In his seminal The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon could be writing about Gaza when he said: “In all armed struggles, there exists what we might call the point of no return. Almost always it is marked off by a huge and all-inclusive repression which engulfs all sectors of the colonial people.” In Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, that point has arrived. From Gaza to the Red Sea, on all fronts the West is now unmasked as a lawless killing machine in terror of losing control. Genocide, starvation and war, defended with Olympic-level diplomatic double-speak, are its only answers to the fact that the Global South, and the nations of the Middle East (if not their leaders) no longer wish to live under US hegemony. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his preface to Fanon's work, wrote of western colonialism: “Our Machiavellianism has little purchase on this wide-awake world that has run our falsehoods to earth one after the other. The settler has only recourse to one thing: brute force… the native has only one choice, between servitude and supremacy.” Fanon was a revolutionary thinker and a practising psychiatrist of colonial racism and its psychic impact on the colonised, and the coloniser. He and Sartre were writing about France’s imminent defeat in Algeria after seven years of brutal war. [...] Western powers are involved in conflicts thousands of miles from home, as they were in Fanon's time in Algeria, Congo and Indochina. Today the western political class has united behind Ukraine and Israel, but for millions of people it is no longer clear that the wars are worth fighting.  As Yemen’s spokesman, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, put it: “The war today is between Yemen which is struggling to stop the crimes of genocide, and the American and British coalition [who] support its perpetrators. Every party or individual in this world has two choices that have no thirds… who do you stand with as you watch these crimes?” Fanon, writing 63 years ago, agrees: “The colonial world is a Manichaean world… at times this Manichaeism goes to its logical conclusion and dehumanises the native, or to speak plainly, it turns him into an animal. The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but the negation of values… he is the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. “The native knows all this, and laughs to himself every time he spots an allusion to the animal world in the other’s words. For he knows he is not an animal, and it is precisely at the moment he realises his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure victory.”

. . . full article on MEE (1 Feb 2024)

You can also find a free copy of Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth on the Internet Archive (available as a PDF, EPUB etc.)

The Abu Saqer family is trying to evacuate Gaza for Egypt. They hope to find safety and to rebuild their lives and pursue their dreams. They write,

everyone in our family has a dream to fulfill, and has something he/she is passionate about:

Mohsen Abu Saqer, a 50-year-old father who suffers from a number of chronic diseases, wants to see his family members achieving their dreams peacefully, also, he wants to live in peace, as he has seen it all, the two intifadas, the Gulf wars, Gaza wars, etc...

Safinaz Al-Baghdadi, a 50-year-old mother, has the same dreams as our father, she is a UN employee, throughout 25 years, she has taught many students, she left her impact on a lot of them, as most of them are still in contact with her.

Yahia Abu Saqer, the older son, and a teaching assistant at the Islamic University of Gaza, and a student who is trying to obtain a master's degree in Data Science, unfortunately, the Islamic University of Gaza has been bombed and severely damaged, and his dream to become a data scientist has faded away.

Hala Abu Saqer, a 22-year-old Biotech specialist, her dream was to complete her studies abroad, but the ongoing war has made this impossible for her.

Ibrahim Abu Saqer, a 21-year-old college student, dreams of becoming a dentist, after 4 years of hard work, and high expenses, the war has made all of that go in vain, he is so depressed because of his lost effort.

Haia Abu Saqer, an 18-year-old high school graduate, won a scholarship in Turkey, as she dreams of becoming a psychiatrist, to cure the damaged souls of Gazans because of all of those wars and the 17 years of blockade, but with this war starting out of nowhere, she can't go out to Turkey.

Deema Abu Saqer, a 17-year-old high school student, her dreams are simple and innocent, as she wants to get a high average in her final year of high school, so she can celebrate her success with her family and relatives.

If you can spare any funds, please consider sharing them with this family. The cost for evacuating 7 people to Egypt is very high, but they are making good progress. They are hoping to reach $35,000 by Eid, which will begin this year on Wednesday April 11th. Let’s help them reach their goal!

