The Decibel - One year after Israel’s ‘Black Saturday’

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

The Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and saw 250 people kidnapped. It also sparked one of the largest wars in the Middle East in a generation. A year of Israel’s ground attack and air strikes on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, causing mass displacement as fears of a wider war continue to develop.In the first of a two-episode feature on this sombre anniversary, the Globe’s senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon captures the feelings of Israelis, sharing the stories of survivors from the attacks and analyzes whether the possibility of a ceasefire remains.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

A day before a somber anniversary, the Israeli military pressed on with its growing offensive into Lebanon. Over the weekend, Israel struck what it said were Hezbollah strongholds in the southern part of Beirut. Media reports in Lebanon said Beirut saw more than 30 strikes early Sunday morning, the heaviest bombardment since Israel escalated its offensive last month. In Iran, all flights were cancelled out of concern of a potential Israeli strike. It's been almost a week since Iran fired missiles at Israeli military targets. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said they were legal and legitimate in his first public remarks since the attack.

It is an Islamic ruling and a logical law, and also in international and global logic, Palestinians are defending their land. Their defense is legitimate, and helping them is also legitimate. The brilliant action of our armed forces in the attack on Israel two or three nights ago was a completely legal and legitimate operation. And in Gaza, the Israeli military launched a new incursion in the north, striking a mosque they said was being used by Hamas and forcing more displaced Palestinians to uproot again or take their chances, like this woman.

Who asks, where should she go when the bombing is everywhere, she says. Meanwhile, family members of the Israeli hostages continue to push the government to bring them home. Like Harout Nimradi, whose son was kidnapped a year ago. It's devastating to think that they're still there, and we can't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing is done, and we are very scared for the lives of the ones that are still alive. Today marks one year since the October 7th attack, where 1,200 people were killed and 250 kidnapped.

Those horrific attacks of a year ago, which, beyond the horror of that day, sort of changed the Middle East. Mark McKinnon is one of two correspondents the Globe has sent to the region to cover the escalating war and the one-year anniversary. Mark is in Israel, while our colleague Eric Reguli is in Lebanon. This is the first of two episodes that look at the anniversary of the October 7th attack and what's happened since then. Tomorrow, we're speaking to Mark about stories from Palestinians and what's happening in Gaza. But today, we talk about Israeli perspectives on the war a year later.

I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Mark, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Manika. Can I just start by asking you, where are you right now? And what have you been up to for the past couple of days? I've actually just arrived in Tel Aviv. The last week or so, I've been sort of shuttling around Israel and the West Bank. We can't go to Gaza right now. But this morning, I woke up in Jerusalem and then drove down towards the Gaza Strip, towards the areas close to the Gaza Strip, the kibbutzes, and this music festival that was attacked by Hamas last October 7th to talk to people about how they're going to commemorate October 7th.

So in general, then, from the people that you're talking to, obviously, you're in various places here. But what has the mood been like in the lead up to the anniversary of October 7th? It's very different in different parts of Israel. Here in Tel Aviv, when I arrived, I couldn't believe how loud it was. You know, just like you have a hard time believing there's a war happening. Less than an hour and a bit's drive from here, I was visiting this very solemn, two very solemn scenes. One was this pile of hundreds of destroyed cars from October the 7th that people were shot and in some cases burned alive inside their cars by Hamas on October the 7th. And the Israelis have assembled really the only sort of state-funded memorial so far they've put

together. They brought all these cars to sort of an open field along the side of a highway and you can go in there and sort of see just the number of cars is very powerful. Some people compared it to all the shoes. If you've ever been to the Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial here, they have just a collection of all the shoes and it's, you know, just the numbers sort of strike you and you see, you know this the scale of all these cars destroyed and then i went down to the site of the nova festival where 300 and some israelis were killed on october the 7th is the the famous scenes that everybody's seen now are um people were dancing partying enjoying you know this overnight music festival when all of a sudden the rockets came

