At 6:29am, the music stopped.
As described by survivors, the sun was about to rise over the celebratory festival in the Levant. There, millennia earlier, indigenous Semitic tribes had become Jews and Muslim Arabs. In the twentieth century, the League of Nations mandated that the area deemed “Palestine” be administered by the British with the goal of creating a national home for Jews. For nearly three decades, Britain governed Palestine with Arabic and Hebrew as official languages alongside English, until in 1947 the United Nations voted to allocate the territory into two states: one for Jews and one for the region’s Muslim Arabs.
It was Saturday, October 7, 2023, at the Nova festival, where thousands gathered from 36 countries to dance from darkness into dawn in the spirit of unity and love. The dancers were happy, unencumbered, and unaware of the violence that was about to unfold around them.
The festival took place in the Negev desert, governed by Israel per the United Nations mandate. Like many nations formed in the twentieth century, Israel’s creation involved complex conflicts and displacements. Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, for instance, were carved out of the Ottoman Empire with forced migrations and conflicts among Assyrians, Kurds, Christians, Druze, Sunnis, and Shiites. The creation of India and Pakistan in 1947 displaced over 15 million people, and over a million died in the violence between Hindus and Muslims. Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia emerged from Yugoslavia, their state origins again marked by ethnic violence. In historical context, Israel’s formation was considered restrained, especially given that six out of 16 million Jews had just been murdered in the Holocaust.
When the music stopped at 6:29am, violence erupted. Survivors describe fleeing on foot into the cactus scrub, where they were hunted for hours with guns and grenades, helpless as they watched their friends be taken, killed and raped.
History could have turned differently many times, allowing Israel and Palestine to co-exist peacefully across a border like so many other neighboring states. Leaders chose otherwise. Powerful Arab leaders refused to live alongside Jews, and increasingly powerful Israeli extremists refused to live alongside Palestinians. When Israel accepted the UN mandate, surrounding armies invaded to wipe out the Jewish state. After Israel repulsed the invaders, hate groups like Black September resorted to terrorism such as the 1972 Olympic massacre. Extremism among Jews also kept war alive, such as in 1995 when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by ultranationalist Israeli settler Yigal Amir.
The terrorist group Hamas was founded in 1987 to oppose peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. The group’s ideology, which views civilian casualties as martyrdom, has informed its strategy. For example, when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh learned in April that three of his sons had died in the conflict, he reportedly expressed gratitude, calling their deaths an “honor.” This mindset contributed to the planning of the October 7 attack, to trigger a wider war that would kill both Arabs and Jews and further weaken the Israeli nation.
Hamas explicitly planned for this precise war. They filmed themselves committing war crimes to encourage copycat crimes, successfully triggering a global surge in antisemitic attacks. Hamas also shocked Israel into a state of total war, at which point Hamas committed further war crimes by using civilians – including hostages and children – as “human shields.” Hamas chose to kill tens of thousands of Gazan civilians.
Hamas also targeted the dancers in the Negev that October morning, not only because they stood in stark contrast to the hatred that has fueled the region’s violence for generations, but also because Hamas wanted to use them in a campaign of mass murder, sexual violence, and mutilation. And what of the people of Gaza, whom the Hamas terrorists claim to represent? They look back at the year with shock and incomprehensible sorrow, and today stand at grave risk of disease and starvation.
In seeking total war, Hamas partnered closely with their nominal enemy, Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. Bibi, the ideological heir of Rabin’s assassin, spent 14 years boosting Hamas to intentionally weaken the prospects for peace, including specifically using prisoner exchanges to create the conditions that made the Nova dancers such valuable targets for Hamas. Bibi became even more aligned with ultranationalist and anti-Arab Jews in 2022, when corruption charges forced him to turn to the most far-right government partners in Israel’s history. Right up until October 7 itself, Bibi continued diplomatically and financially supporting Hamas in Gaza while essentially moving to annex the West Bank against international law. The International Criminal Court at The Hague has initiated investigations into both Bibi and Hamas, as international law demands compromise and peace. Neither Jews nor the Arabs have any path to total victory in Palestine.
Unfortunately, Bibi and Hamas have American allies in their pursuit of total war at the expense of civilians in the Levant. Both Bibi and Vladimir Putin want Trump to win, to extend the wars. This is why Putin backs Jill Stein to siphon away anti-Trump votes. Meanwhile, “leftist” protesters who hate both Democrats and Republicans have created a purity test of demanding a ceasefire, which would leave the region’s Jews and Arabs no closer to peace or safety than during the “ceasefire” that was broken a year ago at 6:29am. As an antifascist Jew fighting against Trumpism, I found myself sickened to see crowds of people nominally a part of my political coalition blaming dead children not on Bibi or Hamas or history but specifically just on Jews as “oppressors.”
Fortunately, voters in this election do not need to trust the lies of the extremists – we can just ask the people who are living in the region itself. At Oakland Corps, we elevate the voices of those who speak up for the strength of Kamala Harris in the face of social pressure or worse. We started with avatars of right-leaning America (Republicans, cops, veterans, white Evangelical Christians, etc.), but it also requires courage among some left-leaning groups. My colleague Chibundu Nnake, an alumnus of Bernie Sanders for President, is speaking out against the warmongering Putin-backed Jill Stein in Michigan. For month, volunteers have been gathering testimonials from Arab and Palestinian voices on the ground in the Levant. Muslim and Arab American voices here in the US, who have been targeted by Jill Stein propaganda, provide voice-over translations.
It’s not just Arab voices asking for peace; Jewish voices are, too. A few weeks ago, I met Ron Segev and Millet Ben Haim, survivors of the October 7 attack. Despite what they endured, they speak quietly yet firmly about reconciliation. They gave me a necklace, engraved with the Star of David, the date “Oct 7, 2023,” and the words, “We will dance again.” I accepted it, though I don’t wear it—it feels too much like borrowed courage. Their resilience and hope for peace inspire me and many others involved in the Jews for Kamala movement.
Please take a moment to watch and hear these voices, and please share them with others if you feel so moved. The choice we make in this election matters not only for us but for people across the world.
