Julia Chaitin Responds to Jay Rothman about the "End" of the Israeli/Hamas War
Newsletter #397 — November 2, 2025
Julia Chaitin sent us this essay on October 15, 2026, in response to Jay Rothman's essay which we had posted the same day. This was two days after the last 20 living hostages came back from Gaza and seven dead hostages had been returned.
As you will quickly learn, Julia is an Israeli Jew, and a life-long peacebuilder, who has been living with and in this war for its full two years. She also has been a BI contributor from the very beginning. She participated in the planning meetings that helped create the BI Knowledge Base and she contributed several essays for it, one on Narratives and Storytelling, relating to her peacebuilding work between Israelis and Palestinians and descendants of Holocaust perpetrators and survivors, another entitled Creating Safe Spaces for Communication, drawn from the same work. She co-authored a third piece with Patrick Hiller on The Bedoins in Israel's Negev Desert: Ubiquitous yet Invisible to the Dominant Society. She also contributed an interview with Julian Portilla in 2003 about this and related work. So Julia has a very long history working for peace in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
After October 7, she shared her thoughts in Newsletter 168 and Newsletter 174, and now, as the war appears to (perhaps) be coming to an end (or at least a change in state).
I live in Kibbutz Urim, located in the Eshkol Regional Council, which is close to the Gaza border. Eshkol was the region that suffered the most deaths and kidnappings on October 7th, a day that has left me traumatized, even though over two years have passed. On that horrendous day I lost many close friends and colleagues, who were either murdered or taken hostage. I know many people who were wounded physically (everyone in the region was deeply psychologically injured). I learned that many of my children's childhood friends and teachers were taken hostage, murdered, and/or severely injured, which buried so many of their sweet childhood memories and experiences.
Over the last two years, I searched the house, looking for concrete mementoes from people whose lives were lost. In these searches, I looked for my children's old report cards (my children are grown, between the ages of 40-50). I/they wanted artifacts from the past that could connect them/me to those who were taken from us.
For example, Daniel, my youngest, was overcome to learn that I found an old report card from Ma'aleh Habsor - his middle and high school - in which Judy Weinstein from Kibbutz Nir Oz, who was his English teacher, wrote that she had praised Daniel for his book report, while commenting that she would have loved to see a bit more depth to his half-page analysis. Judy and her husband, Gadi, were murdered on that Saturday morning by Hamas terrorists, when they had gone out for their early morning walk as Hamas began invading their kibbutz.
We learned in horror about the murder of Itai Svirsky - another one of Daniel's childhood friends who was born and raised in Kibbutz Be'eri. On October 7th, Itai saw his parents murdered and then he was taken hostage. After being held in captivity for 100 days, Itai was murdered, after his captors became afraid that the Israeli army was closing in on them.
My daughter, Noa, was devastated when we learned about the murder of Alex Dancyg - also from Kibbutz Nir Oz – who had been her history teacher and one of the main mentors who led her to become a history teacher with an expertise on the Shoah.
I couldn't breathe when I heard that Vivian Silver from Kibbutz Be'eri — a good friend and colleague, one of my partners in peace — had been murdered in her home. When we got news one midnight in November 2023, that her DNA had been found in her home, and thus the forensic team could determine that she had not been kidnapped (as we had hoped), but rather murdered on that day, I sat on the phone with my dear friend, Eric, in the saddest of silences for 20 minutes, because neither of us could speak.
And this is just a drop in the bucket of what we experienced, indeed, are still experiencing. I apologize to all those dear ones who were murdered, kidnapped, and injured that I have not mentioned in this piece. I apologize to all their families for not mentioning them here.
Please, please forgive me — I carry you all with me in my heart.
I have not cried since October 7th. I kept waiting for the floodgates to open, but every time I began/begin to cry, my body pushed/pushes back the tears and I have been/am left with one small tear on each side, but no more. My body aches from the pain, loss, suffering, cruelty. My body aches to let all of this out. Or at least to let some of it out. Now that over two years have elapsed, and the remaining 20 living hostages have returned, once again, alongside this terrible sadness, I feel the deepest of anger toward ‘my’ Israeli government that let October 7th happen. I am overcome with anger at the politicians and decision makers and 'leaders' who worked tirelessly over many years to keep the 'conflict' going, to sustaining the hatred and to develop more and more weapons of war, without trying to find a way for Israelis and Palestinians to live together in this land that both peoples call home.
Home.
They tried to sell us — at least on the Israeli side — that they/we could "manage the conflict." Some management... first we supported the development of the Hamas, who has consistently called for the destruction of Israel, since our leaders saw this group/organization/ regime as being a "good answer" to the Palestinian Authority controlled by Fatah that our 'leaders' (not only from the Likud, but from the 'left-wing' Labor Party as well) feared so deeply and wanted to destroy. Later, we sent in millions of Qatari dollars that continued to support the Hamas regime, accompanied every now and then (a lot of now and then), by a war, an operation, an incident on the fence, when things reached a boiling point.
Here, along the border, we endured ongoing rocket attacks, fires from incendiary balloons and kites that burned thousands of acres of farmland and forest. We built resilience centres, filled with social workers and psychologists who offered myriads of (new) therapies, to help us and our children learn to live with ongoing war. We built thousands of concrete shelters in our communities and along the roads to protect ourselves from the rockets. Concrete and Iron Dome were to help us "manage the conflict." No one asked the question: "Why are we teaching people to live with the horror, instead of solving it?" Some management...
