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With ‘Let It Be Morning’ and ‘Cinema Sabaya,’ Israeli filmmakers are winning awards for portraying Palestinian stories
(JTA) — Years ago, the Israeli filmmaker Orit Fouks Rotem took a class led by director Eran Kolirin, best known as the maker of “The Band’s Visit.” This month, movies by both filmmakers are getting theatrical rollouts in the United States.
On a recent Zoom call, Palestinian author Sayed Kashua joked: “Was that his class — how to use a Palestinian story?”
Kashua was smiling on Zoom as he said it — he is, after all, known for his often fatalistic sense of humor, particularly when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the author had given his blessing for Kolirin to make an adaptation of his novel “Let It Be Morning,” and said he loved the final result.
But like most jokes, this one had a kernel of truth: Israel’s two most recent Oscar submissions, hitting New York’s Quad Cinema within a week of each other, both — to varying degrees — tell Palestinian stories.
“Let It Be Morning” is a dark comedy about an Arab Israeli village that has suddenly and with no explanation been cordoned off from the rest of the country by the Israeli military. This event forces its Palestinian residents, including a protagonist trying to return to his comfortable middle-class life in Jerusalem, to reckon with how their dignity as citizens has been denied to them by the mechanisms of the Israeli occupation. At the Quad, the film is accompanied by a retrospective of Kolirin’s work, including “The Band’s Visit,” the basis for the Tony Award-winning musical; the retrospective is sponsored by the Israeli consulate in New York.
The all-female cast of “Cinema Sabaya,” a mix of Jewish and Arab actresses, in a film directed by Orit Fouks Rotem. (Courtesy of Kino Lorber)
The following week will see the opening of Rotem’s film, “Cinema Sabaya.” It follows a group of eight women, some Jewish and some Arab and Palestinian, who bond with each other while taking a filmmaking class in a community center in the Israeli city of Hadera. Cast member Dana Ivgy, who plays the class’s instructor, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the filming experience “felt like how living in Israel should feel,” adding, “We have more women in the film than in the Israeli government.”
Stylistically, the two films couldn’t be more different. “Let It Be Morning” is a tightly plotted narrative with boldly realized characters; almost all of its dialogue is in Arabic. “Cinema Sabaya” is a loose, heavily improvisational piece that is almost entirely set in one room, and is mostly in Hebrew (although in one tense early scene, the characters debate whether to conduct their class in Hebrew or Arabic). One is a dry, Kafkaesque satire; the other is an intimate, naturalistic drama.
But together, the films provide a snapshot of the delicate dance Israeli filmmakers must perform in the current climate. On the one hand, these art-house directors are being feted on the international stage for their empathetic storytelling that incorporates or even centers entirely on Palestinian characters. But on the other, they’re being attacked by government officials for their perceived insufficient loyalty — and their films’ very status as “Israeli” is being questioned, too, sometimes by their own cast and crew.
“Everyone can call it what they want,” Rotem said of her film. “I’m an Israeli and it’s in Israel, but I have partners who call themselves Palestinians, and some of them call themselves Arabs, and each one defined herself. I think it’s really how it should be.”
“A film does not have an identity,” Kolirin insisted in an interview with JTA. “It is a citizen of the screen.”
Eran Kolirin accepted the award for Best Director for “Let It Be Morning” at the 2021 Ophir Awards in Tel Aviv on October 5, 2021. (Tomer Neuberg/ Flash90)
Kolirin isn’t a fan of the label “Israeli film” in this case, even though that is how “Let It Be Morning” was categorized at its 2021 Cannes Film Festival premiere; its own press notes also list Israel as the “country of production.” That Cannes screening took place shortly after Israel’s deadly conflict with Hamas that killed more than 250 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and around a dozen Israelis. The events turned Cannes into a political firestorm when the film’s Palestinian cast refused to attend the premiere.
“We cannot ignore the contradiction of the film’s entry into Cannes under the label of an ‘Israeli film’ when Israel continues to carry its decades-long colonial campaign of ethnic cleansing, expulsion, and apartheid against us — the Palestinian people,” the cast’s statement read in part.
“Each time the film industry assumes that we and our work fall under the ethno-national label of ‘Israeli,’ it further perpetuates an unacceptable reality that imposes on us, Palestinian artists with Israeli citizenship,” the statement continues, calling on “international artistic and cultural institutions” to “amplify the voices of Palestinian artists and creatives.”
Kolirin himself supported the cast’s action. He knew they were grieving over the outbreak of violence in Gaza and didn’t want to put themselves in a situation where “some politician is going to wave a flag over their head or whatever.”
What’s more, he said, the status of “Let It Be Morning” as an “Israeli” film, despite the fact that around half the crew was Palestinian, was not his decision: “The film was not submitted to Cannes as an Israeli film,” he said. “You know, you fill in the form: ‘Which were the countries that gave money?’” In this case, the answer was Israel and France.
