překlad o arabské novinářce

Zdroj: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LIcd7wHlCE

When I came and started working on Channel Ten, 15 years ago, one of the anchors there told me, “Wow, Lucy, you are Arab, you are Muslim, you are a woman, you are coming from the periphery of Israel. It’s like all the ‘don’t do’ in one person. It’s like the only thing that is left is that you will be a lesbian. And that’s it. It’s like you will break every glass ceiling.”

Lucy Aharish is one of the most prominent television broadcasters in Israel. Then again, it’s Israel. It’s a small country and there aren’t a ton of famous broadcasters. The thing that makes Lucy stand out is that she is the first Arab Muslim news presenter on mainstream Hebrew-language Israeli television.

Born and raised in a small Jewish town in Israel’s Negev Desert as one of the only Arab Muslim families, Lucy often says that she sees herself as sitting on a fence. By that, she doesn’t mean that she’s unwilling to take a side. As you’ll see, she is a woman of strong convictions and moral backbone. What she means is that she has a unique vantage point through which to view the divisions in Israeli society, the complexity of the country’s national identity, and the Middle East more generally.

That complexity was put on display in 2018 when Lucy’s marriage to Jewish Israeli actor and “Fauda” star Tsahi Halevi sparked tremendous backlash from the country’s religious far-right.

Lucy’s long been a vocal critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2020, immediately following her participation in an online rally protesting Bibi’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, state-run broadcaster KAN fired Lucy from her role. The network chalked up her firing to pandemic-related cutbacks.

Lucy’s also been equally critical of her fellow Israeli Arabs, particularly of Arab violence and of Arab leadership that she says condones it. A Muslim and a Zionist; an Arab and an Israeli. In short, Lucy Aharish is an iconoclast.

I sat down recently with Lucy in Tel Aviv. We talked about the massacre of October 7 and its impact on the country and on her family. Her husband put on his uniform and headed to the south within hours of hearing the news. We also talked about the challenges she faced growing up as the only Muslim Arab kid in a traditional Jewish village. We talked about the terrorist attack that she survived in Gaza, and about the hope that she has for her Muslim-Jewish son and the future of the country that she calls home.

You’re Arab Israeli. Many people would probably think of that as an oxymoron. They’ve never sat where we’re sitting right now. But in that, you represent 20 percent of the Israeli population as Israeli Arab. I don’t know if I represent like 20 percent because a lot of people will tell you, well, she doesn’t represent us. And you’re—they say you’re—You know, I don’t pretend to represent anyone. I represent myself because I have a unique story. I didn’t live—I haven’t lived in an Arab town or an Arab village. Basically, my parents moved to Dimona, which is a very small town in the south of Israel. So basically, I lived in a Jewish town, you can say a semi-traditional Jewish town. And when you say “traditional,” for an American listener, viewer, what does that mean, traditional? It means that it’s small. It’s in the periphery of Israel. It’s more, let’s say “masorti,” we say in Hebrew, which is half religious, half secular, it’s more right-wing. I’ve lived above the Likud Center in Dimona, so you’re talking about oxymoron. And yeah, it’s been quite a ride. Like to to grow up as the only Arab family living in Dimona, being the only Arab student in school and a Muslim student in the nineties where Israel knew the worst terror attacks in its history before October 7. And it wasn’t easy. But it is my home, like Dimona will always be my home. My parents are still living there. And I grew up in a Jewish traditional atmosphere. I celebrated Jewish holidays next to my Arab Muslim holidays, being Israeli, Jewish, Arab, like Jewish, you know, living in a Jewish culture or education was like—it’s something that was totally connected to my life. I didn’t choose it. It’s like my parents, my parents’ decision. But for me, I’m, you know, not only honored, but I got a gift. And the gift was the fact that I lived with Jewish people all my life. And yes, I experienced racism and yes, I was bullied in school, especially after terror attacks. But most of the times it was, for me, it’s the best time of my life because it’s my home. And as you know, every child is going through some tough times. So you have the fat child and you have the child with the glasses and you have the kid with, you know, braces on his teeth. And I was the Arab Muslim girl.

And what were the kinds of— I mean, you've said it wasn't easy. You've mentioned before that terrible things were said to you. Can you give us a sense of, you know, the kind of things that were said? And then, when you would go back and presumably tell your parents about it, how would they respond?

