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A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Tucked in the far corner of a large, brightly-lit exhibition hall on the ground floor of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, there is a delicate-looking piece of art with a strong political message.
At first glance, it appears to be three circular vases with flowers in them. The ceramic vases sit on shelves attached to the wall, and colorful collages hang above them. On closer inspection, visitors will notice that the flowers are made out of paper and that affixed to each vase is an image of the Palestinian flag printed on foam board.
A nearby label written by the curators of the exhibit, titled “Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves,” explains that the piece was inspired by a conversation the artist, Tosha Stimage of Berkeley, had with a Palestinian man. He told Stimage about the plants that are native to Palestine — “a place which he can no longer access due to the ongoing conflict in the region,” the curators write.
The label also includes a note about the flag: “Some may find its presence at The CJM troubling or confusing, while others may find it appropriate and forthright. Stimage recognizes the potential for these divergent responses and hopes to use them as a means of generating dialogue.”
On a Sunday afternoon in October, Maury Ostroff read the label and walked away without inspecting the artwork.
Visitors to the “Tikkun” exhibit are encouraged to share their responses to the artwork via comment cards. (Andrew Esensten)
Asked how the presence of the flag made him feel, Ostroff, who is Jewish and lives in Muir Beach, in Marin County, replied, “Unhappy.”
Why?
“It’s not offensive to me in the same way that a swastika is. My skin is a little bit thicker than that. But I wish it weren’t here.”
He added, “What’s so Jewish about this? What’s so ‘tikkun olam’ about all of this?”
For the “Tikkun” exhibit, which opened Feb. 17 and runs through Jan. 8, the CJM invited both Jewish and non-Jewish Bay Area artists to contribute new works on the theme of repair, however they chose to interpret it. “No one is listening to us,” the piece by Stimage, who is not Jewish, is the first work of art featuring the Palestinian flag to be shown at CJM in recent memory; the museum could not say when or if the flag has been displayed on its walls before.
The piece prompted several internal conversations among CJM staff when it was first submitted and, since it has been on display, has generated a variety of responses from museumgoers who have left comments in a box at the entrance to the exhibit. Intentionally or not, Stimage has raised numerous questions with the artwork, including: Does a work of art that is sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle for statehood belong in a Jewish museum? And what is the role of a contemporary Jewish museum, anyway?
“To truly be a contemporary art museum, meaning embedded in the contemporary issues of our day, our job is to provide a platform for dialogue and to share a diversity of perspectives on our walls,” said Chad Coerver, CJM’s executive director since September 2021. “If any institution [like ours] took the path of withholding artwork that troubled our staff, our board or our community, it would be very difficult to mount exhibitions.”
CJM is a member of the Council of American Jewish Museums, a network of 76 museums across the country. CAJM does not have guidelines about the kind of art its member museums can and cannot display, according to Executive Director Melissa Yaverbaum.
J. reached out to several CAJM member museums in New York, Los Angeles and other places by email to ask if they had ever shown artwork with Palestinian iconography or works by Palestinian artists. The museums declined to answer or did not respond.
In recent years, two Jewish museums have been embroiled in controversy over issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago staged an exhibit in 2008 on Israeli and Palestinian concepts of homeland that included maps and portraits of Palestinians. Following outcry from members of the local Jewish community who felt the exhibit presented Israel in a negative light, the museum decided to close the exhibit after only a few weeks. And in 2019, the director of the Jewish Museum Berlin resigned after the museum tweeted a link to a pro-BDS article in a German newspaper. (The museum previously came under fire for welcoming anti-Zionist scholar Judith Butler and representatives of Iran.)
In a joint interview with J., two CJM staffers who worked on “Tikkun” — co-curator Qianjin Montoya, who is not Jewish, and a Jewish senior curator who served in an advisory role, Heidi Rabben — shared the story of how Stimage’s piece came to be in the exhibit. (Montoya’s co-curator for the exhibit, Arianne Gelardin, no longer works at the museum.)
Since 2009, CJM has invited local artists from different backgrounds to create new work as part of the museum’s annual Dorothy Saxe Invitational. The idea for “Tikkun” was hatched before the pandemic put the planning process on hold. Once the CJM and Saxe — a local philanthropist and art collector — agreed on the theme, the co-curators invited artists “already engaged in healing through their relationship to community or in their practice of daily life,” Gelardin told J. last February.
