Trauma in the Middle East The terror of Hamas and Israels war in Gaza DW Documentary_720p
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00:00:00On October 7th, 2023, the world's eyes were on the Middle East as Hamas terrorists attacked
00:00:24Israel, murdering indiscriminately, taking hostages, scenes of unfathomable cruelty.
00:00:33Israel was struck to its core.
00:00:37I just lay there and thought, is this how I'm going to die?
00:00:41I think October 7th is a new phase for us as Jewish people, right after the Holocaust.
00:00:49It's the bloodiest day in the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict.
00:00:54This was an incredibly serious trauma for the Israeli people.
00:01:01Right now, we feel like, you know, never again is now.
00:01:06Israel responded with war.
00:01:09Its goal was the complete destruction of Hamas.
00:01:13But the bombings and expulsion of Palestinians felt like a repeat of their own painful history,
00:01:19the Nakba, catastrophe, the loss of their homeland.
00:01:24We're experiencing the most terrible form of displacement in the most horrifying way.
00:01:30We're experiencing sheer horror.
00:01:34In my opinion, this is worse than the Nakba.
00:01:37I think people have a challenge to find words to describe what's taking place in Gaza.
00:01:45I lost 70 or more members of my family.
00:01:49Yesterday, I just lost my cousin and his two children.
00:01:52It's a very big trauma for the people there.
00:01:57A new low in the conflict has been reached since October 7th.
00:02:02How can it be that horrific violence continues to beget even more violence without hardly
00:02:08any compassion?
00:02:11Both sides show no empathy whatsoever for the other side's suffering because of the
00:02:16horrendous trauma both have experienced in the past.
00:02:20Both sides are now in trauma mind.
00:02:24They're in a state of high emotion that is contaminating their capacity to think clearly.
00:02:34What are these traumas?
00:02:36And why do Israelis and Palestinians continue these cycles of trauma again and again?
00:02:43What does October 7th mean for the future of the Middle East?
00:02:47This is now the longest open war in Israel's history.
00:02:51Is there hope?
00:02:53Is there a way out?
00:03:14The Gaza Strip, a narrow piece of land between 6 and 14 kilometers wide and 40 kilometers
00:03:21long and densely populated.
00:03:24Before October 7th, more than 2 million people lived here.
00:03:28In their midst, the radical Islamic militant group Hamas was preparing a major attack.
00:03:34These images are not from October 7th.
00:03:36They're Hamas training videos in the Gaza Strip.
00:03:40They were training on different models of Israeli villages, Israeli towns, Israeli
00:03:48military positions and camps.
00:03:50And they were doing it consistently.
00:03:54I saw also the division between those who fight and those who kidnap.
00:03:59And you saw the whole plans through different angles of the training.
00:04:06At several different sites, Hamas trained for October 7th more or less in plain sight.
00:04:13Israel could also see what was going on.
00:04:16We saw these videos before 7th of October.
00:04:19We knew of them before 7th of October.
00:04:22I'm embarrassed to say that there is much more than these videos.
00:04:26I'm embarrassed to say.
00:04:28Much more intelligence.
00:04:30So we saw it.
00:04:32We knew the plan for a decade.
00:04:35They knew exactly what was going on.
00:04:37They just didn't believe Sinwar intends to go at this point.
00:04:44Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is considered one of the masterminds of October 7th.
00:04:50Why did Hamas post these videos online?
00:04:53Why did it reveal its plans?
00:04:56Hamas like any other organization is looking for publicity and for propaganda.
00:05:02And I think what they were doing is rallying people around them.
00:05:07They wanted legitimacy.
00:05:08They wanted to show how well they've been organized, militarized, working as a very,
00:05:15you know, well-developed military organization.
00:05:23Israel didn't take the videos seriously.
00:05:28Part of the problem is the arrogance and the feeling that we have the best technology,
00:05:34we have the best understanding, the best, the best, the best.
00:05:37For those Israeli generals, not all of them, it was like a routine, normal conduct of an
00:05:46army which is training for Judgment Day.
00:05:51They didn't see it as an actual preparation for an imminent strike.
00:06:01We knew we were facing a terrorist organization that will always want to eliminate us.
00:06:08But we wanted, we sort of lived in denial that, you know, yeah, they're just training.
00:06:15That was the, you know, what we said, the misconception.
00:06:22Most people living on the Israeli side of the border to the Gaza Strip had no idea that
00:06:27a major attack was being planned on the Palestinian side.
00:06:34Just behind this fence lies the kibbutz near Oz.
00:06:39Almost 400 people lived here.
00:06:42This was Hadass Calderon's home.
00:06:45We're about two and a half kilometers from the fence.
00:06:51Beyond the fence are Hanunis and other Arab villages.
00:06:55Near Oz, like most kibbutzim, is an agricultural, intentional community.
00:07:02Most living there were left-wing and liberal.
00:07:06I was born here, lived in Tel Aviv, traveled the world.
00:07:10I returned and started a family.
00:07:13I met Ofer, my husband, but now he is my ex-husband.
00:07:17We have four children and I run a clinic for alternative medicine.
00:07:26Things weren't quiet because for 20 years there were many terrorist attacks with rockets.
00:07:33Life in the kibbutz was somewhere between heaven and hell.
00:07:37Most of the time it was paradise, a pastoral, quiet, green place, pleasant.
00:07:44But once or twice a year it turned into hell.
00:07:53The children grow up in the shadow of this situation.
00:07:57They develop anxiety, especially Erez, my younger son.
00:08:03He was afraid to be alone.
00:08:04I had to put him to bed every night.
00:08:08We often thought about moving, but it's not that easy.
00:08:12Still, deep down, you know it's not healthy for children to grow up like this.
00:08:18But we're rooted here.
00:08:20This was home.
00:08:27Living so close to the fence was only possible because the Israeli state guaranteed security.
00:08:34Security is not the correct word for us.
00:08:37It's an existential war.
00:08:41It's our essence to keep our lives.
00:08:45It's not only a simple security, okay?
00:08:48And every politician that I can remember was always running on the ticket of Mr. Security.
00:08:57You are elected as prime minister because of security, not because of the economic situation.
00:09:06The big trauma for Israel is that Jews have never felt safe anywhere in the world.
00:09:15As Jewish people, we will always live around people that we feel wants to kill us.
00:09:19It doesn't matter where.
00:09:22In the south, in the north, you know, somewhere abroad.
00:09:26There will always be someone that thinks that we are not, you know, appropriate, that we
00:09:31don't deserve to live.
00:09:32We were brought up on the stories of our parents.
00:09:37Some of them came from the Holocaust.
00:09:40They have been murdered.
00:09:43They have been seen as vermin throughout Europe and also the Middle East.
00:09:52So it's a kind of a mindset that we can live wherever and we will just need to be on alert
00:09:59constantly.
00:10:00A long history of pogroms, the Holocaust, Jews in Israel are still marked by this suffering.
00:10:13This is the state that we established after the Holocaust, okay?
00:10:20That came out of the ashes to be a haven to Jews from all over the world.
00:10:28And Israel was seen as the one place on earth where Jews might feel safe.
00:10:38But true security remained elusive.
00:10:41Neighboring Arab countries did not accept a UN resolution for the establishment of a
00:10:46Jewish state.
00:10:47Five of them attacked Israel.
00:10:50The Holocaust is not the only trauma Israel has had to deal with.
00:10:54There was the War of Independence of 1948, when Israel was attacked by all the surrounding
00:11:00Arab countries.
00:11:05This country has been going forever to war.