I remember that—I think the most difficult times were after a terror attack. The morning of a terror attack was like the mornings that I didn't want to go to school. And I remember every morning saying to my parents, "I don't want to go to school," because I knew what I was going to go through that day. And, you know, the day after a terror attack, you usually are not only sad, but you're angry. You have a lot of feelings of revenge. And you need revenge because you cannot understand or digest or accept the fact that there is someone who is putting, you know, going on a bus and exploding himself in front of innocent people and killing innocent people, men, women, children. You cannot digest it. You cannot accept it, not even in the name of occupation.

So I remember every morning—it was almost twice a week, I think, once a week back then. And I remember those mornings where I told my mom and dad, "I don't want to go to school." And my mom and dad would tell me, my dad would take me in the car and put me in front of the school gate. And he would tell me, "You will get out right now from the car and you will face your friends and you will face reality. Because if you won't be able to face reality now, you won't be able to face it in the future." And I would get in.

Well, what’d they say? Would they say that you’re a terrorist?

They will see me, and then I will see all my friends, like, you know, saying "death to Arabs. We need to kill all the Palestinians. Filthy Arabs." And then they will look at me and they will tell me, "Well, Lucy, we don't mean you. You know, you and your family are okay. But the rest of the Palestinians, the Arabs, we need to kill them. We need to murder them all."

And I can understand that. But like—I tried to understand that, but I was bullied and I would get back to school, like, get back from school and get back home. And I would cry my eyes out, and my father would tell me, "If I ever, ever hear you say to somebody who called you 'filthy Arab' or 'filthy Muslim' that you called him 'filthy Jew,' I never in my life raised my hand and hit you. But I will do that if I hear you saying to someone, 'filthy Jew.' You will never go down to this level because you're better than them."

Lucy, we live in a—Israel's a very different context from the States. But in the States, you could say we live in a culture of grievances, where people sort of hoard their victimhood. You have said many times in many interviews that you don't think of yourself as a victim.

No, I'm not. Most people would hear these stories and be like, "this is the ultimate victim. Listen to what she's describing."

Why don’t you think of yourself that way?

Because I’m not a victim and I’m not willing to be a victim of racism. I am not a victim of a racist government. I’m not a victim of—at a certain time, a certain time when the prime minister is going and saying on elections in 2015 that the Arabs are going on buses to vote and this is a danger to the rule of the right, this is a danger to Israel.

Me being a citizen of the state of Israel, I am not, you know, a visitor in the state of Israel. I’m a citizen of the state of Israel. The state of Israel at 1948 decided that it’s giving citizenship to the 150,000 Arabs that were living here. Once you decided that you’re giving me the citizenship of this state, you need to treat me like anyone else. I’m not your slave. You’re not doing me a favor.

It’s not that—it’s so complicated, what is happening here, because the Palestinian—Israeli-Palestinian conflict is directly affecting the Israeli-Arab relationship. Well, it’s strengthening it. I mean, there was a poll before the war asking Israeli Arabs if they felt a part of Israel. I think 48 percent said yes. And then postwar, same poll, something like 75, 77 percent, think that’s representative.

I think that it’s representative because for the first time, October 7 proved that we share the same destiny here. Arabs and Jews are living in Israel. Citizens of the state of Israel share the same destiny, and you had the living proof for it. A living proof provided by Hamas terrorists when they got in and they filmed themselves killing and murdering and raping and burning innocent people, that they caught a guy from Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, he’s telling them, 'I’m from Jerusalem, I’m from East Jerusalem,' and they told him, 'Oh, you’re cooperating, cooperating with Israel,' and they killed him. They just shot him to death.

So it’s got nothing to do with, you know, if I will say, [speaking Arabic] they will save me. No. They will spare my life. No, it doesn’t work like that.

Growing up as little Lucy in Dimona, the only Arab in your class, did you have any sense of what you wanted to be when you grew up?

An actress.

Okay, so you got the next best thing, I guess, which is being a television journalist. You know, a journalist.

I knew that I have a totally different story. I knew that I’m living in Dimona. I’m a Muslim from a Muslim family. I went through a terror attack in the First Intifada when I was five and a half years old, in the Gaza Strip on a Saturday morning.

Tell me about that, because right now, the idea of an Israeli citizen going anywhere near Gaza—well, obviously right now, but since 2005, would have been unthinkable.

Back then, it was a totally different situation. We used to go to the Gaza Strip to, you know, to do some shopping there, like, you know, buy groceries and shop and eat fish on the beach. It was like—there were a lot of Israelis getting into the Gaza Strip.

