On October 7th 2023, I lied (to myself).
I lied when I said, ‘Oh it's only rockets…..just the usual rockets’. You see, we arrived only yesterday for the long-awaited holiday. We have a wedding to attend, we have family gatherings, we have kids’ sleepovers and neighbours noodle parties. We have plenty of work to do in the garden, and we want to go spend a day with our 96-year-old aunt in Jerusalem. We only have one week for all this. So no, it can’t be. It must not be. There is no reason for war, not now, not later. And thus, I lied.
I lied (to family and friends)
I lied when I said, ‘We are safe as we are nowhere near Gaza’. When our family in Nagaland, who have been watching with horror the breaking news, pleaded with us to stay inside the bomb shelter, and not open the door when knocked’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, we are safe… life goes on’. I lied because life did not go on. Life changed completely. Immediately our community security team started to organize an emergency response, called us to stock up on water and foods, and clear obstacle and storage boxes from bomb shelters. The men in the kibbutz who are often seen jogging on Shabbat mornings or playing basketball with their kids are now walking around armed. Our community gate is now guarded around the clock by volunteers in pairs or more.
I lied (to myself and my community)
I lied because less than a few hours after news broke of barrages of rockets in the south, I saw young men from our community, all of them dear friends and neighbours, leaving the kibbutz gate in groups, in army uniforms. They have been called. ‘Maybe they are calling key members of special units’, I thought. I lied because within 24 hours more than 30 members of our community have left for reserve duty. And the conversation with whoever you meet became, ‘Have they been called yet?’
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=1]I lied (to those worried for my safety)
I lied when I said ‘Yes, we are inside the house’. I couldn’t stand the quietness inside the house. I needed to hear the sound of children playing outside or neighbours’ dogs barking, I needed to watch the bees and butterflies buzzing around my beautiful flowers, I needed to smell the smell of kibbutz, a smell that only us, the kibbutzniks, find it calming and reassuring; the smell of cowshed and chicken coop, the smell of children’s zoo; the smell of pine cones and citrus trees. I needed to feel the strong autumn wind that made the chime in our balcony buzz violently. If I were to go inside, and sit quietly, I could only hear deep dead silence broken by thunderous sounds of fighter jets flying over us every few minutes. So, I lied and stayed outside the whole day staring at nothing.
You see, we kibbutz people, have neither walls nor gates between us to separate us from our neighbours. We don’t, actually never, lock our doors unless we are going abroad for many days, and if we do, our neighbours and friends keep our keys and can use our empty house for any guests they may have. Most of us still prefer to use community cars and eat in the community dining room and shop in our small supermarket, where we get everything we need for our sustenance. Our children roam around like wild animals who know their territory and we trust them not to damage anything or anybody. The whole community knows all the kids by name, so if you search for your child, you can ask anyone, and they will tell you where they last saw them playing. Everybody who has been to a kibbutz will exclaim, ‘What an amazing place to raise a child’. My 10-year-old tells me that there are so many hiding places and shortcuts that I would never know. I believe him. And when he tells me that he and his friends are going to the picnic and barbeque area to make fire and roast some marshmallows and sausages that they got from the supermarket using our membership number, all I ask is ‘Does anyone in your group know how to make a fire?’
You see the most important aspect of growing up in the kibbutz is that children are kept busy the whole day – study they do, but it is not the most important aspect, they learn to work from very young age, they are assigned animals to care for in the zoo, they are expected to help in the vegetable and flower nursery, some of them help bottle feed newborn calves, older kids can take the horses and ride around fields to count the herd of cattle grazing, while others like to help in the packaging units of our products. Every member is part of at least one sport or culture or environmental protection club. Everyone is part of making this community life peaceful, meaningful and resourceful. Kibbutz people are known all over the country for their active support and role in peace initiatives; often they are referred to as ‘Peace-niks’.
Kibbutz people live simple lives. If you happen to go to a kibbutz dining room at lunch time, you will see men and women in their work clothes from the fields, factories and community services. You will see children seated in one area monitored by young adults, buzzing with noise that makes your heart leap. If you happen to get up to go give a kiss to your kid, you will end up tickling the whole row. That’s what joy looks like.
While I speak with so much attachment to the peace, productivity and belongingness in our community dining room, many such dining rooms of the kibbutzim bordering Gaza have been converted to mortuaries since that horrific day, places of death and mourning. Our own sister kibbutz situated in that region lost a third of its residents in the attack. As of today, in Kibbutz Nir Oz, only 106 of 400 members are alive and safe.
I lied because I wanted to cling on to the good. I lied because I wanted to believe that there is no reason for anyone to harm people who are just living. Living what they imagined ‘make the barren land bloom again’ should look like.