00:11:0948, 56, 67, 69, 70, 73, 82, 96, two intifadas and now the war.
00:11:24This current war.
00:11:26We were engaged in constant, intermittent fighting and confrontations with our adversaries.
00:11:36It never stopped.
00:11:37I think it's impossible to understand the Israeli psychology without understanding this
00:11:44longing to be finally safe and secure.
00:11:49Here in the south of Israel, that longing for security takes the form of steel and concrete.
00:11:55Israel wanted to protect itself following the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, an ultramodern
00:12:02border fence against attacks.
00:12:04By the time the barrier was finished in 2021, the estimated cost was around 1 billion euros.
00:12:11This wall will give citizens in the south a sense of security and allow this beautiful
00:12:20region to develop and prosper.
00:12:2665 kilometers long and six meters tall, the wall is fitted with technology, complete with
00:12:32surveillance cameras, motion detectors and automatic machine guns.
00:12:36It was invented because of developments that happened on the border.
00:12:41Israel has found that Hamas is digging tunnels under the border in order to bring their people
00:12:48inside the kibbutzim, inside the villages.
00:12:51Iron wall.
00:12:53We will pose an iron wall, a strong defensive system, which will deter the Israeli forces
00:13:04which will deter any adversary from wishing to attack.
00:13:12Also, we put many sensors in the depth that will alert us if somebody is trying still
00:13:21to go under the obstacle.
00:13:23I don't think there is any state in the world that has some of this kind of technology.
00:13:30Until October 7th, 2023, Israel believed this barrier was unbreachable and a guarantee of
00:13:37security.
00:13:40I believe that the security barrier against Gaza and on the West Bank border fulfilled
00:13:45two objectives.
00:13:47First, to guarantee Israel's security, putting them inside a kind of voluntary ghetto, with
00:13:53walls and barriers designed to provide a sense of security.
00:13:56But they serve an additional purpose.
00:14:00They make sure that Israel doesn't have to deal with the Palestinians.
00:14:05They disappear behind the walls, behind the fence.
00:14:10That way no one has to face them or hear from them.
00:14:13Israel is no longer reminded of them.
00:14:16They are there and we are here and that gives us peace of mind.
00:14:20I do think that Israelis prefer not to think about how Palestinians were and are living
00:14:30in Gaza.
00:14:30It's excruciatingly painful and it's easier not to think about it.
00:14:36People lost interest.
00:14:38So, I'm on television, we are sitting at the biggest television network in Israel.
00:14:44I'm on television, we are sitting at the biggest television network in Israel.
00:14:49If we broadcast too much about what's happening in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank, etc.,
00:14:55we lose viewers.
00:14:57It is correct to say that people don't want to hear about what is happening there.
00:15:01We have enough of our suffering, we don't want to hear.
00:15:04They're afraid.
00:15:07People are afraid.
00:15:09You know, it's the same thing why people don't want to learn Arabic.
00:15:12Same thing.
00:15:14They don't want to be attached with that language.
00:15:17They don't want to be attached with these people.
00:15:19You know, this is the enemy.
00:15:21I know for a fact that people that escaped from the Holocaust didn't want to hear German
00:15:28language, didn't want to visit Germany.
00:15:30They wanted to disattach from that.
00:15:32I think the same thing happened with Arabic.
00:15:35This is the language of the enemy.
00:15:38And that enemy lives here, Gaza City, on the other side of the fence.
00:15:44There are only two border crossings to Israel,
00:15:47and the State of Israel controls everything coming in and going out.
00:15:54Bashar al-Balbisi was born here.
00:15:57He studied pharmacology and worked in his parents' pharmacy until the war started.
00:16:03Every day behind the fence is hard, even before the war.
00:16:10I'm 23 years old.
00:16:12I've never known a day when there hasn't been a power cut in Gaza.
00:16:24The Israeli occupation puts us under constant pressure.
00:16:27They want us to leave our country.
00:16:30They want to take over the whole of Palestine.
00:16:33They've been putting pressure on the Palestinian people for a very long time,
00:16:37especially on us here in Gaza.
00:16:39The blockade, the difficulty of traveling,
00:16:41realizing your dreams, moving around, everything is difficult.
00:16:47Even before October 7th, resignation and depression were widespread.
00:16:53But Bashar remained optimistic.
00:16:56His passion is Dabke, the Palestinian national dance.
00:17:00Bashar is one of the best dancers in Gaza and used to perform regularly.
00:17:08I feel like I'm flying when I dance Dabke.
00:17:11There's nothing holding me back.
00:17:13I feel free.
00:17:14I can move how I want.
00:17:15I can laugh, be sad.
00:17:17I can leap through the air.
00:17:19I can express everything within me.
00:17:22To him, dance is a form of therapy, group therapy.
00:17:27It has always been that way.
00:17:34After every attack, we dance on the rubble and ashes.
00:17:38We smile through the pain.
00:17:41That's the best way of describing it.
00:17:43We want to convey this message.
00:17:46The people here are fighting for their dream and for what they want to achieve.
00:17:51We're no different from the people outside.
00:17:54Only they have more opportunities than we do.
00:17:58Bashar believes that dance has the power to heal.
00:18:02In the war, we teach the children to dance the Dabke in a simple way
00:18:05so that they can practice and feel it.
00:18:08So it's a way of freeing their minds.
00:18:17Teaching Dabke, especially with children, is like planting a seed that will flourish.
00:18:22Our aim is not to train them to be the best dancers,
00:18:25but to be connected to their home,
00:18:28to love the land and the people.
00:18:31The land that is theirs.
00:18:35A home that Bashar, like all these young people, only knows from stories.
00:18:41Around 70% of Gaza's population are descendants of people who were displaced or fled.
00:18:50Our families often spoke about the Nakba of 1948.
00:18:54How they fled, how they had to leave their homes, how they survived.
00:18:59We asked if they left without a moment's notice.
00:19:01We couldn't imagine how barbaric the occupation was,
00:19:06that they were under so much pressure that they had to leave.
00:19:17The Nakba.
00:19:19No other event has had such a lasting impact on Palestinian history.
00:19:27Well, the word Nakba means the catastrophe.
00:19:30And this is the word that Palestinians use
00:19:34to mark the events that took place in 1947, 1948.
00:19:40In 1948, all the surrounding Arab states attacked Israel simultaneously.
00:19:46In the course of this conflict,
00:19:48which started out as a defensive war against Arab aggression,
00:19:52Israel drove the Palestinians from many of the areas in question.
00:20:00All the Palestinians fled for fear of massacres.
00:20:05The Nakba was an intentional strategic campaign to ethnically cleanse
00:20:11the historic land of Palestine from the non-Jewish population as much as possible.
00:20:17I think that it has a very profound effect on the Palestinian psychology.
00:20:23The stories of the Nakba still burn in the hearts and minds of Palestinian families,
00:20:29moving from generation to generation.
00:20:32And so the trauma lives on and on.
00:20:37For example, what I heard from my grandmother,
00:20:39sometimes when she sees a beautiful jasmine tree,
00:20:42she says, yeah, this looks like the jasmine tree that we had in Jaffa.
00:20:47My dad, until today, he was a very religious man.
00:20:51Until today, he still has the key for their home.
00:20:55My dad used to take us to our land in Beersheba.
00:20:58And I remember as a child, one time we went to my aunt's home and there was a wedding.
00:21:05And even I was like so like crazy happy that finally we saw the land, you know.
00:21:11This event is so remarkable in Palestinian history because
00:21:15many individuals get traumatized directly.
