Transcript of The Year Since Oct. 7

Hey, it's Lauren Dragan from Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times. And I test headphones. We basically make our own fake sweat and spray it over and over on these headphones to see what happens to them over time. We're gonna put on some noise canceling headphones and see how well they actually block out the sound. I have 3136 entries in my database. Kids workout what version of Bluetooth? At Wirecutter, we do the work so you don't have to. For independent product reviews and recommendations for the real world, come visit us@nytimes.com. wirecutter from the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is the daily one year ago, Israel suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. The conflict that followed has become bigger and deadlier by the day, killing tens of thousands of people and expanding from Gaza to Yemen, Lebanon and now Iran. But as big as October 7 still looms in the world, its most powerful legacy is on the ground with the people who lived through it and are still enduring its aftermath. Today, we return to two men in Israel and Gaza to hear how their lives have changed.

It's Monday, October 7.

Hello?

Hi, Golan. This is Sabrina Tavernisi from the daily, from the New York Times daily podcast. Last October, I spoke to a survivor of the October 7 attacks.

My name is Golan Abitbol. My age is 44. I live in kibbutz Berry, and I was born in the kibbutz.

Golan's kibbutz in southern Israel was one of the hardest hit places in the country.

We woke up to the sound of launching missiles.

He described the attack by Hamas that day as unfolding like a nightmare.

You could see murder in dies.

He saw men going house to house.

They took babies.

They killed his friends, kids, his neighbors. They took elderly people, people he'd known all his life.

The best friend of my son, the most adorable, gentle kid, and just ripped him away from the hands of his mother.

It was more than 7 hours before help arrived. By the end, the community had been devastated. 101 of its roughly 1200 residents had been killed. Ten hostages remain in Gaza, but only three are thought to be alive.

People from Gaza, they were our friend, and we donated money to them.

Many of the people who lived in the community believed in peace with the Palestinians.

The mother of a friend of mine, she used to go once a week to one of the border crossing with Gaza Strip and pickup with her cardinal children and take them to get dialysis in israeli hospitals.

Some of them had even made it their life's work.

We are liberal person. We don't believe that all of the people in Gaza are evil. We don't believe. We didn't believe. I'm sorry, we didn't believe. I don't know what I'm thinking now.

But Golan said that for him, what happened on October 7 threw all of that into question. Golan, hi.

Hi.

How are you?

I'm very good. I'm glad to see you.

Sorry for the quality of the selfie camera.

No worries. Last week I called Golan. He and his family were living in the coastal city of Haifa. They had moved there from a hotel on the dead sea where they'd been living after the attack.

We've been to the hotel for five months. They were great. The people did their best to. To help us cope. But it's hard. It's hard to live in a hotel. We had three rooms for all of us. And you go out and there is all the grief. And basically one of the girls didn't took it very well. And me and my wife thought that it's not a good solution for us and our family. And we went to Kaipa.

Was that your daughter? What was she experiencing?

It was very hard to make her go to the. To the school they made in the dead Sea. She took the bed like half a meter away from the wall and put some pillows and put on her headphones and just stayed there.

And so she kind of shut down.

Yeah. And we decided we need to leave.

When you moved into the apartment in Haifa, what did that feel like? Did that feel like going back to normal in some way?

It's a mixed feeling because I consider my home in kibbutz Berry. From one side, we are back in civilization, but it's not my civilization because I used to be in a kibbutz. Kibbutz. It's a shithole. You know, it's a. You can, you can't get anything. You can't get anything delivered over there. You know, I'm just. I'm not used to this scenery of cars and people I don't know. And in the beginning, it was a kind of felt like kind of a betrayal.

How explain that.

Because it's the community. It's to go outside and walk barefoot and pick lemons from the neighbor tree and know everyone else and go and sit and drink coffee with the other neighbors. And wherever you go, you know, everyone. And changing this, it took me time, but. But I know it was the good solution. It was good for the kids to leave the hotel and come here.

Do you feel like you found some peace now after all these months, after that roller coaster? Have you settled a bit emotionally?