flying in and Hamas fighters showed up and started shooting people in their cars and in the streets. And there they've tried to sort of make it the idea of rebirth. They've sort of planted one tree for each of the victims that were killed that day. And it was very somber down there. But at the same time, you could also hear warplanes overhead and outgoing artillery fire into Gaza. Very, very different

than what I'm hearing outside my window here in Tel Aviv. Yeah. And of course, Mark, you're there during the high holiday period for Jewish people, right? So Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, was just at the end of last week. I guess how has that played into how people there are feeling? It's a very, very strange holiday for most Israelis. I mean, this is a small country and everybody knows somebody who was either killed or taken hostage or had a near escape on October the 7th last year. And of course, it was the holidays just at the end of the last year when this awful Hamas attack happened. So it's a very different high holidays. People cannot help but think of the fact that this is, you know, one year ago today, this all began, despite the fact people are, you know, gathering with families, trying to enjoy the moment.

The New Year's greeting people keep saying is the next year has to be better than this one. At the same time, no one's really sure of that because we've just seen the start of Israel's offensive into Lebanon. We had this mass missile attack. I was in Jaffa, which is right next door to Tel Aviv last week when that happened and everybody had to go into shelters. No one really knows what comes next. So it's almost a wishful greeting, you know, like this next year can't be as bad as the last one. And yet there's a bit of nervousness when even saying something as basic as that. Let me ask you about your kind of travel into southern Israel there, Mark. I believe you actually went to one of the kibbutzes

that was attacked last year. Can you tell me what that was like? Yeah, so that was my second visit to Kibbutz Beri. I was there on, I think it was October the 11th last year, so four days after the initial attack. And it was really the first moment that myself, foreign journalists in general, really saw sort of just how horrific October the 7th was.

You walked around this kibbutz, this tightly knit little community. In the case of kibbutz Be'et, it was a very left-wing community. A lot of peace activists live there, most famously Vivian Silver, a Winnipeg-born peace activist. And we went into that kibbutz last year, and I just remember the scale of the destruction, this entire neighborhood where nothing was left standing by the ferocious battle, first Hamas coming in and taking people hostage and then the Israeli army

coming and retaking the kibbutz and using heavy weapons in some cases to end the battle with Hamas fighters that obviously destroyed some homes as well. And when I was there a year ago,

I mean, they were still, it was so raw, they still didn't know what had happened to Vivian Silbert, for instance, she was thought she was hostage. We found a month later that she'd actually died in her home, but the fire had been so intense that it took them weeks to identify her remains. And there were, you know, the bodies of Hamas fighters were in plastic bags on the streets. And it was just this, you know, sort of really raw and horrific experience. And so coming back this year, I don't know what I expected.

You know, I guess I thought a year's time, there'd be a lot more change than I did see. I mean, there are, of the kibbutz's 1,200 residents, I think 200 have returned. There's 102 members of that small community were killed. There's still 11 who are missing in Gaza as hostages. They think eight of them are probably dead, but they're still hoping, we hope these last three will come back. And this neighborhood I described, you know, it's been the first one that I saw, which was there was a woman named Pessi Cohen, who was her house that the Hamas fighters sort of take a lot of the hostages into. The Israelis, I think, used heavy weapons fire to destroy the house and 12 residents of Bari were killed there.