00:21:18And it is not one event only.
00:21:21It's a prolonged trauma.
00:21:25Many Palestinians were not allowed to return after the 1948 war.
00:21:32They and their descendants still don't have a home to this day.
00:21:41The Nakba is the basic of everything.
00:21:44It's the basic of everything.
00:21:46That's what keeps them going.
00:21:47That's what generates, you know, the ideology and the violence and the aggressions
00:21:52and the anger and the humiliation.
00:21:54And it's like all these emotions come from the Nakba.
00:21:58That's the main thing.
00:22:01The belief that everything used to be better in the past
00:22:05and the hopeless reality of the blockade.
00:22:09A perfect breeding ground for radicalism.
00:22:12Life in Gaza was very, very difficult before October 7th.
00:22:16Unemployment is known as being one of the highest in the world during that time.
00:22:20The restrictions on movements were completely controlled.
00:22:24And the rates of mental health suffering was also very high.
00:22:32Studies have come to the conclusion that over 90% of Palestinian children
00:22:37have been trapped in the Nakba.
00:22:39More than 50% of Palestinian children have been traumatized once or even several times
00:22:45by bombs, by war, loss of relatives, the destruction of their homes and schools.
00:22:52A lot of them, they are actually experiencing depression, anxiety.
00:22:57They are experiencing anger, outrage.
00:23:00Some of them, they wouldn't, they told me,
00:23:01they wouldn't go to the bathroom unless their mother with them.
00:23:04Some of them, they would stay wherever their mother is or their parent is
00:23:08For many Palestinians in Gaza, it is clear who is to blame, not Hamas, Israel.
00:23:16In March 2018, major protests kicked off in Gaza.
00:23:2170 years after the Nakba, every Friday saw thousands of people march to the border fence.
00:23:28For me, the March of Return is a great event of Palestinian non-violent activism
00:23:35to claim our legitimate rights as Palestinians, to be recognized, first of all, as a nation,
00:23:42to be recognized as worthy of a state, and also to be recognized that we were forced
00:23:48out of our communities and our lands and our villages in 1948
00:23:53through the Nakba, through the ethnic cleansing campaign.
00:23:56It's another way of Palestinians saying,
00:24:00we are here, we're human beings.
00:24:02We have the right to have a state or a country.
00:24:07We are tired of this life.
00:24:09We are tired of the blockade.
00:24:11We are tired of the bombing.
00:24:14We want to live a normal life like every other human being.
00:24:20For almost two years, week after week,
00:24:23Palestinians demonstrated in the thousands.
00:24:26The atmosphere was charged and increasingly aggressive.
00:24:31Hamas exploited this anger.
00:24:35It was Palestinians who were very, very frustrated with the closure,
00:24:39with the lockdown, with the blockade over Gaza.
00:24:42And Hamas rode that wave for its benefit.
00:24:45And it wasn't initiated at all by Hamas.
00:24:50Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, soon took the helm of this movement.
00:24:56Today, our people begin a new phase in their history of struggle
00:25:04and national resistance, on the road to liberation and return.
00:25:08Today, our people in Gaza, in the West Bank,
00:25:11in the territories occupied in 1948 and from abroad,
00:25:15are coming forward in their entirety to usher in this new phase and correct course.
00:25:20The Israeli government was alarmed.
00:25:23When Palestinians stormed the fence,
00:25:25the military responded with rubber bullets, tear gas, sometimes even live ammunition.
00:25:31Anyone approaching the fence risked their life.
00:25:35Hundreds were killed, tens of thousands injured.
00:25:39So many people, innocent Palestinians, were killed during that time,
00:25:44during the March of Return.
00:25:46It is a failure for those who initiated it, definitely.
00:25:51But all Palestinian attempts to achieve anything until now were almost a failure.
00:26:00They tried diplomatic means, they tried negotiation,
00:26:04they tried the Oslo process, they tried two intifadas.
00:26:08And until now, that is a failure.
00:26:11He started to think about a broader, more dramatic offensive against Israel.
00:26:19And this was, of course, October the 7th.
00:26:23Since 2017, Yahya Sinwar has been Hamas's top official and de facto leader of Gaza.
00:26:30He has been a key figure in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
00:26:34He has been a key figure in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
00:26:37He has been a key figure in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
00:26:39He has been a key figure in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
00:26:42Yahya Sinwar is definitely the mastermind for October 7th.
00:26:46Well, I met him, I don't want to say how well I know him.
00:26:51He's a very cunning, shrewd, calculating type of fellow.
00:26:58People say he's borderline psychopath.
00:27:00I don't know.
00:27:01He's very charismatic.
00:27:04He has a very strong personality.
00:27:07He's very tough.
00:27:08And let's say it, he's very cruel, very brutal.
00:27:11If you profile someone like Sinwar, okay,
00:27:16this is a person that ideology is the most important thing for him.
00:27:21Sinwar's declared goal is to destroy Israel and kill all Jews in the country.
00:27:29The masses of our people and our nation will pour over the borders like raging floods
00:27:34and uproot your entire being.
00:27:37They will find a knife to stab you, a car to run you over,
00:27:42or a Molotov cocktail to burn your hearts.
00:27:48Sinwar was born in the Gaza Strip in 1962 to refugee parents.
00:27:53He is a founding member of Hamas and one of its most radical voices.
00:27:58In his 20s, he was sentenced to jail by Israel.
00:28:02He was sentenced for life.
00:28:04He was in prison for killing Palestinian collaborators, not for killing Israelis.
00:28:09He used his long imprisonment to study his enemy.
00:28:13His sharp mind made him all the more dangerous to Israel.
00:28:2022 years in different prisons in Israel,
00:28:25he read everything he could.
00:28:28He speaks very good Hebrew.
00:28:34By reading the history of Israel,
00:28:37as well as the Holocaust and other pogroms before and others,
00:28:42that they understood the feeling and the trauma of the Jewish people.
00:28:48It certainly looks as though Yair Sinwar studied the Israeli psyche
00:28:55in order to figure out how to maximize pain for the Israeli people.
00:29:01It would appear that he really understands
00:29:05exactly how to get under the skin of Israelis.
00:29:10Fellow inmates feared and respected Sinwar.
00:29:15He positioned himself as a leader among the prisoners
00:29:19and proved himself to be both ruthless and violent.
00:29:24In 2011, Sinwar was released together with a number of loyal followers
00:29:29in a prisoner exchange.
00:29:32Netanyahu released him along with a thousand other Palestinian prisoners
00:29:40in order to get one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit,
00:29:44who spent almost five years in captivity in 2011.
00:29:52There was a lot of public opinion pressure and at one point
00:29:55Bibi reached the conclusion that it's politically wiser for him to give in.
00:30:01And release in spite of the objection of many in the security establishment.
00:30:08Although I didn't condemn this deal even once,
00:30:13after me and my friends stood at the prison that day with tears in our eyes
00:30:20to see all the murderers that we chased for years going free,
00:30:26with these movements and ribbons and flags of Hamas.
00:30:30Okay, for me, it was a black day. It was a disaster.
00:30:35Sinwar was given a hero's welcome.
00:30:39The future mastermind of October 7th immediately set about
00:30:43expanding his influence in the Hamas power structure
00:30:47and he succeeded in further increasing his popularity.
00:30:53Since the moment he came out of prison,
00:30:56he was speaking about doing whatever he can to release his fellow prisoners who were left behind.
00:31:03One of the things we have to assume that Sinwar learned
00:31:08is that Israelis will not leave anyone behind.
