:27]On my father's side were survivors of the Holocaust
[24:31]and just so many programs in Prussia and Romania.
[24:35]And my grandparents came to Israel not as young people
[24:39]and they struggled with the language
[24:42]and with the culture and my grandmother was speak Latino
[24:46]and in home and I always wanted to learn it
[24:50]and she told me, no, you're Israeli.
[24:53]They really, really hoped that Israel
[24:55]will be the end of this Jewish history
[24:58]in the bad way of this persecution and programs.
[25:03]And I think on 10th, seven when this fence broke,
[25:07]it was also just the shattering of the dream of generations
[25:11]that Israel will be a place of safety.
[25:15]I heard it from families of victims
[25:17]that came from Arab countries,
[25:19]from the former Soviet Union, from Europe,
[25:22]just speaking about their kids that died,
[25:25]but also about their parents.
[25:28]Maybe we can't give one example of the story of Shahat Zemak
[25:33]from keyboard spelling.
[25:34]Shahah was a young dad, this amazing peace activist.
[25:39]And he was a volunteer for the organization
[25:43]breaking the silence and making tours in Haavron
[25:46]speaking about a two-state solution.
[25:49]Even wrote an article a few months before 10,
[25:53]seven about the fact that citizens
[25:56]are not supposed to carry a weapon.
[25:58]And but on that morning, when he understands
[26:01]the cabot is attacked and no one is there to protect them,
[26:06]he's the first one to take weapon
[26:08]and go and defend the clinic
[26:10]where some doctors and paramedics were trying to save
[26:14]the people that were already injured.
[26:16]And he's calling the idea of all day
[26:18]and he's trying to get back up,
[26:19]but no one is coming,
[26:21]he's standing there for hours and hours
[26:24]until he ran out of bullets.
[26:27]And when the terrorists came, he put his ends up
[26:30]and he said, please, I'm not your enemy, please don't shoot.
[26:34]And of course they did.
[26:35]And when I'm speaking with his parents,
[26:37]which are her parents with his father, Jerome,
[26:40]he tells me about his mother, Carmela.
[26:44]Carmela was this young, 30-year-old girl in Iraq
[26:48]and by that, when the Farhoot Program happened in 1941
[26:54]and she survived that massacre,
[26:57]when 200 of the Jewish residents
[27:01]of the city were killed by their Arab neighbors.
[27:05]And after that, as a young woman, she came to Israel
[27:08]and was one of the founders of this Kimboutseim,
[27:11]really wanting her children to have a safe place.
[27:15]So Shahar's parents are wondering,
[27:20]if our mother knew what happened to her grandchild,
[27:23]in the place she founded for his safety,
[27:26]what would she say?
[27:27]And that's something I think about a lot.
[27:32]Lee, what do we do with all of this?
[27:34]All of this pain, all of this history of pain
[27:37]and yet resilience, of community, of injustice,
[27:44]persecution, and yet survival, sharing stories,
[27:48]where do we go from here?
[27:50]Like, what do you want readers to take away?
[27:52]Like, I personally took away that no matter what happens,
[27:58]the Jewish people will fight on and carry all the past
[28:02]and all the stories of the past
[28:05]and use that to sort of spur on this notion
[28:08]that like nothing, even no matter how bad it gets,
[28:12]we can get through it.
[28:13]So I feel one message of the book is very hopeful,
[28:18]but another is, you know, it's very sad.
[28:22]I mean, where do we go from here?
[28:25]How do we hold all this pain and take a step forward?
[28:29]Yeah, I mean, this book, what I want people to take
[28:33]from it is like a renewed sense of our shared humanity.
[28:37]We live in a time that is so politicized and so polarized
[28:42]when it's like Israelis and Palestinians
[28:45]are so much in pain that we became blind
[28:49]to each other's grief.
[28:52]And I hope, not just as well as our allies,
[28:56]just people are forgetting to make the difference
[29:00]between governments and between people.
[29:03]And you think about, you know,
[29:04]there's so much politics and that obscures the fact
[29:08]that it's human suffering underneath.
[29:11]And I am a big believer in the power of empathy
[29:16]and the power of empathy to build bridges of coexistence
[29:20]between people.
[29:22]And I think the best way to create
[29:25]empathy is human stories.
[29:28]And that's what I'm trying to do in the book
[29:30]in a much deeper way than we can get from the media
[29:36]when we tell the stories so quickly.
[29:40]Another thing is, you know, I come from the younger generation
[29:44]of Israelis that not all the people know
[29:46]but we're 50, 50% of Israelis were 30 years old or younger.
[29:51]And that fact means that we never lived in a time
[29:54]of a true hope for peace.
[29:56]We were born with or after the assassin.
[30:00]nation of Prime Minister, it's Hakora bin.
[30:02]It basically says with the murder of the Oslo courts
[30:05]of the Pisa courts with him.
[30:08]And in the Palestinian side, it's like more than 50%
[30:11]are under 18.
[30:12]We're all young people that were told again and again.
[30:16]There will always live in wars, you know,
[30:18]for me, the infada is my first memories
[30:20]of just bastus exploding and running away,
[30:23]in order to be careful not to be in places
[30:26]with a lot of people because children
[30:29]die, that's how I grew up.
[30:31]I really, really hope that after this horrible war
[30:35]and this horrible price for all pain,
[30:37]my generation will do the best we can to try and end this conflict
[30:42]and find a way to, you know, to live in safety.
