"I just watched in shock the article that was broadcast about the battle waged by the six Bedouin trackers against the 30 terrorists who infiltrated the division and saved my child. I vow to Facebook that after this nightmare is over, I'm going there to give them the biggest, strongest hug. Who tags them for me? One of them is called Ashraf?"
As soon as Yael Zalberman Kanonich's post rolled out to me on Facebook, I knew exactly who it was. A week before the Hamas attack, I accompanied Maj. Ashraf Bahiri, the senior tracker in the Gaza Division. A person for whom the word commitment is inherent in everything he does. Bahiri, a widowed resident of Rahat, remarried and father of five, could easily have been a tragic hero from life's bumps. Instead, he chose to be a hero of life.
"Everything is fine with me," he smiles tiredly when I ask him how he's doing after the fighting. "On Saturday, I got up at a quarter to six, made a cup of coffee and gathered the soldiers for a patrol. Suddenly, I see people entering Kibbutz Re'im, saying they were from the party and that terrorists had shot at them. I didn't believe this could happen.
I see the marks of gunfire and damage to the car, and only then did I understand. I told them to go into the club and not open the door until I came. I went out with the armored vehicle and on Route 232 I see 15 motorcycles and five jeeps with Palestinian flags. So I say to the CSC, 'These are terrorists.' I realized that if I entered them, we would die together. I went back to Re'im, and when I turned around to the kibbutz I got an RPG in the back. I realize someone is lying on the road shooting at us. I zigzagged with the steering wheel like crazy, we went inside, we just managed to get off and they were already pounced on us. They were on a battle plan, coordinated. For almost an hour and a half of continuous shooting, I was in contact with the battalion commander, at which point he said, 'Ashraf, I'm bringing ammunition,' went and didn't come back, fell.
"We kept thinking that the terrorists were only on our axis, we didn't think there could be more inside Israel. Two hours later, we killed three terrorists in Shag Gan, and the others understood that they wouldn't leave. So they turned around and came from the back fence of the kibbutz. I look towards the back of the kibbutz and think it's our soldiers, because they were in IDF uniforms. I hear them saying, 'Go up, go up,' which is not Bedouin, but the language of peasants from Gaza. I understood that they were Hamas. We killed three terrorists and others fled towards the synagogue and from there to the gym. We identified them and killed another five or six of them. In the meantime, the Shaldag guys entered the event, the terrorists saw that there were a lot of forces and fled from the western side towards Ein HaShlosha. We searched all the soldiers' quarters there, removed them from the unsafe rooms and transferred them to the protected area."
Yael, one of the mothers of the soldiers you saved, asked me to give you a big hug, that you are her hero, and that for the rest of her life she will thank you.
"Thank you, thank you very much. That's our job, you know, to protect."
At his death, he saved the girls
I remind my constituents that just before the war we spoke and he expressed frustration with the low percentage of Bedouin recruitment into the army. He explained how important it was for him to go to school in his free time and convince young people to enlist. Now he feels a real change. "Since Tuesday, when I was able to talk on the phone, people, Bedouin citizens from Rahat and the entire Negev, have been calling me, telling me, 'Ashraf, we want to come and fight with you.'"
How do you explain this change?
"What we've all seen is that these terrorists don't differentiate between Ashkenazim and Bedouins, between Ethiopians or Caucasians or Yemenites. Many Bedouins were kidnapped, many were killed by missiles or murdered. I saw four cars full of dead Bedouin workers. The terrorists knew, and murdered them. We have to tear Hamas apart, we have to kill them at least twice, as much as possible. Whoever harms the citizens of the State of Israel must harm him."
They are now talking about revenge, an eye for an eye, "the language of the Middle East."
"We have a moral army. An army respects and guards as much as possible not to harm those who don't need to. But whoever doesn't respect us and fights with us like that should be killed. I feel very bad that our citizens were murdered and kidnapped, it shocks me, I don't sleep at night because I think so much. We have to return all the abductees to their families and bring back the soldiers, and then tell Hamas that the people of Israel are alive, and will be alive long after Hamas."