00:31:15And for him, it's a vision to release all the prisoners,
00:31:19which is a very sensitive point with the Palestinian society.
00:31:24He wins the minds and the hearts of the people in the society
00:31:31by presenting himself as the protector of the prisoner, as the savior of the prisoners.
00:31:38The fate of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails remains a major issue in Gaza.
00:31:44Sinwar knows that in exchange for Israeli hostages, he could secure their release.
00:31:49His actions do strongly suggest that he learned that taking hostages could be extremely effective.
00:31:59But we can see that he decided, I can do much more.
00:32:05I can go for a massive release of prisoners, but for something much bigger.
00:32:11I can undermine the foundations of Israel's security, of Israeli self-confidence.
00:32:20That's where he was heading.
00:32:23Israel was initially unaware of these plans.
00:32:26Sinwar appeared to be focused on Gaza and his own rise to power.
00:32:30Sinwar comes out of prison with a few of his trusted comrades.
00:32:35Very quickly, he moved aside all the leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh,
00:32:40which was, after the coup in Gaza, the prime minister of the Hamas government.
00:32:47Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran in 2024, left for Qatar.
00:32:53Sinwar and his men wasted no time.
00:32:57They take over the political bureau, pack it with people from the military branch.
00:33:04The political leadership is paralyzed, sent outside Gaza.
00:33:11He moved the circle to Gaza, the center of power to Gaza.
00:33:17So at the first time, at the last decade, the power center of Hamas
00:33:22became to be in Gaza and not abroad with the exile government.
00:33:29OK?
00:33:31In internal elections in 2017, Yahya Sinwar was made head of Hamas in Gaza.
00:33:37He knew how to mobilize his people.
00:33:42Hamas has established itself and rooted itself within the Palestinian consciousness,
00:33:48whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not.
00:33:51And I personally will say I don't agree with everything almost that Hamas says.
00:33:56When you are a victim, you are being in the corner, you're being beaten every day,
00:34:03you're being beaten every day, and you have a hand is being extended to you,
00:34:09you're going to hold to that hand no matter what is that hand.
00:34:12It's as simple as that.
00:34:14So Sinwar came with the vision of he will create the special forces, the Nuhba,
00:34:23those that penetrated Israel.
00:34:25He will establish the possibilities of Hamas to fight Israel in a better way than before.
00:34:34An important tool in the fight against Israel, tunnels.
00:34:38Under the Hamas regime, a network of underground tunnels
00:34:42has been built throughout the Gaza Strip over the years.
00:34:47So tunnels is the way for them to hide from Israel Air Force.
00:34:51It enabled them also to have all these plants that they have been producing missiles and rockets
00:34:58in a way that Israel will not be able to from the air to bomb it.
00:35:05There are said to be over 1,000 tunnels in the Gaza Strip, often kilometers long.
00:35:11The network is known as the Gaza Metro.
00:35:14Hamas controls both the construction and operation of the tunnels.
00:35:20Weapons are manufactured and transported here.
00:35:23Hamas fighters, for example, dig out water pipes to use for the construction of rockets,
00:35:29as Hamas demonstrates in this video posted online.
00:35:35There's something so troubling about the idea of water pipes,
00:35:41pipes that carry the essence of life being used to create instruments of murder.
00:35:49And it tells us something about the state of mind of Hamas fighters.
00:35:56It's essentially become a kind of death cult.
00:36:02The essence of life in radical Islamic thought is the afterlife, not the life in this world.
00:36:11We don't understand it because we have a Western way of thinking.
00:36:16Hamas is about one thing, which is the eradication of the state of Israel.
00:36:22From their point of view, it takes precedence over anything else,
00:36:26including the well-being of the population.
00:36:30Rockets and missiles in the holy war against the devil is legitimate.
00:36:39This is it. It's simple as that.
00:36:42Hamas can also count on its powerful allies.
00:36:47I'm sure it was done with the support of Iran and Hezbollah
00:36:52because they are also doing the same things in their countries.
00:36:58In September 2020, Israel signed the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain,
00:37:05mediated by the U.S., with the later additions of Morocco and Sudan.
00:37:10The focus was on establishing diplomatic relations,
00:37:14a coup for Benjamin Netanyahu, while Palestinians were brushed aside.
00:37:20The first Israeli scheduled flight to the Emirates, a symbol of a normalization of ties.
00:37:28There was a big disappointment in seeing the level, actually, of normalization that was happening.
00:37:34The daily continuous flights of Israeli Jews to Dubai and doing parties and celebrations
00:37:41and business ventures over there and back and forth,
00:37:44flying over us as Palestinians, both sides, as we are still suffering under this occupation.
00:37:51By signing the Abraham Accords and reaching an agreement with Saudi Arabia,
00:37:56the Israeli government under Netanyahu tried to bypass the Palestinians altogether.
00:38:03But this is the typical behavior of a child
00:38:06who covers its eyes with its hands when it's afraid or can't deal with a situation.
00:38:12The high point of this normalization was the first visit by an Israeli president to Abu Dhabi.
00:38:18Israel celebrated the deal as a major turning point.
00:38:24But for the Palestinians, it represented a threat,
00:38:28relegating the question of their future to the margins.
00:38:32They protested angrily against this perceived betrayal.
00:38:41I think Palestinians and many other people in the Arab world feel that the Abraham Accords
00:38:48represent those who signed it. They don't represent the hopes and the conscience
00:38:56and the aspiration of the Arab nations and, of course, not the Palestinians.
00:39:01And I think the Abraham Accords are another tool to deny Palestinian history and Palestinian rights.
00:39:10The Palestinians could greatly benefit from a broader peace.
00:39:14They should be part of that process, but they should not have a veto over the process.
00:39:20He very arrogantly thought that he could shove it into the Palestinians' face,
00:39:28the fact that he is about to sign a deal with Saudi Arabia, even though the Saudis insisted
00:39:35that a pathway towards a Palestinian state be part of the deal.
00:39:39The whole Middle East changes.
00:39:42A new Middle East. On the map, no Gaza, no West Bank.
00:39:47A psychological trigger of past Palestinian trauma.
00:39:50But we do something else.
00:39:52I think there was a direct correlation between the attacks of October 7th and the
00:39:59accords that were happening, especially with Saudi Arabia, where the Gaza Strip, Hamas,
00:40:05the political solution for the Palestinian situation was neglected.
00:40:10My opinion is that Hamas was trying to reclaim a power position in the negotiations
00:40:17in determining what is the future instead of being marginalized.
00:40:21Then there is the unresolved issue of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,
00:40:27which violate international law.
00:40:29There are now 150 of them, with more than 700,000 inhabitants.
00:40:34That means one in 14 Israelis now lives in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
00:40:42Netanyahu's far-right government claims the exclusive
00:40:45right to what it calls the Judea and Samaria area, the West Bank.
00:40:50The settlers can trade their political power for the wish by Likud in general
00:40:59and Netanyahu personally to rule over Israel.
00:41:03So the tail is wagging the dog.
00:41:06Israel is a project.
00:41:08It's a movement.
00:41:10It's something that is all the time extending.
00:41:14All the time wants more land, more houses, and grabbing more land with less Palestinians.
00:41:20Less Palestinians, more land.
00:41:23So this brings back all the time the memories of the Nakba.
00:41:30Many Palestinians feel totally traumatized by the experience of having soldiers
00:41:38check them before they can cross a border.
00:41:42More obvious triggers of trauma for Palestinians are taking of a house.