No. No. It's all. It's all mixed together. It's all mixed together. It's. It's so. It's. I. I guess I'm better than the last time we talked, but. Well, I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I have a lot of sadness and a lot of anger that wasn't there before. No, I'm not a sad person, not a hungry person, but vengeful person. I wasn't. Not a warmonger person. It wasn't. It's a different situation.

I'm not.

We are not the same. None of us is the same. And I can put my hands exactly on it.

Golan, when I talked to you after October 7, speaking of anger, you did mention you were angry. I remember that in your voice. And you just felt like this sense of disbelief that it had happened and anger. You said there were some closenesses between the kibbutz and Gazans. There were Gazans who worked at the kibbutz. There were people who helped Gazans get to cancer treatments. There were donations. But that October 7 had changed things. Do you still feel angry? How are you feeling on that front?

I think my thought of the palestinian people change and not for the best. I'm not saying I was a left wing, but I had hoped for a solution, peaceful solution, which I don't have now. And I have a lot of disappointment of my government that still didn't find the way to bring my friend back. And they are dying over there. I'm really disappointed that this is the same army that didn't show what is going on behind the fence just 4 km outside of my house. I'm. I can't believe it's the same army and the same intelligence operations. It's hard. They had an obligation for us and they neglected us. And now they need to return our friends and family back. And for the last year, they didn't do it. They didn't do it.

Do you think the government is making a mistake by not making that the priority?

Yeah. Yeah. This is the priority. We don't have time. They are dying there. We need to make it a priority. We need to make it first priority. And I. I can't change it.

Yeah. Yeah. Golan, you said that your view on Palestinians had changed, that you lost hope for a peaceful solution.

I don't believe there is any way that us and the Palestinians are going to be in some kind of a mutual agreement that, that have some kind of a coexistence. I believe that in the end, I don't think there are any good people to do peace anymore with. I don't like war. I don't like to see the Palestinians the way they are. But I hate it. I really hate that they made me change my mind on them. I hate them for showing me that the worst of them, the worst things they can do, they can be. And I will never forgive them. I will never forgive them for what they did. I will never forgive them for the slaughter and the ways they, they murdered my friends. I will never forgive them.

But isn't the answer that it's not a monolith in Gaza either, right? That there are different people there? There are those people who did October 7 and then there are also other people. And it's just pretty complicated.

I don't think anymore that way. I believe that we should alienate ourselves from the Palestinians. I think we should not be near them. I think we can trust them. I think the solution is just to build the big wall, and they are here and we are there. I don't think we can ever trust them to annihilate the urge to kill us. I think it's always, was there. Somewhere in the back of their head, maybe there are people who are not thinking like that. But the majority of them, they can say they are peaceful, but I believe that somewhere in the back of their fundamentalist head they want to kill us.

Golan it feels very hopeless to me. And it feels different because, as you said, you didn't have this view before October 7.

In the, in the past, I thought, we can do it. We can do it in a peaceful solution, but we can't do it. We can't. And we tried to do it in Gaza. We tried just to take everything and go out. And you saw what happened. We took everything and went out and they slaughtered us. And if we do it, if we go outside and leave them, they don't have the maturity and enough humanity inside of them to just let us live and let us stay here.

I guess I'm curious how you think about this. I've had a conversation with a man in Gaza who had sent his kids and his wife to Egypt because he felt like it was very dangerous in Gaza. Very much disagreed with what happened on October 7, but has kind of been caught up with everything that's happened since, namely the invasion of Gaza and the war there. Do you see that there or acknowledge that there could be people there in Gaza who weren't party to what happened and who were suffering, though they did nothing.

I'm sure there are people who didn't do it. I'm sure. I know there are a lot of innocent persons and I don't like to see them die. But I really, really want my friends back. And I really, really want the Hamas regime to be gone after what they did to us. If you keep terrorist organization, if you let terrorist organization build a tunnel under your house, you are part of it. You are part of it. This is the regime they have and we have to annihilate them after what they did to us. And they said they are going to do it again.

But what about those people you said who were not part of it?

