The Year Since Oct. 7
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One year ago, Israel suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. The conflict that followed has become bigger and deadlier by the day, killing tens of thousands of people and expanding from Gaza to Yemen, Lebanon, and now Iran. But as big as October 7th still looms in the world, its most powerful legacy is on the ground.

with the people who lived through it and are still enduring its aftermath. Today, we return to two men in Israel and Gaza to hear how their lives have changed. It's Monday, October 7th. Hello?

Hi, Golan. This is Sabrina Tavernisi from The Daily, from the New York Times Daily podcast. Last October, I spoke to a survivor of the October 7th attacks. My name is Golan Abitbol. My age is 44. I live in Kibbutz Berri. And I was born in the kibbutz. Golan's kibbutz in southern Israel was one of the hardest-hit places in the country. We woke up to the sound of launching missiles.

He described the attack by Hamas that day as unfolding like a nightmare. You could see murder in the eyes. He saw men going house to house. They took babies. They killed his friends. They took kids. His neighbors. They took elderly people. People he'd known all his life. The best friend of my son. The most adorable, gentle kid and they just ripped him away from the hands of his mother.

It was more than seven hours before help arrived. By the end, the community had been devastated. 101 of its roughly 1,200 residents had been killed. Ten hostages remain in Gaza, but only three are thought to be alive. People from Gaza, they were our friends, and we donated money to them.

Many of the people who lived in the community believed in peace with the Palestinians. The mother of a friend of mine, she used to go once a week to one of the border crossing with Gaza Strip and pick up with her car children and take them to get dialysis in Israeli hospitals. Some of them had even made it their life's work. We are liberal person. We don't believe that all of the people in Gaza are evil people.

We don't believe. We didn't believe. I'm sorry. We didn't believe. I don't know what I'm thinking now. But Golan said that, for him, what happened on October 7th threw all of that into question. Golan, hi. Hi, how are you? I'm very good. I'm glad to see you. Sorry for the quality of the selfie camera. No worries. Last week, I called Golan. He and his family were living in the coastal city of Haifa.

They had moved there from a hotel on the Dead Sea, where they'd been living after the attack. We'd been to the hotel for five months. They were great. The people did their best to help us cope. But it's hard. It's hard to live in a hotel. We had three rooms for all of us and you.

You go out and there is all the grief. And basically, one of the girls didn't take it very well. And me and my wife thought that it's not a good solution for us and our family. And we went to Haifa. Was that your daughter? What was she experiencing? It was very hard to make her go to the school. They made...

in the Dead Sea. She took the bed like half a meter away from the wall and put some pillows and put on her headphones and just stayed there. So she kind of shut down. Yeah. And we decided we need to leave. When you moved into the apartment in Haifa, what did that feel like? Did that feel like going back to normal in some way?

It's a mixed feeling because I consider my home in Kibbutz Berri. From one side, we are back in civilization, but it's not my civilization because I used to be in a kibbutz. Kibbutz is...

It's a shithole. You can't get anything delivered over there. I'm not used to this scenery of cars and people I don't know. In the beginning, it felt like kind of a betrayal. Explain that. Because it's the community.

It's to go outside and walk barefoot and pick lemons from the neighbor tree and know everyone else and go and sit and drink coffee with the other neighbors. And wherever you go, you know everyone. And changing this, it took me time. But I know it was a good solution. It was good for the kids to leave the hotel and come here.

Do you feel like you've found some peace now after all these months, after that rollercoaster? Have you settled a bit emotionally? No, no. It's all mixed together. It's all mixed together. I guess I'm better than the last time we talked, but I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I have a lot of sadness and a lot of...

anger that wasn't there before. I'm not a sad person, not a angry person, not a vengeful person. I wasn't not a warmonger person. It wasn't. It's a different situation. We're not the same. None of us is the same. I can't put my hands exactly on it.

Golan, when I talked to you after October 7th, speaking of anger, you did mention you were angry. I remember that in your voice and you just felt like this sense of disbelief that it had happened and anger. You know, you said there were kind of some closenesses between the kibbutz and Gazans. There were Gazans who worked at the kibbutz. There were people who helped Gazans get to cancer treatments. There were donations. But that's October 7th.

had changed things. Do you still feel angry? How are you feeling on that front? I think my thought of the Palestinian people changed, and not for the best. I'm not saying I was a left-wing, but I had hope for a solution, peaceful solution, which I don't have now. And I have a lot of

disappointment of my government that still didn't find the way to bring my friend back and they are dying over there. I'm really disappointed that this is the same army that didn't saw what is going on beyond the fence, just four kilometers outside of my house. I can't believe it's the same army in the same

intelligence operations. It's hard. They had an obligation for us and they neglected us. And now they need to return our friends and family back. And for the last year, they didn't do it. They didn't do it. Do you think the government is making a mistake by not making that the priority?