The 30 artists who accepted the museum’s invitation were given only four months to conceive of and submit new works. That was likely the shortest timeline in the history of the invitational, which has been held 11 previous times, according to the museum. Each artist received a packet of materials compiled by CJM staff, with input from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a non-degree granting Jewish education center, to guide their thinking on “tikkun.”
Stimage was invited to participate because she is “very active” in the Bay Area and because “her work reflects ideas of community and connection,” Montoya said.
The curators said Stimage’s inclusion of the Palestinian flag in her submitted piece came as a surprise and prompted challenging conversations. However, they noted that they found the content of some of the other artists’ work surprising, too, and that it’s not unusual for contemporary artists to push the envelope in their work.
“I wouldn’t say we expected to receive a piece about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we weren’t steering anyone away from that, either,” Rabben told J., adding that the submission guidelines did not place any topic off limits. “That’s a commitment from the museum to authentically represent the creative spirit of the artists that we’re working with,” she said.
Still, the curators said they engaged in a dialogue with Stimage in order to better understand each aspect of her piece and her overall intentions. Through those conversations, the curators learned that Stimage wanted to explore a moment of “rupture,” and that through her piece she hoped to communicate “that before healing or repair might happen, you have to first acknowledge that rupture,” Rabben said.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is showing “Tikkun,” an exhibit of works by Jewish and non-Jewish artists on the theme of repair. (Andrew Esensten)
Coerver, who was involved in some of the conversations, stressed that “careful consideration” was given to including the piece in the exhibit. “We felt an artwork addressing the plight of the Palestinians was appropriate in an exhibition on healing and repair,” he said. (No work submitted as part of the Dorothy Saxe Invitational has ever been outright rejected, the museum said.)
Stimage did not respond to interview requests from J. According to a CV on her website, she was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and earned an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2016. She is a past fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and was an artist-in-residence at Facebook in 2018. She also owns a floral gift shop in Oakland called Saint Flora.
Her work often touches on Black identity; she created a piece honoring Sandra Bland, an African-American woman whose 2015 arrest and death in a Texas jail cell sparked protests, and contributed to a 2019 San Francisco Art Institute exhibit on the Black Panther Party.
“I have a responsibility to create things that will, to the best of my present knowledge, do more good than harm, heal, inspire and uplift other humans,” she told the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper in 2015.
Stimage’s precise views on Israel are unknown. CJM referred J. to her artist statement for “No one is listening to us,” which reads: “Olive, sage, and sumac are flowering plants native to the Mediterranean (including regions of Gaza and the West Bank) that have a direct relationship to contested ancestral land and affect the livelihood of so many Palestinian farmers and families caught in the conflict. They are positioned in the space of The Contemporary Jewish Museum as a metaphor for the ongoing conflict over land rights and the desperate need for restoration and healing of an age-old wound.”
The curators told J. that during their conversations with Stimage about her piece, they asked her why including images of the Palestinian flag was important to her but did not request that she remove them.
“We determined that none of [the piece’s] components in and of themselves signified something problematic or concerning,” Rabben said. “Of course, we had the awareness that the symbol [of the flag] will be read in a variety of ways by a variety of people.”
(Rabben pointed out that the exhibit includes other works with national symbols rendered in provocative ways, such as a black-and-white photograph of an American flag that was torn apart and partially reassembled by Mexican-American artist Jose Arias.)
The Palestinian flag — which contains the Pan-Arab colors of black, white, green and red — was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. Since then, it has been the primary symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
For decades, the PLO was considered an enemy organization by Israel, and anything associated with it “had no place in Israeli public life,” said Eran Kaplan, an Israeli-born professor of Israel studies at San Francisco State University. Israel never went so far as to ban the flag. However, during the First Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1993, Israeli soldiers sometimes followed orders to confiscate the flag from protesters in the West Bank and Gaza.
With the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel and the PLO recognized each other as negotiating partners. Yet the Palestinian flag remains a contentious symbol in Israel today. Kaplan noted that it recently served as a flashpoint during the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American broadcaster who was killed in the West Bank in May. (The IDF conducted a review and admitted that the Israeli soldier who shot her had most likely misidentified her as an armed militant.) After warning Abu Akleh’s family not to display the flag, Israeli police attacked mourners in East Jerusalem, ripping flags out of their hands and off of the vehicle carrying her casket.
Today, the flag holds different meanings for Israelis and American Jews from different generations and political persuasions.
“There are large segments in Israeli society who view any form of Palestinian national identity as a threat to the existence of Israel,” Kaplan said. “There are others who view the PLO as legitimate partners in any form of negotiations [over the creation of a Palestinian state], but there’s an absolute split over those questions.”