We — along with the Egyptian regime — kept the Gazan population imprisoned, with their borders closed from the land, air and sea. Every now and then (there was very little now and then) we gave some ‘lucky’ Gazan residents permission to come to work in Israel, go abroad for school or a conference, or come to Israel for medical care. We saw ourselves as benevolent controllers who thought that we could continue to keep Gazans tamed in their little sliver of land, happy to have some income, to get some health care, to get an education in the West, to have 8 hours of electricity (on a good day) and the ability to buy some clean water. We believed that might is right, that everyone – that is, the Palestinians — who surrounds us want only to exterminate us. We backed them into the deepest of corners and supported the regime that called for our destruction. We did this. This was our management.
October 7th was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course, the Hamas, alongside many Gaza residents, wanted to cause us the deepest of pain after all those decades of our arrogance, our disregard, our occupation, our policing and our policies that uprooted and harmed the Palestinians, demonstrating to them that no Israeli should or could be trusted. And what was our Israeli response to the terror attack of October 7th? Crimes against humanity, tens of thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands wounded, physical destruction, a humanitarian crisis, on an unimaginable scale.
Together with Hamas, we simultaneously created our demise and their demise. Together with Hamas, we destroyed life, the value of life, and the reasons and motivations to live together in peace. In Gaza, people are struggling to survive the day. In Israel, people are struggling to breathe.
Some management...
Trump said the war is over.
It is not.
From my home in Urim, I still hear helicopters. I heard air force planes several times today. This morning there was, again, a familiar boom (No idea what we blew up there). We still have 21 captives in the Gaza Strip. They were not the 'lucky' ones who remained alive after October 7th and somehow made it back to their families. The families of the dead hostages still cannot breathe because their loved ones are there, either above or below the rubble. They will not be able to breathe until they all come home.
Home.
Trump said that we will now have a new beginning and there will be peace in the Middle East. Oh my God — I hope with all my heart that he is right.
I have known Gazans for years. I have been in ongoing touch with people there since 2008, and most of these connections continue to this day. Yes, we have stayed connected even after October 7th. Over this time, I even met a few more Gazans via WhatsApp and Facebook...
Most of our interactions over these past two years have been via monetary donations that I and other Israelis have organized, to help people in Gaza survive. Our help has been the smallest drop in the bucket. Our relations over these past two years have not been relations between equals, which is what our relations need to be if we are ever to live in a sustainable peace, but it is what has been called for, in order to help people we know in Gaza survive the day, perhaps the week... People there first need to survive and then we will be able to move on to the next stage of true cooperation and true partnership for the establishment of lives of dignity for all.
Dr. Rothman said that he is back after being gone for two years. He wrote that during war, conflict management has no place. It is only after the war that we can engage in resolution.
My message is different:
- I have been here all the time and hope to have the courage and the stamina to remain here.
- Just as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the Israeli government, including PM Netanyahu (mainly him), Ministers Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Struck and the entire guilty cabinet have been here all the time – systematically destroying life, refusing to take responsibility for the catastrophe they caused us – Palestinians and Israelis – none of us have the privilege to take time off and wait for the war to end. While they — the Israeli and Hamas regimes — are destroying life and human dignity, we must work harder to promise life and dignity for all peoples – here in Palestine and Israel. We are trying to build something good, and if we turn away, our work will collapse.
- For those of you who know me, you know that I work for peacebuilding and peace-living (as opposed to conflict management or resolution). I believe that peacebuilding must be part of our everyday life, in all our interactions, since this is what makes peace possible and sustainable. Just as Hamas et al. have not taken a day off in their perpetuation of war and hatred, neither can we. We often fall short of the ideal, but we cannot give up. We cannot give up.
- When this war does end, we will be needed more than ever. But we can’t wait to move into action that day. If we don’t work for the peace now – during the hardest of times – we won’t have who to work with in less violent times. Our values of life and human dignity and rights for all cannot be conditional – if we hold these values dear, then we understand that they become dearer and more important during times of unbearable violence and loss.
In sum — now is the time. And for those who left and who have now returned, please remain here with us, even when things become very ugly again and look hopeless. Please stay.
This year I published two books that might help people gain insight into (1) what life has been like for Jewish Israelis living near the border with Gaza, both before and after October 7th, and (2) for a way of thinking about sustainable peacebuilding and peace-living.
The book – The Meaning of Life for Israelis Living Along the Gaza Border Before and After October 7th – can be found at the following link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-01761-1 . This book provides an in-depth, longitudinal narrative and discursive study of life in the region between 2018-2021 and after October 7th.
The book, Striving for Peace through Personal Narratives of Genocide and War, which offers conceptualizations, ideas and concrete proposals about building and living , and provides numerous narrative examples (from the Shoah, between Israelis and Palestinians and between Jewish-Israelis from different streams and ideologies, can be found at the following link: https://www.cambridge.org/il/universitypress/subjects/psychology/social-psychology/striving-peace-through-personal-narratives-genocide-and-war?format=HB&isbn=9781009313063
(The books aren’t cheap [understatement], so for those who find the prices prohibitive, please ask your local and academic libraries to order them). (I did not write this piece to plug my new books but of course will be happy for people who made it to this point, to read them and send me your feedback/comments/thoughts/feelings about what you read, so that we can further the discussion).
The war has not ended. We are still living this chaos. We may feel that we have little to concretely offer to truly make our-their lives better. I don’t know of any other way than remaining true to our values, especially in these dark times, as we devise programs that can transform our values of life and dignity into concrete actions that send the message of deep care and respect for Israelis and Palestinians who call this land, "home."
Lead Graphic Credit: Obtained from https://www.
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