And I remember it was a Saturday morning and my uncle and his wife came to visit us with their two children. They came to visit us and my uncle said to my dad, “What do you think? Let’s take a trip to the Gaza Strip.” And my father told him “Listen.” And I understand it was 1987. It was the beginning of the Intifada, the First Intifada, really the beginning. And my father told him, “Well, I understood that the security situation is not that good. Let’s postpone it.” And to make a long story short, we decided that we’re hitting the road. It was me, my mom, my dad, my uncle, his wife, and one of his children. I always say that a lot of people in one car—have this tendency, Arabs, to squeeze into cars. It’s like another one is coming out of the car like grandmas in a bogash. And you know the word “karma,” where, like, everything shows you that you are not supposed to be in that place that day.

So we went to the grocery shop and the grocery shop was closed, and then we went to the beach and the guy that sold my mom fish was sick that day. And then we took a trip to Nasser Street where there was a shop there, Un Bambino. It was a clothes shop for children, clothes and like some perfumes and stuff. And we just parked the car and the owner of the shop was just about to leave and to close shop, and my father’s telling him, “What’s going on? Everything is closed. Nobody’s on the streets.” And he told my father, “Well, you know, security situation lately is not that good. And the young people here are talking about Intifada. But you know what? You made it all the way from Dimona. I will open the shop for you.”

And I remember every time that I got there, I would ask my mom for one thing. I would ask my mom, “Mom, I want red nail polish.” And she’d tell me—ed, yes. And she will tell me no, because it’s like, in Arabic, it’s not respectful to put a red nail polish for a small child, small girl. And I’d try my—and I try my luck again. And I asked her again, “Mom, can I have red nail polish?” And without even thinking, she told me, “You know, and just take it.” So I grabbed it and put it in a small brown bag, and I went outside so my mom won’t change her mind. They went back to the car and we sat down. And just when we were about to leave, the owner of the shop, just got close and said to my dad, “Just do me a favor. Until you’re leaving Gaza, just make sure that your windows are closed.” And my dad’s looking and told him, “What are you talking about?” What he told my dad is like, we are really “white.” Like, Dad is blond.

That is the word he used?

Yeah, no, no, no, he told him, “You look Jewish.” Like, he told him because my father is blond with blue eyes. My uncle also is with green eyes. His wife is with blue eyes. So we didn’t look like typical Arabs. So my father—“Well, what do you?—“Well, put the Quran, put a newspaper in Arabic on the dashboard so people will know that you are an Arab. And my father told him, “What?” “No. You need to understand. You have a yellow license plate. People might confuse you with being Jewish.” And my father, I looked at him and he told him, “Tawakalt Ala Allah.” Leave it to God.

And we hit the road and we just were, I think it was in, in one of the main streets there, Salaheddin, if I’m not mistaken. And we really hit traffic. So the cars stopped. And it was a hot, like, Saturday morning, so my father opened the window. And everybody was, you know, laughing and joking in the car. And I was sitting right next to the window, and I started looking outside and I saw this figure coming towards the car.

He was really tall. He was thin. He had some scars on his face. He had a necklace on his neck and written on it a law: God. And something about him just fascinated me and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. You’re five years old. Yeah, five and a half years old, was just before I went to, like, the first grade. I remember watching him, but I saw something in his hand, so I was, like, a little bit scared. So I started, like, scrolling down my seat and I was looking like that. And I was watching him getting closer and closer to the car. And my mom is watching me going like that. And she told me, “Lucy, sit straight.” And I didn’t even look at her. I just continued watching outside the window, looking at him getting closer and closer to the car. And my mom again: “Lucy, sit straight.” And the third time that my mom—it got—he like, really, really was next to the car. He looked me straight in the eyes.

And the third time that my mom said “Lucy,” there was a huge explosion in the car. The next thing that I remember was my face hitting the ground. I was trying to lift myself up. I looked at one side. I saw my mom crying. I looked at the other side. I saw my uncle’s wife screaming to death. And I looked up and I saw my cousin going into flames. And my father’s trying to put down the fire.

And at that moment I said to myself, "Where is my red nail polish?" I was trying to disconnect myself from this, from everything that I saw, from the screaming of my father, "Help us. We are Arabs like you. Help us." Nobody reached out. Nobody helped us. Everybody was watching it like it’s a really bad action movie. I think it was after 20 minutes that some army forces got in and took us out. My cousin went through a lot of surgeries and me, for me, for a long time, I hated Palestinians. And I said it out loud.

"I hate Palestinians. You need to kill them. You need to murder them all."