IDF Spokesperson
Ashraf's spirit of heroism and dedication is no exception. Yusuf al-Ziadne, a bus driver from Rahat, drove a group of happy young people to the nature party in Re'im, but when the massacre began, he waited to pick up every person he could, saving many people's lives by taking them to safety under gunfire. Amit Hadar, one of the survivors of the party, described his actions on Facebook: "Even when terrorists fired at him from all directions, he didn't think to go and leave us alone."
Yair Maayan, until recently director general of the Bedouin Regulation Authority, took a break from the political race for mayor of Arad and reported for reserve duty as a lieutenant colonel at the division headquarters on the Gaza fences. He is not surprised by the Bedouin mobilization, and tells of one of the lesser-known heroes from the first day of the massacre: "Quite a few of our Bedouin neighbors were injured during the Hamas attack, some were kidnapped and many were murdered in the attack. Just this week, the body of Amer Abu Sbileh, a 25-year-old father of two from Abu Talul, who was murdered in Saturday's terrorist attack near the Sderot police station, was identified. Abu Sbilah went to visit his two brothers at a construction site in Sderot. He came across the Suissa family's car and heard the cries of Odia, whose husband Dolev was driving the car and was murdered. Amer rushed into the car to rescue her and the two girls sitting in the back, but he and Odelia Suissa were shot and killed while protecting the two girls who were hiding in the back seat. Amer sacrificed his life trying to save a Jewish family."
"We have no other country"
These displays of heroism and dedication are only one side of the story. Because among the many manifestations of mutual responsibility and the enormous power of civil society in Israel, another surprise emerged in the Negev: the mobilization of Bedouin society in the war effort. Some are surprised. The memory of Guardian of the Walls is still fresh: blocking traffic at the Shoket junction, turning lampposts into burning barriers, and killing cars caught in the area with life-threatening stones. Arad has become a city under siege, with no one leaving or coming for long hours. All the red lights were turned on during this event, and then shattered to pieces in order to leave great darkness in the Negev plains.
More than paper, darkness really tolerates everything. Heaps of rapid, harsh and agitated statements were thrown into the Negev space. In part, they were composed of logical fears of an illogical reality, and in some of them expressions of primordial fears. Words like "governance" have been thrown into the air as a promise of magic, and it is not yet clear what card is revealed at the end. At the same time, slowly but surely, small sparks began to appear on the edges of darkness, ignited by a variety of civil society organizations, some older and some new, created in the wake of the events.
Cooperation between Bedouin, Druze and Haredim in collecting food for soldiers, photo: David Peretz
Everyone acts - man and woman, organization and organization in its own way, out of a desire to take responsibility for the situation. Repair and connect what is broken and perhaps strengthen its durability, even more than last time.
And although I have seen and written over the past two years about the new models of cooperation and coexistence in the Negev, I admit: I too was surprised by the depth of cooperation and mobilization. Almost overnight, more and more initiatives emerged from the field. On the second day of the operation, the Shalibi family from the Azzama tribe opened the Desert Ship Khan as a place of residence for the families of evacuees from the Gaza Strip and the variety of foreign workers and Thai workers who remained in agricultural areas under fire. Along the roads of the Negev, refresher stations were opened for reservists and IDF soldiers. Loaded freight vehicles left the community of Al Sayyid and Ar'ara towards the fighting forces that had organized in the assembly areas.
In one of the territories we met Rafi Cohen, a veteran reservist who, at the sight of the work, said in amazement: "I didn't know such mutual responsibility, we always learned from the media that the Bedouin are a negative thing... It really gives strength and hope, to see things like that."
Iyad Zanun and Nasser Afrijat, from Bir Hadaj, embarked on an internal operation to collect mattresses for public institutions that have been quickly converted into accommodations. Iyad, a smiling man who a few months ago rescued a Jewish family injured in a serious car accident, explained his actions simply: "We have no other country. We are with the IDF in the water, in the sky and especially in the desert."
