In every war, in every Torah protest, it seems that the song “Home” by Jordana Arzi, and its words – are always there. “This song was born out of anger, a kind of frustration, a kind of soul-searching,” Arzi shares.
“The Home” was first published 40 years ago in the midst of the First Lebanon War. Arzi, who appeared before soldiers in the Shoof Mountains in Lebanon and miraculously survived an attack, told about the shocking experience to Ehud Manor, who turned it into a protest song calling for withdrawal from Lebanon. Over the years, the song has become associated with the struggle to return abductees and captives. After October 7, it naturally became the anthem of the hostages in Gaza.
The song, which started as a protest song, now accompanies the pain of the families of the kidnapped and missing. “Now it’s a song of pain, now it’s a song of longing, now this song is wounded,” Arzi claims. When she is asked what she thought of the magnificent rendition they did of “The Home”, she answers honestly, “I admit that at the first moment my heart was pinched, because this is my baby. This song was actually born from me. This song was born from an experience I experienced personally – so it was as if they took it from me and make it public domain.” She continues, “But I let go very quickly. It’s a spectacular performance, a powerful performance. I let go, also so that I can continue to live with it.”
Back to Barry | Photo: News 12
The word “home” is now accompanied by many connotations, including political ones – and there are also those who call the families apart in their protests. “I arrive at the abductees’ square, I see the families, I am in contact with the families. How can you say such a thing at all? How is it possible? Who would put himself in their place? So to tell them to shut up seems to me to be simply delusional and brazen,” Arzi says.
Despite everything that happened on October 7, Ora Oz, Arzi’s best friend from the Scouts in Haifa lives in Kibbutz Bari with her family and wants to return home – home to the Kibbutz. She and her husband, Yigal, are one of the few who returned to live there recently in an attempt to re-settle the kibbutz. Arzi arrived in Bari with her daughter, Alona, who until now avoided being exposed to the cameras along with her mother, and the two accompanied Ora and heard from her about her longing to return home, in these troubled days. “My house. Starting from the line of the privileged privileged, the first house in this line is our house. We sat in this house and all the drama happened next door,” she recalls.
“It took me a long time to collect myself, and then I went out to appear before the evacuees.” Jordana Arzi Photo: News 12 back to October 7
Oz hid that cursed Shabbat in the MMD along with four other members of her family. “It was suffocating in here at Ramot,” she points out while standing in the MMD in her home. To shut ourselves in the houses, to shut ourselves in the MMAD. We closed the blinds, where there are blinds, and went to the MMAD. Me and Giora Ilon, my youngest son, and his wife Maayan, and my granddaughter, Zohar, seven years old. We turned on the TV and then I heard Ayelet Hakim crying for Danny Kushmaro,” says Oz.
She continues, “I am with two small children in the MMD and with my husband. And no one is here to help us. There is no one here, only the terrorists break into our houses and kill us and burn our houses, and no one comes.”
At this stage, the WhatsApp group of the old friends from the scout tribe “Meshotetti in Carmel” becomes a kind of war zone. When the Hamas attack begins, Erzi is especially worried about the best friends from Bari, Ora and Giura. Ora writes to Jordana, “We have been abandoned.” Giura and Ilon took the sharpest knives , the ones you use to cut a watermelon in peacetime, yes?” explains Oz. However, later the electricity went out and Oz stopped answering messages to save her phone battery.
“Gyora was in Egyptian captivity during the Yom Kippur war. He was in captivity for 45 days, he said: ‘No problems, if they want to take prisoners then I am already experienced. I will be in the hostage class,'” says Oz. “At some point, already towards noon, we heard a noise in our room, upstairs. They have a second floor. And this is where the great fear began, because we were sure that the battle had spread to our house and the terrorists were coming here. Then suddenly my son heard that they were trying to break our window. We took Zohar , we turned her face to the wall, we pretended that she wouldn’t see anything, and Elon and Giura stood at the door with the knives. And suddenly a stinging dog came. And you see how all the tension left Elon’s body, he realized that those trying to enter are our soldiers,” she recalls.
