I didn't feel like writing anything on October 7th this year. It was too unbelievable, too normal. I woke up, went to school, said nothing about it to anyone, got comments, “jokes,” from my friends about being a Jew, and just walked away. I had no emotional energy to confront it… but now, they’re coming home. The hostages are coming home, and the sigh of relief that was released by myself and everyone in my house, the weight of grief and pain and fear and hope being slightly lifted off my shoulders, made me feel a way I haven’t felt in two years. I say slightly because I don’t think anybody will start to heal until they are home, in their family’s arms, wrapped and engulfed in the warmth and resilience of the Jewish people. And for some, the grief will begin and the healing will begin only when the bodies of their family members, friends, colleagues, etc., are returned home for a proper burial, and have their dignity and soul laid to rest the way they deserve. I have never been prouder to be Jewish, to wear my Magen David and walk around not being afraid to hide who I am. There is this siblinghood and care and empathy that I have never seen anywhere else, and I am lucky to say that I am a part of it. I can breathe for the first time in two years, and I will sit here and wait and watch and hold the hostages’ families’ hands from afar until they are ALL home safely and can begin to somehow try to return to their lives.

Since October 7th, I’ve been to Israel twice. I was at the hostage square multiple times, where families fought every single Saturday, and sometimes other days as well, for the return of their parents, children, siblings, and friends, with the support of an entire community of people that stood and fought against the atrocities committed by Hamas. The first time I went was nine months into the war. It was the Saturday for all the mothers. I stood there with my mother, listening to moms call out to their children hidden in a tunnel under Gaza—starved, abused, exhausted. I listened to husbands call out for their wives, the mothers of their children. On that day, I wrote the following:

It’s incredibly unbelievable to realize that October 7th becomes more believable and more real every time something relates to it. It’s now been nine months since our brothers and sisters were taken. Nine months since the horrible massacre and invasion. Nine months is a long time. Nine months is the time it takes for a mother to grow her baby. I listened to many of the hostages' mothers today. I saw their pain, I heard it, and I have so much respect for the way they kept their composure while calling for the return of their children and for the return of all 120 hostages. I stood with an ocean of pained people, and we chanted to bring them home NOW. We read the names of each hostage, we heard songs, and we honored the mothers, all mothers. I heard the phrase “a mother will do anything for her child” 100 times. I looked over to see my mom, and I held her tight and cried into her shoulder. I don’t think I have cried like I did in a very long time. Hearing stories and reading about it has always been painful. I have been in pain for nine months. But hearing these stories from people in real time, hearing the pain in their voices, created a pain in me that I didn’t know if I could bear for much longer. Walking through the square (dedicated to the hostages and the missing) felt like a punch to my stomach. I was overwhelmed with sadness and disgust to the point where I thought I might throw up. It angers me to think about the people that aren’t fighting for the return of the hostages, because it is not something political—it is about fighting for the lives of innocent people. Why do people not learn from history? Never Again Is NOW. We need to work together as human beings and fight for the release of ALL innocent people: the women, the children, the men, the elderly, the soldiers. Every single one of them. BRING. THEM. ALL. BACK. HOME. NOW. 🎗️❤️ (July 6th, 2024)

The last time I went, I got to listen to kids talk about their fathers. I heard a girl a year older than I was speak about her last memory with her dad, who was murdered and taken hostage, and I stood there feeling guilty for not appreciating my dad more. I held his hand and squeezed it tightly, and I couldn’t let go. Here, on this day, there was nothing I could write or say after the weight on my chest and the knot in my throat.

At the Nova memorial site, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I felt like I was there, dancing with everyone, and as I walked around and read stories, I could see them running and screaming and begging for help. The strength of asking their families not to come because it was dangerous, knowing what to do… I will never forget the story of anyone I read while I was there.

The hundreds of cars stacked one on top of another, burned, destroyed, only pieces left—the ambulance, the vehicles the terrorists created from stolen parts and stolen Israeli cars, the way I drove down Road 232 where all these cars were destroyed, where so many people were killed and kidnapped. Where people hid in bomb shelters on the side of the road and got shot at, had grenades thrown inside with them, saw people die, explode, had to play dead and hide under bodies to survive. I feared for my life, and I could barely breathe, but I stood there and I read every story, hoping to somehow bring these people back to life for just a split second by hearing them fade away…

The first March after the war started, on International Women’s Day, I sat onstage at my school’s open mic, and I read something I wrote dedicated to the girls and the women still held hostage in Gaza. This is what I said:

"I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own." - Audre Lorde.