And I remember at a certain point, my extended family heard me saying it, and they said to my dad, “Well, she hates us. She hates herself. She hates who she is. She hates who we are.” And my father, my very, very clever, wise dad told them, “Well, she will grow up. She will understand that life is a little bit more complicated than she thinks.” And he was right. He was right. Life was much more complicated. And it’s not black and white. This is why it was important for me on October 7 to speak out, because it was personal. And I saw the evil in the terrorist’s eyes. I saw him looking directly into my eyes before even—like when he saw a five-year-old and a three-year-old, and he saw a pair of parents sitting in a car, and he knew that he’s going to burn them alive. He knew, and he did it without even thinking. So this evil that we saw on October 7, it’s not something new. It’s not, you know, just what happened on October 7. No, it was there. Now, there are a lot of things that got in throughout the years. But it was there.

You first came on my radar when you became the first Arab-Israeli Muslim broadcaster in the country. And I was like, that’s cool. It’s like, who is that woman? That’s really interesting. And then you sort of exploded, at least in certain circles in the U.S. when you got married to—well, why don’t you tell me exactly?

Tsahi Halevi.

Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about that marriage and tell me about why that caused such a stir in this country and maybe the distinction between the public response to it and the response of your family, which I’m curious about too.

Wow. The response of my family. Well, we were really, really worried about the response of our families. It wasn’t only my family; it was our families. Tsahi is also divorced with a—he was like a teenager back then. Now he is 20 years old. And we were worried about, you know—we know where we live. It’s not that common that there is an Arab Muslim woman marrying a Jewish guy. And when they are both very well-known, it’s a high-profile relationship. So for a long time, we decided that we were keeping it secret. It was secret for around four and a half years.

It’s an odd thing to have a closeted straight relationship in the mid-2010.

Yeah. And I will tell you that first of all, you know, it’s a small country. So to keep it like a small country, small, you know, small media, and yet we were able to save it for four and a half years. I remember that when we got married, it was like—the media knew. All the journalists knew. And we always got phone calls saying, “We know about your relationship. So we’re here.” And I tried to explain to them, to tell them, “Listen, this is not a normal relationship. There is a teenager in the midst of it. Our families, they don’t know.” It’s like—it was a secret. It was a huge blast in Israel because it was a secret until the day of the wedding. 

Like, my—I said to Tsahi, I said, “Well, do you want to say something?” And like maybe a week before or two weeks, I don’t know. You know, we are going like—it’s going for an explosion. At least let me control the explosion. I know that it’s going to explode, but at least when it will explode, I want it to be a very clear fact. We are married. It’s not that we will get married in one month or two weeks, and then I will have to answer a million questions about the relationship and to have discussions on TV and radio whether this is—there should be this relationship is a suitable relationship for politicians or people living in Israel. No, I want when I—when we will announce our marriage. It will be a fact. A fact in the face of all the people who have something to say about this marriage.

What did people say?

Ah, what they didn't say.

Just to be clear, we’re talking about a Jewish Israeli actor who’s in the show Fauda

Yeah. Yes. And he was an ex-military officer in an elite unit, undercover elite unit. 

So like actually Fauda.

Yeah.

And his father was a veteran of the Mossad. So it was like I felt like, you know, if you would have asked me like 20 years, you will marry a Jewish man who is an undercover officer in an elite unit, and his father is working in the Mossad, I will tell you [scoffs] it’s just like, really, this is a non-realistic movie ... and yet this is my reality. But you know, all these titles that people are giving, he’s like this and he’s like that, and his father’s like this. I fell in love with [speaking arabic]. I fell in love with a man. I’m always saying that if I was right now living in the United States, I would be a nonissue. Really. I would be a persona that is really not interesting. A regular, totally regular story. And it was funny for me that people—like it opened the Knesset the morning after, like the Knesset meeting, the parliament meeting, the day after.

About your marriage.

Yes.

It’s like an issue of national security.

Yeah. I was surprised. Like Knesset members reacted, like said that it’s a problem that this assimilation and what they are, what is the example that they’re giving people? One of the Knesset members even posted on Facebook that Tsahi took Fauda one step too forward and he needs to think, to rethink his actions and go back to the Jewish people.

You’ve been in the papers a lot recently, including a big profile in a major Israeli paper for, well, frankly, for echoes of what you experienced as a child, you could argue. Tell us about what happened.

I was invited to speak out last May in Megiddo.

What’s Megiddo?

Megiddo is a, like, small area in the center-north of Israel. ... In Shavuot, the eve of Shavuot. 