That area has been bulldozed flat. there was nothing they could do with that and i guess there's a decision that they're going to rebuild this right at the start of the kibbutz but if you go deeper into the kibbutz uh closer to the fence where hamas actually first entered um you know vivian silver's neighborhood it's just house after house sort of scorched, burned out, shot up, children's toys still in the yard, bicycles in the yard, clothes on the laundry lines. It's like nothing's changed since October 7th. No one knows what to do with this neighborhood. Nobody knows whether they want to tear it down or leave it as a memorial or what. I'll just add one other eerie detail I came across while I was there. I was in Vivian Silver's house and I found one of the few things that was intact to the fire

wasn't intact, just sort of a half-burned Bible opened on this page which talked about sort of the battle for Israel and there was a line that was legible that was just said, even unto the valley of Lebanon. I just thought it was an amazing sort of thing in all this destruction

to wonder why it was open to that page, why it survived, obviously, just circumstance and chance, but it felt it was really very eerie. Yeah, I mean, I can imagine kind of being in that space, especially as you say, you know, being preserved after this year, not really touched. I want to talk for another minute about Vivian Silver, because as you say, you know, she was Winnipeg born peace activist, she was 74 years old. What do we know, Mark, I guess, about her last days there? Well, most of what we know comes from her son, Jonathan Zagan, who I interviewed last week in Tel Aviv. And Jonathan and his wife and his children were supposed to be in Beria on that

day. They were supposed to go to Kibbutz Beria. I think it was the Kibbutz's 77th anniversary of its founding, in addition to it being the holidays. And so they were supposed to go and take part and spend the weekend with grandma. And Jonathan was called playing hookies. They just woke up and just didn't feel like the drive down to the Kibbutz. They were tired and decided to stay home that weekend. And instead of being there, he was on WhatsApp with his mom messaging with her and she was saying, you know, like they're in the house. You know, they said what he thought was a goodbye to her. And then afterwards, he was told that she'd been taken to Gaza,

which changed, you know, he thought he'd kind of just started to accept that he'd lost his mother. And then he's told that she's alive as a hostage in in gaza and so he goes through this other process of trying to deal with this reality and then of course finds out i think it's five weeks later that she had died on october the 7th um just they hadn't been able to find her so of all the tragedies of october 7th hers really sticks out because she was someone who invested her life into trying to find ways to bring her organization was called women wage peace and the women on in Gaza and the West Bank and in Israel

who are trying to sort of open other bridges to to, you know, get around, you know, frankly, the men waging war, and to try and find another way out of this. And, you know, of all the victims, she's, you know, the there's an extra layer of tragedy to that. And I mean, imagine for her son, I mean, what a set of circumstances to, you know, of all the victims, she's, you know, there's an extra layer of tragedy to that. And I mean, imagine for her son, I mean, what a set of circumstances to, you know, to be supposed to be there with your own children and to, you know, kind of have things work out that you're not. I guess I wonder, you spoke to him, Mark, how has he dealt with the loss of his mother? He's always been, always supported his mother's politics, but didn't really believe they'd ever make a difference. And he didn't see how he as an individual had any role to play um losing his mother um has caused him to take up her work as much as he can um he has you know he's been traveling with palestinians who

have lost their loved ones and giving speeches together and taking part in forums together to try and talk about just listening to each other's stories and trying to understand there's the common ground right there that there's a lot of unnecessary death that's come over the decades of this conflict and and he is a believer in the two-state solution he's a believer in the fact that israel you know without justifying obviously he's very very angry what happened to his mother but he doesn't see this having started started on October the 7th. He sees it as something that built up through the decades of Israel occupying the West Bank and laying siege to Gaza for 17 years before this took place. And so, as he said to me, he said, it's not about getting back to October the 6th because October the 6th wasn't sustainable.

It's about building something that can actually last. So yeah, he's really taken on his mother's work then, it sounds like. Yeah, that's, you know, he said he owes it to her, but also to his kids. And he said, you know, my mom didn't live to see peace. I'm not sure I'm going to, but his hope is that his children, her grandchildren will reap the rewards of the work. We'll be right back. So that's the story of one person, Mark, Vivian Silver,

who was killed in last year's Hamas attacks. Vivian Silver was one of nearly 1,200 people killed that day, and, of course, 250 more were taken to Gaza as hostages. Mark, let's talk about this. What is the status of the hostages at this time? This is one of the things that makes a lot of Israelis angry is the fact that here we are a year later, a year of war later in Gaza. And we still have, there's 101 of that 250 are still in Gaza somewhere. The belief is, and the number I've heard, nobody wants to say it for sure, but it's upwards of 30, maybe 50 of those are believed to be dead. That, people believe, was avoidable. There have been