Thank you all❤️

1,750 children had been killed in the 16 days of bombardment by Israeli forces since Hamas’s murderous onslaught on 7 October. That is an average of almost 110 children a day. Thousands more have been injured. The psychological impact of the war on children was showing, said Fadel Abu Heen, a psychiatrist in Gaza. Children had “started to develop serious trauma symptoms such as convulsions, bed-wetting, fear, aggressive behaviour, nervousness, and not leaving their parents’ sides.” The “lack of any safe place has created a general sense of fear and horror among the entire population and children are most impacted,” he said. “Some of them reacted directly and expressed their fears. Although they may need immediate intervention, they may be in a better state than the other kids who kept the horror and trauma inside them.” About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are children. Since 7 October, they have lived under near constant bombardment, with many packed into temporary shelters in UN-run schools after fleeing their homes with little access to food or clean water.

[...]

In Gaza, a child aged 15 has experienced five periods of intense bombardment in their life: 2008-9, 2012, 2014, 2021 and now 2023. Studies conducted after earlier conflicts have shown a majority of children in Gaza exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012, Unicef, the UN children’s agency, found that 82% of children were either continuously or usually in fear of imminent death. Among Unicef’s other findings were: 91% of children reported sleeping disturbances during the conflict; 94% said they slept with their parents; 85% reported appetite changes; 82% felt angry; 97% felt insecure; 38% felt guilty; 47% were biting their nails; 76% reported itching or feeling ill.

I know you can't comprehend this, but I dont need to defend israel because I don't support them. You can actually be pro something whilst critcising them when they torture people. Hamas literally drugged children on ketamine and psychiatrists are saying there are signs of sexual abuse on captees too. Many have ptsd and you're trying to make it sound as if that's because they had to go to gaza, you're disgusting if you're going to call drugging and beating children as well as possible rape neccesary when all hamas had to do was hold them captive to get their own people back

Thank you, The Times of Israel

I believe you

A letter to President Joe Biden from Poet Mosab Abu Toha

Mr. President of the United States, Merry Christmas to you and your family and loved ones.

Unlike previous years, this is the first time I’m not sending of receiving Christmas greetings and wishes.

I’m writing to you from Cairo, where I’m staying with my wife and three kids, the youngest of which, three years old, helped us get out of Gaza. Whereas everyone in the world is visiting their families and friends and exchanging kisses and hugs, I’m unable to contact my parents and siblings and their children, the youngest of whom is four months old. I cannot be sure whether my mother and father have food to eat and water to drink, whether they are breathing.

I was born 31 years ago in a refugee camp, just a few kilometers from where Jesus was born. People in the world are commemorating the birth of Jesus, while we are mourning the death of our families. Every day Israeli tanks retreat from certain areas, Gazans discover corpses, mostly of children decaying, in the streets and under the rubble of houses.

We have been asked repeatedly to evacuate our houses in the north and head to the south. Yesterday Israel bombed a neighborhood in Maghazi, in south Gaza, killing at least 88 people, mostly children.

My colleague Ismael and his parents, children and siblings evacuated their house in north Gaza and stayed in Nuseirat camp. Three weeks ago, only his wife and two of his sisters survived.

Children constitute around half of Gaza’s population. After each air strike and artillery shelling, children, along with their parents and siblings, lose their lives. They are buried under the rubble of their bedroom, which used to be their playrooms.

I’m trying to imagine the future of these children, who have witnessed at least four wars in the past nine years. Those children who were pulled amputated from under the rubble or lost members of their families. What will become of them? I’m sure that not even the smartest psychologist or psychiatrist can fathom a right answer.

I’m not asking you in this letter to impose a two-state solution, nor am I asking for the bringing back of the lives of children and their families.

I’m asking you as a power to impose a ceasefire as soon as you read my letter.

After the ceasefire, drones can stay in the sky. We don’t mind anyone watching us retrieve the bodies of our loved ones. We don’t mind the whole world watching us rebuild our houses and schools and plant our gardens.

