Growing up in Kibbutz Kfar Aza next to Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip meant a childhood that could be interrupted at any moment by sirens warning of a Hamas rocket attack. Sibling fights or quiet nights were instantly turned into a scramble for the nearest safe room. Hamas took control of Gaza a few months before I was born in 2007, so living in its shadow is all I have ever known.
Having 15 seconds to run to safety might not be a common theme in childhood nostalgia, but I convinced myself that it had made me stronger than kids from the comfortable Tel Aviv bubble.
Then came Oct. 7. Hamas terrorists charged into our home, shooting my father, Nadav, and sister, Yam, in a furious ecstasy of hate. I was dragged out of the house together with my mother and two younger brothers and forced into a car to Gaza. I see my father’s fading eyes when I close mine at night.
Arriving in Gaza, the car was surrounded by a mob, mostly people who appeared to be about my own age, 17, or younger. They smiled and laughed as I wept.
In Judaism, there is a tradition that baseless hatred – hatred divorced from all reason – is what led to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70. I now know what it means to be hated baselessly – for all that I am and all I am not.
My Hamas guards hated me for being Jewish, so I was coerced into reciting Islamic prayers and made to wear a hijab. I was forbidden from mourning my father and sister, and often ordered to look down at the ground. Six female hostages I met in a tunnel told me about men with guns who came into their shower rooms and touched their bodies.
Hearing about these young women’s fear of sexual abuse was agonizing. When one of my guards told me that he would find me a “husband” in Gaza, and that I would live the rest of my life as a chained slave-wife, my mother interrupted, deflecting his advances. I was fortunate to be released, along with my family members, in a prisoner exchange after 51 days. But those six young women are still in captivity, held for more than 300 days, without their mothers. They all should have come home a long time ago.
Baseless hatred can lead a person to awful places, but when that hatred is shared by a group, it is terrifying to witness. One morning, my family was moved from our safe house to a school hall, filled largely with Gazan women and children. Strangers asked if I wanted anything to sit on, or if I was thirsty – a rare moment of human connection.
But then, in an instant, the low buzz of conversation was drowned out by Hamas launching rockets, just meters away from us, from inside the school compound. The hall erupted in joy, and as the Gazans celebrated, I realized that Hamas had moved us there to serve as human shields.
Shortly before my family and I were released at the end of November, a guard made a point of telling us that, in the next war, Hamas would return to kill us. There would be no hostage-taking, no more dealmaking.
When we were transferred to a Red Cross vehicle for our ride out of Gaza, a mob formed, just as when we arrived. But weeks of Israel’s intense bombing had changed the mood. Instead of laughing and taking photos, the Gazans banged on the windows and screamed at us: Die, die, die. The word is almost the same in Arabic as in Hebrew – but, then again, hatred sounds the same in every language.
In captivity, I had often filled the long, silent hours by fantasizing, trying to keep the dread and terrible memories at bay. One of my fantasies was that we would be freed and the world would embrace us.
But the world I came back to was deeply divided and seething with anger. The hatred that I thought I had left behind in Gaza was waiting for me online.
My social media feeds were flooded with trolls, falsehoods and conspiracy theories, all with seemingly one objective: driving hate. The comment sections of news articles mentioning my name were battlefields, as hatred from one side was met with hatred from the other.
I have watched as the movement in the West for a Gaza cease-fire sometimes devolves into full-throated support for Hamas and the hounding of Jews in public spaces. I’m sure my kidnappers still hate me, but when American students call for “intifada” or chant in praise of Hamas terrorists “Al-Qassam, you make us proud,” I’m reminded that many other people do, too.
Now a dangerous escalation in the war that began on Oct. 7 may loom, involving an Iranian regime that has long promised to wipe Israel off the map. Theirs is the same hatred that killed my father and sister. The same hatred that poisons too many campuses and too much of social media.
On Tuesday, news arrived that Israeli forces in Gaza had recovered the bodies of six hostages. It is unclear how many of the more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas remain alive. Negotiations for their release continue. I pray for their freedom, but I have no illusions about the world to which they’ll return.
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Agam Goldstein-Almog lives in Shefayim, Israel.
(c) Washington Post