I was at the entrance to the local HMO on my way to see an optometrist when I overheard a loud conversation between the secretary and the clinic director.
“We need to destroy Gaza,” the secretary was saying, “to flatten it into a soccer field because there is not one person in Gaza who is uninvolved in what was done to us. They can leave if they want, but no Arab country will want them and that’s for sure! And all the terrorists who entered Israel to massacre and kidnap people on October 7 and are now sitting in our prisons, they should be poisoned. Instead, we are allowing them to breathe our air and eat our food. I would poison them myself if I could!!”
The director of the clinic nodded in agreement, adding: “And at the funeral procession of Ismael Haniyeh we should have killed everyone!”
I was speechless. I felt sick and disgusted. I had never heard such profound hatred, so openly expressed in all the decades of my life in Israel. There was a voice inside me saying, “Just go sit in the waiting room, life is hard enough already, you don’t need to deal with this too.”
I took three steps toward the waiting room. Then, I heard another voice within me: “Why are you running away from this emotional fire? You know how to deal with it. This is a moment when you can actually make a difference. Go back and speak with her.”
I stopped, turned around, and walked toward her desk. Looking into her eyes, I said: “Please tell me more about what you are feeling.”
I was not ready for her onslaught.
“I live very close to the border with Lebanon where, for over 10 months, there are almost daily bombings, and I have two young daughters who have not been themselves since the war erupted.”
She continued passionately, “My seven-year-old started wetting her bed right after October 7. I have been taking them both to therapy, yet they are still so anxious. My best friend was murdered at the Nova festival and other friends were killed or wounded while fighting in the war. I am so full of fear that I asked my brother, who is a doctor, to give me poison for my daughters and me, so I can take it and give it to them in case terrorists from Lebanon try kidnapping us. There is no way I will have my daughters become hostages...”
She was silent for a moment and then continued: “I watched the 47-minute film compiled from the Hamas footage of October 7 and since then, I have a constant pain in my stomach. Any thought of sex disgusts me. I saw a 13-year-old girl being raped and stabbed several times. Who does that? I saw men and women whose private parts were mutilated – and so much more. I cannot take this horror anymore. I just want them all dead and I want to stop feeling so terrible. I want to stop suffering!”
A hug that meant more than words can say
At that point, she was crying and I was crying with her. I stepped around the table and asked if I could hug her and she nodded. So, I held her in my arms and we wept together.
“I WANT you to know that I don’t hate Arabs, my father’s best friend is an Arab and the woman I work with here is an Arab and I love her like a sister. I just hate the Palestinians in Gaza, all of them... And I want all of us to feel good again...”
“I get it,” I said. And then I asked, ”May I tell you something?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“You are a beautiful and powerful woman and, at this moment, there are parts inside you that are suffering terribly. There is a part that hates and wants to see all the Palestinians in Gaza dead because perhaps that would ease your suffering. And another part that is so worried about your daughters being taken hostage that it is urging you to get poison so that none of you would have to live through a kidnapping. And another part that feels disgusted by the thought of having a man touch you because of what you saw Hamas men doing in the 47-minute film. There is also a part of you that wants to make sure I understand that you don’t hate all the Arabs, and that you have Arab friends you feel close to and love dearly. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then there is something else. There is the powerful, loving, compassionate woman that you are also your essence. Do you feel her presence at all?” I asked.
She was quiet for a moment and then said: “Yes.”
“So, can this powerful, compassionate woman let those other parts know she sees and hears them and perhaps even cares about them?
Another pause, and then she looked at me and said: “I will try... I just want things to get better.”
“I know,” I said and gently squeezed her hand.
We looked at each other once more and then I walked down the hall and into the doctor’s waiting room, feeling a warm feeling of gratitude spreading across my chest.
I had come to the clinic to check my eyesight – how well I could see, near and far – but I had also been given an opportunity to “see” deeper and with more compassion. To see the suffering within the darkness and help a woman connect to her aching heart, allowing her tears to flow for the deep sadness, helplessness, and fear trapped beneath her rage.
Since October 7, as part of her organization Together Beyond Words, the writer, a peacebuilder, and her colleagues have been creating an Army of Healers (AOH), to transform the ongoing cycles of violence and embark on an ambitious drive for dialogue, harmony, and peace between Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians.