Front Burner - ‘Time stopped on October 7th’

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

‘Time stopped on October 7th.’Jonathan Dekel-Chen was a longtime resident of Nir Oz, an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza border. Nearly a quarter of the residents there were either killed or taken hostage on October 7th, 2023, when members of Hamas and other armed groups killed around 1200 people, and took 251 Israelis and foreigners hostage.That set off Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, which has now killed an estimated 41,500 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.Jonathan’s son Sagui was taken hostage on October 7th, and he’s believed to still be in Gaza today. He speaks to host Jayme Poisson about the attack on his kibbutz, the challenges he’s faced in trying to get his son home, and the escalating conflict in the Middle East.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. One year ago today, militants from Hamas and other armed groups breached the border fence in Gaza and began killing people in border communities in southern Israel. Hamas militants came to murder, humiliate and to shatter Israelis' sense of safety. People running for their lives, hiding in groves of trees, dying in the road.

It represents the biggest loss of life in a single day in Israeli history. Around 1,200 people were killed, a majority of them civilians. 251 Israelis and foreigners were also taken hostage, according to Israeli officials. Israel has formally declared war after that unprecedented multi-pronged terror attack from Hamas. Hamas will understand that by attacking us, they've made a mistake of historic proportions. We will exact a price that will be remembered by them and Israel's other enemies for decades to come.

This, of course, set off Israel's retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, which has now killed an estimated 41,500 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. Of the identified dead, more than half are believed to be women and children. It's nearly impossible to summarize every aspect of a year like this in just a couple brief episodes, and we're not going to try. Instead, over the next two days, we're going to hear from two people about their lives before October 7th and after. Tomorrow, which will mark one year since Israel officially declared war on Hamas, we'll speak to a man in Gaza.

Today, you'll hear my conversation with Jonathan Dekelhen. He was a longtime resident of an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza border, near Ouz, where close to a quarter of the residents were either killed or taken hostage on October 7th. Jonathan's son, Segi, is one of those hostages, and he's believed to still be in Gaza today. Jonathan, hi. I really want to thank you for taking the time still be in Gaza today. Jonathan, hi. I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. Hello. So I wonder if we could begin by spending some time talking about your life before October 7th, 2023.

And maybe we could start with the kibbutz that you live on, Nero's. You're originally from Connecticut, but as I understand it, you wound up on this kibbutz and you ended on, Nero's. You're originally from Connecticut, but as I understand it, you wound up on this kibbutz and you ended up staying and raising a family there. And for our listeners who may not be very familiar with kibbutzim, tell me what life is like on a kibbutz and especially what it was like on this particular one where you built your life. Well, it's a long story, so we'll keep it as short as possible. I actually arrived on Nero's in 1981 as a high school kid on a youth group trip, of all things. And most importantly, I think perhaps for our purposes, is the geography. Quibbutz Neroz is a small cooperative farming community that is situated on the border with the Gaza Strip. It is one of about, well, over 200 kibbutzin, which again are these small

cooperative farms. Neroz is on the smallish side and around 420, 430 people on a good day, multi-generational, you know, usually successful farms in which a community comes together for the purposes of living in what some might consider a kind of socialist cooperative life. People bring up their families, you know, go through all of their life cycle events together with this community. life. People bring up their families, you know, go through all of their life cycle events together with this community. Most of them are secular, a kind of one big extended family. You raised your children on this kibbutz. One of them is your son, Sagi. And he stayed on the kibbutz and raised his own children there, right? And what

do you think he liked about the life there? So, Segui and my younger daughter both made choices as they were, after they'd gotten married and started having kids, they made a decision with their spouses to return to the kibbutz to raise their kids as they had grown up in this pretty idyllic community where nobody locks doors, you know, kids can run around safely every, you know, with eyes on them sort of all the time. And, you know, really unlike most places today, certainly in the Western world where their lives aren't focused on this or that screen, but experiencing life for the most part outdoors, but in community. Would you mind telling me more about Siggy? What's he like?

