The Jerusalem Post - The Jerusalem Post Magazine
Resident of southern kibbutz demands ‘real security’
‘If the US is a true friend, it will let our country do what it needs to do’
The South has been suffering missile attacks for many years, although the climax was Oct. 7.
Adele Raemer has been living on Kibbutz Nirim, situated about tow kilometers from the border with Gaza, since 1975. Nirim was one of the main targets of Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. As a longtime resident of the South, Raemer has been doing public diplomacy work for several years, communicating with the world via formal and informal media and bringing attention to the intolerable situation endured by the residents of the region.
Raemer, a native of New York, made
aliyah in 1973 and served in the IDF. She often relates her personal experiences from her safe room; indeed, that is what she did on the day of the massacre as terrorists were invading the kibbutz.
The following are excerpts of the
Magazine’s interview with her.
Are you optimistic that you’ll be getting your lives back together? Are people feeling positive?
I can only speak for Adele [myself]. Adele is feeling positive. The army has a lot of work to do, and we have to do it thoroughly – really, really thoroughly – because we cannot have a situation like we had before.
And yet, before Oct. 7, I had a sense of security. On October 6, before I went to bed, I told my son, who had slept over, ‘If you don’t see me in the morning, it’s because I’m going out before sunrise to take pictures of a field of wildflowers.’ That’s the sense of security that I have to get back again, to feel that I can get into the car before sunrise and go to the field and take pictures.
But it has to be more than just a sense of security. It has to be real security because we learned on Oct. 7 that a sense of security dissipates with the morning fog. It has to be something much stronger, much more solid.
Do you believe this will happen?
It has to happen because if you give up on Nirim, if you give up on the western Negev, then you give up on Israel.
How are you dealing with the trauma of Oct. 7?
I’m dealing. I have days that are better and days that are worse. I try to keep myself busy. For example, I have my flag project: I’m doing portraits of people with an Israeli flag but in black and white, and I’ll turn it back into color when we go back home; that’s one project that I’ve built for myself. I’m also documenting people’s stories, at least for historical purposes.
Also, I’m giving a gazillion interviews and am going abroad – I went abroad twice already – to speak to lawmakers in the US and Germany. I’m going abroad in a few weeks to talk to the Christian media at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m starting to fundraise for the kibbutz, so I’ll be in Canada.
Days that I’m not busy – those are the days that I fall. Yesterday, in the morning, I had only one interview and afterward nothing, except for putting my computer together, and in the afternoon I was weepy. I was thinking. So I try to keep myself as busy as possible, doing things that I feel are significant.
I am a trained medical clown, but my clown has been comatose since COVID. I’m hoping that during my time in Beersheba [where the Nirim community is residing temporarily], I’ll find the emotional wherewithal to revive her. I was a high school English teacher for almost four decades and a teacher trainer of English and digital pedagogy in later years. This was my first school year of true retirement.
How do you feel about the US pressure on Israel now?
I think that if the US is a true friend, it will have to let our country do what it needs to do. In the past, Americans pressured us into things that were not good for us, and this is something that we have to be able to figure out for ourselves.
What the answer is, I certainly don’t know. I certainly want our hostages back as soon as possible, before anything else. On the other hand, we must destroy Hamas; we have to disarm Hamas, and the population there needs to be re-educated. It happened in Nazi Germany. Look at Germany today. It’s very supportive. They were re-educated, and that must happen in Gaza.
You’ve been active in promoting dialogue with Gaza and urging Israel to find a way to make peace. Have any of your views changed since Oct. 7?
My views have not changed; my beliefs have changed. I read an article this morning that hit me right in the gut. A Jewish Iranian-born journalist said our big mistake is believing they want the same thing that we do. But that’s not true because their entire culture is so different. We cannot look at this conflict through Western eyes.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that in Gaza, they want the same things that we do and that they’re just like us. Do you think that’s true?
So that’s what this Iranian-born journalist is saying. No, they don’t want the same things that we do. They don’t value the same things that we do, and as far as they’re concerned, comfort and safety for their families are not priorities.
Their priorities are getting rid of the Jews and turning Israel into Palestine.
He was talking about Iran, and I’m talking about Hamas; but Hamas has done such an excellent job at education that they have poisoned an entire generation to hate Jews and to believe that all we want is their deaths.
People have been saying that since the beginning of the war, there has been so much unity in Israel. Do you think the country is united now, notwithstanding any thoughts about how there has to be a reckoning after the war?
The people are behind the army. The volunteer spirit has been just amazing, especially after what we went through before Oct. 7 [i.e., the deep division in the country over the proposed judicial reforms]. I did not agree with the reforms at all. I thought they were horrible. There needed to be reforms, but the way they were being done was in the worst way possible, and I went to protest in my area.
I went to photograph protests and did what I could do in that sense, but I did not go to the big protests because I felt that they were dangerously divisive from within, as well as sending dangerously divisive messages outside to our enemies. That whole period was breaking my heart. I was saying, ‘I can deal with rockets; I can’t deal with this.’
So, keeping that in mind, I look at the volunteerism now and the coming together, and I hope people remember this and preserve it.