Given the sensitive nature of Stimage’s work and others in the exhibit, the curators decided to solicit feedback from visitors via comment cards available at the entrance to the hall. Rabben said the museum has received a number of comments specifically about “No one is listening to us,” most of which were positive. “The majority of those comments were ‘Thank you for offering space for this topic at the museum,’” she said.
Last month, a security guard sitting in the “Tikkun” exhibition hall told a reporter that he had not witnessed any expressions of outrage or protest through the first nine months of the exhibit. “When we opened we were afraid of negative reactions, but they’re not stressed about it,” he said of visitors. “We have shown worse things here.” The guard, who has worked at the museum since it opened in 2008, mentioned a 2010 exhibit, “Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf,” which included a copy of Hitler’s autobiography. “Some people were cussing us out” for displaying the book, he recalled.
Meanwhile, on the same floor as “Tikkun,” there is another, smaller exhibit containing potentially offensive art. A sign outside of the room warns visitors that inside is a Hitler marionette created by the parents of puppeteer Frank Oz. “Our intention in displaying this object is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the objects and firsthand stories of those who experienced its persecution, and to encourage conversation and education about the ongoing horrors of antisemitism and authoritarianism today,” the sign says.
Coerver, CJM’s executive director, said he was proud that the museum’s three current exhibits — “Tikkun,” “Oz is for Oznowicz: A Puppet Family’s History” and “Gillian Laub: Family Matters,” which includes photographs that Laub took of her Trump-supporting relatives — are raising “challenging questions” and providing opportunities for both visitors and museum staff to “expand our horizons.”
“We’ve been wading into some issues that I think are a little thicker than maybe we’ve been confronting in the past,” he said, “and I hope that continues.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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Israel is the one thing both Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidates agree on
(JTA) — Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and GOP opponent Stacy Garrity faced off on Wednesday in a heated gubernatorial debate, clashing over most policy issues — with the notable exception of Israel.
“I want to recognize the anniversary of the Hamas attacks, where 1,200 innocent people were killed, including 49 Americans,” said Garrity, referring to the third anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
“I want to remember the lives that were stolen, the families that were changed forever, and the Americans that didn’t make it home,” she added.
While Garrity, Pennsylvania’s state treasurer, has the endorsement of President Donald Trump, Shapiro has a 25 percentage point lead in a poll released Wednesday. Both candidates won their primaries uncontested in May, and both have been outspoken against antisemitism.
Shapiro, who himself is Jewish, likewise recognized “the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre” at the debate. He recalled how “Hamas, a terrorist organization, broke into Israel and murdered 1,200 innocents, took over 250 hostage, including many Americans.”
“This is a moment where my heart stands with the people of Israel,” he said. “My heart stands with the Jewish community, who I know are grieving as a result of this.”
“This is a moment where we need to stand together against terrorism, against hate and against antisemitism,” the governor added.
Although the candidates shared similar perspectives on Israel during Wednesday’s debate, they clashed on numerous other topics, including the death penalty, voter identification, taxes and tariffs.
Asked by the debate moderator about the plunging support for Israel in the Democratic Party, Shapiro replied that he has “been very, very consistent” in both his “love of Israel” and his disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Shapiro then noted that Israelis will head to the polls in just a few weeks to choose their next leader. He expressed hope that they would not elect Netanyahu, whom he said “has led Israel down a very dangerous and isolated path.”
“I want America to have a strong relationship with Israel and with the Israeli government,” Shapiro added. “That’s not possible right now with the Netanyahu government in charge.”
Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish Democrats nationwide, was among the final candidates considered by Kamala Harris in her vice-presidential search in the 2024 election. He is also seen as a possible 2028 presidential hopeful.
But Shapiro has also faced the challenges posed by increasing antisemitism in America. During Harris’s search, for example, a website and social media feed labeled him “No Genocide Josh” over his support for Israel.
In April 2025, an arsonist set fire to Shapiro’s house just hours after his family had conducted a Passover seder. In 2018, while Shapiro was serving as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, a terrorist killed 11 people and injured six others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh..
Garrity, meanwhile, has more than tripled Pennsylvania’s investment in Israel bonds in her current role. She invested $20 million after the Oct. 7 attack and another $35 million in July 2025.