Yeah. Yeah. This is the priority. We don't have time. They're dying there. We need to make it a priority. We need to make it first priority. I can't change it. Yeah. Yeah. Golan, you said that your view on Palestinians had changed, that you lost hope for a peaceful solution. Yeah. I don't believe there is any way forward.

that us and the Palestinians are going to be in some kind of a mutual agreement that have some kind of coexistence. I believe that in the end, I don't think there are any good people to do peace anymore with.

I don't like war. I don't like to see the Palestinians the way they are. But I hate it. I really hate that they made me change my mind on them. I hate them for showing me that the worst of them, the worst things they can do, they can be. And I will never forgive them. I will never forgive them for what they did.

I will never forgive them for the slaughter and the ways they murdered my friends. I will never forgive them. But isn't the answer that it's not a monolith in Gaza either, right? That there are different people there. There are those people who did October 7th, and then there are also other people. And it's just pretty complicated. I don't think anymore that way. I believe...

that we should alienate ourselves from the Palestinians. I think we should not be near them. I think we can't trust them. I think the solution is just to build a big wall and they are here and we are there. I don't think we can ever trust them to annihilate the urge to kill us. I think it's always there, somewhere in the back of their head,

Maybe there are people who are not singing like that, but the majority of them, they can say they are peaceful. But I believe that somewhere in the back of their fundamentalist head, they want to kill us. Golan, it feels very hopeless to me. And it feels different because, as you said, you didn't have this view before singing.

October 7th. In the past, I thought we can do it. We can do it in a peaceful solution. But we can't do it. We can't. And we tried to do it in Gaza. We tried just to take everything and go out. And you saw what happened. We took everything and went out and they slaughtered us. And if we do it, if we go outside and leave them, they don't have the maturity to

and enough humanity inside of them to just let us live and let us stay here. I guess I'm curious how you think about this. I've had a conversation with a man in Gaza who had sent his kids and his wife to Egypt because he felt like it was very dangerous in Gaza. He very much believed

disagreed with what happened on October 7th, but has kind of been caught up with everything that's happened since, namely the invasion of Gaza and the war there. Do you see that there or acknowledge that there could be people there in Gaza who weren't party to what happened and who are suffering though they did nothing?

I'm sure there are people who didn't do it. I'm sure. I know there are a lot of innocent persons and I don't like to see them die. But I really, really want my friends back. And I really, really want the Hamas regime to be gone after what they did to us. And

If you keep terrorist organization, if you let terrorist organization build a tunnel under your house, you are part of it. You are part of it. This is the regime they have. And we have to annihilate them after what they did to us. And they said they are going to do it again. But what about those people you said who were not part of it?

I don't wish for Palestinian kids and innocent people to die. I really don't. But I don't think there can be any peaceful solution to us and Zen. I think that you can't do such an horrific massacre and it's not affecting all of the community over there. They are part of it.

This is the price of war. But there are innocent people that suffer as a result. Of course. But it's a war and we need to finish it and we need to finish the Hamas and Hamas is still there. We are all inside Gaza now. We are all inside this fight. Whether it's our friends that are fighting there or whether it's my friends who are being hostage there.

All you have to do is bring the hostages back and stop trying to kill us. And this is what really bothers me about all the international community. They can give really a lot of criticism on Israel because we are not being humane. Give pressure on the Hamas to bring the hostages back. Give pressure on Hezbollah to stop shooting at us.

The last years they've been shooting at us. Okay, if the international community would have stopped Hezbollah from shooting, we didn't have to invade. I don't want to invade Lebanon. I don't want it in the other side also. I don't want the Lebanese and the Palestinians and the Houthis in Yemen. I don't want them to die, but it's time for war. We can't sit on our hands while...

They are slaughtering us. We can't sit on our hands while after a year of nonstop bombing from the north, we can't. We can't. We have to go to war. Golan, what do you want people to understand about you and about Israel a year later? We don't want this war. We were dragged into this war by force, by brute force and terror.

And we don't want to keep on doing it. We don't want to keep on killing our neighbors. And it's that simple. Just stop. Stop trying to kill us. And maybe in a few decades, we can have some kind of reasonable peace after we forgot. After the pain will be a little more numb.

Golan, thank you for talking to me. Yeah, thank you. When we come back, the story of Hussein, a Palestinian man living in Gaza.

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Help this fight. Donate at NRDC.org slash The Daily. In Middlesex County, New Jersey, innovation is here. And you should be here, too. Because businesses that move here thrive here. Visit DiscoverMiddlesex.com slash Thrive to find resources available for your growing business. I first spoke to Hussein in February. Hussein? Hello. Hi. My goodness, it's very difficult to get through. Hello.