I lied when I told children whose fathers had gone, that the war will be over soon, as it always does and that their fathers will come home and they will go back to school. I lied when I told my son that because we are cutting short our holiday, we will come back soon, in two months when he will have an even longer holiday. And when he and his friends jumped with joy screaming, ‘for Hannukah?’, I cringed and said to myself, ‘Yes for Hannukah, the festival of miracle’.
I lied when I said our kibbutz is not affected. Since that black Shabbat, we have had three funerals. A young man, just 24 years of age, a grandmother whose body was found on her 80th birthday, a granddaughter who wouldn’t leave her grandmother, she was only 12 and autistic.
Soon I could no longer lie, so I cried.
I cried when a friend told me her nephew is still missing, when my neighbour told me his cousin and her children are locked in a shelter near Gaza and her husband shot. I cried when I heard my son’s friend, who had gone to visit his grandparents with his father, had been locked in a shelter for 22 hours with no water or food and in complete silence because constant gunshots shatter the silence outside their window. I cried when my neighbour’s nephew was found dead and that the funeral will take place at our kibbutz cemetery. I wept when during the funeral the commander of the unit in which this young man served said, ‘Israel has lost one of the most promising start-up geniuses’. I sobbed when I saw that he was the only son of his parents and the only brother to his sister.
I cry for every soul hurt, every family shattered, every precious life lost, every hostage taken. There is no human language to describe the cruelty of this act of terrorism. I cry for the country in shock, crushed and wounded like never before. Didn’t we promise ‘NEVER AGAIN’? ‘And this is happening as we still live with the survivors of the holocaust?’
I cry for the foreign workers who are part of the everyday fabric of our thriving society - Thais, Nepalis, Cambodians, Filipinos, Indians, Sri Lankans and many more whose care for our land and our elderly cost them their lives and their dream for a better life for their families back home.
I cry for all the mothers and fathers whose children are on the frontline, waiting for the devastating call. I cry for all the cities and suburbs whose skies are torn by endless rockets. Is anyone asking, ‘when will Gaza run out of rockets?’
I cry for Gaza, a strip they call you. I try very hard not to judge you. I know I cannot fathom your suffering, not now and even otherwise. But I do know that the Israeli people whose lives have been ripped apart that 7th October morning, know you more than any of us. Many of you come to work on their farms. Many of them drove your sick ones to hospitals across Israel, some of them do it every week. One of them, a 76-year-old man, wept like a child when he was told that five out of nine of you were killed by those terrorists when they were on their way to work in his kibbutz. The world screams at us to heed your suffering, but they are cruel people. How can a freshly wounded beast turn to the direction of the attack and seek to understand their pain? Instead of judging us and commanding us, shouldn’t they be holding the space for peace that neither us nor you can hold right now?
I cry for uncertainties, but I also cry for the certainty that this war will be the costliest, the longest and the most brutal. I cry for Israel whose rage will spill all over, within and without. I cry for Palestine whose rightful aspiration for dignity and freedom is robbed and hijacked by terrorists who don’t care if themselves and their own people live or die. I cry for Gaza whose leaders take their water pipes to make rockets, their money for schools and hospitals to make tunnels, and parade their dead bodies to show the world. I cry for children taken hostage into the dark tunnels. I cry for the children of Gaza who are blocked and prevented from leaving the war zone by their big brother, Egypt.
I cry for children of the world who cannot make sense of what is happening to us. My little son’s friend from Germany who said to him, ‘Oh I was so worried for you, I thought you got killed’, or another friend, from Australia, who said, ‘I will do play-dates with you everyday, until the war in your country ends, so call me, ok?’ and a 9-year-old girl from Japan who said ‘I am sorry’ with tears in her eyes and a little Indian girl who said to him, ‘you must be very scared, no?’.
My heart cannot hold any longer the lies that try to comfort and the tears that try to confront the reality we live in right now.
I have never longed for Hannukah so much. Hanukkah, the festival of miracle and light. Hannukah is the reminder that during the worst destruction of the Jewish temple, when all hope was gone, the Menorah, the lamp, was still burning. For eight days, the lamp kept burning despite no oil poured into it. Everyone had been dispelled. The house of God had been desecrated. The mightiest and strongest building ever built was in shambles. But the candle continued to burn with the help of the miraculous oil.
Where is that light, that miracle light I so desperately long to see? Somewhere in the rubble of our souls there must be a candle burning. Let us find it, together.
Neichu Mayer
Kibbutz En Hashofet, presently based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
He can contacted at neichu.mayer@gmail.com