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Protesters overrun Oct. 7 Israeli peace vigil attended by Mamdani
(New York Jewish Week) — Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters on Wednesday night overran a vigil marking Oct. 7 attended by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The demonstrators swamped the area of Union Square Park that was supposed to host the event held by Israelis for Peace, a left-wing peace group. The organizers moved the vigil to a nearby spot in the park surrounded by police barricades as speakers struggled to be heard above the protesters. Attendees held electrically lit candles and signs reading, “Not one more life.”
Upon learning Mamdani was present, the pro-Palestinian protesters booed and broke into a chant of “Traitor!” and “Zohran, what do you say? How many boots did you lick today?”
The mayor stood solemnly throughout the event and did not speak at the vigil or address the protesters.
One protester yelled at Israelis for Peace organizers: “We don’t want peace with Israelis, bro! We sent your people to hell on October 7.” Other protesters wielded megaphones and drums while chanting anti-Israel slogans, including “Gaza will be liberated!” and “Israel is a terrorist state!”
Earlier in the evening, protesters were seen grabbing the electric candles intended for the vigil and mockingly singing the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagila.”
Another protester in the vigil area shouted out his disapproval of Mamdani: “He’s 100% Muslim but as of now, he stands as an ambassador of Zionism and U.S. imperialism.”
And someone else carried a poster depicting Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who helped mastermind the attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people three years ago Wednesday.
Amid the cacophony, Brad Lander, the Jewish Democratic nominee running to represent parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn in Congress, took the microphone during the vigil to recite the words of the mother of a 20-year-old man who was murdered at the Nova music festival three years ago. He looked visibly shaken as the evening progressed, watching the protesters while speakers shared testimonies of people killed on Oct. 7.
Speakers also shared testimonies of Palestinians killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and the event included the group being led in a Muslim prayer. Many speakers referred to Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a “genocide.”
The vigil ended with the participants raising their candles and reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer honoring the dead. As they filed out of the event, the protesters shouted “Death to the IDF!”
Lander told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that throughout the ceremony he felt “a deep and profound sadness for the testimony” of those lost, recalling that he’s met family members of some of the victims, both Jewish and Palestinian, whose stories were read.
“That level of heartbreak is a lot more than the level of having some people shouting,” he said. “The flattening of empathy is another sadness. And the fact that this is one of the few places where people even try to say Kaddish together and to mourn both Israeli lives lost on Oct. 7 and 75,000 Palestinian lives lost in Israel’s war since, is also sad. And that’s why it was important to do.”
Amichai Lau-Lavie, who leads New York’s Lab Shul and led the Mourner’s Kaddish, told JTA that “In the heat of these protest battles, there’s no room for nuance. It’s the slurs and the slogans. And what we saw here tonight was hatred that is coming from a good place of justice and freedom, but is not attuned to what we’re doing here.” He described that goal as one that acknowledges that both peoples’ futures are intertwined.
Lau-Lavie also praised the mayor for coming. “I can say I’m glad about the fact that the mayor was here and witnessed this animosity, and stood with us,” he noted. “For all his flaws, and there are many, I hope he got something.”
Despite the war of words, both gatherings disbanded peacefully. No arrests were made.
Amid the rival gatherings, Ross Glick, a New York pro-Israel activist and former executive director of Betar US, a far-right staunchly Zionist group, arrived with a group of counter-protesters holding Israeli flags. They were swiftly confronted by anti-Israel protesters, and the two sides got into a shouting match as they stood separated by a barrier.
The pro-Palestinian protesters had held a rally at City Hall, organized by Pal-Awda and various student groups, before heading to the location of the vigil. They condemned Israel and the United States for the war in Gaza, but also criticized Mamdani for capitulating “to Zionist pressure.” Some carried anti-Mamdani signs, including one that depicted Mamdani rolling out a red carpet for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The throng of protesters outside City Hall chanted “Free Palestine,” “Globalize the intifada,” “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” and “Israel is a terrorist state.”
One protester held a sign reading “Operation Epstein Fury,” a play on Operation Epic Fury. Another held a sign that read “Liberation in action Oct. 7.” Nearby, an Israeli flag was held up with the text “Death cult” and an inverted red triangle — a Hamas symbol — atop the Star of David.
Earlier in the day, Jews in the city who marked Oct. 7 expressed fear about the political environment three years on from the attacks.
Toni Rabin, an 83-year-old Upper West Sider who lived in Israel in the 1970s, told JTA that she calls herself a progressive and has attended protests against President Donald Trump. But like many New York Jews, she gets unnerved by Mamdani.
“I’m burying my head in the sand a bit, because it’s a little too much for me to handle,” she admitted. She timed her arrival for her swim at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan to coincide with the commemoration of the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in southern Israel.