May next Christmas come while Palestinians have their own airport and seaport, because it has been my dream, not only to see Gaza from a plane window and from a distant ship, but to also take my family and friends to Times Square on Christmas Day, to have lunch in Washington DC, and later to show them the elegant campus of Syracuse University, where we both studied. I also would love to welcome my international friends to Gaza, to take them to the strawberry farms in Beit Lahia, and to watch the sunset on the beach. For peace and for children and for humanity, let there be a ceasefire.

Yours Faithfully, Mosab Abu Toha

"The quote is from Les Damnes de la terre (Wretched of the Earth), and can only be understood in the context of the fuller argument Fanon is making: “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” No one can deny Fanon’s brilliance or his pioneering and profound understanding of the psychological effects of colonial violence on the colonised and the coloniser (as a psychiatrist, he treated French colonial officers and Algerians alike and found them to suffer similar psychiatric ailments). But the second and more famously quoted part of Fanon’s argument is not comprehensible without the first part, and the first part – especially in the Israeli context – is in fact profoundly wrong. Colonialism, especially settler colonialism – and even more particularly Zionist settler colonialism – is very much a “thinking machine” with very powerful and longstanding logic and rationalities that are the key to its success. Because of this, considering what “a greater violence” would look like and how it can be measured, never mind achieved, is a crucial task for those analysing and fighting colonial violence alike. I have yet to see any plausible scenarios in which Palestinians acquire the means to deploy “far greater violence” vis-a-vis Israel/the Zionist entity for any length of time in any conceivable geostrategic balance of power. Even if Iran (the only major power that supports Palestine in any meaningful way), for example, wanted to deliver heavier weapons to Palestinians, Israel’s control over access points, as well as Egypt’s and Jordan’s, will prevent that from happening. Palestine is not Ukraine, supported by major powers and able to utilise land, water and air corridors to obtain an unending stream of weapons deliveries to fight a much larger and better-armed adversary. Quite the opposite, in fact. More broadly, Palestine today is not Algeria in 1956, which was Fanon’s most important reference point. Nor is Israel France, with a metropole to which settlers can return (unless we consider Tel Aviv the metropole). There will be no long-fought war of independence resulting in the vast majority of Jews leaving à la française a reconquered Palestine. But there are several scenarios that could lead to a redux of the Nakba, as many Israeli politicians are now screaming for. [...]

Indeed, for over 50 years of occupation, and 30 years of the post-Oslo Palestinian “self-rule” rather than “the native cur[ing] himself of colonial neurosis … through force of arms”, what has occurred (as I learned in interviews with therapists at the few mental health centres in Gaza as far back in the later 1990s through 2000s) is the passing on of trauma, with former Fatah prisoners tortured by Israel torturing Hamas members using the same techniques as the Israelis used on them – often screaming at their victims in Hebrew while torturing them in the very same rooms where they were tortured. Hamas has continued this cycle in the two decades of effective control over Gaza. And now we see this with crowds cheering kidnapped, beaten, and murdered Israelis. Whatever catharsis this constitutes, it is not one that will lead to victory over an Israeli society that has been using violence against Palestinians as its own traumatic catharsis for 75 years, in a world that has a very high tolerance for Palestinian civilian casualties, with most people in the West still supporting Israel whenever there is a high level of Israeli Jewish casualties. [...]

Tragically, Fanon died in 1961, a year before Algeria achieved independence. He did not live to see the realities of postcolonial politics in Algeria, or across Africa for that matter, where, as Kenyan novelist and decolonial thinker Ngugi wa Thiong’o has so powerfully showed, leaders of newly independent states almost immediately began treating their peoples in much the same manner as their former colonisers (a phenomenon also experienced with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas since Oslo). Forty years ago, when he was describing this dynamic of postcolonial governance in his groundbreaking prison memoir Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir, Thiong’o used the term “neocolonial” – not to indicate the continuation of European control by other means, but rather to describe how anticolonial leaders adopted (and adapted) the same brutal and authoritarian techniques of rule as their colonisers to cement and maintain their power; a critique of the “coloniality of power” that is today at the heart of the ever more popular decolonial thought. That coloniality of power fundamentally will never allow for anything approaching actual independence for Palestinians, neither via the neocolonial PA nor with Hamas at the helm. If Palestinians are to defeat Zionist colonialism, it will likely take a much different sort of analysis of its violence and power than Fanon offered three-quarters of a century ago, and it will probably require a paradigm shift in the core concepts of what a nation, freedom and independence are at a moment when the entire world, not just Palestine/Israel, is heading towards conflagration.