00:41:49Obviously, any kind of military action, any kind of Israeli violence,
00:41:56is a trauma trigger for Palestinians.
00:42:01I think there are trigger effects on both sides.
00:42:04Israeli military violence terrifies the Palestinians and rightly so.
00:42:09They're afraid that they might be driven out again, forced to flee again.
00:42:15And the Israelis are rightly afraid that terror attacks against Israel
00:42:19will again be planned and carried out.
00:42:22I think what we are doing in the West Bank with more and more points of settlers
00:42:27is ruining the future of the Israeli Jewish state.
00:42:32No question about that.
00:42:34The situation escalated further in spring 2021.
00:42:39It began with protests in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem
00:42:44against an anticipated court decision to evict Palestinians from their homes
00:42:49to make way for Israeli settlers.
00:42:52I think the Sheikh Jarrah became a symbolic expression
00:42:56of the ethnic cleansing campaign that's happening in and around Jerusalem.
00:43:01And especially because it was led by very extreme zealot settlers
00:43:07that were engaging in this.
00:43:09And then they made it very, very clear.
00:43:11They're demonizing, they're attacks, they're insults of the Palestinians
00:43:15that were living there and taking homes and removing the furniture,
00:43:19throwing it out in such a brutal way was a wake-up call for many people
00:43:24that this is a continuation.
00:43:28Palestinians and some left-wing Israelis protested against the evictions.
00:43:34Amid this heated atmosphere, clashes broke out on the Temple Mount
00:43:38and Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine for Muslims.
00:43:45Hamas took advantage of the Palestinians' outrage.
00:43:49Hamas saw fit to portray itself as the guardian of the holy place Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem.
00:44:04Hamas fired rockets.
00:44:07The Israeli response was harsh as usual.
00:44:11War once again broke out with hundreds killed.
00:44:14Yahya Sinwar's house in the Gaza Strip was also destroyed in an attack.
00:44:20But the moment there was a ceasefire, he came out of the ruins and sat in a chair
00:44:27to show, of course, that he has survived, that he will persist.
00:44:33And yes, it was an act of defiance.
00:44:36After this particular operation, Israel believed erroneously
00:44:41that Hamas would be deterred.
00:44:44As the chief of intelligence at the time said, that is two and a half years ago,
00:44:50they will be deterred for the next five years at least.
00:44:54Turns out he was wrong.
00:44:56In early 2023, 10 months before October 7th, Israel had its own worries.
00:45:02The country was rocked by demonstrations.
00:45:05Hundreds of thousands took to the streets
00:45:07to protest against the government's controversial judicial reform
00:45:11aimed at curtailing the power of the Supreme Court.
00:45:14Netanyahu was under increasing pressure.
00:45:17There were intelligence reports on quotes of Hamas
00:45:24that they understand that the situation in Israel is very bad
00:45:30because of the dispute about judicial reform.
00:45:36At the same time, the IDF was monitoring suspicious activity
00:45:40on the border with Gaza.
00:45:42Spotters, you know, they for two or three weeks before the offensive,
00:45:47they watched and they saw all the training nearby the border
00:45:52and they were told, listen, shut your mouth.
00:45:58You know nothing about the strategy
00:46:00because we know that they are deterred and there is no threat.
00:46:03But I think that if you don't want to see something, you won't see it.
00:46:08If Israel was watching carefully the Hamas channels
00:46:13and Hamas TV and radio and newspapers,
00:46:16the main slogan was Jihad, Jihad, Jihad.
00:46:20Something was evidently brewing in the Gaza Strip.
00:46:24Amphibious landings, dummy tanks, house-to-house fighting.
00:46:28In September, armed Palestinian groups
00:46:31carried out joint drills for these situations.
00:46:35Israeli media reported on these exercises.
00:46:38But the government did nothing.
00:46:40Yet intelligence had long been in possession
00:46:43of the so-called Jericho Wall Plan,
00:46:46a Hamas blueprint for a large-scale attack.
00:46:51We had their plans.
00:46:53We got hold of, you know, lots of documents
00:46:57that literally said what they're planning on doing.
00:47:02It wasn't even a secret, most of it.
00:47:05The question, if it's more a drill,
00:47:07was raised three or four days before the attack.
00:47:12And everybody said, from the intelligence system,
00:47:16that it's only drills, it's only training.
00:47:20An extraordinary miscalculation with terrible consequences.
00:47:25At this point in Israel, people felt safe.
00:47:28So safe, in fact, that a music festival was held near the Gaza Strip.
00:47:32We left the house at about midnight.
00:47:34People had said it was going to be a huge festival.
00:47:37Artists had been brought in from abroad,
00:47:39and it was going to be really cool.
00:47:41An opportunity to celebrate.
00:47:44I didn't ask where it was happening.
00:47:47Then I saw Gaza on the navigation and asked,
00:47:50how come we're so close to Gaza?
00:47:56When we arrived, I saw a lot of police.
00:47:59When we arrived, I saw a lot of police, security and military,
00:48:04and thought, OK, we're safe here.
00:48:06It'll be fine.
00:48:08Worst case scenario, there might be rocket fire.
00:48:19I can't describe the feeling.
00:48:21It was the greatest six hours of my life.
00:48:24We were jumping around, enjoying ourselves.
00:48:27It was more than just music.
00:48:29Is this what you experience beyond music?
00:48:34October 6th.
00:48:35Around 4,000 people came together to dance in the Negev Desert,
00:48:40just five kilometers from the border to Gaza.
00:48:45On the other side of the fence,
00:48:47Hamas was beginning their assault on Israel.
00:48:50Phase one.
00:48:52First of all, they activated all the cellular phones
00:48:56with Israeli SIM cards,
00:48:58which have been bought freely on the Israeli market.
00:49:02This was one of the signs that, from Israel's point of view,
00:49:06should have brought the whole army on the border.
00:49:09If they wanted to communicate,
00:49:11they couldn't have used their Palestinian phones,
00:49:14wouldn't have operated inside Israel.
00:49:16The problem was that we failed to understand
00:49:20that this activation could be for only one purpose.
00:49:25In Tel Aviv, alarms were going off among the intelligence community.
00:49:30We know that there was a video meeting of the heads of the military
00:49:35and they understood that something different is happening
00:49:38and they decided to talk again early in the morning.
00:49:42Too late.
00:49:45The attack began that same night.
00:49:48Somewhere around four o'clock in the morning,
00:49:51people on the side of Hamas were gathering in mosques and other places.
00:49:56So you have an unbelievable situation in which
00:49:593,000 Hamas fighters are called to the mosques.
00:50:04Not by phones or any radio, by messengers, physically.
00:50:10Instructed to pick up their weapons from home and report for duty.
00:50:14They still don't know they are going on the attack.
00:50:17They think it's a drill.
00:50:18Mosques are one of the places where underneath they have ammunition and everything.
00:50:23Only a handful of commanders knew really that it's going for real.
00:50:29The low level, and I spoke with quite a lot of them,
00:50:33they knew about it only in the morning, early in the morning.
00:50:376.29am, Hamas launched thousands of rockets.
00:50:42They started with rockets and missiles
00:50:45because they knew that the Israelis are used to missiles and rockets.
00:50:51Across the country, authorities declared red alert.
00:50:55It's not a regular campaign.
00:50:56When you shoot 3,000 or 4,000 and you can see on TV screen all over the country,
00:51:04all over the country, there is an artillery of missiles.
00:51:08There is an artillery of missiles.
