Yakovi and Bilha Inon’s children didn’t wait to be officially notified that their parents’ bodies had been identified before they began sitting shivah. On the night of October 7 they posted a death notice and the next day they embarked on the week-long mourning ritual, according to their son, Maoz Inon, a social activist and entrepreneur, and co-founder of the Abraham Hostels in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Yakovi’s body was identified 12 days after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel that Saturday. Bilha’s body has yet to be identified at the time of this writing, 17 days later.
Maayan Inon, Maoz’s older sister, says that already on that terrible Saturday they had a feeling about what was happening in their parents’ moshav. “Early Sunday, my brother-in-law traveled to their home in Netiv HaAsara, accompanied by security forces, and saw two unrecognizable bodies, but it was clearly them,” says Maayan, 50. “That was enough for us, we didn’t need more than that to realize we need to start mourning.”
The first shivah of the October 7 War became a collective ritual of mourning. “Survivors from Nir Am, Netiv HaAsara, bereaved families – they all came to us,” says Maoz, 48. “It shook all of us up. There was an emotional bond between all the survivors, or maybe they’re better described as victims. During the shivah you’d hear about this guy from school who had been killed, and that girlfriend, and this person’s son – a lot of people you know.”
“We arranged the shivah in a very intuitive way, and in retrospect, it was correct,” Maayan adds. “We were together, and we had the space and the time to come to grips with the fact that they’re gone. Survivors from Netiv HaAsara were dispersed and didn’t have a place to gather and process what happened, so they came to us. I heard my parents whisper in my ear, ‘We’re fine, take care of them.’"
Yakovi was an agronomist and farmer, a native of Kibbutz Nir Am; Bilha was an educator and artist, born on Kibbutz Ruhama. Both were people of the Negev who lived their whole lives near the Gaza Strip. Their first home was on Nir Am, which is where their five children – Mor, Maayan, Maoz, Magal and Magen – were born.
“My father had Bedouin and Palestinian friends,” Maoz recalls. “I remember being 6 or 7 years old and traveling with one of them, Ali Khamis, to fix his truck at a garage in Gaza, and then he’d take me to a restaurant. When I told him my parents were killed, he collapsed and was hospitalized.”
When the kibbutz movement faced a severe crisis in the ‘90s, the Inons decided to leave Nir Am and start over some 60 kilometers to the north, in Netiv HaAsara, with barely any financial means. They bought a small plot of land and built a modest home. Yakovi was the head of moshav’s secretariat, helped plan a large logistics center adjacent to the Erez Crossing, and even advocated unsuccessfully for the opening of a hospital there that would serve the residents of Gaza.
On the morning of October 7, Yakovi sent a message to his children saying that he and his wife had locked the doors and were in their safe room. “When we realized that there was a terrorist infiltration, it became clear to us that they wouldn’t survive. We always knew the house couldn’t withstand an attack. We called it a cardboard house,” says Maayan. “But they felt safe. My dad always said: We can’t live in fear. He claimed that fear is a subjective thing and he didn’t really feel it. My mom had some bouts of fear and anxiety. But they still chose to stay because they loved the area and the people, they were pillars of their community, and they lived well. The fact that he locked the house was a sign that they sensed that something unusual was happening.”
It emerged that the terrorists who infiltrated the moshav fired a missile at the house, which went up in flames. Yakovi and Bilha died in the inferno.
“In their will, my parents asked that their bodies be cremated,” Maoz says. “They said the soil was a place for wheat, not graves. They asked that we spread their ashes in the moshav’s fields, and over the graves of my dad’s parents on Nir Am. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
Maoz Inon says that up until October 7, he didn’t describe himself as a peace activist, but rather as a social activist. For two decades he has been coming up with initiatives that focus on using tourism as a tool for social change, and linking it with a vision of Jewish-Arab coexistence and joint cultural and business ventures. In 2005, he opened the first backpacker hostel in Nazareth’s Old City, the Fauzi Azar Inn, in partnership with the Palestinian family that owned the premises. He went on to help create hiking trails linking Jewish and Arab locales and founded the Abraham Hostels network, which in addition to accommodating travelers in an atmosphere of “sustainable tourism,” offers activities for different communities in Israel: Haredim, asylum seekers and LGBTQ people. Most recently, Inon founded Abraham Tours, which organizes trips to the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt and Israel. One of the tours used to pass through his parents’ moshav.