“We should never forget,” she said. “We already have forgotten so much about the Holocaust, and there are very few people left who can speak about it anymore. They’re dying out. … So, we have to remember the horrific event that took place, the shock.”
She spoke over the sound of a cellist who performed for a small crowd in a lobby that was otherwise packed with small children having lunch with grownups. There was art on display by the Israeli artist Zeev Engelmayer from his “Strokes of Hope” exhibition.
Throughout the city on Wednesday, New Yorkers found themselves coping with the intense memories of learning about the 1,200 people, mostly Israelis but also foreign nationals, slain in Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the majority of them civilians. Meanwhile, Palestinian residents and their supporters mourned the more than 74,000 Palestinians killed in the ensuing Gaza war, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
Hours before arriving at the vigil, Mamdani posted a statement on X in which he paid tribute both to Israelis killed by Hamas attackers in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and to Palestinians killed in the Gaza war that followed.
His statement infuriated leaders in the mainstream Jewish community, who read his post as yet another vehicle for accusing the Israeli government of genocide and apartheid.
Wednesday “marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others,” the mayor said in his X post. “We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.”
He went on, however, to say that the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presided over an “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” saying that Israel “has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians — including more than 21,000 children.”
Mamdani continued, “Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.”
The city’s Jewish Community Relations Council was scathing in its response, saying that Mamdani “continues to fall short” of bringing New Yorkers together.
“It does not honor the dead to pit them against each other,” it said in its statement. “It is shameful. Today, Jewish New Yorkers across the five boroughs walked through metal detectors to drop off our children at preschool, thanked the police officers posted outside our synagogues for keeping us safe, tucked in our Jewish stars on the subway, and felt the gut punch of grief remembering the 1,200 innocent people who were slaughtered in their homes, in front of their families, and dancing at a music festival just because they were Jewish.”
Lander, favored to win his race for Congress next month, said on X ahead of the vigil that there was room to mourn the dead on all sides. “On this third anniversary of October 7th, a good start is to try to resist the flattening of empathy, to let ourselves weep for all the lives lost, the children killed, the families torn apart, the homes destroyed.”
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Newly aired recordings of paramedic Amit Mann’s final hours renew push to let families access Oct. 7 records
(JTA) — Three years after paramedic Amit Mann, 22, was killed by Hamas while treating the wounded in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, newly aired recordings of her final calls revealed fresh and harrowing details about her last hours.
The recordings, aired by Channel 12 on Tuesday, prompted her sister, Haviva Mann Izikson, to renew an appeal for a centralized system to ensure other families are not left searching for similar records years later.
The calls capture Amit repeatedly calling emergency services as Hamas terrorists overran Be’eri, seeking assistance while continuing to treat wounded residents.
The previously unknown calls came to light by chance, when, earlier this year, Mann Izikson contacted the Magen David Adom emergency service seeking the precise times of calls Amit had made on Oct. 7 as she updated a presentation she planned to give about her sister. MDA provided information on seven calls. Until then, the family had known of only four.
Mann Izikson said hearing them revealed both that what Amit endured was “even worse than we had thought” and the extent to which Amit continued caring for others even as the situation around her deteriorated.
“It showed me even more both the hell that she went through and, on the other hand, who she was. What she was dealing with, what she went through there, which was even worse than we had thought, and how despite all of that she keeps treating the wounded in every way she can,” Mann Izikson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Wednesday as she prepared to return to Be’eri for a memorial event at the dental clinic where Amit was killed.
The recordings trace Amit’s increasingly desperate attempts to summon help as terrorists closed in around the dental clinic. Hours later, she sent her sisters a chilling last message: “They’re here, in the clinic. I don’t think I’ll make it out of here. I love you.”
In one call, Amit is heard struggling to convey the scale of what was happening to a police dispatcher.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” she told the dispatcher, describing wounded and dead people around her and continued gunfire. She asked whether the army or police had reached the kibbutz. When the dispatcher told her help was coming and urged her to stay inside, Amit began to cry. “Just tell me you’re here.”
Hours later, at 10:41 a.m., after seven calls to Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service, Amit made her final recorded call to police. “Listen, terrorists have infiltrated Be’eri! We urgently need an ambulance or police here. Come urgently to the dental clinic.”
Hearing the latest recordings was heartbreaking, Mann Izikson said. She was struck by Amit’s ability to pull herself together after desperate calls for help and return to caring for the wounded, comforting them, asking about their families, bringing them water and improvising with what little there was. Amit placed helmets beneath their heads and covered those who were cold from blood loss.
