2023-10-31 09:52:45
I saw the tear of the busy
fading away on the cheek.
and the smell of zeal rose from the cracks,
With a fresh wind.
and stream water splashed on stones
In a wave of joy for free.
and on the banks of the Kinneret there were bathers
And no wind blew over the sea.
And there was no one to go on the waves
Just a lot of boats and games.
And I saw the tear of the slaves
From – All your troubles and waves – Dalia Rabikovitch
To write this article it was not necessary to interview anyone. It was enough to sit in one of the hotels on the Dead Sea, or Eilat, or Tel Aviv, or any other evacuated hotel in Israel and watch.
We call them “evacuees”, because refugees for us are people who are exiled from their country, run away, leave everything behind and have nowhere to return. We believe that we will win the war, the residents of the northern Negev in the kibbutzim and towns will return to their homes, everything will be rebuilt, we are strong and therefore they are only “temporarily evacuated”, soon all this will be over. But the “soon” is getting longer every day in a few more days, a few more weeks, an unknown amount of time.
For an unknown amount of time, it has a tendency to float in the air, to put women into a giant soap bubble that floats in space, taking on and unfolding forms.
The women at the Dead Sea hotel where I volunteer looked like that too.
I used to think that the phrase “eyes are a mirror to the soul” was an exaggeration by poets. I skipped the descriptions of the long eyes in male and female writers, they talked about eyes but meant what was behind them. This “time” ended the day I entered the Enjoy Hotel in the Dead Sea, the refugee hotel.
I thought we would arrive and immediately organize a kindergarten, a school, workshop activities, there would be a lot to do. I learned about stressful situations, treatment of people affected by anxiety and fear. But just like I didn’t understand what was really reflected in the eyes, I didn’t understand that there are situations where no one wants to hear, talk, sit.
They wanted clothes, shoes, underwear, bras, toiletries. The one who ran away with his shoes on him asked for sandals. The one who ran away with flip flops, asked for shoes. And that’s it. refugees
Above everything hovered abysses of sadness. chasms
Studies at the ENJOY evacuee hotel in the Dead Sea (Photo: Oshra Shaiv Lerer)
The eyes could not stay in one place, the eyelids narrowed suspiciously, the gaze wanders and finds no rest, trying to study the place, to understand, looking for a grip but falling down. The face, shoulders, chest, everything aspires down. The steps are small and hesitant and everything stays close to the body, as if striving to disappear, not to be here now. Everything is close to the body, the hands, the children, the girls, the couples, the family, everything gathers inside. Strict on defense. speaking quietly. Only with those who are close.
Abyss of sadness. chasms
At the Enjoy Hotel, they did everything to organize the evacuees’ lives anew, as the evacuees themselves testify. It seems that they were the first to understand the magnitude of the disaster, and the basic and non-basic needs that refugees need. They allowed dogs to be brought in, opened donation depots, allocated meeting and learning halls, performances, attractions, everything needed to let the initial shock melt away.
And yet it was impossible not to notice, even without words, the difference between the organization of Kibbutz Magen members staying there, and the residents of the city.
We always knew that the life expectancy in the kibbutzim is the highest in the country, together with the ultra-orthodox they beat us all. “Community” they call this animal power, they say that social ties, mutual guarantee, solidarity, caring, defeat diseases. In the Aegean Sea, right in the middle between Greece and Turkey, lies a small Greek island, where some say, the most people live in the world. The explanation for this is simple, they live off their food and live a life of sharing. They exchange products they have grown, or prepared themselves, meet every afternoon to talk and gossip. The doctor visits them occasionally, but he doesn’t have much work to do.
The researchers who examined the community were thinking about life expectancy, not survival.
Communities that fight together have greater survivability. Emergency classes, education committees, health, adults, economy… all the collective structures have proven themselves this time as well.
You see it in the hotel in the body language of the people. My friends and girlfriends from Magen, although very sad, like everyone else, although they are crying, but they sit together in the lobby, in groups by age, or families, and talk. speaking quietly. They repeat the stories, check where others who are not with them are, who is evacuating and where, which of their members in other kibbutzim are alive, who are not.
