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The following text contains very harsh and triggering descriptions of genocide and rape, but this is our life in Israel since October 7, 2023, and the world should know.
Tales of tumult: Israeli authors decode war
- A call: Help release the Israeli captives/ Yishai Sarid
- October 7 2023, a day that will live in infamy/ Noa Menhaim
Parents and children in the pastoral kibbutz of Kfar Aza, whose members woke up to a typical Saturday morning, were tied and tortured in front of each other by invading Hamas terrorists.
They were murdered, their bodies horrifically mutilated—one by one until none remained. Then the terrorists casually dined amid the grisly scene, surrounded by severed limbs in the devastated family home. This account was provided by a member of ZAKA, an Israeli organization responsible for recovering bodies after disasters, during an interview with Israel’s Radio 103FM.
Shani Louk, a young German-Israeli woman who partied at a peace rave, was kidnapped into the Gaza Strip by terrorists who invaded the party, murdering its attendants indiscriminately. She was stripped, and her naked body was tossed on a truck face down between the Hamas terrorists. The truck drove through the streets of Gaza, with the masses cheering the appalling scene, and Shani’s naked, discarded body spat on by the surrounding throngs.
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Israel is under attack
(Credit: ynet and News Act)
Another young woman kidnapped from the party was pulled from the back of the truck violently and taken to the front with the back of her pants, between her legs, soaked with blood. The soul aches at the thought of the events preceding these images. The survivors of the peace party-turned-pogrom reported that the Hamas terrorists who raided it raped young women beside the bodies of their murdered friends.
At Kibbutz Kfar Aza - a quiet, peace-seeking rural community, which until last week numbered 750 residents - dozens were slaughtered in their homes, 20 of its residents were kidnapped and contact has been lost with 36. In the kibbutzim of the Gaza border region, which have endured the horrific Hamas massacre, dozens of bodies of babies and children were found murdered in their cribs, in their beds, wrapped in the bodies of their dead parents who died trying in vain to protect them, or burned alive while trying to shelter from the atrocities in the safe rooms in their homes.
Over 100 Israeli citizens have apparently been kidnapped to Gaza, including babies, toddlers whose parents were murdered, mothers with their children and elderly Holocaust survivors. Over 1,200 people were murdered in this brutal, violent attack.
We, Israelis in the fields of writing, humanities and academia, are mostly left-wing in persuasion and believe in equality and human rights. Many of us have been active over the years to promote a diplomatic and peaceful solution between Palestinians and Israelis.
The barbaric massacre that took place in the Gaza border area on October 7, 2023, the horrific rapes and abductions of civilians have nothing to do with the struggle for the rights of Palestinians or human rights. These are acts of pure sadism, of the worst and most abominable type imaginable, of the kind ISIS committed against their victims. Those who committed them would have gone on to do the same to any Israeli resident—Jew, Arab or foreign national—that had fallen into their hands had the security forces not stopped them.
It is the duty of Israel and of humanity to protect themselves and eradicate such acts and those capable of committing them. The world must know and act against them and help us bring the innocent captives back home, for the sake of the continued existence of Israel and for a sense of humanity, wherever it may be found.
- Snunit Liss (1980) is an Israeli author. Born in Kibbutz Ein-Shemer, Liss has worked as a local journalist, music critic and entertainment and technology reporter. She owns a marketing content firm and researches literature and disability