It’s a big holiday where Jews tend to study all night long. ... 

Exactly.

Getting the Torah. 

Yeah. 

They maybe bring in lots of speakers. 

So they brought me as a speaker, not to speak Torah. I feel like—You know, to speak about my life. I wasn’t like playing it as a rabbi, coming to speak to the Jewish people and give a message to the Jewish people. I came and gave a lecture about my life. I spoke about my life, about the mutual life that I have, the coexistence that I’m living. That’s it. It was an amazing evening. We really was—we all, like, felt connected and really it was an emotional evening. I got the money they paid me and that’s it. 

Two weeks before, like two weeks ago, I just step out of the bathroom from the shower, and I look at my phone and I have, like, these tons of messages telling me, like, sending me an article in the whole not telling me—sorry for my language—“What is this shit? What is this?” Apparently, the Education Ministry of Israel prevented the money from Megiddo, decided not to pay Megiddo because they brought me, a woman who symbolizes assimilation, who represents assimilation, cannot speak about Jewish culture. So you cannot bring her to speak about a Jewish culture in the eve of Shavuot. And this is why we’re not giving you the money. This letter came out from the Ministry of Education of the official state of Israel, which means that the official state of Israel is basically looking at me and telling me I’m racist and I’m not ashamed of it. You know, back then, some people—people were a little bit ashamed with their racism. Now? No shame whatsoever.

(Vysvětlení od překladatele: Tato situace se týká ženy, která byla zvolena jako symbolizace asimilace a měla promluvit o židovské kultuře v předvečer svátku Šavuot. Avšak zprávy, které jí přišly na mobilní telefon a sdílené články, naznačovaly, že Ministerstvo školství Izraele rozhodlo, že organizace, která pořádala událost, nebude dostávat financování, protože zvolili právě ji, ženu, která symbolizuje asimilaci, aby mluvila o židovské kultuře. To tedy naznačuje, že oficiální stát Izrael de facto naznačil, že je rasistická a že se za to nestydí. Autorka této části textu vyjadřuje své rozhořčení nad tím, že kdysi lidé možná měli alespoň trochu studu ze svého rasismu, ale dnes už se zdá, že se za něj nestydí vůbec. Poznámka překladu.)

So Lucy, there are people, as you know, all over the world who look at Israel and say it is a racist, colonialist, apartheid state. It is no better than the Jim Crow South in America before the civil rights movement. And the kind of thing that just happened to you is proof of that. What do you say to that?

Look at your countries. Look at what is happening in your countries right now. What I’m going through right now is pure racism, definitely. Apartheid? No. Look at me. It cannot work. I’m not like—I’m a presenter on a mainstream TV channel in Israel. It’s like—no. My sister is working in one of the big banks in, one of the major banks in Israel. My other sister is a VP, is the general manager of a big hotel in Eilat. This is not an apartheid country. Yes, but there is a lot of racism towards Arabs, like every country is dealing with racism, and racism should be fought. I should fight it, and I’m going to fight it. My child won’t study in the Education Ministry of the state of Israel when this education ministry is basically telling him, you don’t have a place here, and we’re telling you this. It won’t happen. And if I need to sue the Ministry of Education of Israel, I will do it.

You’re gonna do that? 

Yes. Yes.

Because for me, this is the red line. You could also look at what just happened to you and say encapsulated in that story is the fundamental tension of the identity of the state itself. It is a Jewish state and it is a democratic state, and many people look at that as a paradox at best. Other people look at that and say, those things are on a collision course and they can never be reconciled. What’s your view of it?

And I will tell you something like that. This country has to be Jewish and democratic. Why? Because the Jewish people have no other option than to be democratic because of their history, because they were persecuted, because they went through the Holocaust, because six million of them were murdered because they were Jewish, because all the persecution, because of antisemitism. As a Jewish man or woman, you cannot allow yourself to be something else than Democratic. So for me, this state, it’s a natural thing that it will be Jewish and democratic. And if there are some certain parts or extremists in Israel that use democracy, use the Israeli democracy to hurt the Israeli democracy and to make it some kind of a messianic I don’t know what, I’m going to find them. If you want to call me the gatekeeper of the Israeli democracy and the Jewish people, I have no problem with that. I’m the gatekeeper. I’m going to be the person that is going to remind a lot of Jewish people and the Jewish people that it was not such a long ago that the state of Israel didn’t exist and the Jewish people almost didn’t exist. This state is a miracle on every parameter. It’s a miracle. Seventy-five years. That’s it. There are some grandparents that are older than this country. So being a democracy, you know, it’s like—it’s baby steps. We are in our baby steps, like this country is just starting to walk.

