‘We’re in this together’: viral videos spotlight Arab-Israeli heroes of October 7 Hamas attack

Aya Meydan and Ismail Alkrenawi meet a few weeks after Alkrenawi saved Meydan from Hamas attackers

Judy Malz reports in Haaretz on 29 November 2023:

A few days after the Hamas massacre on October 7, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged police to brace themselves for a repeat of the violent Jewish-Arab intercommunal clashes of May 2021.

Shir Nosatzki, a specialist in Jewish-Arab partnership building, had enough experience to know that the situation – so volatile at that point – could go either way: Israel might once again find itself on the verge of civil war; or, alternatively, Jews and Arabs might finally wake up to the fact that they share a common destiny. After all, Hamas terrorists did not discriminate between Jewish and Arab blood when they embarked on their killing spree.

“It was clear to me that this could be either a moment of crisis or opportunity, and that we needed to act quickly to shape the narrative,” says the 39-year-old founder of Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? – a nonprofit dedicated to promoting political partnerships among Arabs and Jews.

During the Hamas attack, 24 Arab citizens were murdered (19 of them Bedouin) and nine were taken hostage (all Bedouin). An untold number of Bedouin homes were also destroyed by Hamas rockets. Israel’s Bedouin population is concentrated mainly the south, not far from the Gaza border communities infiltrated by Hamas, which explains why this particular group took such a hit.

Nosatzki had become aware, through a close friend in the community — attorney Hanan Alsanah, from Itach-Maaki (Women Lawyers for Social Justice) — that the Bedouin were in dire need of food, medical aid and shelters after the October 7 attack.

“She told me that they were not getting any help from the state, and that while Jewish civil society organization had mobilized to help people evacuated from the kibbutzim and border towns, no such efforts were being made to help the Bedouin,” Nosatzki recounts.

Her organization sprang into action, establishing a joint Jewish-Arab emergency relief center in Rahat, the country’s largest Bedouin city. With the help of hundreds of volunteers — as well as Alsanah, who is now her partner in the project — it has been providing food and medical assistance to 500 families in the south, both Jewish and Bedouin, ever since.

“More than just serving basic needs, we wanted to create a sense of solidarity among Jews and Arabs, and make people realize that we’re all in this together,” she says.

While working at the center, Nosatzki heard about members of the Bedouin community who had been murdered, kidnapped, lost their homes and even risked their lives to save Jews on October 7 – stories that had somehow never found their way into the mainstream Hebrew-language media.

“I don’t think it’s because of racism that these stories didn’t get covered,” she says. “It’s more to do with the fact that this is a very closed community, and if you’re not in contact with Bedouins, you wouldn’t have an opportunity to hear them.”

Shir Nosatzki.

When rescuers are assumed abductors
Enlisting the help of her husband – documentarian Regev Contes – Nosatzki resolved to share these human interest stories with the world. “For me, this was an opportunity to bring light into all the darkness,” she says.

Two videos they produced have since gone viral.

The first tells the story of Kibbutz Be’eri resident Aya Meydan. She had gone out for a bike ride early on the morning of October 7, only to learn on her way back that Hamas terrorists had infiltrated her community. Aya would spend the next few hours hiding in the bushes with Hisham Alkrenawi, a resident of Rahat who worked in the kibbutz mess hall, waiting for members of his family to come rescue them.

The reason the wait was so long was that on their way, and under Hamas gunfire, the Alkrenawi clan picked up and saved dozens of young Israelis they found on the road who had escaped the massacre at the Nova trance music festival at nearby Re’im.

A few minutes after picking up Aya and Hisham, the Alkrenawis were stopped by Israeli soldiers on patrol who mistakenly assumed they were abducting the Jewish kibbutznik. A recording of their frantic exchange, with Aya sobbing in the background, can be heard on the video. It ends with a tear-jerking scene of her reunion with her Bedouin saviors.

This clip, according to Nosatzki, has already had more than 4 million views on various social media platforms.  We have not witnessed even one instance of violence by Arab citizens against Jews since October 7. To me, it says they have been as shaken up by what Hamas did as we have.

The second video tells the tragic story of Hamid Abu Ar’ar from the Bedouin town of Arara, who was driving with his wife Fatma and their baby boy when Hamas terrorists on motorcycles surrounded the car and shot her dead. A devout Muslim and mother of nine, Fatma was wearing a hijab, ruling out the possibility that she could have been mistaken for a Jewish woman. Abu Ar’ar grabbed his son from the back seat and sought cover in a storage room he found on the road. He suddenly heard Arabic being spoken and understood that several Hamas terrorists had stationed themselves behind his hideout. From the other side, he then heard Israeli soldiers conversing in Hebrew. It was clear to him that they were about to walk into a trap. Risking both his life and that of his baby boy, Abu Ar’ar jumped out of the hideout, his son in his arms, and ran toward the soldiers, frantically motioning them to move back. By pushing them out of range of the terrorists, he saved their lives.

That video, says Nosatzki, has already received 3 million views and is being used by her organization to raise funds to help Abu Ar’ar support his nine motherless children.

“For many years, there was a fear among Jews in this country that if the Arab armies ever decided to attack us all at once, the Arab citizens of Israel would serve as a fifth column,” she notes. “These stories prove just the opposite: that Arab citizens were there for Jews when the state and the army were not.”

The next video in the pipeline, she says, will spotlight Samer Tlalka, a 25-year-old Bedouin man from the town of Hura who was kidnapped by Hamas.

A sense of belonging
Nosatzki’s activism began as one of the leaders of 2011’s social justice protests, which were focused mainly on Israel’s high cost of living. Over time, she reached the conclusion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict posed a much greater threat to Israel’s future than inflation, and this was where she needed to focus her energy.

The only way the conflict can ever be solved, Nosatzki believes, is if a majority of Israelis join the peace camp – and the only way that can happen is if Arab citizens are on board. “Unfortunately, if you take Jewish society alone, there isn’t a majority for peace,” she explains. “But if you take Israeli society in general, the potential is there.”

With that goal in mind, she founded Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? in 2018. The organization’s first big campaign, launched at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, focused on the contributions of Arab health care workers to the Israeli medical system. A video produced by the nonprofit, featuring Arab doctors and nurses, received more than 2 million views, becoming the most-watched clip on Israeli Facebook in 2020.

Nosatzki was very active in this year’s mass protests against the government’s planned judicial overhaul, which were cut short by the October 7 attack and subsequent war. Because of her expertise, she was tasked by the protest leaders with recruiting speakers from the Arab community for the weekly Saturday night demonstrations.

A poll published two weeks ago by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 70 percent of Israel’s Arab citizens feel part of Israel and its problems – a record high for the past 20 years. For comparison’s sake, only 48 percent of Arab citizens expressed such a sense of belonging in June.

For Nosatzki, it is all the more incredible considering attempts by Ben-Gvir and other far-right politicians to incite against the Arab population, considering the many Arab citizens with family members under bombardment in Gaza, and considering how many Arab citizens have been detained by police in recent weeks for little more than voicing support for an immediate cease-fire.

“And yet, despite all this, we have not witnessed even one instance of violence by Arab citizens against Jews since October 7,” she says. “To me, it says they have been as shaken up by what Hamas did as we have. In a certain sense, then, Hamas has helped push Arab society into the bigger Israeli story.”

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