'They're So Cruel': How Oct. 7 Destroyed an Israeli Peace Activist's Faith in the Palestinians

[Valin]

The Washington Free Beacon

Andrew Tobin    
December 14, 2023

EILAT, Israel—Irit Lahav, 57, was a peace activist who believed in the decency of the Palestinian people. Then, on Oct. 7, ordinary Gazans joined in a terrorist attack that left more than one in four of her neighbors in Kibbutz Nir Oz dead or abducted.

For many members of Nir Oz and other Israelis, the atrocities of Oct. 7—and particularly the broad participation of the Gazan public in the day—destroyed their faith in coexistence with the Palestinians.

Lahav, a manager at a travel company, long participated in peace demonstrations. In recent years, she volunteered for an Israeli charity called Road to Recovery, driving Palestinian children from the border of the Gaza Strip, less than two miles from her home, to Israeli hospitals for life-saving medical care.

"We thought that Palestinians are good people. All they want is peace and prosperity," Lahav told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview from a hotel in this Red Sea resort city where she and most of her community were temporarily relocated. "It's just that Hamas is forcing them to be in this aggressive situation."

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Dec 15, 2023
Irit Lahav, 57, was a peace activist who believed in the decency of the Palestinian people. Then, on Oct. 7, ordinary Gazans joined in a terrorist attack that left more than one in four of her neighbors in Kibbutz Nir Oz dead of abducted.

[Valin]

Neflix and Kill: How a Palestinian Woman Took Over an Israeli Family's Home on Oct. 7

Alana Goodman    
December 13, 2023

EILAT, Israel—Natali Yohanan, a 38-year-old mother of two, never locked the doors of her house in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip. There wasn't even a key.

On Oct. 7, a Gazan woman walked through Yohanan’s unlocked front door and made herself at home for hours, eating, singing, and watching Netflix. Sometimes, the woman served drinks to armed terrorists who stopped by for a break from the massacre they were conducting outside.

Yohanan, hiding with her family in the safe room of the house, did not get a chance to see the unwanted house guests. But she imagines the woman is a young mother like her and wonders how she could have been so cruel. Like many survivors of Hamas's surprise attack from Gaza, Yohanan no longer believes coexistence with the Palestinians is possible.

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Dec 14, 2023
Natali Yohanan, a 38-year-old mother of two, never felt a need to lock the doors of her house in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip. There wasn't even a key.

During the Oct. 7 terror attack on southern Israel, a Gazan woman walked through Yohanan's front door and stayed for hours, eating, singing, and watching Netflix. Sometimes, the woman served drinks to armed terrorists who stopped by for a break from the massacre they were conducting outside.

Yohanan, hiding with her family in the safe room of the house, did not see the unwanted house guest, but she thinks about her constantly. She imagines the woman is also young mother and wonders how she could have been so cruel. Like many survivors of Hamas's surprise attack from Gaza, Yohanan no longer believes coexistence with the Palestinians is possible.

[Valin]

Related

Dec 15, 2023
Megyn Kelly is joined by Bari Weiss, founder and CEO of the Free Press, to discuss former liberals becoming instantly "conservative" after October 7, what's behind so many Black Americans opposing Israel and Jews, and more.

[Valin]

'Hide Under the Bed': How Hamas Made a High Schooler's Holocaust Education Trip Unnecessary

 

Andrew Tobin    
December 18, 2023

EILAT, Israel—Ola Metzger, 45, had planned to send her daughter on a Holocaust education trip to Poland. But on Oct. 7, days before the trip was to depart, a holocaust came to them.

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Regarding the trip to Poland, a traditional rite of passage in which Israeli high schoolers visit Auschwitz and other Nazi camps, Metzger said her daughter "doesn't need to go now."

Just as tens of thousands of German civilians willingly joined in the Nazis' extermination of six million Jews, masses of ordinary Gazans flooded into Israel on Oct. 7 behind the Hamas terrorists who led the surprise assault. Footage from a number of the targeted communities shows dozens of ordinary-looking Gazans looting and taking part in killings and kidnappings of Israelis.

"The second wave of Arabs who came into the country were just as cruel as the terrorists of the first wave," Gadi Yarkoni, the mayor of the Eshkol Regional Council, which encompasses most of the Gaza border communities, told the Free Beacon in October. "We saw that it was not only Hamas who came to slaughter us. It was all the residents of Gaza, including people who worked in our kibbutzim."

In Niz Oz, Gazan women and children as young as 10 years old participated in the pogrom on Oct. 7, according to a dozen survivors.

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