Well, I've said it many times over the last year. I probably should have said it more to him before October 7th, honestly, that he's the son that any father or any parent would want to have. He's now 36 years old. We marked his birthday in mid-August. He, in many ways, is a kind of archetypical kibbutz kid, having grown up into adulthood, very independent, extremely creative, works with his hands in really amazing ways, is community-focused, not just on our pretty small community on the kibbutz, but also focused on social justice. So in addition to being a dad, my wife says he's a guy guy, as you would say here in the States, but he also is a daddy girl. He loved his daughters. His commitment to the wider community and social justice was manifest, is still manifest in what he chose to do for a living. So he supervised, managed, and supported social action projects for Jewish and Bedouin communities throughout the south of Israel.

Sagi caught the bug somehow, I don't know from where, of refurbishing old buses into usable objects. And so he bought a really old bus and converted it into a mobile home that he and his wife-to-be would live in and sort of travel around the country and camp out. And then they came up with this idea of creating a business, actually, of a mobile grocery store that would travel around the southern part of the country to underserved communities and food deserts. And then about two years ago, he signed a contract with a nonprofit organization in Israel that provides educational services to outlying communities throughout Israel. And the idea was to convert four old airport buses

into mobile technological classrooms. And on the morning of October 7th, he was doing what he usually did on Saturday and holiday mornings, which is to go to the machine shop where these four buses were parked. He had purchased four old airport buses and was in the midst of converting them. When he saw it about 6.30 in the morning, a group of heavily armed terrorists who were already inside the kibbutz, and he, along with others who were awake at that time, put out the alarm that there were terrorists inside the kibbutz. And he, along with others who were awake at that time, put out the alarm that there were terrorists inside the kibbutz. What he didn't know and the other people who were putting out the alarm,

what they didn't know, it wasn't just those individual groups that they themselves had seen, but it was over 200 heavily armed, well-trained terrorists who had invaded the kibbutz simultaneously. Kibbutz near Oz is a lush oasis, its gardens blooming. But now it's also a killing field. 400 people lived here, 100 are gone, dead or taken hostage. His journey on that day, that horrific day on our kibbutz, began working on those four buses that were supposed to become mobile classrooms for underserved Jewish and Bedouin communities in the south of the country. I think that kind of tells you all you need to know about Sagi.

I understand that you were at a conference in Baltimore on October 7th. Yeah. But your daughter and your ex-wife were there as well, right? Yes. Your grandchildren. Yeah. And how were they all doing through all of this? Were you able to contact any of them?

Well, you're right. I wasn't on the kibbutz that morning. Right. I wasn't on the kibbutz that morning. If I had been on the kibbutz, I would probably have been among those who were murdered that morning or taken hostage, given the reconstruction of the events. As far as my daughter and her young family are concerned, they also miraculously survived the assault on our kibbutz through perhaps pure luck. You know, there's some things we simply can't explain about that morning. And the heroism of her husband, who engaged periodically with terrorists inside and around his own, their own, for the better part of eight hours with a weapon that he had. They were locked down in their safe room on the kibbutz with their two boys and three guests who had come sort of coincidentally over the weekend.

It was a holiday weekend. And they were able to survive for nine hours in their safe rooms while terrorists and looters rampaged throughout the kibbutz, including within their home, for hours and hours. The two boys and another boy, one of the guests, were very traumatized. Everyone was traumatized by that event, by that day. And my ex-wife, the mother of our kids, was also on the kibbutz that morning. And she was taken captive and was being transported along with another 10 women and children from the kibbutz on a looted tractor and wagon back towards Gaza. So that's about a mile from the kibbutz on a looted tractor and wagon back towards Gaza. So that's about a mile from the kibbutz to the border fence. And around the border fence, that tractor was attacked by an Israeli attack helicopter

that had arrived on the scene. The terrorists who were on the tractor were killed immediately. The 10 women and children hostages were thrown out of the wagon by the blast. A dear friend of ours, Efrat Katz, was a mother and grandmother and wife, was killed in that blast. My ex-wife, Noamit, she took on a lot of shrapnel and was bleeding badly. And in a really sort of fateful moment, she decided to play dead so that when another group of terrorists came by to collect the survivors, she played dead and miraculously, they just left her there.