After the flare-up of hostilities between Israel and Gaza in May 2021, Inon began organizing tours with a political agenda, together with Nazareth-born activist Kholoud Abu Ahmad. “We realized that the first step toward a life together is to get to know the other’s narrative,” he says. “It’s very dangerous to repress, silence and block out the narrative of the 20 percent of Israel’s citizens who are Palestinian. They are citizens, and they aren’t going anywhere. We shouldn’t be afraid of the Palestinian identity. We should get to know them, hear their story, know what causes them pain.”
The personal tragedy that struck the Inon family three weeks ago has not changed his views. On the contrary. Since that Saturday, Inon defines himself as a man on a mission. “Look at our state,” he says. “We’ve been warning for years that we were on the precipice of an abyss, and now the biggest disaster since the Holocaust has struck the Jewish people, under the leadership of the ‘fully’ right-wing government, which will be the end of us. We have to change all our terminology and our basic assumption that Israel's security is based on military might.”
You aren’t angry, you don’t want to punish the people who did this?
Inon: “I understand the anger and the frustration, and I understand the desire for revenge, but I also see where this revenge has gotten us over the past century. If the Hamasnik who fired the missile at my parents’ house was sitting across from me right now, I would talk to him. I would want to understand. I would want him to see me cry.”
His sister Maayan also says she doesn’t feel hatred or anger – just pain. “It tears me up inside that people have gotten to the point where they are capable of behaving this way. The question is, do we want to continue this round [of fighting], is this round good for us? Or do we want to look for a different, less violent, less cruel and destructive path? I don’t think we can say hocus-pocus and reality will change. But I believe that through work and growth, there’s hope and opportunity for change. We can create healthy, balanced and proper relationships.”
‘No innocent lamb’
Quite a few peace activists and their relatives were murdered or taken hostage during the October 7 pogrom perpetrated by Hamas. In the three weeks that have passed since that terrible day, their families have had to deal not only with profound loss and grief, and dread over the fate of loved ones who are hostages or still missing – but also with hateful comments on social media and on the street.
Facebook posts mentioning Vivian Silver from Kibbutz Be'eri, one of Israel's most prominent left-wing activists, who served on the board of the B’Tselem rights organization and helped to found the Women Wage Peace group, and is now being held hostage in Gaza, were met with comments like “she wasn’t abducted, she’s just visiting friends,” “she ought to stay there with her peace-loving friends,” and “this is a story of an Israel-hater who made her bed and slept in it,” among others.
Similar comments greeted Neta Heiman-Mina, a member of Women Wage Peace and a native of Kibbutz Nir Oz, after she published posts about her 84-year-old mother, Ditza, who was also taken hostage by Hamas.
“People wrote me that the blood of all the 1,300 victims is on my hands, that I deserve the fact that my mother was abducted to Gaza, and that they’d be willing to help me join her. All kinds of pearls of wisdom. After I appear in the studios of the main television channels, I am immediately attacked. A few days ago I was interviewed at about 2 A.M., I was sure no one was listening, but by the next day my inbox exploded. Someone wrote, ‘Yuck, you stinker – because of people like you there’s antisemitism. You’re the reason she’s there. Go help soldiers instead of stinking Arabs.’ Someone else wrote, ‘Leave Israel and move to Palestine.’”
You haven’t blocked comments on your page?
Heiman-Mina: “No. Facebook has blocked people who aren’t friends from responding in order to prevent all kinds of hateful comments about Israel, but it turns out we need protection from people who are among us. People who have been poisoned for so long don’t know when to stop.”
Heiman-Mina is sure that her mother was taken to Gaza alive because footage captured on October 7 shows Ditza being forced into a car by Hamas terrorists. In the clip, she appears to be healthy, but since then there has been no information about her fate. Meanwhile, her daughter has been traveling from funeral to funeral.
“Every day,” she says, “I have to choose which one to attend. First I go to the funerals of relatives of people I grew up with. Of the 13 people in that group, two members’ families weren’t on the kibbutz that Saturday, and two other members’ parents survived. The rest all have parents who’ve been kidnapped or murdered, or both of those things.” An estimated 79 residents of Nir Oz are among the hostages.
Heiman-Mina has been active in the Women Wage Peace organization since 2017, and explains that, “It’s a group that talks about a diplomatic accord [with the Palestinians], and doesn’t necessarily demand two states for two people. Some of the members live in the settlements … But it is a movement that believes ‘peace’ is not a dirty word – that it can belong to everyone, not just those on the left.”
When you were growing up, what was your attitude toward the Palestinians on the other side of the fence?
“They worked for us, they were around on the kibbutz. No one was afraid of them. Or at least that was my sense as a child. Most kibbutzniks believed in peace. There was a big group that belonged to the Peace Now movement. That was the feeling, that all people are equal and everyone deserves to live in peace. As children we didn’t feel like we were on a border. Before the first intifada, people from the area traveled to Gaza to shop.