On the way to real change
In Rahat, the largest Bedouin city in the world, a Bedouin-Jewish war room convened. It was established in cooperation with the Rahat Municipality, the AJEEK organization, Desert Stars, With You, and Have You Seen the Horizon Lately. A variety of Bedouin and Jewish organizations that joined together to make donations, pack and send hundreds of food packages to all those in need during the terrible disaster. On each and every package is a sticker that clarifies the temporary order: "Partners in fate - partners in the war room."
One of the most impressive initiatives, and perhaps the most impressive private initiative in Israel, is registered in the name of Sami al-Karnawi, a tourism entrepreneur and owner of hotels and resorts in Mitzpe Ramon. "Do you know why I opened my hotel two hours after the event? Because I realized this disaster long before the Shin Bet and the security establishment, and I had already spoken and even been interviewed about it many months ago. I said again and again when I saw ISIS enter Syria and slaughter there, that when they finish there they will come to us. I was told, 'How come on. Calm down, we're strong.' But I see the Middle East no less well than the Shin Bet and the defense establishment, I see what will come from Hebron and Jordan, and from Hezbollah in the north, and you know why? Because all these bodies think they speak to the Arabs in Arabic, but in practice they speak to them in English. They just don't understand the Arabs as much as I do."
Al-Karnawi is an impossible Israeli hero. The Bedouin boy, who was born 50 years ago in a tent near Tel Arad and rode a donkey to school, grew up in Rahat and became a southern resort tourism tycoon with luxury tents and glamping complexes. The gas station in Avdat, who recognized the commercial potential of the desert and built a tourist empire with his own hands, is a Muslim Likud member who lives in Mitzpe Ramon and loves the State of Israel with great love.
"I love this country and am loyal to it, no less than Bibi Netanyahu. And I've said it before over and over again, that this country has gone completely crazy with the reform, that they're dealing with nonsense and not with the important things. And on Saturday morning, when I heard the shots, I knew a war had started. I immediately understood that a civil order 8 was needed here, I wrote on Facebook that Selena and I had opened all my hotels to all the evacuees of Ashkelon, Ofakim and Netivot. Two hours later we were <>% booked. Since that day I've been around them, taking care of donations, socks, food, psychologists, phones.
"I was surprised that only one body responded to my request to help – not the state, but 'brothers in arms,' who bring vegetables and donations to refugees here. Pilots and friends who come from the Golan, drag wood to the fire for people to warm up, bring whatever is missing. Think how many thousands of nights of hospitality it is. Only my hosting expenses have already exceeded one million shekels. Do you know why the government doesn't pay me? Because they tell me, 'Get the guys out of the horizons and put only the guys from Sderot, because the guys from Ashkelon don't need to be here and they need to be there.' Really? Is this how I'm going to throw out people who need shelter?
"I have the honor of hosting all my life, I had a case where one woman disappeared for a day and I looked for her, and then I realized that on that day she buried her family, and the next day she came back to make shiva with me. How am I going to get her out in the middle of shiva? I decided I wasn't taking anyone out of here. With or without a state solution, we will manage."
And what causes so many Bedouin to join the war effort?
"First of all, it's not an act of Islam, to murder babies, old people, women like that. There are also a lot of kidnapped Bedouins and there are a lot of dead Bedouins. Israel needs to change, both internally and externally. The truth must be told, without too many lies - whoever wants to live in this country must be loyal to it. I have no doubt that we will rise to a new era, that the country will change drastically, because something happened here that hasn't happened in 50 years, worse than the Yom Kippur War. And all Israelis are doing some soul-searching today – Jews, Bedouins, Arabs, Druze. When we pass this wave, and we pass it triumphantly, we will change the Middle East. We can bring peace to Israel. We are all under one flag and have no other country. We just have to think about how to live together and create peace in order to live with dignity in this country."
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