Where were you on the morning of the day that changed everything? About this country and maybe the world.

I was at home sleeping in my bed. Tel Aviv is 10 minutes away from here. I heard the sirens at 6:30 in the morning. I, like, called Tsahi and I told him there are sirens. He told me you’re not. . . you’re dreaming. I told him no, not dreaming, there are sirens. We grabbed Adam, our son, and we went to the safe room. And I started looking at my phone to understand what is happening. Because, you know, we have these WhatsApp group—WhatsApp groups in our channel. So I started looking for something like—throughout the night, maybe something happened, maybe, so, I don’t know, we attacked Gaza, I don’t know. I’m just—and nothing. Everybody in this group were asking, “What is happening? What, what is happening? What is happening? What is happening? We hear sirens, we hear si—”

And you’re one of the most prominent news stations in the country. 

Yes. 

And no one, ...

No one understood what is happening.

And then one of our journalists is sending us this image of terrorists in the Toyota— 

In the white pickup truck. 

Yeah, white pickup truck with guns. And he’s saying there is an infiltration in one of the cities in the south of Israel. 

That’s one of the earliest images. Was this like this pickup truck?

Yeah. 

Six guys in Sderot.

Yeah.

And that seemed like the craziest thing, that had happened...

It was crazy. It’s like one of the things that you say just—how did they get there? What? What? And then you see this image and you say, okay, in like, you know, 10 minutes, it’s, it’s going to happen. But the army will be there, the police will be there. It’s going to be like, you know, this—the fucking state of Israel. And then more horror images start to come in, horror images of Israeli soldiers being dragged into—bodies being dragged into the Gaza Strip, spat on, really be—like people are attacking the bodies of these soldiers. And I was like—I watched these images because everything is on social media. I remember that I said to Tsahi, “Oh my God, his mom is watching.” That was the first sentence that came out of my mouth and I started crying.

"Oh my God, his mom is watching this. She doesn’t know she’s, she’s watching, watching her child being murdered in front of her eyes." And as I was saying the sentence Tsahi got in and when he went out, he was in his uniform. 

And he—as you’re watching this, he went to the bedroom, he put on his uniform, and he came out.

Yeah.

And he’s like standing on, like, the balcony’s door. And I told him, “Where do you think you’re going?” He told me, “I have to go out. This is not a drill.” I’m alone here. What am I supposed to do? He told me, “Close the door, get into the safe room, and every time that you will hear a siren, just do whatever you need to do. I need to go out.”

What time of day was it when he put on his uniform and left? 

It was around 8:30, 9. 

So really early. 

Yeah, it was the first hour. 

Had he been called up?

No.

So when he said “I need to go,” what did he even mean?

He’s going to serve his country. He’s going to save his family, to save this country, to save everything that he believes in. 

You know, you—I don’t really think that people understand what happened here on October 7. I don’t think that even we as Israelis understand what happened here on October 7. 

... I just—I told you at the beginning you came here at a good time because the picture starts being clear and it’s a horrible picture.

On October 7, we need to say the truth. We lost for hours and hours. People were burned and raped and murdered in their houses, in the safe—in their safest place in the haven of the Jewish people - in their own country. And people waited for somebody to come and rescue them, and nobody came. And they waited and they sent text messages and they sent us—journalists—help us, direct somebody to us. We—like, there are terrorists outside our houses. 

Nothing.

I think that the feeling that we feel in Israel, especially after October 7, is—a lot of us feel—is that that day we were orphans. You know, I always say that my country is like my parents. I love my country like I love my parents. I will do anything for my parents. I will walk the seven seas. I will walk fires. But I don’t always agree with my parents.

And I say to myself, well, I will—this I will deal with a little bit differently than how my parents did with me. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t love my parents. And on October 7, we felt that we don’t have a mother, a father, that will take care of us. You know the feeling that you walk in your apartment and you say to yourself, if a terrorist will get into this building, where do I hide my child? It was like thinking, a thought that I never, ever in my life thought that I will have. Do I put him in the washing machine? Do I put him like, like, in some kind of a closet? Who the hell in the world is thinking that? Where he should hide his child? Someone think like—thinks like that in New York or Washington or San Francisco or London.

In those early days, did you feel like this could be the end of the state of Israel?

Yeah.

You did? 