The day the war began, he was waiting for a furniture delivery to fill his newly renovated home in Gaza City. We had a big balcony. And we were thinking that this big balcony would be a place to sit in, drinking coffee and tea and breathing fresh air.

That home was destroyed in the war's early weeks. And in the months after that, he moved four times, each time further south in the Gaza Strip. A lot of crowds here. Imagine, there is more than a million people are here in this small city. Eventually, Hussein ended up in Rafah, the southernmost city, on the border with Egypt. What does it look like? It's dark and dark.

A lot of crowds of people just walking, trying to find food, water, just walking around us with no direction, with no destination for them. At the time, nearly half of Gaza's population had taken shelter there. And Hussein was trying to decide whether he should send his wife and three children to safety in Egypt. I just remember the silly questions we used to play in our childhood.

It was hard. Living without them, he said, might be too painful for him. But staying in Gaza was too dangerous for them. A few days later, Hussein paid to get them out.

But he stayed behind. To work off the debt he incurred to send them away. And to care for his elderly parents. Hussein. Hussein, can you hear me? Yeah, I hear you, yes. Hussein, hi. I'm glad to hear you. Me too. You sound clear. Yes, thank God. Actually, I got a good connection right now. Hussein, where are you right now? Where am I catching you?

When I reached Hussein last week, he was living in central Gaza with his parents and siblings. I'm living in a house. I got the financial ability.

to pay but even though that i am in a house i get to fetch water i get to do this because there is no water reaching the houses yeah and imagine i pay monthly for this apartment

3,500 shekels, which is almost $1,000. Wow. And for me, I am less than 1% of the community who are almost a year without work. They don't work. They don't have income. So imagine I have a good income and I'm facing this problem to secure my basic needs. I can't get

Clothes, shoes, proper food, anything. I've been wearing the same clothes for a year right now. The same shoe I'm wearing for a whole year, which has fallen apart and torn out. But there is no choice. Even though I got the financial capability to buy a new pair,

But there is nothing in the market. It became so strange if you see someone who looks well or who are dressed well. All the people are looking miserable. You can see the pain, the misery, the struggle on their faces, the loss. It's obvious, the loss.

And due to the lack of clothes, most of the people are wearing the same thing as if they are in a uniform, but in a dirty uniform. The same misery over their faces. All of us are kind of lost, you know. All of us are lost here. And Hussein, what's an average day for you? What's your life like from day to day? Try to avoid things, to keep myself busy.

Each day, I would have early morning, I check on the water and try to get a couple of buckets to just wash my face and to brush my teeth, etc. Which is literally seawater. When I wash my face, actually it burns. Wow, it's seawater. Yeah. Then I try to go to my work.

We got electricity and internet on the walk. And when I go back to home, I try to keep myself as much as busy. I try to walk on the streets for an hour or two hours. Because staying alone is very hard for me, far from my kids and my wife.

But most of the day, I try to keep myself busy walking. Yeah. Not to think, to walk. You said that you try not to think. What do you try to avoid thinking about? Where do you not want your mind to go? About not seeing my kids again. Hussein, tell me about how you talk to your kids again.

How often do you talk to them? How do you keep in touch with them? Over WhatsApp, yeah. When I got internet, I talked to them. Sometimes we have video calls, et cetera, voice calls. I'm trying to follow up their life and to be with them. And they share videos with me, what have they done, and the places they are going to, about their dreams, what they do.

Yeah. And thank God, alhamdulillah, that they got food right now. They got proper clothes right now. And inshallah, they are safe there. And this released me, at least, that they are safe. Are they back in school? Yeah, online, just online.

Because they don't have residency papers and they can't enroll in schools. So just online. Their teacher is in Gaza or in Egypt on that online school? On West Bank. On the West Bank. Wow. So they're in Egypt and they're taking online school with a teacher in the West Bank.

Yeah. Wow, that's quite an arrangement. It's a complicated life. Very, very. What about your wife? How is she doing? Alhamdulillah, she's doing well, yeah. And I know there is a lot of things over her shoulders. And it's very hard on her, but alhamdulillah, she still can do it and have the strength to care for her.

Yeah, and actually, I never imagined that I can survive this. It seems that we are surviving. I've seen people are dead. I've seen people are burned up. I see rockets falling in front of me. I saw my

House which I've been working for all my life to build, being destroyed and to be bombed. I've seen a lot of things, but I'm still surviving. I guess the humans got a huge power. We don't know about it. Hussein, are you surprised that the war is still going? I'm surprised that there is humans doing these wars. Why they do it?

How could humans become this evil? Killing others, imposing collective punishment on over 2 million people with no reason. What are they going to get? Why are they doing this? How could humans do this to other humans? I'm still shocked how people can do this. And why to do wars from the beginning?