I don't wish for palestinian kids and innocent people to die. I really don't. But I don't think there can be any peaceful solution to us. And Zen, I think that you can't do such an horrific massacre and it's not affecting all of the community over there. They are part of it. This is the price of war.

But there are innocent people that suffer as a result.

Of course, but it's a war and we need to finish it. And we need to finish the Hamas. And Hamas is still there. We are all inside Gaza now. We are all inside this fight, whether it's a our friends that are fighting there or whether it's my friends who are being hostage there. All you have to do is bring the hostages back and stop trying to kill us. And this is what really bothered me about all the international community. They can give really a lot of critic on Israel because we are nothing, being humane and not being. Give pressure on the Hamas to bring the hostages back. Give pressure on Hezbollah. Stop shooting at us. The last years they have been shooting at us. Okay, if you, if the international community would have stopped Hezbollah from shooting, we didn't have to invade. I don't want to invade Lebanon. I don't want it in the other side also. I don't want the Lebanese and the Palestinians and the Houthis in Yemen. I don't want them to die. But it's time for war. We can't sit on our hands while they are slaughtering us. We can't sit on our hand while after a year of non stop bombing from the north, we can't.

We can't. We have to go to war.

Golan, what do you want people to understand about you and about Israel a year later?

We don't want this war. We were dragged into this war by force, by brute force and terror. And we don't want to keep on doing it. We don't want to keep on killing our neighbors. And it's that simple. Just stop. Stop trying to kill us. And maybe in a few decades we can have some kind of reasonable peace. After we forgot, after the pain will be a little more numb.

Golan, thank you for talking to me.

Yeah, thank you.

When we come back, the story of Hussein, a palestinian man living in Gaza.

I'm Luke van der Plug. I'm a producer on the daily. Probably my favorite part of working on the show is when we get to hear directly from our listeners, you guys, about how your lives are being impacted by the news. I've spent entire days of my life listening to hundreds of recordings that you all have sent in. It's wildly beautiful to hear all of your voices, and it's a huge reminder of the relationship that we have with our listeners. Every episode of the Daily is made for you to help you understand the world and understand your place in it a little bit better. We're able to bring you these stories because of a group of you who are subscribers to the New York Times. The daily runs on the journalism of the New York Times, and the New York Times runs on subscribers. So if you love what we do, consider subscribing to the New York Times.

I first spoke to Hussein in February. Hussein, hello. Hi. My goodness. It's very difficult to get through.

Yes. Thank God. There is kind of connection right now.

The day the war began, he was waiting for a furniture delivery to fill his newly renovated home in Gaza City.

It was very beautiful, actually. We have a big balcony, and we were thinking that this big balcony would be a place to sit in drinking coffee and eat and leaving fresh air.

That home was destroyed in the war's early weeks. And in the months after that, he moved four times, each time further south in the Gaza Strip.

A lot of clouds here. You can imagine. There is more than a million people are here in this small city.

Eventually, Hussein ended up in Rafa, the southernmost city on the border with Egypt. What does it look like?

It's dark and a lot of crowds of people just walking, trying to find crude water, just walking around us with no direction, with no destination for them.

At the time, nearly half of Gaza's population had taken shelter there, and Hussein was trying to decide whether he should send his wife and three children to safety in Egypt.

I just remember the silly questions we used to play in our childhood. Who will you choose to save? We never imagined that we can be in a real situation where we got to choose.

It was hard living without them, he said, might be too painful for him, but staying in Gaza was too dangerous for them.

Right now, I'm thinking about evacuating my kids to save them from the hell we are living in.

A few days later, Hussein paid to get them out, but he stayed behind to work off the debt he incurred to send them away and to care for his elderly parents. Hussein? Hussein, can you hear me?

Yeah, I hear you. Yes.

Hussein. Hi. I'm glad to hear you.

Me too.

You sound clear.

Yeah, thank God. Actually, I got a good connection right now.

Hussein, where are you right now? Where am I catching you?

I'm in Diral Balach in the middle area of Gaza. It's the fifth or fifth displacement or location I am in through the last year.