Do you feel today that you were wrong about the Gazans?
“No. Not at all. Those who didn’t think like us were mistaken, and they got us into this situation. Those who didn’t think they [the Palestinians] deserve a fair life, who thought that we can rule over another people for so many years and it wouldn’t backfire – they were wrong. Many others were wrong. We weren't wrong. If they had listened to Women Wage Peace – who have been screaming at the top of their lungs since the 2014 Gaza war that the time has come to end the suffering, and that it’s possible to end it – we wouldn’t be in a situation where my mother is in Gaza in the hands of monsters.”
Heiman-Mina says that the horrific events of the past few weeks have only strengthened her belief that a diplomatic process is necessary to solve the conflict: “No matter how many times we try to eradicate Hamas – after all, we supposedly erased it a few times already – the next round will always be worse. The belief that the solution must be a diplomatic one hasn’t been undermined; it has grown stronger. Because this time I have been personally affected.”
Her opinions about the terror organization haven’t changed, either. “We didn’t think that Hamas was some innocent lamb. What surprised us now wasn’t that they tried [to attack], but that the army couldn't protect us. The Palestinian people suffer a lot from the Hamas regime, but what can you do? Hamas is our enemy right now, and peace is waged with enemies, no matter how cruel they are. We have no other choice. It’s not easy, it will be painful, but it can happen. Of course I feel rage toward Hamas. Clearly the people who took my mom and the people who perpetrated the slaughter are animals. Of course the initial anger is directed at them. But that doesn’t reduce the anger I feel toward those who didn’t protect the victims, who include my mother, who helped to found the state.”
Speaking out while cannons roar
Tom Godo was 52 when he was murdered in his home on Kibbutz Kissufim, in the northwestern part of the Negev on the morning of October 8; he had been bodily blocking the door to the safe room in his home for 24 hours to protect his wife and three daughters. As the terrorists opened fire at the door with armor-piercing bullets, Godo’s wife and daughters escaped through the window – and survived.
In the eulogy he delivered at his son’s funeral, on Kibbutz Na’an, Yaacov Godo said: “The fingers that pulled the trigger and murdered, the hands that held the knives that stabbed and beheaded and slashed were the loyal and determined emissaries of the accursed, messianic and corrupt government [of Israel], which consists of an arch-criminal accused of illegal acts and a group of entirely incompetent sycophants who lack any political vision… At these very moments, a violent rampage of Jewish, messianic terrorism is being waged to ethnically cleanse and kill [Palestinian residents in] villages and communities around the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, backed by the army and the police.
“I can’t tell Tom, ‘rest in peace,’ because his tumultuous soul will detect the hypocrisy. At the end of this hellish ordeal, and after the stables are thoroughly cleansed, when the sun really starts shining, I will visit your grave, dear beloved Tom, and tell you: ‘Rest in peace, you are free.’”
In the eulogy for his father Eviatar Kipnis, 65, who was killed on October 7, Yotam Kipnis also chose to mention Eviatar’s commitment to peace. “We will not stay silent while the cannons roar, and we won’t forget that Dad loved peace. He wasn’t willing to serve in the territories ... Do not write my father’s name on a missile, he wouldn’t have wanted that … We will stand up and protect our home in the name of life. We will sanctify life, not death, because there is good in the world, and it is worth fighting for. Not for revenge … Dad never forgot that innocent people live in Gaza, stuck between the rock of the Israeli government and the hard place that is the Hamas dictatorship. Hamas is the enemy. Not the Palestinians. Hamas, knowingly strengthened by the [Israeli] government that believes in a race war. We will not forget and will not let it be forgotten that this war won’t really be over until there is peace.”
Yaacov Godo, 72, is active in Looking the Occupation in the Eye, a relatively new organization that aims to raise awareness of goings-on in the occupied territories, and accompanies Palestinian shepherds in the Southern Hebron Hills to protect them from settler attacks. Since the war broke out, he notes, almost all of the shepherding communities in that area have been driven away: “Immediately after the war began, a crazy ethnic-cleansing rampage was launched by the settlers. The army is observing from the sidelines. The settlers injured five of our activists. They detained and beat them.”
Godo wasn’t always a peace activist, but was motivated to become one by the so-called Balfour protests against Netanyahu and the government in 2020-21. “My opinions were always left-wing but weren’t given expression on the ground. Over the years I avoided visiting the territories. When I did go there, I was shocked. I was familiar with Judea and Samaria from my military and reserve service, and suddenly I saw a terrible reality there.”