ceasefire deals. It felt several times this year when I was here in April and May, like we were right on the verge of a ceasefire that would have seen the hostages returned. And through this period, a lot of Israelis, including a lot of the hostage families, believe that Benjamin Netanyahu's government was never as interested in, that was never their biggest goal, wasn't bringing the hostages home. They had other goals. Destroying Hamas became more important to Mr. Netanyahu and his government than bringing the hostages home. And that makes a lot of people here very upset. How much focus is there still on the hostages in Israel, Mark? I mean, I'm sure there's not kind of a uniform thing, but I don't know, are there still missing persons posters out there? Are there still protests? Everywhere. I mean, just driving down the highway here,

you see these yellow banners, which are the yellow of the adopters, the color of the hostages. You see pictures at bus stations, on fences, on buildings of the missing people. One of the biggest buildings in Tel Aviv is lit up with 366, because it was a leap year, 36 ceremony to commemorate the event in one of the southern cities that was a scene of a big battle between Hamas and the Israeli military. But the hostage families are not taking part. They're having their own memorial service here in Tel Aviv. That's why I'm here. You know, they don't want anything to do with the government's sort of commemoration of this event. A lot of the kibbutzes that were attacked are just, they're closing their gates and having a private ceremony as well, because they also don't think the government has the right to be commemorating this moment,

given the way the last year has been handled. Well, then I guess I wonder, what kind of support does the government have? And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like, how do Israelis see him? Or what kind of support does he have there? Well, intriguingly, I mean, he was near the sort of historic lows for his Likud party until very recently. And what, of course, changed in the last three weeks is the offensive in Lebanon, which began with this astonishing attack where we saw pagers and walkie-talkies of Hezbollah members across Lebanon just explode. And then we saw this, the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who is really one of the dominant figures in the Middle East for the last two decades. And all of a sudden, the conversation here for a lot of Israelis has shifted from Lebanon and the hostages to the war in the north and getting, there are 60,000 Israelis,

I should say, who were displaced by Hezbollah fire over the last year. And they're going to go home. That's their, well, they're hoping they'll go home at the end of this conflict in Lebanon. So that's become almost the more important cause one that mr netanyahu talks about more often than the hostages which of course uh makes the families of the hostages more and more worried but mr netanyahu's polls though have come back up to the point where likud would according to most polls would get the largest number of seats in the knesset if they had an election doesn't mean to be able to form the next government doesn't mean he'd be able to win coalition building in Israel is

always extremely complex. But it shows you that he's rebounded because of deciding to take on Lebanon and take on Iran. And people again, are talking about King Bibi as they have, he's sarcastically referred to because he's, you know, been the prime minister for all but 18 months of the last 15 years. So what Yeah, so it sounds like what you're saying is really in the last few weeks, so that's where the change has happened. Because previously in the last year, maybe he wasn't viewed as favorably amongst a large swath of the population, but things have really turned around then with this incursion into Lebanon. People thought the political math for him was that if the ceasefire in Gaza happened,

he would lose the far-right members of his coalition. They were very blunt about that. If a ceasefire was reached before Hamas was completely destroyed, they would leave the government, which would collapse it, sending into an election that Mr. Netanyahu would lose. And you've got to remember, Mr. Netanyahu is also facing criminal charges on corruption allegations here in Israel. And the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has requested a warrant for his arrest in relation to alleged war crimes. So that's a pretty bleak future for any politician, losing an election and having to face courts both here and potentially internationally. So, yeah, it was seen as he was prolonging the war in Gaza

just because he didn't have another move. And then this Lebanon sort of offensive, the decision to sort of focus on Hezbollah and Lebanon and sort of let Gaza simmer. Again, there's no ceasefire in Gaza. The fighting is still going on there. Has at least given Israelis something to rally around because it's so far has been an extremely successful campaign, unlike what's been happening in Gaza. So, Mark, you mentioned that destroying Hamas was a key goal for Netanyahu because the right wing parties in his coalition demanded that, basically. So what do we know about Hamas's strength a year after October 7th?