00:51:11So many people understood at that minute that there's going to be an infiltration,
00:51:18but nobody thought that it would be that big.
00:51:21The rocket barrage was meant to cover up for the real motive of the operation.
00:51:30Hamas fighters used aerial drones to drop grenades on the towers,
00:51:34disabling the cameras, sensors and automatic guns.
00:51:38What Hamas cleverly planned was to hit those very sensors in the first moments of the attack.
00:51:49Shooting, very simple.
00:51:52Some 3,000 heavily armed fighters from Hamas and other militias advanced to the border fence.
00:52:00When they were on the fence, they told all of the warriors,
00:52:04it's not a drill, we are going in.
00:52:09And then they explode the fence in dozens of points on the fence.
00:52:17Sinwar has decided, I think fairly last minute,
00:52:23to go for 60 points, crossing points into Israel instead of 405
00:52:32in order to grab hostages, go back and then negotiate an exchange.
00:52:43Every unit was in charge of a specific place.
00:52:46You are in charge of that military base.
00:52:48You are in charge of that city.
00:52:49You are in charge of that kibbutz.
00:52:51So everyone has a mission.
00:52:53They infiltrated Israel on scooters, pickup trucks.
00:52:57They didn't know about the other missions.
00:53:00They were very focused, very specific.
00:53:03And that's how it was so well orchestrated.
00:53:07Thousands of Hamas terrorists stormed the border.
00:53:10Hamas knew the Israeli army wouldn't be fully operational
00:53:13because October 7th was a Jewish holiday.
00:53:16And numerous troops had already been deployed to the West Bank.
00:53:20Defensive strong points were overrun.
00:53:23Then they attacked in motorized paragliders.
00:53:27On their way, they clashed into the music festival.
00:53:31It was a surprise.
00:53:32They didn't have intelligence about this party or this festival ahead.
00:53:38OK, but it was very good for them.
00:53:41Thousands of targets.
00:53:44The festival organizers were informed that an attack was underway.
00:53:53Suddenly, the music stopped.
00:53:56I looked up at the sky and saw what looked like fireworks.
00:54:18We were by the dance floor and saw a drone and waved to it.
00:54:21We thought it was part of the event and was photographing the festival.
00:54:26Then we heard the shots coming closer and closer.
00:54:45Suddenly, there was a truck in front of us.
00:54:47They ran at us and shot at the car.
00:54:49We jumped out of the car and started running.
00:54:52People next to me were falling over.
00:54:54I didn't understand what was happening.
00:54:58I had to stop.
00:54:59My legs were shaking.
00:55:01I couldn't run.
00:55:07There was smoke everywhere and shots being fired above me.
00:55:13I didn't see my legs.
00:55:14I couldn't run.
00:55:15I couldn't run.
00:55:16I couldn't run.
00:55:17I couldn't run.
00:55:18I didn't see my life flash before me the way they say you do.
00:55:21I just lay there and thought, is this how I'm going to die?
00:55:27More than 350 young people were murdered by Hamas.
00:55:32It was a massacre.
00:55:35Around 40 people were taken hostage at the festival and taken to Gaza.
00:55:40More and more fighters crossed the open fence into Israel.
00:55:48Once it started, it lured others to join.
00:55:53And then suddenly, people that, you know,
00:55:56have never been trained crossed the border
00:55:58and went to put on their frustration and anger and anxiety
00:56:03on the poor victims that were there.
00:56:07The Israeli villages and towns are so close to the border,
00:56:13five minutes sometimes walking, sometimes running,
00:56:17that all they need is to cross at several points
00:56:20and they are within the kibbutz.
00:56:23Once you cross it, it became a jungle of warfare on the other side.
00:56:30The Hamas terrorists also attacked the kibbutz near Oz.
00:56:35Many of the residents were still asleep.
00:56:37The militants fired at anyone they saw.
00:56:46I heard voices in Arabic, shouts, screams, terrible noises, explosions.
00:56:54And I realized they weren't just rockets.
00:57:00After about an hour's walk,
00:57:02we managed to get into two of the main kibbutzim near Oz and near Am.
00:57:09We are here in the heart of the settlement.
00:57:11At half past eight in the morning,
00:57:13I got a message from my ex-husband, who was with our children,
00:57:16saying there was a terrorist in the house.
00:57:19They jumped out of the window of the safe room and were hiding in the bushes.
00:57:27The power was off, including the air conditioning.
00:57:29It was dark and hot and I could hear them coming.
00:57:35They were in my house.
00:57:36They weren't in a hurry.
00:57:43That's what struck me, they weren't in a hurry.
00:57:47They walked around as if it were their village.
00:57:57They walked around and killed.
00:57:59their village.
00:58:04They walked around and killed, casually.
00:58:07They looted.
00:58:08They brought their whole village with them.
00:58:10Young, children, older people, everyone was there, and no one came to save us.
00:58:23When I went outside, I saw houses burning, and parked cars.
00:58:31Everything was broken, destroyed, burnt, mutilated bodies.
00:58:39I began to realize the extent of this catastrophe.
00:58:43Shoah.
00:58:45We were experiencing a shoah.
00:58:48There is no other word for it.
00:58:52I called my family, but my children didn't answer.
00:58:57Their father didn't answer.
00:59:00My mother didn't answer.
00:59:03Five members of my family had disappeared.
00:59:06I didn't know where they were.
00:59:08My mother is 80.
00:59:10Noya, my 13-year-old niece, is autistic.
00:59:15Ofer, the father of my children.
00:59:20Erez, my 12-year-old son, and my 16-year-old daughter, Sahar.
00:59:26I panicked.
00:59:29Shortly afterwards, a video appeared online.
00:59:36It showed my son Erez being taken hostage.
00:59:49Five days later, I got the official confirmation that they'd been taken hostage.
00:59:59On October 18th, there was a knock on our door.
01:00:02I was informed that my mother and Noya had been found in a shelter, in a pool of blood.
01:00:17The militants abducted Israelis, both young and old, and took them to Gaza.
01:00:40They planned to capture 10 to 20 peoples.
01:00:46Those were the orders.
01:00:47And to bring 240 people was a surprise, was a strategic surprise to us and for them also.
01:00:59Almost every Israeli knows someone who was killed or taken hostage.
01:01:05October 7th is the bloodiest day in the history of the Jewish people since the Shoah, the
01:01:10Holocaust.
01:01:12Israel was in a state of shock, another trauma.
01:01:23I look at it backwards and I think it still looks like a dream or like a nightmare.
01:01:30Soldiers, civilians, men, women, child, they were all, for Hamas, legitimate targets for
01:01:38their atrocities.
01:01:40It was a massacre.
01:01:42It was not a military operation and it was horrific.
01:01:47The militants had infiltrated 18 kilometers into Israel, murdering and taking hostages.
01:01:54It was a big area.
01:01:56All the southern Negev was conquered for 48 hours.
01:02:02It was carnage.
01:02:04Before too long, the question everyone was asking was, how could the state of Israel
01:02:10let this happen?
01:02:16It was a combination, sort of a Murphy's law.
01:02:19Everything that could be wrong happened on this day.
01:02:23There was not enough force.
01:02:25People were not in their places.
01:02:28It was a holiday morning.
01:02:31Israel, in a way, prepared for a very, very minor incident, not for the outbreak of a
01:02:40war.
01:02:41Citizens of Israel, we are at war.
01:02:44Not an operation, not a round of fighting, at war.
01:02:48The enemy will pay an unprecedented price.
01:02:53People tried to regain control, recapture military posts and free hostages.