Since Tom’s murder, however, Yaacov has not resumed his activist role. “My wife and I need to protect each other now,” he explains. “But I’ll be back. I told myself that if I go back there now, I might do something irrational. Sometimes the settlers push us and hit us, and we’re not violent in principle. But in my current state, I might lash out.”
Your feelings are aimed at the settlers, and not at Palestinians?
“I see these violent people using all means to commit ethnic cleansing, hurting people – children and women. They hit, shoot sheep sometimes. What happened on Saturday was terrible and unforgivable. But I don’t think that acts of revenge should be carried out against all Palestinians, or against all Gazans. I don’t think Gaza should be razed to the ground. Killing women, children, the elderly – how are they to blame? As much as I am mourning Tom – he was murdered by Hamas, and I believe that they were emissaries of Israel’s government, whether they knew it or not.”
Godo says he has not been able to sleep since Tom’s death; at night he replays the events that happened there, in the safe room. “Cruelty is cruelty, what happened there is unforgivable. But where was the army? My son, Tom, was in the safe room for 25 hours, under attack. At 4 P.M. Saturday, an Egoz [combat] unit arrived at their home. The soldiers told Tom and the family, ‘We’re not evacuating you yet; in a few hours someone will come rescue you.’ Who am I supposed to blame?”
Hamas wasn’t fighting soldiers, but attacked civilians, including children. How can that be explained, how can it be forgiven?
“If the army had been there, they [the terrorists] might not have infiltrated towns. I’m not justifying what happened. I can be angry and also in pain. But Hamas can't be eradicated as an idea, so what we’re doing now beyond physically taking out Hamas’ members is that we’re raising the next generation of haters and pogromists. And they will be more hateful and bloodthirsty. Gaza already has more than a million refugees. How can that be justified? Can a state exist, based on revenge? ”
Have you gotten comments on your eulogy on social media?
“Yes, someone said, ‘If these are his opinions, why does he live on Na’an, he should go to Nablus.’ Someone else wrote, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, but why stick politics into a eulogy?’”
People also found it difficult to accept the comments made by 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, who was released by Hamas this week along with Nurit Cooper, 79. Lifshitz told reporters that her captors in Gaza had provided food, hygiene and medical care. She said she even turned around to shake the hand of the Hamas operative who handed her over to the Red Cross, and told him “Shalom.”
Yocheved’s husband, Oded Lifshitz, 84, a former journalist, was also abducted and remains in Hamas captivity. Over the past few years, he volunteered with The Road to Recovery, an organization that arranges transportation for sick Palestinians from the Erez Crossing on the Gaza border, and at the Tarqumiyah Crossing in the West Bank, for treatment in Israeli hospitals. Many of the volunteers come from the Gaza border communities. Some were murdered in the Hamas rampage; others, like Lifshitz and Haim Perry from Kibbutz Nir Oz, were taken hostage.
“Almost every kibbutz in the area has a volunteer in our group – or two or three,” says Yael Noy, who heads the Road to Recovery nonprofit group and was born on Alumim, another kibbutz on Israel’s border with the Strip. “Most are retirees. They give as many rides as they can. Adi Dagan, from Kibbutz Be’eri, who was killed in the attack, gave a lot of rides, both from Gaza and from Hebron. Vivian Silver, who was taken hostage, Eli Orgad of Kfar Azza who was murdered, Tammy Suchman of Kibbutz Be’eri who was murdered – they all gave people rides from the Erez Crossing.”
Noy always saw helping Gazans as a natural thing for residents of the Israeli border communities to do. “Anytime someone would say ‘The poor people of your city take precedence,’ I would respond: Gazans are the poor of my city. It’s the city that’s closest to me. As far as I’m concerned what we do is a humanitarian act that helps the neighbors who live closest to us … In the Road to Recovery organization, we don’t ask people about their politics. We have volunteers from Nokdim and Kedumim and Kfar Etzion [West Bank settlements], and my dad who lives on Alumim votes for right-wing parties, and the organization is his home as well.”
Since that black Saturday, Noy admits that she has had trouble accepting the losses that have been suffered, as well as the complexity of the situation. “I’m torn. All day long I get WhatsApp messages from patients in Gaza who ask how I’m doing. There’s a lot more empathy and interest from patients and our coordinator in Gaza than from the people we work with in the West Bank. We continue to drive patients from the West Bank but it’s very difficult, because they’re silent. They don’t have even one word of empathy [for us]. I’m always looking for that place inside me where I can find peacein the face of this, and I don’t always succeed.”