miraculously, they just left her there. And she then began over the course of about two hours, blood actually bleeding out. She was able to make her way approximately a mile back to the kibbutz and rejoin my daughter and her family in their safe room, where my son-in-law and his brother were able to stop the bleeding and save her life. And so we're all very fortunate that she was able to survive that day. What about Siggy's wife and his daughters? Yeah, they too miraculously survived. I'm using the word miracles a lot because I don't have better explanations for that. They, at the time, Avital was seven months pregnant.

And she was with the two little girls at the time, two and six years old, in their safe room and their house. Those safe rooms were not a guarantee of survival by any means for a variety of reasons. The doors could be shot through in many cases. The safe room, you know, we will lock the door. We use some rope and cabinet to hold it closed. Luckily, they didn't shoot our door. Down this hallway is what they call a safe room where people were hiding. There's bullet holes as the Hamas militants tried to get at the family members here in their home in the early morning. There's a big swath of blood from the safe room into the living room.

And the terrorists, when they couldn't access safe rooms where they knew are men, women and children, or they burned the houses down around them. They burned the houses so people would come out of these sheltered rooms and they could or suffocate to death or they would just shoot them coming out. Somehow Avital was able to survive that day. Sagi at some point made sure that they were locked in the room so the door could not be easily opened. Around 4.30 that afternoon, meaning about two hours after the first soldiers arrived, my son-in-law went with a group of soldiers to liberate Avital and the two girls from their safe room. Their home looked like a battleground.

There had been a significant gun battle and explosives used and grenades all around the house. There were homes burned down all around them. Avital and the girls had heard Sagi struggling with terrorists in the house before he was taken. But they did survive, and thank God, Avital was able to give birth to their third daughter in mid-December. And of course, that daughter has never met Segui. What else do you know about what happened to Seguigi that day and then in the days after that? There was an initial deal signed between Hamas and Israel that allowed for the return of a little over 100 hostages to Israel in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Amongst those 100 plus, 40 of them were from our kibbutz.

Of the 79 who were taken, 40 were returned to all women and children. And they, a handful of them, were able to tell us that they had met male hostages in the tunnels under Gaza. In the case of Segui, they were able to tell us that they very briefly saw him. They saw him very, very briefly in the tunnels under Gaza somewhere in between late November, early December. And he was alive but wounded. And that was the last confirmation we got and most other hostage families got from our people, certainly, about the status of their loved ones. And beyond that, only people who have seen their loved ones in psychological warfare hostage videos that Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have put out over time have gotten any proof of life. But as we've horrifically learned, that's also not any guarantee because many of those same men who appeared on these

psychological warfare videos were subsequently executed by their captors. You do not have to answer this question, but if you don't mind, over the past year, what has gotten you through the days? We still have 29 hostages remaining from our kibbutz of the total 101 hostages being held by Hamas. 29 are from, from near Oz. And we know for sure that at least nine of them have already been murdered.

We don't know about the other 20, including Sigi. They're all my extended family, from the littlest, Kfir Bibas, who is a little over a year old. One of the hostages taken from here is believed to be a 10-month-old baby boy, Kfir Bibas, along with his four-year-old brother, Ariel, and their terrified mother, Shiri. To the oldest, who we know has already been murdered, Ariel Zalmanovich, who died of neglect at 86 years old. They're all my extended family and I cannot rest until they're home.