It's hard to say. There have been there are ongoing clashes in the Gaza Strip. Every now and again, you do see videos of Hamas fighters sort of attacking Israeli positions in the Gaza Strip. They fired a couple of rockets recently. The group's leader, Yahya Sinwar, is still alive, which is probably sort of the biggest challenge for Mr. Netanyahu. In order to declare victory in Gaza, he can't do that while Sinwar is alive and the hostages are still there. And Sinwar, after the last Israel-Gaza war,

famously came out and sat on a lawn chair and was photographed in front of all the destruction, looking very sort of satisfied that he'd survived. The Israelis don't want to see that picture again. Getting Sinwar probably is top of the to-do list for the Israeli military in Gaza. The problem with the idea that you can defeat Hamas or defeat Hezbollah is that this fight has been had again and again, but you're fighting against an ideology, you're fighting against a people. It's very difficult to squash something, to squash an ideology militarily. So I guess all of this being said, Mark, we've touched a little bit on the potential of a ceasefire deal that hasn't really happened yet. But is something like this in the future? What do we know about how likely a ceasefire deal

actually might be? You know, if there's a ceasefire deal in Gaza, it now has to be a regional ceasefire. You can't separate out Gaza from Lebanon, Lebanon from Iran anymore in terms of who Israel is combating. Hezbollah has been saying for months that if there was a ceasefire in Gaza that held, they would also end their rocket attacks on northern Israel. They were always seen as like, you know, the reason why Hassan Nasrallah gave for firing rockets into Israel after October the 7th was to, he called it a support front. He wasn't waging all-out war on Israel. He was holding back same capabilities.

He was hoping to draw some Israeli troops away from Gaza to help exhaust the Israeli military. Those two fronts were always linked. By going now into Lebanon and saying they're going to destroy Hezbollah, now we're talking about a regional deal, if there's going to be one, which involves whatever the future of South Lebanon is, whatever the future of Gaza is, and some sort of agreement that probably involves the United States and Iran as well, since they are the backers of the belligerence here. I don't see anything like a peace process right now.

Just in our last few minutes here, Mark, since you're in Israel right now, you're talking to people. I wonder, what have Israelis told you about how they're feeling when it comes to the international community's response to this war? How are they feeling about all of this? There's a lot of frustration here. There's a sense that people don't understand that Israel is fighting, as they see it, a war on behalf of the West. You know, if we don't destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, they're going to be blowing things up in European cities and North American cities, is the argument you hear a lot. And we should understand that. They want the West to understand that. They want the West to support them more. And the criticism from Western governments is quite stinging here. I mean, we saw this week

a really remarkable moment when the Israeli government banned the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres from entering Israel. They know this was just, you know, it was after he made remarks that were seen as sort of calling for Israeli restraint. The frustration in Israel is with the international community at large. And they're mad at governments like the Canadian government, even the American government, because they're tired of the criticism. Which is interesting, though, because there's a lot of criticism from the other side, though, saying, you know, the Canadian government, the US government is kind of full support of Israel, too. So you actually, you're saying there's actually criticism on the other side as well. Well, it's war. And so people in war,

they rally around the flag, whether it's here, Ukraine, anywhere. But they feel very misunderstood. They feel like this is a conflict that the West doesn't get. The comparison is always made to September the 11th, that after September the 11th, America had to do what it had to do. That's the comparison here is, you know, we had our September the 11th and now we have to deal with our enemies. Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Thank you, Manika. That's it for today.

I'm Manika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.