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Jen: Hi, it’s Jen Richler, here to kick off the spring season of Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where gender, history and Jewish culture meet. 

Jen: This winter, I traveled to Israel with a group of women leaders of Boston Jewish nonprofits on a trip co-organized by the Jewish Women’s Archive. We had a mission: to understand October 7 and its aftermath through the eyes of Israeli women. We wanted to know how women in Israel are coping months into the war and how women leaders are responding. 

Over a whirlwind three days, we crisscrossed the country in a minibus and packed into conference rooms to hear from many different women: Israel’s first female trauma surgeon, who treated people injured in the attack and returning hostages; women leading relief efforts for evacuees from the north and south; mothers, daughters, and sisters of people kidnapped by Hamas, whose eyes were red from exhaustion and crying. There were many moments on this trip when I felt deep sadness, even despair. 

But there were also moments that gave me hope. In this episode of Can We Talk?,  we’re focusing on women we met who are working to build a shared society for Arabs and Jews in Israel. These women are Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, including Bedouins from the Negev. And they’ve continued to work together even in the thick of this divisive war. 

We hear from Hanan Alsanah, a Bedouin woman who co-founded the first joint Arab-Jewish relief center after October 7; Ayesha Ziadna, Khitam Abu Bader, and Racheli Geffen, who help run the center; and Sally Abed, a Palestinian social justice activist. They talk about how the war has affected their lives, work, and identity; the unique qualities women bring to social justice work, and their vision for a shared future.

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Jen: On a sunny morning in Jerusalem, we met Hanan Alsanah, a leader in the Bedouin community. She’s a lawyer with Itach Maaki, Women Lawyers for Social Justice, where she directs the Center for Bedouin Women’s Rights. After October 7, she co-founded a Jewish-Arab relief center in the southern city of Rahat, the largest Bedouin community in the world. It’s staffed by Jewish and Arab Israelis and has delivered food and other essentials to hundreds of Jewish and Bedouin families affected by the Hamas attack and the ongoing war. Before she talked about her work, she told us about her family and the roots of her activism.

Hanan: My father is very traditional Bedouin and all our, uh, my sister and my mother [are] the same way. Uh, I am the youngest in the family. I'm the only one who managed and succeed[ed] to get education in academic[s], in the university.

And it's not because I am the clever. Uh, it's only because I was…mardanit…rebellious. [laughter]

Jen: Hanan rebelled against all her family’s expectations—that she cover her hair, marry her cousin, and—if she insisted on working—become a teacher. Her dream was to become a lawyer and to work for social justice and greater opportunities for Bedouin women. And that’s exactly what she did. She earned her law degree and joined the staff of Itach Maaki. She designed courses for thousands of Bedouin women in literacy, education, and small business. She started with the larger Bedouin centers like Rahat, but eventually expanded her work to the more remote, less developed villages. At first, some people were skeptical that she could pull it off. 

Hanan: They said, you will not succeed, it's impossible. You cannot do it. Because the community there, they are very close and very, very traditional. They will not allow you to work with their women. [I] tell them, I know from where I came, they will not going to be more difficult than my family [laughter]. Let me deal with them.

Every time I have been told that it's impossible, you cannot do it, but I proved that it's possible. We can do it as a woman. And all the time, I feel there is nothing impossible—until October of seven. But on October 7 morning, I said, That's it. Maybe there is something impossible.

Jen: The impossibility of the situation struck her early that morning, when her Whatsapp groups started blowing up with reports about attacks happening in real time. Messages poured in from people in her community desperate for help, and Hanan realized something.

Hanan: The state is not there. If we got this message, the state is not there. The people expect from the citizens, the civilians, to come and save them. And from this minute, Arab and Jews, they go to the Otef Azza, work[ed] together to save lives, and worked together to transport the survivor[s] to [a] safe place, to Yam HaMelach, to Eilat, to Be'er Sheva. And hundreds, they work[ed] hundreds, for many hours, and they opened, also, the Bedouin community opened their house for the survivor[s].

And nobody know[s] about this. They know about only the attack, the victim[s], and they thought that the war between Arab and Jews. It's not; it's not between Arab and Jews.  

We are a Bedouin, we are citizen[s] of Israel, we are Arab, but we also have family in Gaza; part of our tribes live in Gaza. And they are also victims and our heart[s] [are] with them in this war. 

But in the second hand, we cannot stand and not help our neighbors, our partner in Israel, because sometimes your close neighbor [is] more close to you than your brother who live[s]far from you. 

But two days after, we found out that we also have victims. 

