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6 Months Since October 7

>> Read all messages from Zehava Galon

Early in the morning exactly six months ago, people didn’t yet realize what was happening. As pictures of armed Hamas terrorists taken through a peephole started to crop up, everybody was sure that in no time the state would show up and bring the event to an end.

But the state was a no-show. For hours we saw people on WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook begging for the help that never came, barricaded in safe rooms and gasping for air as the state was nowhere to be seen. They were abandoned, left to fend for themselves. This is what they mean when they say “we were abandoned.” The state, which promised us security, said that everything would be fine, and assured us that it would be there for us if only we worked, paid taxes, and did our army service simply vanished.

And it did so for days on end. People volunteered to drive soldiers to the south because there was no transportation. They donated food and equipment because the defense budget presumably wasn’t enough to afford these simple things. A whole society mobilized to fill the place of the failed state.

The state is still not there. For six months of assurances that only military pressure will secure the release of the hostages, yet all that it has yielded us is body bags. Six months of hostages being raped and murdered, with members of this bloody government – for whose failure we have paid the most dreadful price – hardly missing a good night’s sleep. Six months of families begging for their children to be returned and mothers pleading for the lives of their sons, with the government doing everything in its power to turn them into enemies of the public. It boggles the mind; it makes you want to scream!

Netanyahu met with his party affairs adviser the day after October 7, but met with the families of the hostages only three weeks later – yet no one is as much as surprised. After all, this is Netanyahu’s greatest talent: to get us used to expect nothing from the state he has claimed as his own. After half a year of relinquished responsibility, one thing is clear: as long as Netanyahu remains prime minister, the state will not be there for us. For that to change, Netanyahu must go.

Yours,

Zehava Galon

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Dr. Maha Sabbah Karkabi

 

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.

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Prof. Frances Raday

Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.

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Dr. Rawia Aburabia 

Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.

Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.

 

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Ron Kessler

With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.