On October 7th, I woke up in Charlotte, North Carolina and went to the Piedmont Farmer’s Market, which has become my weekly tradition on Saturdays, for fresh flowers and veggies. When I got home, I had an hour before I had to leave to work the Luke Bryan concert at the PNC Music Pavilion, the last outdoor concert of the season.
I turned on CNN and was instantly confused. Why was Wolf Blitzer hosting on a Saturday morning? I then saw the headline: “Netanyahu: ‘Citizens of Israel – We are at War.’”
I dropped to the couch, an instant dagger to my heart, as I am a “citizen of Israel,” though to be honest, my past ten years had made me forget.
When I was 26, I took advantage of a free trip to Israel called “Birthright.” I nearly didn’t go on the trip as I didn’t feel “all that Jewish,” since only my mother was Jewish and I grew up celebrating all of the holidays and had never had a Bat Mitzvah. However, the world-traveler in me decided to go to Israel anyway, mainly because of my “FOMO” or “Fear of Missing Out,” and of course, the stamp in my passport.
I didn’t know anything about Israel nor the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I actually thought a kibbutz (an agricultural community like a farm) – was a BOAT my entire life, and even asked my trip leader if our group would “fit.” (I honestly thought we might sink it.)
I was therefore the least likely person to “make Aliyah,” which literally means to “ascend,” ie: immigrate to Israel. Of course, at that point, I didn’t even know what that meant nor that it was possible.
The epiphany happened one evening during a group activity. Six female soldiers had joined our group for a few days. They were all 19 years old. Envelopes were on the wall with different questions, and we were to anonymously write our answers on small pieces of paper and put them in the envelopes.
One question asked, “Does Israel belong more to those born in Israel, that speak Hebrew and serve in the Israeli Defense Forces? – OR – Does Israel belong equally to all the Jews in the world?”
Knowing I was the most ignorant person in the room on all-things-Israel, this seemed like a no-brainer. Israel belonged more to the 19-year-old girls with guns on their backs who spoke Hebrew. I put my answer in the envelope, and as the answers were read out, I realized I was the only one who answered that way, because put plainly - I was wrong.
Israel belonged to me, as much as it did to these young women in khakis, and if the world ever rose up against Jews again, (or even if it didn’t), it was an option and a right – for me to move to Israel.
I was astounded, and a year later, I returned to study Hebrew for seven months, after which I formally immigrated to the country, and spent an incredible seven years living and working in Tel Aviv.
However, for various personal reasons I needed to leave to deal with something in the US. As it turned out, I was misinformed about the only way to fix this situation being to “move back to the US,” but I wouldn’t learn that until 2019, and even once I did, I was not supported in solving the problem.
It was a devastating blow to have to leave Israel as I had made friends here so easily and had felt more at home, as well as more patriotic, than I had ever felt in the US or Canada. We had moved frequently between the two countries which never allowed for roots of any kind to be formed, let alone a support system or even a sense of identity.
Once I was back in North America, things really took a sad turn, beginning with my mother's death in 2014, after which things completely fell apart. By the time I got to Charlotte, I was a shell of myself, and starting over from scratch. I had survived the unsurvivable so was trying to make the best of it, but for the most part - I felt useless. "I don't belong here," I've been thinking and saying for years. "But where am I supposed to go?"
I had forgotten - about my Israel. It was filed away somewhere in a cabinet I'd accidentally locked and left in a place I'd stopped searching.
Then October 7th happened, that blackest of Saturdays, and my heart and spirit broke - (but this meant they had both returned.)
The details of the barbarism that occurred and the ruthlessness of the attack in Israel only began to emerge in the days and weeks that followed, putting most of us global Jewry in a unique place I never thought I’d experience. It has been a trauma of shock, underneath a trauma of grief and despair, underneath a trauma of horror by the world’s reaction to what happened in Israel, which was even worse than what I knew to dread would eventually happen in the media; it was an actual celebration of the attack in Israel all over the streets, with professors calling what Hamas had done “exhilarating.”
In essence it was 1930s Germany overnight, so why wasn’t I hearing from anyone?
An endless, chilling silence ensued, so I began to essentially “bleed out” on social media. I found myself stating plainly to “Call your Jewish friends. We are shattered. We are not okay, and this silence is invoking memories of the Holocaust. PLEASE - CALL US.”
In response, I would get a few thumbs up, which felt like mockery.
Just a week after the attack, I finally heard from one of the top three people I’d been waiting to hear from.
“You need to manage your sorrow and celebrate life,” the text said.
So, I was overreacting. To the stories of what was now 1400 slaughtered civilians.
This number - 1400 in a tiny country like Israel - would proportionately be 40,000 slaughtered in one day in America. 250 hostages taken would equate 7000. It would be like fifteen September 11th attacks at once and everyone in the US knowing people killed or taken. The gravity and the scale of the massacre that occurred was simply being missed.
350 of the victims were trapped by terrorists at the Nova Music Festival, a “Peace and Love International Music Festival” – and raped by thousands of men from Gaza, who joined in with Hamas to “help out.”
Many were gang raped so brutally that their pelvises where broken before they were tortured to death, while other kids from the dance packed themselves into bomb shelters, only to be burned alive or have grenades thrown at them and die together in these packed spaces, with the very few survivors doing so by hiding underneath the bodies of their friends, families and peers for eight hours.
