‘I have never.seen. such hatred. It happened to us.. But it could happen. to you, too’.
The Hamas terrorists behind Israel’s kibbutz massacres last month wanted utter annihilation. Unbelievably, hope for peace flickers in the heart of one survivor. Nicole Lampert reports
Sometimes, between rocket attacks, there would be months when Sofie Berzon Mackie thought she lived in a slice of paradise: a loving community in stunning countryside on the edge of the magical Negev desert. The mother-of-three would jog across the fields and look towards the Gaza border, just 3km away. She would see the city, see the sea and be filled with the hope of peace one day – certain that there were mothers just like her on the other side of the fence who wanted peace, too.
‘I’ve been a left-winger all my life. I don’t believe in violence. I always wanted co-existence,’ says the Israeli artist. ‘Even in our darkest hours, I told my children that in Gaza there were mothers like me, and children like them, and they are not the devil. Now I realise how naive I was.
‘There is still a part of me that wants peace, of course I do. But these monsters – Hamas – have to be defeated. And the world has to help us. What they did happened once. It happened to us. But it could happen to you, too. I have never seen or heard of such hatred as happened on 7 October.’
Born in Be’eri, Berzon Mackie, 39, has for most of her life been a member of the kibbutz where her parents – a mother of Scottish descent and an Israeli father – met. The family moved to London, but returned to Be’eri when she was seven. Two months after she arrived – ‘a little girl who didn’t speak a word of Hebrew’ – she lost her mother to a particularly aggressive form of cancer. Just days after that, the Iraq War started, with Saddam Hussein shooting missiles into Israel to provoke the country into war. ‘And that was my introduction to Israeli life,’ Berzon Mackie says, with a shrug.
Those in the community became more than neighbours. They were family, helping to raise her and her three siblings. Created by secular pioneers in 1946, the kibbutz, like many, had an ethos founded on socialism, with a successful printing factory and members always sharing earnings, eating together like a huge family. They were – are – peaceniks, derided as idealists by some in a country veering ever rightwards after 20 years of particularly violent conflict with the Palestinians. Members would drive regularly to the Gaza border to ferry children for hospital treatment in Israel. They employed Palestinians when the border was open for vetted workers, continuing to pay their wages when it was closed during increasingly frequent conflicts.
For at least some in the kibbutz, those Gazans felt like an extended part of the community. Despite, or due to, the rocket fire between Gaza and Israel, each thought they knew how the other felt. At Be’eri, when the siren went off, they had 15 seconds to run into a bomb shelter or safe room, routinely seeing the return attacks as the impact hit Gaza.
Members had all sorts of jobs. Another woman – Lianne Sharabi, who was killed with her daughters Yahel, 13, and Noiya, 16
‘THE MOST DEMONIC CREATURES OF MYTHOLOGY DON’T COME CLOSE TO WHAT HAMAS DID’