read the full article

I really like this column. When western media is mindlessly parroting Israeli propaganda and western far-leftists (myself included) are primarily listing all the evils of the Israeli state to make it clear who the real bad guy of the story is, there's very little practical discussion of what is actually happening and what could come next.

‘Chronic traumatic stress disorder’: the Palestinian psychiatrist challenging western definitions of trauma | Gaza | The Guardian

🇵🇸☝️🇹🇷

mustafa.guldagi Due to the ongoing war in Gaza, many Israeli Jewish citizens became psychiatric patients due to fear. Psychiatrists can't keep up with this. They too are afraid and leave Israel. Fear is of no use to death. The evil that Israel has done will return to itself.

Additionally, hundreds of thousands of Jews have left Israel since the war began.

He did it alone.

As long as the resistance continues, neither psychiatry nor anything elseIt won't help.

Israel's military loss is much greater than expected.

🇹🇷☝️🇵🇸

In 2005, actor Daniel Day-Lewis visited Gaza and witnessed the arrogance and crimes of the occupation up close. He narrated his experience, feelings and position in an influential five-page article that sparked the anger of the entity and its gang. These are excerpts from it:

“This is an apartheid state. It took me less than a week to lose neutrality. And through this I might throw stones at the tanks.”

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army responds to stone throwing with bullets. He responds to bombings and attacks launched by Palestinian militants by bulldozing homes and olive groves in search of the perpetrators, punishing their families, and establishing buffer zones to protect Israeli settlements. It blocks access to villages and multiplies checkpoints, cutting off Gazans from the outside world. MSF psychiatrists try to help Palestinian families cope with the pressures of living within these borders, by treating severe trauma and listening to their stories. These visits are sometimes the only sign that they have not been abandoned.

Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers can come without warning, often at night. The noise alone, for a people forced to suffer these violations year after year, is enough to freeze the soul. Israeli snipers are stationed on rooftops. They order homeowners to leave; They don't even have time to gather pots, pans, papers and clothes before bulldozers crush the unprotected buildings like dinosaurs trampling eggs. Those caught in the incursion area will be shot. Even those hiding inside their homes may be shot or bombed through walls, windows and roofs. The white flag carried by humanitarian workers offers little protection; We may be subjected to warning shots at least twice before the week is over.

Sometimes families do not leave the area being raided, because if they leave they will lose everything. Staying at home is a big risk. Sometimes the house is occupied by Israeli forces, and the family is forced to stay there as protection for the soldiers. Last year, an average of 120 homes were demolished per month. In the past four years, 28,483 Gazans have been forcibly evacuated; And the destruction of more than half of the usable land in #Gaza, which consists mainly of orchards. Last year, 658 Palestinians were killed in violence in Gaza, along with dozens of Israelis. This plowing, house after house, orchard after orchard, turns the community into a wasteland, scattered and combined with a stunted crop of broken glass, nails, books, and abandoned possessions. As we make our way toward the home of Abu Saghir and his family – one of many families we will visit today – we walk over broken histories and aspirations.

One day, Rafael Eitan, the former chief of staff, likened the Palestinian people to “drugged cockroaches moving and floundering inside a bottle.” In 1980 he told his officers: "We have to do everything to make them so miserable that they will leave." He opposed all attempts to grant them autonomy in the occupied territories. Twenty-five years later, it seems to me that his position and policy have been implemented with great enthusiasm.

