The interviewee was Sima Abukasis, a woman from Sderot who lost her daughter Ella to a Kassam rocket attack in January of this year. Ella, then 17, was accompanying her 10-year-old brother home from a meeting of the Bnai Akiva youth movement at the end of Shabbat. The missile siren that had just been installed in the community began to scream and Ella realized that she and her brother didn’t have enough time to get to cover. She threw her brother to the ground and threw herself on top of him as the missle hit mere meters from where they had been standing. Ella’s brother was seriously injured. And Ella was hit by shrapnel in the head.
Ella hung between life and death for 6 days, and passed away just before the following Shabbat. The entire State of Israel spent the week praying for her to recover, and at her funeral, her father thanked every Israeli for the help.
This past Friday, June 3, would have been Ella’s 18th birthday. Her parents decided to hold a memorial service for her today to mark the occasion, rather than waiting the customary year until the anniversary of her death. Their choice – to celebrate Ella’s life rather than mourn her death – is one of the many examples that show how remarkable this family truly is.
But with all that, the pain they feel and the whole in their lives is still quite severe. Ella’s little brother, whom she saved at the cost of her own life, is scared to venture out of his home on his own. He doesn’t even like to go into the bathroom by himself in case something should happen to another relative. In school, he can’t concentrate on his studies. His parents got him a cellphone so that they could always be in touch, and he uses it – multiple times per hour – just to make sure everyone is okay.
All of this was mentioned in the interview. What was also mentioned was that yesterday, the day before Ella’s memorial service, Sderot was hit by two more Kassam rockets, one of which crashed through the roof of a nearby house and landed on the living room sofa. Luckily, no one was home. But it was enough to reinforce all the fears that Ella’s brother is experiencing. And it was enough to bring all the memories of that horrible January evening flooding back into Sima’s mind.
And she said so in the interview. She said that she couldn’t understand how the State of Israel can leave a community like Sderot so bereft of any support and so vulnerable to attack at any whim of the Arabs. She couldn’t understand how absolutely nothing is being done, after years of such attacks on an almost daily basis, to actually hit back at the Arabs, to actually stop them from attacking Israelis at whim. Above all, she couldn’t understand how her own daughter’s blood, shed while saving the life of her brother, could be so incredibly cheap to the rulers of this country.
Amnon Nadav reacted by asking whether she had heard the declaration made this week by the IDF’s new Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, that the continuation of such attacks would lead to a harsh IDF retaliation. Sima’s response was that such declarations have been made repeatedly for years by all Chiefs of Staff, all defense ministers, all prime ministers, and that the attacks still take place, and the Israeli defense establishment is still powerless to stop them. “Why must we live like this,” she demanded.
It was at this point that Amnon Nadav lost all the respect I had previously held for him. And there was a lot. I have listened to many of his broadcasts, and have generally found him to be a relatively fair interviewer, someone that has an easy conversational style, who gives his interviewees the opportunity to present their case without too much interjection of his own opinion.
But in reaction to Sima’s last statement, Amnon Nadav responded, “If you can’t live there, why don’t you move?”
On the most obvious level, this question is incredibly insensitive. It confirms everything Sima charged about the State of Israel abdicating its responsibility to Sima’s family, and to Ella’s memory.
But on a deeper level, this question precisely describes the utter destruction of ideology in what was once the Zionist enterprise. Imagine asking the founding halutzim, those who built farming communities such as Zichron Yaakov and Rishon Lezion out of barren wasteland under searing summer heat, the same question 120 years ago. Imagine asking the workers who drained the swamps in the Hula Valley – often at the cost of their own lives through malaria or terrorist attack – the same question. Imagine asking any of the heroes of Israel’s birth the same question.
Life then wasn’t easy for sure. There weren’t any of the comforts that we have today. This country was built on the sweat, tears and blood – literally upon the lives – of its founders. Nobody so much as even thought of daring to ask these heroes why they didn’t just give up and move.
But alas, in the mindset of today’s “mainstream Israeli”, those who live in comfort in the beautiful cities of Zichron Yaakov, Rishon Lezion, Petach Tikva, or in the verdant and plentiful moshavim and kibbutzim of the Hula, Beit Shean, Jezreel, Jordan, and other valleys, and hills and plains across this country, if life gets too difficult, why not just move? If it gets too dangerous in Judea and Samaria, move to Tel Aviv. If it’s too dangerous in Tel Aviv, move to New York.
That was the thinking behind the Oslo Accords. It was the thinking behind every attempt at diplomacy since then. It is the thinking behind the current proposed Disengagement Plan from the Gaza Strip – something that will only make life in Sderot, 4 kilometers away, all the more dangerous.
Living in Israel, contributing, building, developing, teaching, and yes, giving up your life to achieve these aims, is something that cannot be valued. It cannot be challenged. And it cannot be replaced. Simply getting up and moving is not the answer.
Sima Abukasis, much to her credit, didn’t shy away from the answer Amnon Nadav – and indeed all Israelis – needed to hear. Without hestitation, she responded: “Ella wanted to do her National Service in Jerusalem, but I didn’t want to let her because I thought it was too dangerous. Now it’s quiet there, and she died 100 meters from our home in Sderot. Where should we move to?”
And that indeed is the answer that all Israelis, all Jews, must understand. In the words of Golda Meir, “The difference between the Arabs and the Jews is that we have no place to go.”
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