I should just “get over it” I guess, and I should also get over what happened to the families in the kibbutzim, who were beheaded by garden hoes, raped as they were forced to listen to their baby scream as it was cooked in their oven, and families told to get into bed together so they could all be executed. One family was found sitting around their dinner table, hands tied behind their backs and shot in the back of the heads, but before they were killed, the Dad’s eye was gauged out, the Mom’s breast was sliced off, the little girl's foot was amputated and the little boy’s fingers were cut off. Then the Hamas terrorists sat down and ate their holiday meal.
This is what Israeli society is dealing with. Trauma upon trauma upon trauma – and it was already one big joke to so many in America in those early weeks. One comment underneath the article about the cooked baby asked: “With or without baking powder?”
After 30 days of this I was having multiple panic attacks a day, so I booked a one-way flight to Tel Aviv, despite knowing there were constant sirens warning of incoming rockets sounding throughout the country, despite not having lived through war when I lived here, and despite not having an emergency contact if something were to happen to me. It was almost laughable, so what did I have to lose?
I needed to get away from the apathy and antisemitism in North America and I needed to be surrounded by people whose entire identities were slashed like mine, as in Charlotte most people I encountered didn’t even know October 7th happened and weren’t interested in hearing about it. I basically needed to fly to a war zone to have a proper conversation about everything that was happening.
And so is the story of the birth of this website, the purpose of which is plenty.
I will be writing profiles on the hostages that remain in captivity in order to humanize them, as they are much more than just a name and a picture on a poster. All of our men were left behind, and there are still women and children in captivity, too. I also plan to travel to the Dead Sea in the south, to speak with families that have been evacuated from their destroyed kibbutzim (neighborhoods), many of whom had their children released from Gaza last week.
Additionally, I will be writing shorter pieces on specific "arguments" we have gotten used to hearing in the Diaspora; accusations such as Israel being established on stolen land, Israel being an "apartheid" society, Israel committing a genocide in Gaza and Hamas terrorists being "Freedom Fighters" that are fighting on behalf of the Palestinian people, to name but a very few. My hope is to provide short pieces that can be used in responses on social media, to help correct disinformation and inform the world of the truth.
Lastly, this website will be used to tell the stories of what is happening on the ground, as the stories are ongoing and it feels like may never end, as now we are hearing from the 113 released last week, while 138 still remain held hostage in the dark tunnels of Gaza.
This week we learned that six of our hostages with certainty were murdered, and we’re still waiting to verify if the Bibas family was actually killed as Hamas has stated – (it is believed by most in Israel that the family is alive and that this is yet more Psychological Terror for the country by Hamas). This family is practically the face of the war here in Israel – as the Mom was seen on camera being taken away, holding her two redheaded little boys, Ariel who is 4 and Kfir, who was only 9-months old on October 7th, the youngest of the hostages taken (although now there has been a pregnant hostage who gave birth in captivity).
Just today we learned that the hostages that were released last week were drugged on the day they got out, to help hide their physical and emotional trauma, as they were forced to wave and smile and "high five" their Hamas captors as they were transferred at gunpoint to the Red Cross “on camera.”
The worst thing coming out today is why the 20 remaining women and children were not released last week with the others, and why Hamas gave vague answers about “not knowing where they were," and made sure to break the ceasefire to end the nightly returns of a selected lucky few back to safety in Israel.
They weren’t released because of the torture and sexual violence they have been enduring in captivity since October 7th. They are basically a chunk of people, who as I write this and as you read this, are getting the worst of the worst of this entire nightmare.
One of them is Noa Argamani, who was seen globally being taken away on the back of a motorbike as she reached for her boyfriend, who was also taken hostage. Her mother Liora, who has stage four brain cancer, released a video five days ago begging to see her daughter before cancer takes her life. "If I don't see you, please know I love you very much," says a woman whose grief and horror cannot be imagined.
Last but certainly not least, I will be posting the facts of what happened on October 7th regularly and repeatedly, as I have learned after long arguments with friends about Gaza, that they don’t even know there was an attack in Israel.
This is a tall order, but I feel called to do it. Please share this post with anyone you know who cares about Israel, wants to know what is happening here “on the ground,” and wants to post things in their own communities to help raise awareness about the mess of disinformation that has taken over the world, so much of which was created by Hamas ahead of October 7th (think TikTok), all of which is part of this ongoing terror attack.
The world needs to wake up, as this time, this isn’t a dispute about land or even the “conflict.” This is Hamas. This is Iran. This is evil. This is anti-freedom, anti-West, anti-democracy, anti-woman, anti-gay. This is HATE, and Israel and the Jews are just the tip of the iceberg of what these radical and ruthless terrorists are after.
We cannot wait until it is too late to do our best to reverse the momentum that has taken the world by storm. Please help me help the world understand why we need Israel, as Israel is not just fighting its own existential battle; Israel is fighting this war against Hamas on behalf of every nation that enjoys and values its freedom.
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In case you want to help:
This is a labor of love and I feel called to do it, but admit it has started to cost a small fortune, between flights, rent at home, accommodation here and the building of this website, which still needs work to maximize visibility. I have therefore just started a GoFundMe in the hopes of getting a little bit of help to stay here another month or two to conduct these interviews with families of hostages around the country and cover the war from the ground. Any donation, no matter how small, will go toward accommodation in Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and Eilat and bare bone travel expenses. Anything at all will be tremendously helpful and very much appreciated. With gratitude, Melanie
Consider applying to work at The Free Press. You're efforts are applauded and honored.
When wrong is being done it needs to shouted out to the World!
Less cannot do it!
Very moving. Good luck with your venture. Stay safe. Don’t take any foolish risks.