Five minutes

I didn’t spend more than five minutes in that shelter. Five minutes that will stay with me for as long as I live and breath. My five minutes, standing in the stillness of what became a mass grave, so at odds with the terrifying experience of those who were mutilated beyond recognition in the very same spot. Five minutes of witnessing, of imagining, and I still can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop smelling it, can’t stop seeing it, can’t stop.

Whether a gas chamber in Poland or a bomb shelter in Sderot; it’s the same vehicle of death for those who want to eradicate Jews. And that is what I was thinking about in those five minutes. I was thinking about 2023 and 1942. I was thinking about how a few minutes as a Jew then was the same as a few minutes as a Jew now. I was thinking about what our enemies imagine doing with us in five minutes, as we’re entrapped in a concrete box, no way to get out, the sadistic ways they can obliterate us. I was thinking about how long life can feel when you understand how desperate Hamas are to end it. I was thinking about who was stood in the shelter before they were murdered; how many were strangers, were friends. How many were Jews. I was thinking about how they were more than just Jews. And then I wondered how many said the Shema. Maybe they all did in their final moments. An hour before they were kids at a music festival; an hour later they were Jews who knew they would die. I was thinking about how some died on impact, but others were badly wounded, lying under dead bodies for hours on end. I was thinking about how many had grandparents who told them the same stories from 80 years before. I was thinking about if any got out. Imagine surviving that. Is it even possible? Would you want to?

One year ago today, on Christmas morning, I arrived in the Gaza envelope to bear witness to the massacre of October 7. Among the many horrendous things I saw and smelled and felt that day, was one of the many bomb shelters on the 232 in which Nova attendees took shelter from Hamas, and many were murdered. The 232 was the highway that thousands of young music festival attendees tried to escape being burned alive and raped and blown up and gunned down by Hamas on. In this shelter, tens of people were murdered by multiple RPGs, and I could smell the guts still only months later. The damp of burned human flesh. All those holes in the wall that you see are fragments of exploding shrapnel from grenades. Multiple grenades. One would have sufficed, but Hamas came to party, and they had a lot of ammunition to waste. One would have sufficed, but often there’d be three, four, five RPGs, burning up to volcanic temperatures to explode in these confined spaces and just… erase people. I heard a lot in the days I spent in the South that often teeth were used to identify the missing. Nothing else remained.

I mention this horror today because of all the things I thought about in those five minutes, the one thing I thought about the most was an addition to the scene that had been brought in months after October 7. In the corner at the bottom of the shelter there lay a chanukiah from the festival of chanukah several weeks before I arrived there. A tiny little schmata of a chanukiah that someone had lit in honor of those who were murdered here. A symbol to remember the history of our people. Not just a light in the darkness, but a promise. A resistance. An uprising. A revolution in the midst of hell.

On Chanukah we remember how the Maccabees defeated a much bigger flashier army, and we celebrate the miracle of there being enough of a tiny light to keep the temple active during this war. I have heard a lot in the last year that all you need is a small fragment of light, and from that crack of light anything can be achieved. That little bit of light in the dark. A sign. I took it as a sign that day in the worst five minutes I have ever stomached. A year later, that sign has kept its promise, as we can now recount many successes in this war against the savages who committed these atrocities. The end of the mastermind of October 7 Yahya Sinwar, and so many of his upper command in Gaza; the destruction of Nasrallah and much of Hezbollah’s capabilites in the South of Lebanon; the fall of Assad in Syria; the exposure of Iran’s airspace via the brilliant operations of the Israeli Air Force. So many victories for the IDF and Israel. And yet, the war continues on.

My experiences a year ago completely changed me. Was I disappointed that people stayed silent on these matters? Of course I was. I still am. I would love nothing more than to be acknowledged and supported by the people to whom we have acknowledged and supported without hesitation. All I can do about that is continue to light up the truth, in the hope that eventually that light will be so strong that it will catch fire to the people standing next to me and they will feel so compelled to use their voice too. To take a stand against the violence against women, men and children, including when those women, men and children are Jews. Isn’t that the point of the menorah at Chanukah? Every flame lights another flame, until eight days later, there is eightfold as much light as there was at the beginning, blasting its way into the ether, refusing to be ignored. That leading candle - the shemash - lights more and more candles every night, banishing more and more shadow.

This morning I woke up to a video message from a friend in Israel, a Nova survivor no less, one of the people who I met exactly a year ago. She had her phone camera in her face at 4am terrified because of the red alert alarms going off. She doesn’t have a bomb shelter in her home and she was scared. That’s how the Houthis said Merry Xmas to Israelis this morning.

This Christmas, this Chanukah, we still are faced with the pain of 100 of our loved ones being trapped in Gaza, as Israelis are still being bombarded with attacks from its enemies every day. According to Haaretz, Israel is ready to submit a report to the United Nations, detailing the testimonies of hostages already returned from Gaza. The report has been prepared by doctors and psychiatrists who treated the victims. It outlines how both children and adults were subjected to sexual assault and rape; how hostages were branded with hot iron; how their hair was torn out, and they were bound by their hands and feet; how they were forced to watch graphic videos of their loved ones from October 7; how they were forced to have medical procedures without anesthesia; how female hostages were enslaved; how they were starved; how they were compelled to soil themselves due to inhumane conditions; how they suffered from severe PTSD and ongoing mental health challenges, even months after release. Israel will prepare this report for the United Nations, and what will the United Nations do? Do I have to answer that?

This time last year, I threw myself into a warzone to help fight back against the disinformation by Hamas against Israel and the Jews. If even those five minutes I spent in a 232 bomb shelter could give a lay person something to think about, it was worth a lifetime of living with that memory.