When I reached Hussein last week, he was living in central Gaza with his parents and siblings.

I'm living in a house. I got the financial ability to pay, but even though that I am in a house, I get to fetch water. I get to do this because there is no water reaching the houses. Yeah. And imagine I pay monthly for this apartment, 3500 shekels, which is almost $1,000.

Wow.

And for me, I am less than 1% of the community who are almost a year without work. They don't work, they don't have income. So imagine I have a good income and I'm facing this problem. To secure my basic needs, I can't get clothes, shoes, proper food, anything. I've been wearing the same clothes for a year right now. The same shoe I'm wearing for a whole year, which is falling apart and torn out. But there is no, no choice. Even though I got the financial capability to buy a new pair, but there is nothing in the market. It became so strange. If you see someone who looks well or who are dressed well, all the people are looking miserable. You can see the pain, the misery, the struggle on their faces, the loss. It's obvious the loss. And due to the lack of clothes, most of the people are wearing the same thing as if they are in a uniform, but in a dirty uniform. The same misery over their faces. All of us are kind of lost, you know? All of us are lost here.

And Hussein, what's an average day for you? What's your life like from day to day?

Try to avoid thinking, to keep myself busy. Each day I wake up early morning, I check on the water, try to get a couple of buckets to just wash my face and to wash my feet, etcetera, which is literally sea water. When I wash my face, actually, it burns.

Wow. It's seawater.

Yeah. Then I try to go to my work. We got electricity and Internet on the walk. And when I go back to home, I try to keep myself as much as busy. I try to walk on the streets for hour or 2 hours because staying alone is very hard for me, far from my kids and my wife. But most of the day, I try to keep myself busy walking. Yeah. Not to think. To walk.

You said that you try not to think. What do you try to avoid thinking about? Where do you not want your mind to go?

About not seeing my kids again. Yeah.

Hussein, tell me about how you talk to your kids. How often do you talk to them? How do you keep in touch with them over WhatsApp?

Yeah. When I got Internet, I talked to them. Sometimes we have video calls, etcetera, voice calls. I'm trying to follow up their life and to be with them, and they share videos with me. What have they done and the places they are going to about their dreams, what they do. Yeah. And thank God, Alhamdulillah, that they got food right now, they got proper clothes right now, and, inshallah, they are safe there. Yeah. And this released me, at least, that they are safe.

Are they back in school?

Yeah, online. Just because they don't have residency papers and they can enroll on schools. So just online.

Their teacher is in Gaza or in Egypt on that online school on West bank. On the west bank. Wow. So they're in Egypt and they're taking online school with a teacher in the West bank?

Yeah.

Wow. That's quite an arrangement.

So complicated life.

Very, very. What about your wife? How is she doing?

Alhamdulillah? She's doing well. Yeah. And I know there is a lot of things over her shoulders and. And it's really hard on her, but Alhamdulillah, she still can do it and have the strength to care. Yeah. And actually, I never imagined that I can survive this. It seems that we are surviving. I've seen people out there. I've seen people are burned up. I see rockets falling in front of me. I saw my house, which I've been working for all my life to build, being destroyed and to be bombed. I've seen a lot of things, but I'm still surviving, I guess. Humans got a huge power. We don't know about it.

Hussein, are you surprised that the war is still going?

I'm surprised that there is humans doing these wars. Why they do it. How could humans became disease, killing others, imposing collective punishment on over 2 million people with no reason. What are they gonna get? Why they are doing this? How could humans do this to other humans? Well, it's actually. I'm still shocked how people can do this and why to do wars from the beginning, why to occupy other people's land? Why to do all of these things?

I wanted to ask you, Hussein, you know, on the question of why the war is still going, there have been many efforts to try to get a ceasefire and a hostage deal, but until now, now they failed. What do you think of that? What do you think is happening?

I think that I'm a hostage. Actually, I'm a hostage. For me, alongside with around 2 million people without hostages, what's the difference between us or any hostage? Do we have our freedom? Do we live normal life? Do we get to do our decisions? No. We are forced in this situation via guns and weapons. Yeah. And I wish that someone would try to do a deal to release us. Not me, only the whole nation of the Palestinians, hostages in their land and outside their lands.