I spoke with Dina Bernstein, Kibbutz Magen spokesperson, to understand how they organized themselves so quickly. Yes – the kibbutz has a spokeswoman. Like the other men and women holding positions in the new kibbutz they are building in the Dead Sea, she held the position before the war.
I called her hesitantly. Nevertheless, the common kibbutznik image is not of a person who surrenders easily. But throw away all the images, she came down to me in the hotel lobby, approached me with a light face and it was as if we both realized immediately that we were hugging and all the partitions were falling.
They left with only their clothes on. This is her first time to vacate, in the past she refused, this time she agreed. “We arrived here with nothing, we found ourselves outside the house, we thought it would be a matter of days, now weeks, we realize months.” The feeling of uncertainty creates an amoebic bubble, but creating orderly mechanisms brings some order.
380 Kibbutz Magen evacuees moved the mechanisms from the house to the hotel, the positions remained as they were: community manager, farm, heads of social committees, spokeswoman… each one knows his role. A warehouse for donation equipment was immediately set up, orderly lists of needs were prepared that were sent to donors, a school, nurseries and a kindergarten were established, catering for the third age – who went on a trip on the day I interviewed Dina, emotional therapists were recruited in every field imaginable.
They also opened the “Wednesday pub” tradition, exactly on the same day and time for Megan and Sderot together.
“It’s like a hospital,” says Dina. “In the beginning it’s intensive care, to live. To organize transportation and transportation of an entire community to a safe place, to assign rooms, to take care of food, clothing, psychologists to push. Then we move to the wards – each according to his condition. At the end of the rehabilitation: physical therapy , occupational therapy…” They are not yet in rehabilitation, she says, in the meantime they are making sure that there is no deterioration.
What a painful image.
Residents of Sderot evacuated en masse, each under his car and the bus that happened to run over him. Petachon Lev organized the evacuation, not the state. They were evacuated six days after the start of the war, but no one thought to evacuate them as communities: a neighborhood, a building, a school. Dismantled them.
They were told to get to the Dead Sea and there they would be put in hotels. A., who wishes to remain anonymous, tells about the road there, until it seems to be a trauma in itself. How she asked her brother to gather her family as well, how they didn’t know if there would be someone to receive them in the Dead Sea, or if they would get lost there too. She too, like Dina, mentions the hotel’s employees, who received them with love, patience, and kind eyes.
After six days of sequestering each family alone in the MMD, their evacuation as a family gave them security, gave them strength to know that whatever happens, they will get through it together. At the hotel, they began to organize equipment.
Together with the hotel, we volunteers made sure to arrange a donated equipment warehouse for the residents of Sderot, to bring what was needed, to build an education system, but most of all we understood that we needed to create a leadership that would take command, slowly such leadership was created, from among the residents and the residents. “The sense of community is missing,” says E., “we built a community together with the volunteers.”
Today, the Sderot hotel also has a nursery school and a kindergarten, there is a school system. The municipality of Sderot took it upon itself to hold classes for kindergartens and elementary schools, including transportation. They built the new education system on infrastructures established by the volunteers. The girls and boys do not yet have an organized framework, Zoom does not provide the social response that is so important. At our hotel, we built a system of studies for them in the morning and activities in the afternoon and evening together with Hashomer Hatzair, the female soldiers and other volunteers. There is still no answer for adults.
Much has been researched, written and shouted about the dissolution of solidarity, the importance of man to man, which has been disappearing in recent decades and how it harms the body and mind, the resilience of the person, the group and the country.
The Enjoy hotel in the Dead Sea is the microcosm of the disintegration, but also of the rebuilding. Some of us still remember how important it is to belong to a group, a neighborhood, a kibbutz, we rebuilt it.
“We are all learning as we go, trying to mobilize and provide the necessary response. What will happen? We are all trying to understand what will happen?” E. summarizes life minute by minute with sad eyes.
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