Most of the cast later did not attend the Ophir Awards ceremony, Israel’s equivalent to the Oscars voted on by its filmmaking academy, where “Morning” won the top prize (which automatically made it Israel’s Oscar submission for that year). In solidarity at the awards, Kolirin read aloud a statement from his lead actress, Juna Suleiman, decrying Israel’s “active efforts to erase Palestinian identity” and what she called “ethnic cleansing.”
Orit Fouks Rotem (Courtesy of Kino Lorber)
“Cinema Sabaya” hasn’t played host to as much offscreen controversy, but its vision of Israeli multiculturalism is still inherently political. Rotem’s mother is a local government adviser on women’s issues in Hadera, and the film was inspired by her experience participating in a photography class designed to unite Jewish and Arab women. Rotem herself later led filmmaking classes in a similar vein as research for “Sabaya.”
In the film, Ivgy’s character, who is modeled on Rotem, instructs her class to film their home lives, while secretly hoping to make a movie from their efforts. When her desire to do so is revealed, the women in the class feel betrayed: They thought they were just making films for themselves, not for their stories to be told by someone else.
Similarly, Rotem said that working with Arab and Palestinian actresses made her “aware to the fact that I can’t really tell their story.” Her solution was to allow the performers — some of whom are well-known activists who had to think twice about appearing in an Israeli movie — to voice their own opinions, and to establish the necessary trust to allow them to be unscripted on camera.
She theorizes that “Cinema Sabaya” has been so well received in Israel because “it doesn’t say ‘occupation, occupation, occupation.’ It says ‘humanity,’ so people are less afraid.” (She also noted that, in real life, the women who attended her filmmaking classes bristled at her initial suggestion to make a documentary about them, telling her to fictionalize their stories instead — which she did.)
Lately the Israeli government has a tendency to view its filmmaking class as agitators unworthy of national support, particularly when they make films criticizing the occupation. Former Culture Minister Miri Regev often disparaged films she thought were bad for Israel, including celebrated international hits such as “Foxtrot” and “Synonyms.” Her current successor, Miki Zohar, has already threatened the makers of a new documentary about the West Bank city of Hebron, saying the movie smears the military and that the directors might have to return government funds.
In recent years, Israel’s culture ministry has pushed two new controversial proposals: a grant program earmarked for those who make films in settlements, which are considered illegal under international law; and a form pledging not to make films “offensive” to Israel or the military that filmmakers would be required to sign in order to apply for certain grants, which many directors have likened to a loyalty oath. For years, some of the country’s largest grantmakers have required applicants to sign a form promising to represent their projects as Israeli on the national stage.
There has also been an effort among some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government to end funding to public broadcaster Kan, which the country’s film industry views as another attack on its free expression.
“Kan has all this dialogue,” Ivgy said. “It has Jewish and religious and Arab and Palestinian, for kids and for grownups. And nothing is taboo there. I feel that it’s very dangerous to close that option down.”
Many Israeli filmmakers are fighting back. Hundreds, including Kolirin and Rotem, have refused to sign the ministry’s pledge, and many have also protested the settlement grant program. Nadav Lapid, one of the country’s most celebrated and outspoken directors, harshly critiqued government restrictions placed on his own work in the 2021 drama “Ahed’s Knee,” which went on to win a special prize at Cannes.
Kolirin said he had recently been on a call with several Israeli filmmakers looking to further organize against artistic restrictions, and that it had given him hope. “I had this feeling of some optimism, which I didn’t have for a long time,” he said. But he didn’t mince words when discussing Israel’s new governing coalition, which he likened to “a circus of mad dogs unleashed.”
Rotem said that the current government is “very, very bad and scary,” but that it has only strengthened her resolve to make political films.
“For me, it’s also political to show women in Israel in a deep way: I mean Arabs and Jews,” she said. “Because I don’t think there are enough films that are doing that.”
For Kashua, a veteran TV writer and opinion columnist, the question of identity in Israeli and Palestinian filmmaking is even more pronounced. After a long career of trying to write about the Palestinian experience in Hebrew as a way of reaching Israelis, he left Israel for the United States in 2014, becoming discouraged by an incident in which Jewish extremists burned a Palestinian teenager alive as revenge after Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Now based in St. Louis, he has worked as a writer and story editor on Israeli series that center on both Palestinian and Jewish stories — including the global hit “Shtisel,” which focuses on haredi Orthodox Jews, and its upcoming spinoff, along with “Madrasa,” a young-adult series about a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school.
Israeli filmmakers choosing to center Palestinian stories can be its own radical political act, Kashua believes. He noted that the dialogue in “Morning” is almost entirely in Arabic, a language that Israel demoted from national language status in 2018 — doubly ironic as he had deliberately chosen to write his original novel in Hebrew.
“The idea that this film is ‘Israeli’ — it really contradicts the idea of Israel being a purely Jewish state,” Kashua said. He added that, while he had initially hoped a Palestinian director might have adapted his novel, he was ultimately happy with Kolirin’s approach.
“I truly love the movie, and it’s barely Orientalist,” he joked, echoing Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said’s famous book about how a Western lens on Eastern cultures can be reductive and harmful. “Which is a big achievement for an Israeli filmmaker.”
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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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