But for me, of course, the most powerful drive every morning and is what quite literally gets me out of bed, is the absolute commitment to reuniting Sugi with his four girls, his beautiful wife, and his three little girls. And I cannot rest until that happens. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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You and I are speaking on Wednesday, October 2nd. It's the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. How are you observing the high holidays this year without Sugi? I think for all of our family, and perhaps other hostage families as well, we've not celebrated anything since October 7th. We mark things, whether it's a holiday of this kind or another or birthdays or other life cycle events, we mark them. So it's a moment in time, but no more than that. Time stopped on October 7th as normal people understand it. And so it can only resume when they get home. We have seen over the course of this war an incredible tension between many of the hostage families as well as freed hostages and the Israeli government.

Hostage family members protesting in the streets. Taking down Hamas, we keep hearing from them, is going to take months or years, and it's going to take a long time. The other objective is time-sensitive. People are dying. We're here to tell our government that we won't stop until they bring everybody home now. Screaming at members of Netanyahu's party in the Knesset.

There's also leaked audio from December of freed hostages screaming at Netanyahu himself in a closed-door meeting. You will return them all. They will not wait 50 days. They will not wait another year because you claim that they are strong enough. You have no information. You have no information. The fact that we were shelled, the fact that no one knew anything about where we were. knew anything about where we were. For you personally, one year on, what do you think about the Netanyahu government's efforts to bring these hostages home? I've been a vocal critic of the Netanyahu government since early December, after the first cycle of hostage releases, because it's become increasingly clear to me and the

majority of other Israelis and those millions that have gone out into the streets in the aggregate since that time, that the Netanyahu government is not doing nearly enough beyond lip service to gain the freedom of the hostages. He and his government have been selling a myth to the Israeli people and some of Israel's supporters abroad that it is possible, and really the only way to go about freeing the hostages is through just increasing military pressure on Hamas. And somehow that will result in Yechia Sinuar, or whomever the leader is, to come begging for an agreement that will be completely on Israel's terms. That was always a fallacy, but it's certainly been proven as such in the last couple of months, during which hostages who we

know for a fact were alive are being killed, most of them by execution, some of them by friendly fire, friendly Israeli fire, are being killed while in Hamas captivity, despite increased Israeli military pressure. The only way to get them out alive, the hostages, is through a negotiated process. With the devil, we all agree agree Hamas is the devil. And the Israeli government has shown again and again that it prefers the preservation of its own power over the hard choices that would be necessary in a negotiated process to get the hostages home, the remaining 101. The number keeps shrinking because more and more hostages are being murdered or dying.

You are a professor of history. You're also the son of a Holocaust survivor. And in June, you wrote this op-ed in the New York Times. I remember it at the time, criticizing Israeli government ministers and other leaders for comparing October 7th to the Holocaust. of Israeli officials who had compared pro-Palestinian protests around the world to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. And can you talk to me a bit about those criticisms about what you wrote? Well, as I wrote in the article, and again, as the son of a Holocaust survivor and a last-minute refugee, my mother from Nazi Germany, just before the invasion of France, I'm keenly aware of the implications and the history, of course, of the Holocaust. And I've always found it offensive. And as I wrote in the Times article, Netanyahu is not the first Israeli leader to do this. It's for decades, this sort of nonchalant use of the Holocaust to explain why the government needs to do this or that thing, usually supposedly in defense of the country. And I've always found that problematic because Israel itself was the answer to the Holocaust. We are no longer a defenseless

people, Israelis. We have a country, we have an army, we have intelligence services. And so if indeed, like on October 7th, there was a massacre, then one cannot simply pass it off as yet another, yet more evidence that sort of the world is against us. It was a colossal failure of Israeli, of planning, of conceptualizing the relationship with our neighbors, Hamas specifically, and intelligence and a lack of imagination. It is not a Holocaust. It cannot be a Holocaust because we have an army that supposedly is one of the strongest, certainly in the Middle East. pogroms are concerned or calling pro-Palestinian protesters on campuses, let's say, in the United States, labeling them all as Nazis is more than anything else, just pure ignorance and misunderstanding or not caring to understand who most of these protesters are and what it is that they are looking for. And it is, in a way, allowed our