“She keeps them alive until her final moments, and she stays true to herself until her last breaths,” Mann Izikson said. “It just amazed us.”
Mann Izikson is urging the state to establish a central body that would collect all existing documentation from Oct. 7, including recordings held by emergency services and police as well as security-camera footage and other material, catalogue it by victim, and contact each family. Such a body, she said, should tell relatives: “We have documentation of your loved one. Would you like to receive it?”
“If the family wants it, then all of it should be provided to them proactively,” she added.
She pointed to the family of Gil Buyum, 55, a member of Be’eri’s security squad whom Amit treated after he was shot. In one call, Amit reported him wounded; in a later call, she reported that he had died.
The two recordings allowed Buyum’s widow, Ayelet, to narrow down the time of her husband’s death, Mann Izikson said. Buyum’s 22-year-old son, Inbar “Buri” Buyum, was also killed while trying to defend the kibbutz that morning.
“Only because of Amit’s recordings was she able to identify the 20-minute window in which he died,” Mann Izikson said. “That’s just one example of how someone can get some kind of closure from something like this.”
She said families should be able to decide for themselves whether they want such material. “It belongs to the families. It is the families’ material, and the families should decide what, if anything, to do with it.”
A law passed in July established an Oct. 7 Memory Authority slated to include an archive and centralize documentation of the attack. The law is due to take effect in January, but it is unclear whether the authority will match material to individual victims and notify their families.
JTA was unable to reach the Prime Minister’s Office and the Israel State Archives, the government body responsible for preserving state records, in time for publication.
Merav Israeli-Amarant, CEO and co-founder of the Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas, which released a major report in May documenting sexual violence during the attack and its aftermath, said Mann Izikson’s proposal was “profoundly important.”
“Families should not have to discover, years later and by chance, that recordings, footage, or other documentation connected to their loved ones exist,” Israeli-Amarant told JTA. She said there should be a mechanism that “approaches families with sensitivity,” while giving them the choice of whether to “receive it, view it, preserve it, or not engage with it at all.”
But Israeli-Amarant also said there was “unique importance” in preserving such material through civilian institutions, noting that many Oct. 7 families feel abandoned by the state and that some prefer documentation to be handled independently and “outside political considerations.”
Maya Gan-Zvi, manager of the National Library of Israel’s Bearing Witness: October 7 Archive, which has collected hundreds of thousands of files from the attack, cautioned that proactively approaching families, as Mann Izikson proposes, also raised ethical questions because families differ widely in how, and whether, they want to encounter such material.
“Some want to receive everything, and some do not want to know, or not yet,” Gan-Zvi told JTA, adding that even members of the same family may disagree. Contacting a family without first knowing its wishes could “reopen wounds,” she said, particularly in cases involving graphic material or footage filmed by the terrorists themselves.
Gan-Zvi said she favored a system in which bereaved families themselves would take the initiative, registering that they wanted to be contacted, specifying the types of material they wanted and receiving a description of what had been found before deciding whether to obtain it.
According to Israeli-Amarant, any system would face “significant” practical and legal hurdles because Oct. 7 material is scattered among government bodies, emergency services, police, the military, media outlets and private individuals, raising questions of ownership, privacy, consent and the rights of victims’ families.
Some recordings or footage may also be evidence in ongoing investigations or criminal proceedings against Hamas terrorists, she said, making chain of custody, publication restrictions and the integrity of those proceedings additional considerations.
Mann Izikson said providing documentation would help answer fundamental questions that remained unresolved.
“Three years later, we still don’t know the full truth and don’t understand how this happened,” she said. “Every piece of material like this can shed another bit of light and help us understand a little bit more.”
She has listened to the newly aired recordings repeatedly, echoing a pattern she described to JTA on the first anniversary of the attack, when she said she reread Amit’s messages from Oct. 7 every day, in part to piece together what happened during her sister’s final hours and try to come to terms with it.
It took two and a half days for Amit’s body to be identified. Mann Izikson told JTA at the time that when her sister was lowered into the grave, “I felt like they were burying half of my own child. I wanted to go in instead of her.”
Even amid the war, the hostage crisis and the wider grief in Israel on the first anniversary of Oct. 7, Mann Izikson said Amit’s loss eclipsed everything else. “There is all the rest — and the rest is painful and scary,” she said. “And then there is Amit and nothing else at all.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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