Watchtowers are these evil structures with malicious shadows of power all over the land. On our third day, as we stood at the torn edge of the refugee camp in Rafah, the forbidden border area between Gaza and Egypt, bullets pierced the sand a yard and a half away from where we were standing. In this place was Iman Al-Hams, a helpless schoolgirl who had been shot just weeks before. She ran and tried to hide here from the cruel death that came to her. I felt her presence. The sky shakes with its shallow, fluttering breaths of its last terror.

[Killing the little girl Iman]

Soldier 1: “We recognized a person standing on his feet 100 meters away.

Soldier 2: “A girl about 10 years old.”

Soldier 2: “She is behind the trench, half a meter away, scared to death. The bullets were right next to her, one centimeter away.”

Signal soldier: “We shot her. Yes, it seems she was hit.”

Captain R: “Roger, yes. She just went down. Me and a few other soldiers are moving forward to confirm her death.”

Soldier 2: “Catch her, catch her. There's no need to kill her.”

Captain R: “...We fired and killed her...I confirmed the kill...Anyone who moves in the area, even if he is three years old - an old child, must be killed, finished.”

A military investigation determined that Captain R “did not act unethically.” He still faces criminal charges. Two soldiers swore they saw him intentionally shoot her in the head, emptying the entire magazine of his gun into her.

Source:

by Phyllis Chesler

The Jewish Museum in NYC refused to have me lecture there or even do a book signing. They told the employee who’d floated this idea: “No. The book is too Jewish.” He was distraught and came to see me. Gently, I told him that what they meant was that the book was not “politically correct.”

About a month later, what I said at a grassroots feminist conference held at Barnard caused a near-riot. I was lecturing on a completely different subject for a group of African-American women who loved every word I said—until an agent provocateur asked me about “the humiliation at the checkpoints.” I told her that I opposed apartheid and that Islamic countries are the largest practitioners of both gender and religious apartheid, as well as practitioners of slavery.”

The place went wild and I had to be escorted out for my safety.

I lost most of my left-wing feminist colleagues. Those who did not choose to ostracize me, insisted on fighting with me. They, too, did not believe that anti-Zionism had anything to do with antisemitism; that as good Jews or as good people, they believed in supporting the victim, not the victimizer, and Israel was always viewed as the “occupying victimizer of innocent civilians in Gaza and on the West Bank.”

To this day, those feminists who remain Marxists, (and who still talk to me), continue to tell me that I “just don’t understand, that Israel is in the wrong, that the Palestinians are innocent, that Hamas/ISIS are freedom fighters.” Some of them proudly join “Queers for Palestine” demonstrations. The sight of Jewish blood has excited them so much that they wish for more. They read Ha-aretz, The Nation, and Al-Jazeera. Their minds have been deformed by disinformation and lethal propaganda.

Early on, at a conference at New Paltz, I had to endure an Israeli psychiatrist, one Ruchama Marton, (a woman), who believed that Israel was like a battering husband and his wife was a Palestinian. Oh, how she was cheered.

For years, I needed police protection on campuses when I spoke.

-

Jews are now engaged in an existential war for our survival, both in Israel and around the globe, including in the West. Soon, America will have to face the possibility and probability that World War 3 is upon us; that continuing to appease Iran will only lead to more danger; that Iran is behind Hamas and Hezbollah, that the Hama barbarians trained for their massacre in Iran; and that Americans have already been killed, captured, or fired upon.

Where do you stand?

TODAY: adolescent and child psychiatrist dr audrey mcmahon did an interview with cbc today, having recently returned from palestine after spending 14 months in both gaza and the west bank with médecins sans frontières. when asked what she saw children experience, dr mcmahon said "it's infinite circles of grief." it was also noted by the interviewer and elaborated on by dr mcmahon that a lot of children have stopped speaking due to the trauma they've endured. at the end of the interview dr mcmahon delivered the final statement "beyond everything, this is about children, and this needs to stop. the numbers are extremely high... this cannot be our new sense of normal. we cannot accept this as normal."