Jen:  At least seventeen Bedouins were killed on October 7th. Some were shot by Hamas terrorists who had infiltrated the border, and others were killed by incoming rockets. That’s because many Bedouin villages lack rocket sirens, bomb shelters, and the protection of Israel’s Iron Dome system. 

Hanan: You should see what happened in October of seven. We couldn't see nothing less than darkness. But we, through our project, we managed and succeed[ed] to see this point of light through our shared emergency, um, a room in Rahat.

Jen: Hanan started the shared emergency room with a Jewish woman named Shir Nosatski, whom she met during the protests against the government’s proposed judicial reforms. Hundreds of volunteers,  Jewish and Arab, have come to Rahat from all over the country to pack boxes of food and other supplies for people in the surrounding communities—also Jewish and Arab—who were struggling in the aftermath of the attack.

Hanan: When Arab and Jews go together to this family and give them the food, we show them that there is, there is a way to solve and overcome this problem. We give them a pocket of hope.

We have to discuss and work together, and bring the real democracy to Israel. What we have today, it's not democracy. And many people tell me, how you manage, because everybody in the beginning, the first week, we feel afraid. Arab[s], they don't want to talk with the Jews, and the Jews don't want to talk with Arab[s].

But you know what is the secret? The secret is that it comes from two women. I believe in the power of the women. And I believe when women want to do something, they can do it. If you go to the Knesset, and every ministry office, you will not see women there. They disappeared in the last three years. We cannot hear their voice. 

And I tell everyone that I met, look what happened in October of seven, who saved the people? The NGOs together with the civilians.It's mean that we have also [an] opportunity here. 

Jen: We got to see an example of Jewish and Arab Israeli women seizing that opportunity together when we went to Rahat and visited the relief center Hanan helped build. On our way in, we passed rooms with piles of supplies:diapers, baby formula, warm blankets. We headed to a conference room where we met Ayesha Ziadna, Khitam Abu Bader and Racheli Geffen, three of the women who run the joint relief center, or Hamal Meshutaf, in Hebrew.

Rahat is a city of just over 70,000, one of the handful of Bedouin communities recognized by the Israeli government. There are dozens of unrecognized villages that lack basic services like water and electricity—in addition to the bomb shelters and rocket sirens I mentioned before. 

Ayesha Ziadna is Bedouin and directs the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation. It’s an organization led by Jews and Arabs that works to build a shared and equal society for the two groups in the Negev. She started by talking about what the relief center meant to her.

Ayesha: Since the seventh of October, it is quite hard to gather people together. And it was, like, a call for people who still believe in hope, and still believe that we can live together, to work things out. 

Jen: Sitting next to Ayesha is Khitam Abu Bader. She is also Bedouin, and works for Desert Stars, a leadership and empowerment organization for Bedouins in the Negev. 

Khitam: We believe that Jewish and Arab inthe Negev should be, like—this is the opportunity that the world should see by the Hamal Meshutaf, and we want to be part of that because we believe in our agenda of Desert Stars that, uh, the agenda says that Arab and Jewish stays here.There is no one going to move there. There is no one gonna, like, moving to other country. And we should find a way to live together. Racheli, she is a great partner that she come[s] every Wednesday. We shout about each other, but we are doing a great job. [laughter]

Jen: Racheli is sitting to Khitam’s left. She’s Jewish and works for an organization called Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, which takes its name from a song by Yoko Ono. She brings up the confused and tense atmosphere in the days after October 7.

Racheli: In the midst of all this chaos, it was easy for all the more extremist elements in our government to kind of try to fan the flames and say it's, like, a war between Jews and Arabs,and it's not. It's a war between forces of good and merchants of death, that's what it is.

But in the first days where everything was just—it was hard to breathe. Coming here became such a relief and a breath of air. And at the beginning we felt uncomfortable to admit it, but now I'll say it out loud, it's really fun. For us, that's the main goal. So people can see that not all is lost. We still have this. We're in this together.

Ayesha: When men like Ben Gvir and Bibi and Smotrich are trying to set us apart  and say it's stuff like we Arabs and Jews should have like a fight together and seeing women here try to gather everyone around, being able to work with someone, that is really something speciality that women have…I think it's one of the abilities of women to think about everything around them to have, really, this kind of compassion and yet combine it with the, uh, the being able to take decision[s], thinking about everything around them.

Racheli: We lack the feeling of entitlement that a lot of men have. We are forced to learn to be more flexible and more imaginative and try to find solutions, because we gain very little by digging in our heels. I don't know…I feel like maybe a little less ego, a little more like, uh, let's get shit done orientation. Um, there needs to be a way bigger, like, transformation than just putting some women in leadership roles. But I think it does make a difference. 