And yet, Noy has no doubt that she has to keep going: “I always think about the morning after. There are cracks that have to be mended. A few days ago I didn’t notice that I left the house wearing a Looking the Occupation in the Eye T-shirt. I was on my way to visit a neighbor, and when I realized what I was wearing, I took the shirt off in the middle of the street and turned it inside out. I don’t feel comfortable wearing it now, I don’t want to cause anyone pain and I feel like my opinions may cause pain now. I never felt doubts before, or uneasiness. When I visit my parents, who have been evacuated to a hotel in Netanya, some members of the kibbutz say: ‘You realize that this is because of you and the people you drive around.’ I cause them pain with my presence.”
Does that shake you up?
“Yes, but it’s clear to me that I’ll keep going. I’m fighting to keep my humanity. I’m scared of turning into a monster like [Hamas]. I don’t want the seeds of evil to sprout within me, because they’ve sprayed us with that filth. We have no choice but to bear witness. You have to hear the stories and stay human, and I don’t know how that’s possible. There’s a very big rift inside, but I keep going. The requests come in and we respond. There are lots of new volunteers joining now, especially now.”
You don’t harbor any anger vis-a-vis the Gazans?
“Not even a drop. They’re being held hostage by Hamas, and are more afraid of Hamas than we are. Some patients would call to ask how our volunteers were doing each time rockets were fired at the border communities. I feel like the Gazans are, in a way, in the same boat as [our] volunteers from places near the Gaza border. They suffer the same way, the Gazans and the kibbutzniks. “
Nadav Weiman, a former senior figure at Breaking the Silence, credits his former commander in the Nahal Brigade, Shachar Zemach, with convincing him to join the anti-occupation NGO. On October 7, Zemach, 39, a member of Kibbutz Be’eri’s security squad, was killed after fighting the terrorists for seven hours, at which point his ammunition ran out.
“Shachar was a special person,” Weiman says now. “The week I was discharged, he called me and said, ‘I joined an organization called Breaking the Silence, and I think that you should join as well.’ I told him to leave me alone. All I wanted at that moment was to make enough money to go to South America. I took my trip and when I returned I broke the silence after all. Zemach was the activist who mentored me there, which gave me a lot of confidence. He was a very smart man who loved to argue about politics. From his first day at Breaking the Silence he didn’t accept the code of the organization [as it is], he questioned things. And he was the beating heart of the Zionist left at the organization. At some point he started studying economics and went to work at the Finance Ministry. I didn’t understand how a leftist could do such a thing. But that’s the kind of person he was.”
People from different periods of Zemach’s life attended his funeral, and everyone said the same things – he was a good person and a true friend, he was argumentative, loved Israel, loved hiking and loved flash floods. “His dad said that he died with a gun in one hand and a olive branch in the other,” Weiman says. “That’s also how I felt about him … It was the first time that I heard Breaking the Silence mentioned at a funeral.”
Have the recent events made you rethink your own political ideas?
“Yes and no. The ‘no’ is regarding the fact that the murderous rampage by the insane Hamasniks proves yet again that Gaza doesn’t have a military solution. It doesn’t work. No matter how many missiles we launch at them. Only a diplomatic solution can help. It also demonstrates the power of the settlement movement: that so many soldiers and weapons were transferred to protect the settlement regime [in the West Bank], to the point that there weren’t enough troops to protect the communities abutting the Strip. The settlers are above everyone in this state. From that standpoint, I still think that we need a diplomatic solution for Gaza and the West Bank.
“What did change is [the realization] that the scope and depth and murderous insanity of Hamas isn’t something that can be ignored. Not that I supported Hamas in the past, but there was an idea that Hamas is the one you talk to in Gaza, that you transfer money there and let the laborers in. But I don’t think these are people with whom you can discuss peace. This is a historic moment in Israeli society. It was the biggest terror attack that has ever happened here. Many things are shifting with regard to our attitude regarding possible solutions and the issue of who we talk to now on the other side. I was taught in the army that my role as a soldier is to protect the State of Israel with my life. If I’m wounded, it’s part of defending this place. But civilians are outside this story. To go to a house on a kibbutz and abduct people and torture them, that is entirely different from taking over an army post and shooting at soldiers.”
So what’s the conclusion?
“I don’t know. We’re still trying to grasp what’s happening now. It was one of the reasons that I immediately traveled south to volunteer at the war room set up by the aid organizations down there. Breaking the Silence is the most important thing that I do in my life, aside from being a dad, but now we have to help our own people, because the government doesn’t care. We’re in a holding pattern, and after that we’ll figure out what to do next.”