The October 7th """massacre""" was debunked, just so you know so you'd look marginally less like an idiot every time you cheer on Israel bombing preemies in hospitals.

theintercept com/2024/02/27/zaka-october-7-israel-hamas-new-york-times/

Are you alright in the head? Are you trying to claim an article that says one guy lied about 2 killings, debunks the ENTIRETY of October 7th. You realise that's like saying 9/11 was staged because they counted 5 more deaths than the real figure was? Just like with 9/11, if someone inflated the figures by like 5 deaths, does that justify Osama Bin Laden? Hell no it doesn't. An Israeli guy adding 2 deaths to a death toll of over 1,000 on a day of atrocity and murder, in which children were kidnapped from their homes, doesn't invalidate the entire event.

Don't you EVER dare try and make excuses for a verified terrorist attack that impacted thousands and shaped a nations history, don't try and claim it didn't happen, and never say it wasn't a massacre. The deaths of that many people is and always will be a massacre, in the exact same way I will never refuse the thousands of dead Palestinians, including children. My ENTIRE blog is about accepting that innocents have suffered on both sides at the hands of Hamas and their careless selfish extremist attitude, causing the pain of thousands in both countries, because the only indisputable detail of this war is that Hamas has murdered thousands and lead to the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. You cannot debate that, the evidence could stretch as far as Gaza itself.

If you ever try and justify such atrocities you are a spineless brainwashed lunatic who will go to such extreme lengths to spread a misinformed victim narrative, to the point you attempt to downplay kidnapped children, you need to seek help. Seriously. I will graduate with a degree in psychology soon and I will happily take you as my first patient as a psychiatrist because if you've read my blog and think I cheer for dead kids just because I don't hold Israel accountable for a non existent genocide, because my opinion differs, and if you think that gives you an excuse to downplay the suffering of others to try make your beliefs seem better than mine, then I've genuinely lost any hope left for the people who go as far as people like you.

"How Do I Balance Looking Left-Wing While Pro-Israel?" - Douglas Murray 🔥🔥 Response

Interviewer: It's difficult because there is a huge range of beliefs and I have Jewish friends of mine who go on the Saturday marches.

Douglas Murray: Really?

Interviewer: It's awful and…

Murray: Wow, there's a case for psychiatrists.

Interviewer: I mean, unfortunately they're probably not my friends anymore but there is a minority of people who, Jewish people, who go on the marches on a Saturday. "No, it's amazing, we're marching for the poor people in Gaza." And you have that side of things, you know, it sort of goes on to a question that I want to ask you, which lots of people have asked me to ask you, which is this.

You know, the Jewish Community is a real mix of political beliefs and there is a large group of people who would call themselves far more to the left. They would be the Guardian readers, they would... that side of view. And they have said to me, I love Douglas, I love what he says. But he's a bit right-wing. And they say, how do I balance my political beliefs with what he's saying and his more right-wing beliefs? And they're struggling with that.

Murray: I tell you, I've got one response...

Interviewer: Tell me.

Murray: ... and how about asking them to tell the truth? How about urging them to orient their life not by a boring political seesaw game that no one cares about, except for themselves, and instead of orienting themselves by, "oh, exactly how can I position myself?" No one cares. No one cares.

Interviewer: This is why we love Douglas, right?

Murray: Instead of saying how, will I balance myself to make sure I keep my Guardian reader friends on-side, say, how about you just orient yourself towards the truth?

If something exists in front of you, and when you come across a mental blockage like this, you can keep head hitting your head against the wall. Or you can realize that you've got to do something else, and the something else in this case is, to look frankly at what is actually happening.

Also, by the way, it's a serious moral defect in a person to believe their membership of a political tribe should override anything else.

I don't care whether I'm thought of as as right-wing or not. But if somebody said to me, oh Douglas, you know I don't agree with you on Ukraine and you know you're likely to tarnish your right-wing credentials, I'd say, so what? So what? What's that got to do with... I don't care. Kick me out of your boring club. Why would I want to be a member of it anyway?