[30:45]I think that was the true dream of our grandparents,
[30:48]coming to Israel, maybe a less thing because, you know,
[30:51]we're speaking to you, there's this subject
[30:54]that everyone is ignoring, which is the gender
[30:57]respectively, most 10, 7.
[30:59]I was gonna bring that up and some of the things
[31:02]that you reported I had not heard before
[31:05]were just made my stomach turn.
[31:07]I, you know, we know about the fact
[31:10]that there was so much female sexual violence
[31:13]but reading about it in your book in such detail.
[31:16]And oh my gosh.
[31:18]Okay, sorry, go on.
[31:20]No, no, you're completely right.
[31:22]And I think, I mean, this is the most painful layer
[31:25]but there is so much like just think about it.
[31:27]How many women are there in the Israeli cabinet of war?
[31:32]Not a single one.
[31:33]How many are there in like leadership roles in the IMF?
[31:37]There's barely any and I'm in in the Hamas leadership.
[31:41]Of course, it's a joke.
[31:43]So we have two sides of the conflict.
[31:46]There's absolutely lack of women voices
[31:49]that are in the decision making process.
[31:52]And then I'm thinking about who were the only people
[31:56]that warned Israel from this war to say
[31:59]all the workers for the spotters,
[32:02]like spotters, this we call them in Hebrew,
[32:06]that's Pitaniot.
[32:07]They are these young soldiers,
[32:09]a job that is given only to women
[32:11]because it's so difficult.
[32:13]They need to sit and stare at the desert
[32:16]at their cameras for hours and hours
[32:20]and to report to their commanders
[32:22]and their male commanders,
[32:23]if they see any suspected activity from Hamas.
[32:27]And these young girls reported,
[32:29]they reported weeks and months before the attack
[32:32]and they said, we see something unusual.
[32:34]And while their male commanders told them,
[32:37]girls, you're only the eyes, you're not the brain
[32:41]and they did nothing with their reports.
[32:45]16 of them were killed that morning.
[32:48]And seven were taken hostage,
[32:50]many of them are still there in Gaza.
[32:53]And I'm thinking what happened if we listen to them,
[32:56]but also I'm thinking about what happened on October 4th.
[33:01]October 4th was this huge, huge peace march
[33:06]of Israeli women and Palestinian women
[33:09]that work together from this organization,
[33:12]women wage peace from the Israeli side
[33:14]and women of the Sam from the Palestinian side.
[33:17]And they signed together what they called the mother,
[33:20]the mother's call.
[33:22]They said, look, as mothers,
[33:23]we have so much more that the United States
[33:26]than separates us.
[33:28]And all of us just want to protect our kids
[33:31]and they send letters to the leaders saying,
[33:34]please go back to the negotiation table.
[33:36]Please try and speak about a solution
[33:39]before we'll go to war again.
[33:42]They had this beautiful march,
[33:43]speaking about their dreams of peace and safety
[33:46]on October 4th.
[33:48]And three days later, the co-founder
[33:51]of women wage peace, Vivian Silver,
[33:53]was murdered here at home in Kibbutz,
[33:56]where we and three other members of this peace organization
[34:00]was murdered.
[34:01]So I'm thinking what happened if we listen to them before
[34:06]and how come when everyone are now speaking about the future
[34:10]and what will happen in Gaza,
[34:12]what will be the next Israeli leadership,
[34:14]but no one is speaking about the absolute need
[34:18]to have women in both leaderships, whatever they'll be.
[34:23]So I think, in this podcast that is all about
[34:26]like women power and moms, it's a message
[34:29]that is really important for me.
[34:31]And I really hope that we, the young,
[34:33]the young Israeli women will step up
[34:36]and we'll go to politics and we'll try to make the change.
[34:40]Well, I have to say, as you've been talking,
[34:42]in my head, I'm thinking,
[34:43]I am talking now to someone who in 20 years
[34:46]is gonna be in charge of this whole country.
[34:48]Like, you, I just, I'm just sure of it.
[34:54]Whatever you say, you're mine too.
[34:55]Like, and that fills me with hope
[34:58]that someone like you can pick up the mantle
[35:01]and it just fills me with so much hope.
[35:04]You're amazing.
[35:05]The book was amazing.
[35:07]I could talk to you about all the stories.
[35:09]We didn't even touch on some of the ones that hit me.
[35:12]It's just incredible, essential, essential reading.
[35:17]So important, gives such context to everything else
[35:21]that's going on.
[35:22]And it's also sort of a mitzvah to the lost souls
[35:27]that we can all now get to know them like this.
[35:29]Thanks to you.
[35:30]So Lee, thank you.
[35:32]Thank you, thank you.
[35:32]This was such a gift and it is amazing.
[35:36]You're amazing.
[35:37]Thank you.
[35:38]Thank you so much.
[35:38]So important for us to have the American Jewish community,
[35:44]to be remembering with us and understanding
[35:49]the complexity of the situation.
[35:51]So I really, really appreciate you
[35:53]and your listeners taking the time to remember these stories.
[35:57]And I hope for that, you know, now that we're entering
[36:00]the high holidays, this will have Shannatova,
[36:03]a better one than this year.
[36:05]So thank you so much.
[36:07]Shannatova.
[36:08]Shannatova.
[36:09]Bye, Wei.
[36:10]Thank you.
[36:11]Bye, Wei.
[36:12]Thank you so much.
[36:13]Thank you.
[36:16]Thanks for listening to Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[36:19]If you love it, please leave a review.
[36:20]And follow us on social at Civi Owens and at Civi Readers.