Ayesha: We had a lot of lists for people who wanted to, to come and volunteer, basically.And I had to, like, really choose among them, and they were really upset with me. [laughter][that] I chose those and not us. It was the only place that they can kind of…

Racheli: Feel good. 

Ayesha: Yeah, feel good. And they would leave with the kind of experience of doing something.

Jen: Even with this sense of shared purpose, Ayesha and Khitam also acknowledged the ways the war is affecting them as Palestinian citizens. 

Ayesha: It's quite difficult when Arab[s] speak about what is happening in the country right now. 'Cause you feel there's no freedom of speech.Uh, and it's going stricter, and being harder and harder. 

Jen: Since October 7, the Israeli government has cracked down on speech, especially in Arab communities. Dozens of Palestinians have been arrested and university students have been suspended for social media posts and other comments that allegedly showed support for Hamas. Ayesha says it’s hard to feel like you belong as a Bedouin. 

Ayesha: You feel like you are the child who is not wanted from their father or from their mother. And you are in [a] divorce kind of process. You're feeling that way, because for the Palestinians, you're not Palestinian enough,and for the Israelis, you're not Israeli enough.So you are kind of the one who is not wanted in the whole scenario. 

Khitam: And the Arab countries hate us…

Ayesha:  Yes, we are, like, traitors to the Arab countries, traitors to everyone. 

And not mentioning that a lot of Arabs here have families in [the] Gaza Strip. Um, but also, they maybe have also family members who are in the IDF or the police. And maybe they have somebody who got killed. So it's so bizarre feeling a lot of hope and happy coming here and then going at night trying to sleep and having these kind of, I don't know how to describe it, but I'm speechless with the stuff  that I feel when I'm trying to go to sleep.It will take a lot of time healing from that thing. 

Khitam: I think what concerns me personally is the Jewish and Arab relationship. What's going…what will be after that?

We felt like, I did feel that we areworking so hard to making this working out, all the story of the Jewish and the Arab relationship, it's taking us a lot, long of years to be like part of the Israeli society. Like, going to the university and a long, long years. And we feel that we are going to start from the basic. And this is a very devastating thing. 

Racheli: A few days after October 7, there was a piece in HaAretz, an interview with a therapist who specializes on, like, um, national trauma. And he said that one of the worst things about, like, witnessing crimes against humanity is that it makes you lose faith in humanity. And that  the only treatment is to be exposed immediately to [an] abundance of humanity, which is kind of part of the idea behind the Joint Center.

Jen: Ayesha, Khitam, and Racheli’s work is an example of a shared response to the crisis of October 7. We also met with a woman who has been working for years to build a just, shared society in Israel. Sally Abed is with Standing Together, a grassroots movement of Israelis, Jewish and Arab, fighting for peace and social justice—including an end to the occupation. It was founded in the aftermath of the 2014 Gaza War. When we met her in Jaffa, she talked about October 7 as a turning point for the movement.

Sally: A lot of conceptions were shattered within Israeli society and we had to really think again, okay, what's the main question? Because in many ways, social movements are really about public narrative, right? And about who's the “we,” who's “us” and who's “they,”who are we working against, who are we fighting against, who's benefiting from the status quo, right? And, uh, we found ourselves reallyin a very impossible rhetoric right now.

Jen: Sally mentioned the signs you see everywhere in Israel since October 7— on bus stops, high rises, banners running at the bottom of the TV news. They say B’Yachad Nenatzeach, Together We Will Win. 

Sally: Who's b'yachad? Who's, who's the togetherness? V'maze nenatzeach? What's the, um, what's the image of victory? What is it? No one knows. No one knows.

Really, ask the average Israeli right now. What is their image of victory, of this war? No one knows. And it's not their fault. They don't know because our leadership doesn't know. They have some ideas. They [have] some messianic—you know, some of them have some messianic fantasies of what this victory looks like, right?But it has nothing to do with our lives and our future and our security. Um, so we looked, you know, left and right, and we're like, there's no one, literally no one talking about peace right now.And we really, uh, started asking ourselves, what's our role in all of this? um, as a movement?And we understood that we are gonna be the next peace movement.

But it's not gonna be merely, you know, a peace movement that's gonna talk about peace as a concept. But it's really a peace movement that's gonna try to renovate how we can rebuild popular demand for peace within Israeli society out of self-interest, and not out of moral lecturing. Because the Israeli society right now is deeply traumatized, deeply hurting, terrified, terrified.