So, let me say first of all on the, I mean, first I should address the question of the lunatics you mentioned the sort of, Jews for Suicide groups... they were always like this. I mean there's Neturei Karta, of course. There is -- this is a joke that may only work with this audience, but there's also of course, there was Queers for Palestine.

Interviewer: I mean, it's the best.

Murray: I called recently -- and, again this doesn't work with everyone, not everyone gets the reference, I think you can -- I call Queer for Palestine the Gay Neturei Karta.

It's exactly saying, okay, yeah there's some people who like to die and just struggle madly beforehand. I... it's just... okay.

But then inside from that, I would urge your friends who say this to listen to the testimonies of people from the kibbutz, who I've spoken with, who were far to the left of any of the people you're talking about I can guarantee.

Interviewer: Absolutely right, absolutely right.

Murray: And you know, if you go around the sites -- they've been cleaned up a lot now, they weren't when I was there, it was pretty fresh -- and if you go around, you can literally see "Peace Now" stickers on what remains of somebody's fridge.

And you can see, and I mean, you speak to the people. I spoke to a man in a Hospital in Tel Aviv the other month, in October, November, very nice man, been in the kibbutz all his life, total leftist Peace Now activist, believed in peace with the Gazans, lived just by Gaza in Nir Oz. And he was in the safe room on the morning of the 7th with his wife and teenage son and daughter, and they shut themselves in the safe room, as you know, the safe rooms didn't lock because nobody expected this to happen.

They tried to hold the door closed and they did for quite a long time -- he did for quite a long time. And then the terrorists found the air vent because by then they'd set light to his house, and they were trying to burn them out. And a lot of families had this and you had to choose whether to burn to death with your family or flee and be shot. And they stayed, and the smoke was getting too much, and they opened the vent and then Hamas saw this, and they threw grenades in and one of the grenades killed his wife and then they stuck a Kalashnikov through the shutter, and they shot his 14-year-old son through each side of the chest, and he bled out in front of his father and his sister. And his father also lost both his legs.

And it was heartbreaking. He described his son said to him as he was dying, would you bury me with my surfboard? He said would you bury me with my surfboard? And when the authorities came to ask if he wanted anything from the house that was burnt, he said only one thing, if you can find my son's surfboard. And he buried him with it.

He said to me at the end of our time together, he said, you know, Douglas, I've been a leftist all my life. I want nothing but potato fields from here to the Mediterranean. I can't, we can't live with these people.

Now, there are hundreds of stories like that. Everyone's heard of the 75-year-old woman who spent her life driving Palestinian children to hospital. I mean, imagine what it's like for the people who, and I've spoken to a lot of them, were so dedicated to the idea of people in Gaza, Palestinians in Gaza working with them in Israel, getting a better life.

Just around the time of the 7th, there was meant to be another increase in the number of workers allowed each day from Gaza into Israel to work. And that was all the international community were pushing Israel to allow more and more workers in. And I've spoken to a lot of people in the kibbutzes who were friends with these people, were friends with Palestinians, employed Palestinians, worked with Palestinians, tried to do everything they could to make this work.

And they discovered that when people came into their communities, they knew exactly where to go. They knew, for instance, in one of the kibbutzes they knew where house of the head of security in the kibbutz was and they went and they shot him and his family and then they went door too everywhere else.

So, I'd say to your friends, you know, sleep and dream while you can. Because not everyone has that luxury. The people of Nir Oz didn't have that luxury the people of Be'eri didn't have that luxury people of kibbutz after kibbutz and town after town. But everybody who went to the Nova party wanted peace. They were young people who wanted to dance and have a good time. And if you'd have said to them, do you dream of a day that you can dance with your Palestinian neighbors, they would have all said yes. Absolutely.

But you know, then these people could have been your friends and mine. And if this party had been going on in this country, our friends would have been there.

So, I would say to your friends, I beg you, have some empathy and understanding for the people who can no longer afford to dream dreams that you dream.

Interviewer: That's really beautiful. I really don't have any reply to that, Douglas. It's really, it's really powerful.