politicians of many different stripes to avoid serious conversations about serious issues in Israel concerning defense and our relationship to the world. And while Netanyahu has certainly been the most frequent and the most cynical mobilizer of those parts of our collective memory. He's not the first. I hope he's the last. But more importantly, I think, perhaps, or at least as importantly for your listeners, look, it is, and this is coming from a critic of what our government has and has not done since October 7th. And there are criticisms that can be made of the Israeli government, this one or any other, before or after October 7th, certainly after October 7th, that are legitimate. The dilemma we all face right now

is that there's been deafening silence, relatively speaking, about the responsibility of Hamas for where we are right now. Whatever has happened since October 7th is a result of Hamas invading a country, whatever it says its justifications were. its justifications were. A terrorist messianic organization invading a country, mass hostage taking, and the destruction of civilian communities, refusing then to release the hostages. And so alongside, again, legitimate criticisms of Israel and primarily its government, my message to your listeners, wherever they might be, is that if you really care, forget about caring about Israel or the fate of my son, if you really care about Palestinian lives, you must first ask yourself, what have you done today to leverage Hamas to release the prisoners and thereby release, end the needless suffering of millions of civilians in Gaza.

Some hostage family members have been very explicit since early on in the war that they do not want the Israeli government to use their loved ones as a justification for mass civilian casualties. And Gaza, I'm wondering just what your thoughts are on that. Look, Hamas has to be eradicated as a governing and military organization for the good of the world, it's clear. Allowing Hamas or any other terrorist organization to do what it did on October 7th without a direct, powerful response to degrade it to such a point where it could never do such a thing again would be a very bad sign for the world, never mind Israel or the fate of my son. So, while I understand that sentiment, and I've been critical of how the Israeli government, and to a degree the military, certainly until June or so, has conducted the war itself, or so has conducted the war itself. The principle of the absolute need to eradicate Hamas,

I would like to believe, is acceptable not just to all Israelis, but to any right-thinking person in the world. Over the last couple weeks, we've seen major escalations in Israel's conflict with Hezbollah and Iran. And I'm wondering what you think that all of this is going to mean now for the efforts to get your son back. Look, I don't think that any leader of Hezbollah is going to be missed by any decent person in the world. That being said, many of us question what exactly is the truest national interest of Israel within all of this mess. And I can say one thing for sure, no matter what the achievements of our intelligence services, and they are substantial in the fight against Hamas

and, again, a messianic dictatorship in Iran. No matter how far our warplanes can fly and what facilities they can disable, whatever those achievements might be, the future of Israel itself depends far more on getting the hostages home. Tens of thousands of protesters packing into central Tel Aviv in Israel's biggest protest since the war began to voice their anger after six more hostage bodies are found in Gaza. And now you killed them. You killed them. It might not have been you who pulled the trigger, but you placed the gun over their head. Protesters want a deal to ensure the safe release of the captives. But they say the government is neither capable of bringing them back nor interested in a ceasefire that allows that to happen. The danger here is that our government and the world will be

distracted enough by these other developments and the escalation towards a regional war to kind of forget about the hostage issue. And to a degree, I fear that that's exactly what our government wants, because it doesn't want to face the responsibility, accountability for the colossal failure of October 7th and its lack of effectiveness or disinterest in getting the hostages home thereafter. And so, as if we didn't have enough challenges already, hostage families and their many supporters in Israel are now fighting an even more uphill battle to make sure that the hostage crisis is not forgotten within what seems to be an escalating regional war that I believe can only get diffused by reaching some kind of agreement with Hamas. But again, we need a lot of help, both from pro-Israel and also pro-Palestinian voices in the world. Jonathan, I want to thank you so much for this, for taking the time. And I know that you've heard

this hundreds and hundreds of times in the last year, but I am so sorry for what you have been going through. And I just, I really do hope and pray that Sagi will be back with your family soon and hugging his daughters. That's my dream, but thank you for saying it. I appreciate it. All right, that is all for today. Just a reminder that tomorrow we will be speaking with a man in Gaza about what the last year of his life has been like. Thank you.