And in many ways, you know, according to polls, the Jewish public actually is not aware of the fact that Palestinians are afraid.We are a society that is, that has endured very heavy persecution, very heavy, you know, incitements against us in the last three months—not just, but really very heavy in the last three months. We are extremely scared with so much guns everywhere in our mixed cities. Uh, in Jaffa you can go right now and find people with their guns, like, really crazy lunatics who are going around patrolling with their guns. And we are really deeply unsafe. And we feel like we're next. Uh, we're next. Um, and the Jewish public doesn't understand, doesn't have even the capacity to understand us, the people who live with them, their colleagues, their peers, their neighbors, their friends.So how are they going to even understand the Palestinian experience in Gaza or in the West Bank?

And in many ways also for us as Palestinian leadership in the movement, I find myself fighting for a society that is, you know, completely overlooking me at best or really delegitimizing my existence as a Palestinian here.Um, you know, at worst.It can be much worse than that. We are getting physical threats. 

Jen: In Israel, Standing Together gets harassed from the far right. In the diaspora, Sally said it's the far left that attacks the movement for “legitimizing” the state of Israel. Sally and other leaders have been the target of slurs.

Sally: “Normalizer!” I'm a Palestinian fighting for my life, like, on the ground right now. Like, what are you talking about? One of the things that I like to say to them, especially now, I think the Palestinian liberation movement has finally received unprecedented recognition and legitimacy around the world. It's crazy what's happening. Yeah, we never happened before, you know, to have like hundreds of thousands of people across the world with Palestinian flag[s], like, that's not something that's seen before. That's exactly the moment where people need to have the responsibility, to assume the responsibility, to understand, okay, what does it mean? What does it mean, free Palestine? What does it take? 

And I don't judge. I think many Palestinians, especially in the diaspora, are extremely traumatized as well. But it really requires a lot of radical empathy into understanding that the Jewish Israeli people are, like, real people and not this fascist, oppressive, colonial entity, you know.It's not an “entity”— it's people. 

And just, even if you take [to] the side, you know, the human lovey-dovey moral question of the Israeli people and seeing their humanity, you need to understand it strategically. It’s a requirement. Youneed—you need to understand the Israeli psyche and the Israeli reality as they see it,So you can actually change it. So they become your allies. If Israelis don't build the political will to end the occupation, it won't end. 

We need Palestinian leadership that also has a political will, you know, to really acknowledge the right for the Jewish people to exist on this land freely, you know, and with security. That's something that needs to happen. And in many ways, for decades, it's something that has been, you know, methodologically, like, prevented by Israel, and overlooked by the world. Like, eh, let's not deal with that, you know, we don't need leadership right now. Um, they're either incarcerated or assassinated, right? 

When I talk about liberation for the Palestinian people, by the way, it's much more than ending the occupation, right? Because, you know, ending the occupation, it's not going to liberate a Palestinian woman or Palestinian LGBT. Like, liberation is just so much more than just ending the military control of Israel. 

And also in many ways, for me, like, historic justice is about acknowledgement, acknowledging the injustices that happened. And for us as Palestinians here, you know, to make sure that we are also equal in our homeland.

Our biggest hope and our biggest strength is the one weak point of the right right now, which is the fact that they literally have no will and no capacity to provide us with any answers about our future. And that's the one thing that we are able to provide, which is really a different kind of vision. 

I think many Israelis are in such distress because the right wing is so effective right now. They're feeding on the trauma, on the fear, and they're so effective into silencing, into sanctioning anyone who would say anything other than b’yachad nenatzeach and it's very effective.

So, the question is, how do you create legitimacy? We're encouraging the center, we want them to start talking about political solutions. Once this kind of center starts to talk about it, it becomes legitimate to talk about it. The Israeli public for many years now has been methodologically convinced, fed, there's no partner, there's no way.  We have to control them, we have to incarcerate them, we have to kill them. We have to. So we are safe. But we are not. We're not safe. And October 7—that conception shattered. 

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But from the deepest crises comes also the very, very clearest visions.  Really. I have never had such a clear vision of what our mission is. We're fighting for our lives. We're fighting for our future.

Jen: That was Sally Abed.  Since we met her, she’s won a seat on the Haifa city council in Israel’s municipal elections. You also heard from Hanan Alsanah, Ayesha Ziadna, Khitam Abu Bader, and Racheli Geffen. 

Special thanks to Combined Jewish Philanthropies for sponsoring the mission to Israel and to the Fuchsberg Center for coordinating it. 

Thank you for joining us for Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive. Our team includes Nahanni Rous and Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls In Trouble. 

JWA is collecting stories about Jewish women’s experiences since October 7. Visit jwa.org/october7 for question prompts. Submissions can be in writing or audio, in whatever language you choose. 

You can find Can We Talk? at jwa.org/podcasts or on your favorite podcast app. Don’t forget to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. 

I’m Jen Richler—until next time.