From Israel's worst day ever, to one of its most glorious
Kan's website recalling the horrors of 10/7, but also an inspiring interview with two helicopter pilots who took part in rescuing the four hostages.
As we noted yesterday, this may just be a relatively quiet news week. Hoping that it will be, we’re trying to focus this week on Israelis’ indomitable Israeli spirit. As we mentioned, Israeli television has produced some genuinely fabulous clips of interesting stories, and we’re going to share them with you over the week, with English subtitles added.
Here’s what’s below:
A photo posted on Israeli social media reflects Israelis’ abiding gratitude to and sense of loss over the death of Chief Inspector Arnon Zmorah z”l, the soldier killed in the hostage rescue operation.
Kan 11 has created a virtual museum called “7.10 360º” that seeks to track what happened in every place at any given moment on October 7th. It’s in Hebrew, but we try to show you how to navigate it despite that.
Finally, we shift to the recent hostage rescue with an interview—like yesterday’s video, this is another one of Kan’s excellent pieces—of two helicopter pilots who took part in the operation. Subtitles added.
I don’t know who took this photograph. It was posted on Israeli social media and shared. From the bottom up, an Israeli flag, a hostage poster that says BRING OUR SISTERS HOME NOW, and then a hand-made sign that says “Inspector Arnon Zmorah, z’l, Thank you, Hero.”
Zmorah was part of the police, not the army, which is why the rank differs from the ranks we usually hear about. He was also promoted posthumously, at his funeral, to the rank of Chief Inspector. As the hand-made sign indicates, though news of the rescue is no longer on the front page daily, a national sense of indebtedness to him for his sacrifice can be seen all over.
TUESDAY (06/25): In Israel these days, there are songs so vivid and descriptive that they could be read as articles in any Israeli newspaper. And there are articles that read like song lyrics. On Tuesday, we’ll explore glimpses into Israeli society through a song which has become an anthem of sorts over the last eight months. And we’ll compare an article from the NYT and one from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showing how on both sides of the border, hopes for peace or coexistence have eroded.
WEDNESDAY (06/26): In last week’s podcast we heard from Seth Farber who explained the drama over the elections for Chief Rabbi, why those elections have been delayed and what is at stake. In this week’s podcast, we’ll learn about one of Israel’s most iconic and revered personalties, and the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi before Israel was established, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook.
THURSDAY (06/27): We’ll close out the week with a video about a woman named Yael Mazarib. As you’ll hear in the video, she is first and foremost, Yael, and a commander in the IDF. What makes her story so fascinating is that she is also a part-Bedouin woman raised in Zarzir. While her ancestry may be “mixed,” there’s nothing ambiguous about her love for this country or her devotion to it.
Kan, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, has launched a virtual museum to document and commemorate October 7. The project is called “7.10 360º”.
The virtual museum begins with an interactive map of all the locations where the massacre took place. Each place includes the stories, videos, photos, sound clips and WhatsApp correspondence from the victims, the families and survivors, as a way of getting to know the human stories behind each place.
The project is still in the process of construction as more and more videos, recordings, and text messages are created.
Above is a screenshot of how the homepage is set up. You can click on any one of the towns. Google can sometimes translate the text, and sometimes not. You have to play with it and see how it works on your system. You can always copy text into Google Translate and read it there. But try right-clicking or [(Mac) control-clicking] somewhere on the paragraph, selection “translate section to English” and it might work.
Here’s an example of Kfar Aza. All the red location pins indicate homes and families. You can click on any one of the homes/ families and it will take you to their minute by minute story on October 7.
The home we’ve circled in yellow is the home of Irene Shavit and Netta Epstein, a young couple who were supposed to have been married in April.
At 11:30 am, Hamas terrorists entered the home of Irene and Netta. On the left side of the photo above are WhatsApp messages between Netta and his dad.
The terrorists tossed a grenade into the shelter and Netta threw himself on it to protect his fiancée. He was killed and Irene survived.
It’s worth spending some time on the site, if only to get a sense of the reverence with which many Israeli organizations, Kan among them (recall that we also interviewed the staff of the National Library of Israel who are doing a parallel project) are working to preserve the living memory of what transpired on that horrific Shabbat morning that forever changed Israeli history.
As we noted, ever since the war began, Kan 11 has been doing some extraordinary reporting. On their website, you can find a host of terrific videos, but they are almost all in Hebrew. So we’re going to share some of them with subtitles, so a wider audience can appreciate them. The original of today’s video, which was actually posted the day after the rescue—so Kan clearly got their act together very quickly, can be viewed here on the Kan 11 site.
The video itself requires no comment.
Except for the wistful thought that we all have as we read about that day, that if only the army that has performed wonders in the past months had done the same on October 7, the history of this country might ultimately have been very different.