War Torments Wisconsinites with Ties to Israel and Gaza

Frederica Freyberg:

Turning to international news, it’s now more than five weeks since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. With the death toll in Gaza topping 11,000 and growing. “Here & Now” reporter Aditi Debnath continues that reporting on how the escalating war continues to torment these Wisconsin families.

Betsy Forester:

There are no positive ways to spin what is happening.

Hama:

I just want this thing to end.

Aditi Debnath:

These Wisconsinites have close connections to the war. Like Hama, a native of Gaza, whose family there does not have internet access to tell her if they’re alive. For now, pictures of her family are all she and her mother have.

Hama:

She just have our house photos and the crying. That’s the only thing she’s doing right now.

Aditi Debnath:

Hama recently applied for U.S. citizenship and fears anti-Palestinian backlash if she speaks to the media. She also worries that her family in Gaza may be targeted.

Hama:

I have zero hope to see them again.

Aditi Debnath:

This war is an episode in a decades-long conflict. She feared for her family in 2014 also.

Hama:

That war, I lost my aunt family, like eight people died, killed in that one.

Betsy Forester:

Who live under the constant threat of missile attacks and death.

Aditi Debnath:

The fate of all people in Gaza and Israel leads Rabbi Betsy Forester to pray for them multiple times a day.

Betsy Forester:

To hold it together I believe is what my job is.

Aditi Debnath:

But it was harder for her to hold it together when her husband, Scott, was in Israel with their daughter, and Israel declared war.

Betsy Forester:

I felt very helpless here.

Aditi Debnath:

Scott is back home now but still unsettled.

Scott Forester:

Everybody is walking around with a cloud hanging, you know, a cloud of uncertainty.

Aditi Debnath:

Following Hamas’ attack killing an estimated 1,200 Israelis, the unrelenting retaliation by Israel has so far killed more than 11,000 people in the Gaza strip, and that number continues to grow daily. UW-Madison Professor Samer Alatout is a native of Palestine and a geopolitical expert of the region. He says at issue is Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish nation on Palestinian land.

Samer Alatout:

The people who paid the price for the Zionist project are the Palestinians, and they paid a heavy price.

Aditi Debnath:

That heavy price is what Amnesty International deems apartheid. Decades of Israeli laws and policies designed to, “maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians.” Even in Israel, most citizens don’t support the government’s leaders according to a study by the Pew Research Center.

Marc Kornblatt:

So it’s a really, really tough time to be an Israeli.

Aditi Debnath:

Marc Kornblatt lived in Madison for more than 30 years before he and his wife moved to Israel in 2019. Now in Tel Aviv, he says most Israelis do support Palestinian liberation.

Marc Kornblatt:

I’ve not become more Zionistic. I’ve not become more right wing. I’ve not become more religious. I’ve become more Jewish.

Aditi Debnath:

Kornblatt says it’s important to show his community that they’re not alone. He volunteers at a clothing donation center and participates in a citizen patrol.

Marc Kornblatt:

I would rather have the vital life that I have here where I might make a small difference, than the quiet life that I could choose by leaving.

Aditi Debnath:

Kornblatt says the Jewish community is a small one. .2% of the world population, according to Pew, and many of his neighbors know someone who has been tortured or killed in this war.

Marc Kornblatt:

One of the big calls that comes out to the place where I’ve been working with the donated clothes in our neighborhood is for social workers. Just to be able to sit with people and let them try and breathe and talk.

Aditi Debnath:

Over in Gaza, a Wisconsin man’s sister was killed in a bombardment while at a marketplace there soon after the October 7th attack. She was a Palestinian social worker and her brother, Mohammed Hamad, lives in Brookfield.

Mohammed Hamad:

And she worked for, I don’t know, all her life to treat her kids. They are going through trauma and to help them, you know, to recover after wars.

Aditi Debnath:

Hamad says he’s lived through numerous wars and hopes for an immediate ceasefire. Betsy Forester says the current war is only setting Palestinian liberation back.

Betsy Forester:

Large swaths of the Israeli population and the American Jewish population have been working hard for a two-state solution and an end to the occupation of the West Bank.

Aditi Debnath:

Professor Alatout believes in one state, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea that equally includes Palestinians and Israelis.

Samer Alatout:

The solution is one democratic state between the river and the sea with a state of its citizens and for its citizens and with equal rights to everybody.

Aditi Debnath:

No matter the solution, Hamad said there’s only one way out of this war.

Mohammed Hamad:

There will be end for this cycle of violence by agreement, by people who know they’re going to live side by side in peaceful situation.

Aditi Debnath:

Until then, the cloud of uncertainty and the fear of death remains for these Wisconsin families and hangs heavy. For “Here & Now,” I’m Aditi Debnath.