[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
Batia Holin is one more of those leftist kibbutzniks who for her entire adult life – she is now 71 — believed deeply in the possibility of peace and coexistence with the Palestinians. She placed her faith especially in one particular Palestinian, a certain Machmud, with whom she collaborated on photographic projects designed to show the “humanity” of both sides. Then October 7 arrived, and the Palestinian she had grown to trust tried to make contact with her — in order, she realized, to murder her. Since then, Batia Holin’s world has shattered. She no longer believes in “peace with the Palestinians.” She has been mugged by a murderous reality. Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and more on her story can be found here: “SPECIAL REPORT: The peace campaigner who came to kill,” by Richard Ferrer, Jewish News, June 27, 2024:
…The 71-year-old, who has lived on the kibbutz for more than 50 years, has dedicated her life to coexistence. The idea of collaborating with a Palestinian across the border, someone who experienced the same sights and sounds yet lived a vastly different reality, deeply resonated with her sense of purpose.
“Machmud and I wanted to show the world that, despite the circumstances in which we live, we share the same hope for a brighter future. That despite the obstacles, most people on both sides of the fence just want to live in peace.”
Their exhibition opened in Israel on 4 February 2023 in nearby Kibbutz Nahal Oz (where 14 people were killed and seven abducted), with plans for it to tour the United States. One of its most striking exhibits was photographs of the Mediterranean Sea, showing the same beach border from opposite perspectives: one looking north, the other south.
Machmud was, of course, unable to be there in person, so he wrote Batia a touching email: “I hope this project will influence and improve understanding, quality of life and security on both sides of the fence. I hope that with the help of my photos, Israeli society and the whole world will know that the Gaza Strip is not only a place of rockets and missiles but a place worth living in. I hope that with the help of my photos, Israeli society will see that in Gaza the people are simple, love life and are not fighters and terrorists. This exhibition, for me, is hope for a peaceful life.”
Today, in the wake of such unimaginable brutality, Batia’s dreams seem heartbreakingly naïve. Her faith has been so profoundly shattered that she fears there may not be a single adult in Gaza who shares her vision of peace. “The hardest feeling is the sense of total betrayal,” she tells me.
“The sense that everyone in Gaza was involved, even those who claim to oppose Hamas. I realise how awful that sounds. It truly is awful. But I cannot think anything else today….
Batia heard Machmud’s voice for the very first time at 10am on October 7 when she received a phone call from an Israeli number she did not recognise. He told her he was inside the kibbutz and asked if Israeli soldiers were nearby.
“I was so confused,” recalls Batia with a shudder. “At first, I thought Machmud must have heard about the attack and was calling out of concern. It didn’t take long to realise he had a different reason. He wanted to cause me harm. I didn’t speak to him. I just hung up….
On 3 February 2024, exactly one year after Batia and Machmud’s exhibition, Batia, who is staying with family in Kibbutz Shefayim near Tel Aviv with fellow survivors from Kfar Aza, opened a second photography exhibition called The Dream And Its Break. It is in four parts, entitled The blackened present, Shattered dream, Garden of remembrance and Hope, let it be.
“It tells the story of how my 50-year dream of peace was broken in a single day,” Batia says, her voice heavy with sorrow.
I ask if she will ever return. “I don’t know,” Batia sighs. “If my daughter doesn’t come back, I won’t. But there’s still time before we face these questions. First, we must see what happens with the hostages and what happens in Gaza. No one can live here until Hamas is gone. Before she was released, Hamas told one of the hostages taken from Kfar Aza, ‘Don’t go back because we will return.’ I believe them.”
Every one of Batia Holin’s hopes and dreams about peace with the Palestinians has been shattered. She now says “the hardest thing is the sense of total betrayal.” Her Palestinian “friend” and collaborator, Machmud, the one who had taken pictures in Gaza that were to be shown together with the photographs taken by her in Israel, showing the same beach and the same sea and the same sky, but from very different perspectives, had presented himself as believing in a “common humanity.” Batia Holin laments the loss: “Machmud and I wanted to show the world [or so she thought] that, despite the circumstances in which we live, we share the same hope for a brighter future. That despite the obstacles, most people on both sides of the fence just want to live in peace.”
Of course Batia Holin now knows she was wrong. The Palestinians do not share “the same hope for a brighter future.” The Israelis would like there to be peace, and coexistence, and collaboration, between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. The Palestinians do not. They want to see the disappearance of Israel, the expulsion or murder of its Jewish inhabitants, and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state.
Six months before Hamas committed its atrocities — rapes, tortures, mutilations, and murders — on innocent Israelis, Machmud was piously expressing his lying hopes, to show Israeli society that Gaza is “more than rockets and missiles,” that people in Gaza “are simple, love life and are not fighters and terrorists.” Six months passed, and the world saw how thousands of those “simple” people in Gaza, whom Mahmud insisted were “not fighters and terrorists,” behaved, as they burned children alive, mass-raped, tortured, and then murdered young girls, sliced off the breasts of women and played catch with their flesh, cut the genitalia off of men, and gouged out their eyes before putting them to death. And these acts — these “heroic deeds” — were celebrated all over the Gaza Strip, with celebratory chants, ululations, and the handing out of sweets. It was all great fun, and no doubt Machmud himself took part in the general merriment.
Batia Holin is not alone in her sense of betrayal and deep suspicion of all the people — not just the Hamas operatives — in Gaza. For hundreds of ordinary Gazans accompanied the Hamas attackers on October 7 into Israel. They took part in the atrocities. They continued to beat the frightened hostages, many of them wounded, as they were being taken back to Gaza. Once the hostages were in Gaza, “innocent civilians” continued to strike them as they passed in the back of slow-moving pick-up trucks. Those “innocent civilians” screamed with delight. And passed out candy to celebrate. All this Batia Holin now knows. And it has changed her views on “peace with the Palestinians” forever.