Hussein, you said you want them to do a deal, but they have been trying to do a deal. It hasn't worked. Do you feel that one particular party is at fault here? Are you mad at Hamas?

I'm mad at humanity at all and all of the humanity. Nothing on Hamas, Israeli whoever, on humans who accept this situation. It's not a matter of Hamas, Palestine, Israel, whatever. It's matter of humanity. We are talking about. More than 50,000 people were killed. Around 20,000 kids. What's their fault to be killed? What have they done for me? I really believe in human rights and justice and equality between all the humans. But do the world do? Because we are not only seeing, we are facing double standards that we are imposed to all. The world is watching us. Seized, killed, humiliated, and no one is doing anything.

Are you worried that as this conflict gets bigger, that Gazans will be forgotten, will be less on people's minds out in the world?

Actually, what I'm worried about is this will alter the mentalities of people, even though the people who are believing in peace and resolution between the nations. When you lose your kid, when you lose your brother, when you lose your house, and you know that this party, that this side have killed them, has displaced you to put collective punishment on you, and they are the reason of the dire situation you are living in, I guess people would seek revenge, won't believe in peace again.

You're worried this experience will make people not want peace yeah.

I'm wondering how this world can be unfair and how am I gonna believe, again in human life, inequality, injustice, when I see that it doesn't apply on us? I'm still believing on this, but I'm afraid that this. This picture would collapse due to what's happening here in Gaza. It will encourage other parties and other nations and other countries to offend, to humiliate other people when they see that some countries are doing this. And it's fine. We can do it. It's okay to kill anyone, to put collective punishment on not one or two. On 2 million people. It's okay to keep it for more than ten years? It's fine. So it would encourage people to be uncivilized. It would encourage barbarian violence to the whole world.

Hussein, remind us how old your children are.

My children? Nine, seven and two.

Nine, seven and two. The littlest one is now two.

Yes. And when they travel before, he didn't use to. He didn't start talking yet, but he. Now, right now, he's talking.

He's talking.

Yeah. So hard that your son is growing far from you, especially these times and this age. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Do you feel like it was the right decision to send them to Egypt?

Yes, for sure.

Are they happy in Egypt?

They are. They are happy with the chocolate, with the coke, with the chips, with the toys, with the cloves. I remember the first two weeks, they were kind of insane that they find chocolate and potato chips and coke to drink and etcetera. They were so super, super heavy when they just kept telling me that, we got this, we eat this. They were happy to eat. They were happy to find food. Yeah.

Do you think you will see them again?

Inshallah. Yeah. Inshallah. We will reunite. Inshallah. See each other again. But each night when I talk to my kids, they are crying and saying, you shall come to here. When are they gonna open the borders? When are you gonna come? And I don't have answers, actually.

Hussein, thank you very much for talking to me.

Thank you, Sabrina. I'm sorry for talking a lot.

No, it's okay.

Thank you for hearing me.

It's okay. I really. I really appreciate you sharing. You sharing your thoughts and your life with me.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Bye bye.

Okay. Bye bye, Hussein. Bye.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know. Today in Gaza on Sunday, the israeli military carried out airstrikes and issued evacuation orders for nearly all of northern Gaza, ahead of what it called a new phase in the war there. It also ordered residents in southern Lebanon to evacuate over the weekend while israeli airstrikes hit Dahya, a neighborhood south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway and where heavy bombardment has already forced many to flee. In Israel, efforts to mark the anniversary of the deadly attack by Hamas are constrained by security concerns and the ongoing conflict. Israel has yet to hold a national day of mourning for the people killed or taken hostage a year ago today. Today's episode was produced by Diana Wynn, Michael Simon Johnson, and Rochelle Banja. It was edited by Mark George with help from Patricia Willans, research help by Susan Lee, and Yonatan Race contains original music by Marian Lozano, Alicia Beetoop, and Rowan Nimestowe, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Yonatan Reyes and Patrick Kingsley. That's it for the daily I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.