Yeah. I’m still afraid. I’m still afraid of politicians doing politics and thinking only about their political small interests than the big interests of the state of Israel.

So when some people are saying they’re afraid, they’re thinking of not just the war with Hamas, but another front opening in the north. Of course. They’re thinking about Iran. Is that a piece of the picture for you, too?

Of course. Of course. We have—Ehud Barak said once about Israel that it’s a villa in the jungle.  

I remember that, and it was enormously controversial when he said it.

It is. Whether we like it or not, it is. Look what is happening in the Middle East. Look what is happening. Like, you know, I covered the Syrian refugee crisis. I was twice in Greece. Once I did a documentary on the Syrian refugee crisis. And the second time I went and volunteered for ten days in a school that was built by Israelis for the refugees. I heard their horrible stories. I saw the children, you know, coming. And I was like cutting an apple and I—whatever was left from it, I close it to the gar—I dropped it into the garbage, and I saw children coming to the garbage and taking it from there. And I remember going back home and I said to myself, this can’t happen in 2020. How come this is happening in 2018 or 2017? I don’t understand it. It’s like the world is so, you know—it’s 2017, in the name of God. It’s 2018, in the name of God. It’s—how come people just—their lives changed like that?

How do you explain—I mean, right now there’s, I don’t know if you’d call it a jihad or what, but a total decimation of Christians in Nigeria by Islamists.
If you look at what’s happening in Syria, you look all over the world and it’s people like the guy that stared at you from the window when you were five years old or the people that carried out October 7, terrorizing people, including Christians, Jews, other Muslims all over the world. And there are lots of people who look at that and say what Israel’s fighting, fundamentally, is not a war with Hamas, it is a fundamental war between Western civilization and Islam. And what do you say to that, because you are Muslim?
Ah. You know, I see what these fundamentalists are doing in the name of Islam. I see what they’re doing in the name of religion, in every religion. You—I think Christianity or Judaism or Islam. If you want to do something extreme, you will find the right excuse for it. I think that we are giving up on education. We gave up on education. When I see people in the United States like this, like young people, the young generation going to elite universities saying, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” They’ve never been to Palestine, they’ve never been to Israel. They don’t understand what a Palestinian is feeling. By the way, the United Emirates, you know, Dubai, all these by countries, they understood the danger of this fundamental Islamist movement and they fight it. Ask yourself why Abdel Fattah el-Sisi doesn’t want anything to do with the Palestinian. He wants to be the, you know, moderate. “I’m willing to have—but I don’t want this problem in my country, no, no.” Why Jordan has, like, you know, a love and hate feeling with the Palestinians. 

Why? 

They don’t want this problem.

Let’s explain the problem, though. Because, you know, pre–October 7, even after the Intifada, even after all the rockets on Sderot, even after after after all of these things—broadly on the Israeli left, and certainly in the United States on the left, there was a consensus view. And that consensus view was there’s two people, and the conflict is fundamentally about splitting up the land. It seems to me that that is fundamentally shifted, that idea. 

Because what happened on October 7 got nothing to do with the occupation.
Because when you hear right now Khaled Meshaal—
Being one of the heads of Hamas.
Yes. One of the heads of Hamas—being interviewed in a podcast—

I’m going to say it again.

Khaled Meshaal was interviewed two weeks ago in a podcast. Okay? He was like sitting in one of the, you know, prestigious hotels doing a podcast while his people are starving or, you know, going through Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip. And he’s being interviewed for a podcast and saying in that podcast, “We’re not talking about two-state solution. No, no, no. There’s only one state from the river to the sea, which means we’re eliminating the state of Israel.” So when Hamas is asking to stop the war, it’s very funny. You are declaring deep to a race. You’re saying that state of Israel, like you’re not going to just be okay with the Gaza Strip or the Palestinian territories. You’re saying that you are going to be okay with all Israel. So when you’re asking to stop the war in the same sentence, it’s a little bit funny. And at the same time, another leader of Hamas is basically laughing in the face of the international community. They’re looking at these young people marching on the streets, shouting in the name of a terror organization, and they’re laughing. 

So when you teach people, when you educate people to speak in a soundbite and not give—and not read, you know—I remember the guy that I fell on his, like, the day of the terror attack. There was a very old man that I fell next to him. When I fell on the ground, my face hit the ground. There was a guy that sold a small like—shoes, and he looked at everything that happened and he told them, “Yeah, well, come on.” Where will you escape from God? These are innocent people. Where will you escape from God? I think that these fundamentalists, these extremists don’t want us to ask the right questions, don’t want us to question things that are said, that are done. It’s easier to have a villain in—you know, in religion, everything is very clear. The—the good guy, the bad guy. We are the last ones. No.

