At sunrise last Oct. 7, 20-year-old Natanel Haziz was enjoying a day off from service in the Israel Defense Forces, joining masses of other young Israelis dancing at the Nova Festival, an outdoor dance party in southern Israel, a few miles from Gaza. First came hundreds of Hamas rockets fired at Israeli civilian centers. Then suddenly there were hundreds of Hamas gunmen wielding RPGs and assault rifles, blowing kids apart as they ran desperately for their lives.
Nearly 400 of those kids were slaughtered. About 40 were kidnapped. As he tried to escape first by car and then by running as fast as he could, Natanel saw dozens of those he had just been dancing with massacred. As he ran frantically from the festival grounds to an avocado field, “all the way to the avocado field I saw dead bodies.”
Natanel survived by inches. A Hamas terrorist grabbed him, but pulled off Natanel’s backpack, which had his phone in it, and the youngster slipped loose. For 3 hours he and others hid in the avocado field.
At 10 a.m., as she does every Saturday morning, Natanel’s mother called him to say hello. The Hamas gunman who had grabbed his backpack answered the phone, and told Natanel’s mother: “I’m from Gaza. Your son’s not coming back.”
When Israel’s first responders finally arrived at the field, Natanel crawled and then ran to them, and was miraculously returned to his stricken parents. He now lives with them, and suffers from severe PTSD. His nights have been ruined by nightmares and anxiety attacks.
Talking about October 7th, Natanel loses his composure at several points. He is in America as part of a delegation of LGBTQ Israeli soldiers here to mark Pride Month and meet with LGBTQ groups and elected officials. As his voice breaks and he stops to collect himself, one of his fellow soldiers, 36-year-old Amit Benjamin, puts his hands on Natanel’s arm.
This is Israel’s story.
That Natanel, Amit, and 34-year-old Shai Arbagil are here to talk about their pride in Israel’s LGBTQ community and their own identity feels almost extraneous. It is their pride in their national homeland and their countrymen that dominates the conversation as they sit in a downtown Boston conference room.
“On October 7th, everyone in Israel was in shock,” says Benjamin, a hairstylist and a reservist in Israel’s Search and Rescue Unit of the Home Front Command. “The world, I think, doesn’t know what really happened.” On that day, Benjamin was at home just a few miles from the Gaza border with his husband Gal. They had learned one week earlier that they were about to have a baby daughter. Amit said this to his husband when he heard what had happened that morning: “I need to find my uniform.”
He was dispatched to the city of Netivot, which Hamas had overrun, executing families and holding civilians hostage. He saw burned cars and bodies as he made his way there. “I smelled death,” he recalls. Then he helped retake the city.
Arbagil, studying for a Master’s in design, went to synagogue that Saturday, not only the Jewish sabbath but also a religious holiday. Three days later he was part of a combat team headed to the Gaza border. What he saw was unimaginable devastation in the Israeli communities along the way. Before long he was in Gaza itself. “I felt privileged,” Arbagil says. “It wasn’t easy, it goes without saying. But I was surrounded by very good people. It felt like I was not alone in this mission.”
Military service famously bonds Israelis of every conceivable background. “For a gay person, it’s a non-issue to be gay in the army,” Amit is saying. “Soldiers who are orthodox, Muslim, Christian, LGBT – we’re all in one spot.” For these three Israeli soldiers, how those who hold themselves out as “progressive” can choose the wrong side is incomprehensible. They’re not the only ones. “In the end, if it is us or Hamas, for people to choose Hamas is insanity,” he says.
Sure is.
Jeff Robbins’ latest book, “Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad,” is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a lawyer, is a longtime columnist for the Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.