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This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Future of the Middle East
2024-02-20 (300)
Lucy Aharish is one of the most prominent television broadcasters in Israel. But that’s not the thing that makes her exceptional. 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 there, Lucy often says that she sees herself as sitting on a fence. By that she doesn’t mean she’s unwilling to take a side—as you’ll see, she is a woman of strong convictions, bravery, and moral backbone. What she means is that she has a unique lens 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 on display in 2018 when Lucy’s marriage to a Jewish Israeli actor (Tsahi Halevi of Fauda fame) sparked a nasty backlash from the country’s religious far-right.
Lucy has long been a vocal critic of those peripheral far-right voices—the ones who are inclined to oppose her marriage. She’s also long been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But she is equally critical of her fellow Arab Israelis, particularly of Arab violence and of the Arab leadership that she says condones it.
An Arab. A proud Israeli. A Muslim married to a Jew. In short, Lucy Aharish is an iconoclast.
I sat down with Lucy recently in Tel Aviv. We talked about the October 7 massacre and its impact on the country and her family—her husband put on his uniform and headed to the south within hours of Hamas’s invasion of the country. Left alone with her son, she contemplated “hiding him in the washing machine,” should terrorists arrive at her doorstep.
Lucy also talked about the challenges she faced growing up as the only Arab Muslim kid in a traditional Jewish village, and how she was bullied for that but doesn’t view herself as a victim. We talked about the terrorist attack that she survived in Gaza as a child, which makes October 7 all the more personal to her. We discussed why she believes that Israelis and Arabs share the same destiny, the hope that she has for her Muslim-Jewish son, and the future of the country she loves—and calls home.
I’ve been very lucky in my career: I’ve done many interviews that have stayed with me. But this might be the most moving of all.
By Bari Weiss
February 12, 2024
@thefreepress
Video Transcription:
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 kind of—I
mean, you’ve said it wasn’t easy.
You’ve said
before that
terrible things were said to 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
that 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’m 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 that 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 will take me in the car
and put me in front of the,
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 will tell me “If
I will 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
like, raised my hand and hit you.
But I will do that
if I will
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.
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 were watching it
like it’s a really
bad action movie.
I think it was after
20 minutes that
there was like
some army forces got in
and took us out.
My cousin went through a lot of—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
were 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.
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
like 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?
What they did—.
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.
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—
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 on 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.
We just started,
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.
We—on
October 7,
we need to say the truth.
We lost.
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?
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.
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 a, you know,
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.
Yes. So grateful.
Now you have to go and vote.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
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