According to Oz, she lost people who were close to her. “Quite a few of our friends were killed. There are families here that were terribly hurt. There are families like us that nothing happened to them. But when I walk into a dining room, even when it’s full of people, the pictures of the people who aren’t keep popping up at me.” And yet, she is convinced that going back to Barry was the right thing to do. “Gyora and I had no hesitation as to whether to return. Barry needs to be built, and we must come here as soon as possible. Barry must not be a ghost.”
Song “To one of the soldiers”
Like all of us, Jordana Erzi’s life is also divided into before and after October 7. Only for her it’s also personal. “This time I was just in some kind of market. It took me a long time to collect myself, and then I went out to perform in front of the evacuees. I remember the performance for Yishuv Yabul, and what happened to me is something that has never happened to me in my life. I suffocated. I saw the people. I cried.” she remembers “But I won’t expose myself with tears. I did the well-known trick, I let the audience sing. I have a passion, I didn’t allow myself to express it. But I felt that this thing just came out of me.”
Arzi’s concert tour since the beginning of the war is unlike any tour she has done to date. As in all of Israel’s wars, this time too she found herself doing everything possible to encourage and comfort. In the last three months, she arrived at hospitals, appeared in front of evacuees and was one of the first artists to show up at the Kidnapped Square. At a time when everyone is running away from responsibility, she realizes that she cannot stand and watch from the sidelines.
One of her most exciting meetings this week was with Corporal Noam Levy, a fighter in the Nahal who was mortally wounded in Gaza. His amazing recovery story was also recorded in a new music video they made in Assuta Ashdod with the song “For One of the Soldiers”. A song written in 2009, but still relevant today.
Although originally, the song “To one of the soldiers” by Arzi is a song intended for love. But in its current performance and in the current context, it also became a song for a mother and her son. “We have a mass of wounded, a mass of dead. But in all of this, each one is unique and special. Each one is a whole world and from this place I sang the song,” she says while looking at Corporal Levy who is sitting next to her.
“We were in the north of the Gaza Strip, we actually ran into a building in front of us,” recalls Corporal Levy. “Next to us was a tank that was shelling the house from which they were shooting, and the tank was shelling several shells while moving. He narrowed the range to me, to us, and in one of the shells, when everything was very, very, very close, because in Gaza, everything is crowded there, the shrapnel flew back at me and shrapnel cut me in the main artery.” He continues, “It’s scary. It’s a fear that’s not a fear of a horror movie – it’s a fear of death.” Immediately afterwards, Corporal Levy was put on the helicopter, where he lost consciousness, and thanks to the doctor, who immediately told the pilot that they didn’t have a few minutes to reach Sheba, he made an emergency landing in Assuta, Ashdod – and saved.
generation after generation
The inferno that occurred on October 7 also deeply affected Arzi’s daughter. According to Arzi, the very fact that her daughter is interviewed by her side is something that is not taken for granted at all. “I didn’t believe it would happen. She ran away from this whole thing of exposure because she was required many times because of me to be exposed and she didn’t agree. Suddenly something was released and I’m very happy about it,” she testifies.
Her daughter hurries to explain: “It’s because of the situation. I felt that I had the duty to come here. For the reason that we must witness this thing, we have to look at this thing with our eyes. From October 7 until today, I racked my brain: there is no video that I did not see, I experienced Everything to the maximum, because I feel it is my small duty to experience it as strongly as this thing was experienced by people who were here.”
Jordana Arzi and her daughter Alona in Bari Photo: News 12
Alona, a lawyer by profession, already knows Barry through her work. “I also happened to be here when I worked for the Shurat Hadin organization, which fights terrorism through the courts and works against the money transfer pipes of the terrorist organizations. So we were here a lot, and we explained a lot to the people we brought here, who supported the organization, what Barry means, what is on the side Barry’s second.”
Jordana Arzi and her daughter Alona in Bari Photo: News 12
According to Alona, when the war broke out, there was a lot of hysteria among her contemporaries. “We looked at you, as our generation, me and my friends – and mothers in hysterics to leave the country. We were here for a week or two and I said, ‘What are we doing?’ ‘How do we cope now?’, and I really saw that your generation was much more gathered around everything that happened,” says Alona, but her mother is quick to emphasize, “but there has never been anything like this before.”
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