I am not free until there aren’t 11 women murdered daily in Mexico. I am not free until every woman can walk home without feeling like she has to watch her back. I am not free until we all feel like we can speak up. There is a deep hurt in my heart due to the silence of my fellow feminists, or as I like to call them “selective feminists,” maybe even “hypocrites,” after October 7th, 2023. As many of you probably know, on October 7th, the terrorist organization Hamas entered Israel and raped, kidnapped, maimed, and murdered innocent civilians. Today, five months later, there are still 13 women held hostage in Gaza. I am a woman, I am Israeli, and I am proud. Only now, five months later, feminist organizations are starting to speak up. Only now, they are starting to investigate the allegations of sexual assault against Hamas. Because only now, there are “reasonable grounds to believe Hamas committed acts of sexual assault.” Let me tell you the story of Naama Levy, one of the girls still held hostage. Naama is 19 years old and was kidnapped from the Nahal Oz IDF base. She had arrived on base on Thursday, October 5th, and had just finished her training to be a part of the border observation unit. Many of you have probably seen a video of a girl in grey sweatpants and a black T-shirt being dragged by the hair from the trunk of a jeep to its back seat, at gunpoint, with her hands tied behind her back. Naama is described as a girl who believes in the good of all people. She was a member of "Hands of Peace," which unites American, Israeli, and Palestinian youths for social change and action from the ground up. I am not free until Naama is free. Until all women are free. Thank you to all who spoke up today, I am incredibly proud of you all. I want to be able to protect all women, to fight, to prevent anything from happening to you. The same way I fight for any woman, however different she may be from myself, I ask you, feminist, to speak up and fight for every woman. (March 8th, 2024)

Since then, Agam, Daniella, Karina, Liri, Naama, and all other girls and women are all home safe ❤️‍🩹

Shiri Bibas, Ariel Bibas, Kfir Bibas; you are in my heart and memory forever. Your stories are engraved in my mind, body, and soul, and I promise to carry you with me always. You are so loved, and especially Kfir and Ariel—there are so many people ready to live everything you missed for you. Two beautiful little redheaded boys and their mom, MURDERED in cold blood for being Jewish. The day their bodies were returned—baby Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel’s bodies were returned together with that of an unidentified woman. Shiri was nowhere to be found. Yarden Bibas, Shiri’s husband and the boys’ father, was also taken hostage and was kept separate from his family. He has been released and is alive and well, but he returned to a world where his life was completely flipped upside down. His wife and children are gone. Shiri eventually was returned home and laid to rest with her babies. To the Bibas family, I mourn for you and with you, and you are in my thoughts forever.

The word “Hineni” has been stuck in my head since I discovered its meaning: Here I am. Like it or not, here we are to stay. We’re not going anywhere. We will fight and unite and scream until our voices give out for the justice that not only our people deserve but the return of humanity. Watching the surge of antisemitism in this world, getting swastikas drawn in my notebooks, being told to “pick up coins,” called “soap,” being saved in someone’s contact list as a number, being told “Jews are the worst,” or “ew, Jews are gross.” Having the principal of my high school say to me and my friends, two days after October 7th, “a terrorist for you may be a hero for me,” and having the school do nothing when all we wanted was to put up white flags for peace and then needing to explain that this wasn’t the conflict that’s 75 years old (because that was the response we got), that this was a terrorist organization attacking, massacring, raping, and abusing innocent civilians, when the conflict was just two days old and we had no idea it would stretch into two years. These are all things that never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined, that would make my Holocaust survivor great-grandparents sick to their stomachs, to know that Never Again is now. History didn’t repeat itself, but Israel suffered from the deadliest attack since the Holocaust, and history is just editing itself, adding footnotes. Needing to explain to people that you can hate Bibi Netanyahu, and support the Palestinian people and want them to be free from Hamas’s terrorist regime while also supporting the right to existence of a Jewish state and the return of the hostages, is not that crazy. Having grown adults tell 15- or 16-year-old me—because I was 15 when this started and I turn 18 in two weeks—call me a stupid bitch, inhuman, and crazy, were things that I never imagined.

I hope and pray and beg for the hostages to all return safely home to begin healing, to let the entirety of the Jewish people begin to heal. May those murdered and deceased be returned home to be laid to rest properly, and may the Jewish people remain resilient, proud, and united. Forever.
Bring them ALL home NOW. 🎗️ עם ישראל חי 💙