You said earlier to me that on October 7 Israel lost the war, but of course, the war, you know, to fight Hamas hadn’t really begun on October 7. It would take a few weeks. And now we’re almost four months into that war. Do you think it’s possible for Israel to—there’s a paradox, right? On the one hand, Israel must win the war because a democratic country cannot live with a terrorist group at its border promising to do it again and again and again. On the other hand, other people say you can’t defeat an idea, and this is an idea. So can Israel win the war? 

Like you said, Israel has to win. It doesn’t have another chance. It doesn’t have any other choice. And I chose the war: chance and choice. We have to win this war. You know that the reaction is going to be harsh and brutal, and you want the reaction to be harsh and brutal.

Why?

Because they want to kill our sense of humanity. I was angry and frustrated about this terror organization because they took from me the ability to look at the other side with compassion. At the beginning of these days, they killed compassion. The sense of compassion in me. They murdered the sense of compassion in me, of humanity, me not being able to look at someone else and say, 'okay, I need to look at this, too. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to see.' I’m not interested to see. And this is what Hamas wanted to do. And he was able to do it. A lot of Israelis, and you know what? On a certain level, they are right. They don’t want to even listen about the misery of the people in the Gaza Strip. They don’t want to, to have compassion towards the people of the Gaza Strip because they say to themselves, “they didn’t have any compassion when they came and burned us alive. Why should we have compassion to them?” And I understand that. But then I say to myself, we lost that day and they want us to lose this war. I’m not willing to give them this, the benefit of them looking and seeing that we lost our humanity. We are not Hamas. Israel is not Hamas. And this is why in the last few days, in the last few weeks, I started watching what is happening in the Gaza Strip. It’s horrible. 

It’s not easy seeing the images coming out from the Gaza Strip. And I feel sorry and painful for babies, for children, for men and women who are being killed in this war. No one should experience this. No one in this world should experience not what we experienced and what the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip are experiencing.

The next generation of the people living in the Gaza Strip in 20 years, if we want them, if we want to start looking for forgiveness between Israelis and Palestinians, we need also to be part of the solution. We cannot just say it’s not our problem. These are our neighbors. We don’t have any other neighbors.

You know, if somebody is sitting in Israel and thinking that one day, 3 million Palestinians from, you know, the West Bank, 1 million in the West Bank and 2 million in the Gaza Strip will just disappear, you’re living in a really, really, really bad conception. 

And Israel—I’m announcing as an Israeli, Muslim, Arab woman, is not going to disappear anywhere, nor the Jewish people. The Jewish state is here to stay. 

Now we need to be part of a solution. And to just look at the geopolitical situation, we have a great opportunity. Everybody has political interests. Everybody has interest in the Middle East. You know, we have peace agreements with Jordan. You have peace agreement with Egypt. We have the Abraham Accords. And Saudi Arabia is winking and telling us. . . . So we need to be really, really, really, you know, blind not to see the great opportunity where a lot of political interests come together for Israel and for the Palestinian people. We just need to open our eyes.

Before we left the interview, we asked Lucy about her parents. We wanted to know a little bit more about what they think of her work, her life, and what she’s become.

They’re really proud. They—they’re amazing, really. They sound unbelievable. I cannot be grateful enough for them, and, you know, them accepting Tsahi as they are—the day that Tsahi, on October 7, when my mom knew that he’s going to the battlefield and he’s going—she cried her eyes out. He’s like her son. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that she’s Muslim or he’s Jewish or we have a child. His name is Adam. We have, you know, I don’t want to put this, like, burden on him, but he’s the future. He’s our future. Like Adam is Adam. He’s an empty paper. White. He’s a human being. So nobody’s going to judge him and nobody’s going—he’s the future. He’s this and that. He’s Muslim and he’s Jewish. And for me, this is my—everything that I’m doing in my life right now is for him. I want him to have a better future. I want him to be in a country where he can be proud to be Jewish and to be Muslim. And I am not willing to just sit aside while some people are trying to push him and tell him 'you’re not part of this country.' His father is patriotic. As a 48-year-old man that is not supposed to do reserves is. And he is—he’s a human being. And I will fight for his right to be who he is without being judged. This is my fight.

I can’t thank you enough for giving— ...

Thanks you.

I know how busy you are.

Yeah.

So grateful. Now you have to go. 

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.