Why to occupy other people's land? Why to do all of these things? I wanted to ask you, Hussein, you know, on the question of why the war is still going, there have been many efforts to try to get a ceasefire and a hostage deal, but until now, they've failed. What do you think of that? What do you think is happening? I think that I'm a hostage, actually. I'm a hostage. I'm...

For me, alongside with around 2 million people, we are hostages. What's the difference between us or any hostages? Do we have our freedom? Do we live normal life? Do we get to do our decisions? No. We are forced in this situation via guns and weapons. Yeah. And I wish that someone would try to do a deal to release us.

Not me only, the whole nation of Palestine are hostages in their land and outside their lands. Hussein, you said you want them to do a deal, but they have been trying to do a deal. It hasn't worked. Do you feel that one particular party is at fault here? Are you mad at Hamas? I'm mad at humanity at all. At all of the humanity, not Hamas.

on Hamas, Israeli, whoever, on humans who accept this situation. It's not a matter of Hamas, Palestine, Israel, whatever. It's a matter of humanity. We are talking about more than 50,000 people were killed, around 20,000 kids. What's their fault to be killed? What have they done?

For me, I really believe in human rights and justice and equality between all the humans. But do the world do? Because we are not only seeing, we are facing double standards that we are imposed to. All the world is watching us, sieged, killed, humiliated, and no one is doing anything.

Are you worried that as this conflict gets bigger, that Gazans will be forgotten, will be less on people's minds out in the world? Actually, what I'm worried about is this will alter the mentalities of people, even though the people who are believing in peace and resolution between the nations are

When you lose your kid, when you lose your brother, when you lose your house, and you know that this party, that this side have killed them, has displaced you, put collective punishment on you, and they are the reason of the dire situation you are living in, I guess people would seek revenge.

won't believe in peace again. You're worried this experience will make people not want peace. Yeah. I'm wondering how this world can be unfair and how am I going to believe again in human rights, in equality, in justice when I see that it doesn't apply on us. I'm still believing in this, but I'm afraid that

This picture would collapse due to what's happening here in Gaza. It will encourage other parties and other nations and other countries to offend, to humiliate other people when they see that some countries are doing this and it's fine. We can do it. It's okay to kill anyone, to put collective punishment on people.

Not one or two, two million people, it's okay to keep it for more than 10 years, it's fine. So it would encourage people to be uncivilized. It would encourage barbarian violence to the whole world. Hussein, remind us how old your children are.

My children, nine, seven, and two. Nine, seven, and two. The littlest one is now two. Yes, and when they traveled before, he didn't start talking yet. But right now he is talking. He's talking. Yeah, and it's so hard that...

Your son is growing far from you, especially these times and this age. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like it was the right decision to send them to Egypt? Yes, for sure. Are they happy in Egypt? They are kids. They are happy with the chocolate, with the coke, with the chips, with the toys, with the clothes.

I remember the first two weeks, they were kind of insane that they find the chocolate and potato chips and coke to drink and etc. They were so super, super happy. And they just kept telling me that we got this, we eat this. They were happy to eat. They were happy to find food. Yeah. Do you think you will see them again?

Hussain, thank you very much for talking to me.

Thank you, Sabrina. I'm sorry for talking a lot. No, it's okay. Thank you for hearing me. It's okay. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts and your life with me. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay. Bye-bye, Hussein. Bye. We'll be right back.

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Hey, I'm Tracy Mumford. You can join me every weekday morning for the headlines from The New York Times. Now we're about to see a spectacle that we've never seen before. It's a show that catches you up on the biggest news stories of the day. I'm here in West Square. We'll put you on the ground where news is unfolding. I just got back from a trip out to the front line and every soldier... And bring you the analysis and expertise you can only get from the Times newsroom. I just can't emphasize enough how extraordinary this moment is.

Look for The Headlines wherever you get your podcasts. Here's what else you should know today. In Gaza on Sunday, the Israeli military carried out airstrikes and issued evacuation orders for nearly all of northern Gaza, ahead of what it called a new phase in the war there.

It also ordered residents in southern Lebanon to evacuate over the weekend, while Israeli airstrikes hit Dahya, a neighborhood south of Beirut, where Hezbollah holds sway and where heavy bombardment has already forced many to flee. In Israel, efforts to mark the anniversary of the deadly attack by Hamas are constrained by security concerns and the ongoing conflict.

Israel has yet to hold a national day of mourning for the people killed or taken hostage a year ago today. Today's episode was produced by Diana Nguyen, Michael Simon Johnson, and Rochelle Banja. It was edited by Mark George with help from Patricia Willans. Research help by Susan Lee and Yonatan Reis. Contains original music by Marian Lozano, Alisha Ba'itup, and Rowan Nemistow.

and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Yonatan Reyes and Patrick Kingsley. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.

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