01:03:05The feeling was a mixture of shock, shame, revenge, failure.
01:03:13Because Israel was shocked out of its equilibrium, it took it three weeks to prepare a ground
01:03:23operation.
01:03:25The Gaza Strip was completely sealed off, and 360,000 reservists mobilized for a counter-attack.
01:03:34I think that the Israeli leadership feels determined to eradicate the terrorist threat.
01:03:44But it's hard not to see that revenge is playing a role.
01:03:50Revenge is not a good thing when you calculate your steps in a war, okay?
01:03:57But you cannot prevent it.
01:04:00It would be naive to think that nobody wanted revenge.
01:04:06It's an all-too-human impulse, but it is not a good strategy for winning.
01:04:12I was very apprehensive, and I expected a very revengeful reaction from Israelis.
01:04:21And I remember very well calling my cousin in Gaza at that time and saying,
01:04:24find a way to get out of there.
01:04:26This is going to inflict a disaster.
01:04:31A few hours after the massacres, Israel attacked Gaza from the air with devastating effect.
01:04:40Three weeks later, it launched a ground offensive with tens of thousands of soldiers.
01:04:46Gaza became a battlefield and was reduced to rubble.
01:04:51Israeli forces began destroying the tunnel network.
01:04:54They also hunted Yahya Sinwar, public enemy number one.
01:04:58But footage showed that he and his family had escaped through the Gaza Metro.
01:05:04It was found in cameras, DVRs, in the tunnels that we entered.
01:05:12It was taken on October the 7th or 8th.
01:05:17It was found several weeks later.
01:05:20By that time, Sinwar went elsewhere, was not seen ever since.
01:05:28I think Israel will do whatever possible to kill him, but he is not a guy who is going
01:05:35to die in bed.
01:05:36He is in a bunker.
01:05:39Whether it's under Khan Yunus or under Rafah, I don't know.
01:05:41He knows better than anyone all the tunnels.
01:05:44And of course, he is surrounded by hostages.
01:05:48I do believe my information that they were able to get to him.
01:05:59But because of the fear for the lives of hostages, they refrained.
01:06:06In Israel, the October 7th massacre has a face.
01:06:10This oversized banner in Tel Aviv reads, think who benefits from the division, unity
01:06:16now.
01:06:19Sinwar is an incredibly important symbol for Hamas, but especially for the Israeli people.
01:06:28So we can understand the need, the perceived need to get him, to feel safe.
01:06:38To focus exclusively on one person and say, once we get him, we will win.
01:06:43To me, that's infantile.
01:06:46I think Sinwar is important like Bin Laden was important.
01:06:49It's a symbol, but we don't have to prolong the war in order to find him.
01:06:53We might find him in 10 years from now also.
01:06:56Israel, of course, erred in not finding a better and more clever ways for conducting
01:07:04surgical strikes in order to get the hostages out and to kill Sinwar and his colleagues.
01:07:13According to the United Nations, airstrikes and the invasion of the Gaza Strip have killed
01:07:19more than 40,000 people and injured over 90,000, including many women and children.
01:07:26Israel defends the large-scale attacks by claiming that Hamas is hiding among the civilian
01:07:32population.
01:07:35More than 70,000 buildings have been destroyed.
01:07:39Hundreds of thousands are homeless.
01:07:41Hunger, disease and despair are everywhere.
01:07:46I can't even imagine the level of fear and trauma the population in Gaza is living in
01:07:52now, not knowing in any moment if they or members of their family are going to be killed.
01:07:59I lost 70 or more members of my family.
01:08:03Of course, we lost all our homes.
01:08:05We lost everything that we ever had.
01:08:11The worst part about what's happening now in Gaza is that it's being televised.
01:08:16Everyone knows about it.
01:08:17Everyone can watch what's happening in Gaza on their screens.
01:08:20And the world has not managed to stop it.
01:08:25Yet another generation in Gaza is living through war, becoming traumatized and susceptible
01:08:30to radicalization.
01:08:32This will not make Israel safer.
01:08:34It's correct to say that people that are now suffering from Israel will be anti-Israel
01:08:40in the future.
01:08:41It's correct.
01:08:42When will the war end?
01:08:45No one can say.
01:08:47There appears to be no clear goal.
01:08:49What is it that Netanyahu wants?
01:08:51What is it that Israel wants?
01:08:53Are they trying to eliminate, you know, Palestinians totally?
01:08:57Or what is the deal?
01:08:59Bashar al-Bilbisi fled the bombings like many others.
01:09:05We just had a strike here.
01:09:12There was shelling too.
01:09:14It was very loud.
01:09:18The situation here is dangerous.
01:09:20It's dangerous to be here.
01:09:22It's also dangerous for anyone thinking of returning.
01:09:30Until the war, this was a big prison, enclosed on three sides by a fence, the fourth side
01:09:35the sea.
01:09:36The war has turned it into a small prison.
01:09:39Now there are planes overhead, bombing and trying to kill us.
01:09:45Bashar now lives in the south.
01:09:48The north, his home, has been completely devastated.
01:10:01The worst thing is you don't know where you're going, where you're going to live, if you'll
01:10:06ever go home again.
01:10:12We left without knowing that we wouldn't come back.
01:10:21We didn't think it would last six months.
01:10:24We said to ourselves, maybe a few days, two weeks, and we'll be back.
01:10:28We didn't even take our clothes with us, no documents, no certificates, nothing that was
01:10:33important to us.
01:10:35Since October 7th, hundreds of thousands of people have been fleeing across Gaza in search
01:10:41of shelter.
01:10:43There is a lack of water, food, and medical supplies.
01:10:53These are normal people from Gaza City.
01:10:55They've been on their feet for 200 days, and you can see it in their eyes.
01:10:59They're marked by grief and exhaustion.
01:11:02Above all, they've lost hope to continue living there again, because there was absolutely
01:11:07nothing left to eat.
01:11:09There was constant bombing, death and destruction everywhere.
01:11:12There's no safe place left in Gaza.
01:11:15It was simply too dangerous in the north.
01:11:17They wanted to drive out the whole population from northern Gaza.
01:11:23Bashar and his family have fled three times now.
01:11:28For now, they are camping here on the beach.
01:11:34These places were uninhabited before the war.
01:11:47We're experiencing the most terrible form of displacement in the most horrifying way.
01:11:52We have to endure such cruelty.
01:11:59There are no winners in this war.
01:12:02Palestinians are experiencing immense death and suffering.
01:12:07Israel is mourning its dead, hoping that the hostages still held by Hamas will come home.
01:12:18The hostage-taking was a horrible experience for the Israelis.
01:12:22The idea that there are still hostages in tunnels in Gaza today, that women are still
01:12:28being raped, is something that I don't think any Israeli can cope with.
01:12:35We are speaking about innocent citizens that a brutal terror organization kidnapped and
01:12:42they really, they suffer, the humiliation is unacceptable.
01:12:49Israel has succumbed to a kind of melancholy, some form of depression.
01:12:56The faces of the hostages can be seen everywhere in the streets.
01:13:01Everyone here knows their names, their stories.
01:13:09Their relatives in particular continue to protest against Netanyahu and his government,
01:13:15like here outside the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
01:13:21This extreme right-wing government is keen to continue the war and not focused on bringing
01:13:26home the hostages.
01:13:28Netanyahu did not care about the hostages or at least understood that he will not be
01:13:35able to reach his war aim of eliminating Hamas if he cared about the hostages.
01:13:41This is the reason why you heard Sarah Netanyahu saying to the families, you are playing into
01:13:48the hands of Sinuar, which is of course terrible to say to the parents of children that are
01:13:52there.
01:13:53But I know where it comes from.
01:13:56Of course Sinuar and others know that we are sensitive and know that we are a democratic
01:14:02state and know that people will demonstrate on the streets.
01:14:05Of course.
01:14:06The families are keeping up their campaigns and unleashing their anger.
01:14:14This demonstration is in front of the party headquarters of Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu's
01:14:20party.
01:14:21The hostage-taking has re-triggered the trauma of the Shoah.
01:14:29Hamas is playing a remarkably cruel game, a kind of psychological warfare, by continuing
01:14:34to post videos of hostages.
01:14:37That way they get under the skin of the Israeli public.
01:14:42Psychologically they're hurting us a lot.
01:14:44I mean, their attempts to do everything they can to weaken us is quite visible and it works.
01:14:54These glimmers of hope are wearing Israel down.
01:14:58Hadass Calderon's ex-husband is still in the hands of Hamas.
01:15:03Her children were released at the end of November, along with 108 other hostages, in exchange
01:15:10for Palestinian prisoners.
01:15:14My children were missing for 52 days.
01:15:17Then they came home.
01:15:18We hugged each other and cried.
01:15:25Erez was in shock.
01:15:27He smiled, but he was in shock.
01:15:30He still hasn't been able to cry to this day.
01:15:33Saar cried immediately and didn't stop.
01:15:36And they talked and talked and talked.
01:15:38They're back.
01:15:39But it's not over.
01:15:41They keep reliving October 7th.
01:15:49They live in uncertainty, in fear.
01:15:52They think that at any moment a terrorist will attack again.
01:15:56Their home is no longer a safe place.
01:16:02Their innocence has been stolen.
01:16:04It's been literally taken from them.
01:16:11There is no more happiness, none.
01:16:16I realize it myself, nothing makes us happy anymore.
01:16:22We used to be able to enjoy small things.
01:16:24Now we can't, never.
01:16:26It's as if something has been switched off.
01:16:36Our fight is not over yet.
01:16:37Their father is still there.
01:16:49You can't fight this kind of pain.
01:16:56For over 75 years, Israelis and Palestinians have been locked in a never-ending spiral
01:17:03of trauma.
01:17:05I feel traumatized since the day I was born.
01:17:09I was born into the stories of the Holocaust.
01:17:12I was raised on the wars.
01:17:15I was a soldier in a war.
01:17:16I'm traumatized from my early years.
01:17:20New research in epigenetics confirms that the traumatic effect goes for a few generations.
01:17:28It passes from one generation to a few more generations in the future.
01:17:33And I expect that we Palestinians are affected by all these forms.
01:17:40October 7th and the war in Gaza have ensured that yet another generation of young Israelis
01:17:45and Palestinians remain traumatized.
01:17:58Michal is returning to the scene of the massacre for the first time.
01:18:04She can hear the war in Gaza raging in the distance.
01:18:14This is a scar that will stay with me my whole life.
01:18:22So many people I will never see again.
01:18:31She's trying to find ways of coping with what she experienced.
01:18:40I won't sink into sadness and depression.
01:18:43That's what they want.
01:18:45I won't let it happen.
01:18:51I thought about what I could do personally to tell the story so that people know what
01:18:56really happened.
01:19:00Also to remember my friends who are no longer here and to be the voice of the people who
01:19:06can no longer speak.
01:19:13That's how I can heal.
01:19:16Hi everybody.
01:19:18Thanks for coming.
01:19:21I come here and tell my story and I can't believe it really happened.
01:19:25I can't believe it.
01:19:32I watch videos that I'm in.
01:19:34I see in these videos that it happened.
01:19:38I can't believe that such evil exists.
01:19:42Because they didn't just come here to kill.
01:19:45They came here to maim, to humiliate, to degrade us.
01:19:52If the trees could speak.
01:19:57Is there a path to forgiveness?
01:20:00After what everyone has been through, that seems impossible.
01:20:05Our research has shown that hurt people are at a higher risk of hurting other people.
01:20:12The claim that hurt people hurt people is not meant to imply that every person who is
01:20:18hurt will hurt others.
01:20:20If you've been hurt and on top of that you've been educated that you need to be violent
01:20:27towards certain people and you've also been educated that your family has been hurt as
01:20:33well and that your people are hurt as well and you've learned of your history in a way
01:20:39that contributes to that grievances and that really, really strong victimization, then
01:20:48all that will definitely lead to the fact that you will hurt others.
01:20:52I've interviewed a lot of perpetrators all over the world and what I've noticed is that
01:21:00perpetrators invariably see themselves as victims and perpetrator leaders use that to
01:21:10recruit followers.
01:21:12They tell a story about our victimization in order to mobilize fighters.
01:21:19And in fact, where I noticed this the most was in talking to Jewish extremists in Israel
01:21:27and Hamas members.
01:21:30When trauma is the basis of an identity, a victim identity, it prevents you from having
01:21:35empathy for others because you are the victim.
01:21:39Since when should the victim feel empathy for the perpetrator?
01:21:43Because if you are the victim, then the other person is the perpetrator.
01:21:48No responsibility is taken for one's own violence on either side.
01:21:54Violence that is excessive, that traumatizes, that has consequences for which responsibility
01:22:00must be taken.
01:22:02Instead both sides have a victim narrative that legitimizes their violence and relieves
01:22:07them of responsibility for it.
01:22:10The consequence of always seeing oneself as the victim and the other as a perpetrator
01:22:17is that it becomes possible to commit atrocity.
01:22:25And I think that applies to both sides.
01:22:30Bashar is trying to help heal the trauma his way, by dancing with children in the refugee camp.
01:22:37The difficulty of dance training specifically for children depends on the teacher.
01:22:48The teachers are under enormous pressure and have to develop a sense of how the children
01:22:52are doing.
01:22:54Everyone has their own story, their own cultural background, and now they're all here together,
01:23:00in this place.
01:23:04So it can be hard to pull myself together when I'm teaching.
01:23:09I have to keep showing them that I'm full of positive energy, which I want to communicate
01:23:14to the children, so that they learn to love dance as much as I do.
01:23:30I use the traditional Dabka dance to try to fight the negative energy around us.
01:23:34It's the only way we can get through this.
01:23:47Despite the circumstances, we do our best to put a smile on their faces.
01:23:51I think they're all happy and enjoy the atmosphere we create.
01:23:56I think that in their minds, they're far away from the war.
01:24:01Is there any hope, any way out?
01:24:07I think two sides of a conflict, who have both been severely traumatized, can find a
01:24:13way to reach one another.
01:24:15In the shadow of their shared experience of trauma, they could develop empathy for one
01:24:20another.
01:24:21But I think the exact opposite has happened in Israel and among the Palestinians.
01:24:28Empathy is a very, very important thing.
01:24:33It's what will allow for people to start communicating again.
01:24:38The understanding of both societies, of the trauma of the other side, is very important
01:24:43in order to reconcile.
01:24:45No question about that.
01:24:47I don't think that there are groups on both sides, small groups that are talking to each
01:24:52other, families that their sons or daughters were killed.
01:24:56It's very small numbers and I don't see it in the near future.
01:25:00I don't believe that the only road to peace is via trauma therapy.
01:25:04We simply don't have the time for that.
01:25:07I believe peace negotiations must begin.
01:25:10Only then can one begin to deal with their respective traumas.
01:25:14We are not there yet.
01:25:15We are not there yet.