Today Radio's Sam Steen spoke to Hamza Attar, a Palestinian journalist living in Luxembourg, and Dr Olivier Wolf, a Luxembourg-born Israeli citizen, to find out how the Israel-Hamas war is affecting people in the region.
On October 7th 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israeli territory, killing over 1,400 people and kidnapping over 200 more. Since then the Israeli response has been devastating: close to 10,000 people have died, including over 4000 children at the time of writing.
With no end to the conflict in sight, Sam spoke with two people with personal experiences of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Listen to the full interview on RTL Play or via the player below.
“These are my people, these are my family, these are my friends.”
From beginning his career as a 17-year-old news producer and cameraman in Gaza, through being shot three times while on the job at 20, and later moving to Luxembourg, Hamza Attar detailed his incredible career and offered a powerful insight into the plight of the people of Palestine.
Hamza himself was critically wounded during an Israeli invasion of Beit Hanoun in north-eastern Gaza in 2006. Filming on the ground at a demonstration, during which an Israeli tank opened fire and killed 40-60 people, Hamza and his colleague were also targeted.
Hamza was shot and was lucky to survive. He was treated in a hospital in Gaza, before being transferred to an Israeli hospital in Tel Aviv.
Hamza's memories of first working in Gaza are haunting. Asked whether he ever had time to reflect on that incident, Hamza said that people working in war zones do not suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but TSD (traumatic stress disorder).
“There is no past, as it’s never done," he said. Often, there was no time to sit down and cry or to try and understand what was happening. “The memories haunt you later, they are like a sleeping monster. The moment they are triggered, they come in a package, not in separate incidents,” he said.
Hamza felt that he had an effective coping mechanism up until now, but with the intensity of the current bombing of Gaza, it was difficult to look at the pictures of human suffering going on in his country. “These are my people, these are my family, these are my friends,” he added.
Hamza admitted that living in safety in Luxembourg brings up complicated feelings of guilt. “Everything I do feels like a betrayal. I have clean water. Feels like betrayal. I can have a shower. It’s a betrayal. I have electricity. It’s a betrayal. You have to live with that, but you have to watch the news 24/7 as it’s the least you can do.”
Hamza told Sam that last week the Palestinian Health Authority published a list of 7,000 names of people that have been killed during Israeli airstrikes in the last three weeks. He said it took him two days to open the file and to go through the list of family names. “You keep praying inside of you, I don’t want to know this person… I knew a lot of people on that list, and I knew a lot of families on that list,” he said.
On the question of whether people in Gaza are receiving any medical aid, Hamza replied that his experience of being shot was a luxury, compared to today’s situation. There was an ambulance that was able to reach him, they were able to use mobile phones, there was a hospital ready to receive him, the ambulance that took him to hospital was not shot or bombed, there was electricity and there was medicine to treat him. All of this does not exist in Gaza now, where there is not enough equipment to treat the wounded.
On hearing of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, Hamza said he knew the retaliation would be devastating. He described the war now as beyond his imagination, his worst nightmare. Hamza called what is happening in Gaza not as a war, but a genocide.
On how Palestinians feel at this point and the future, Hamza explained that it is impossible to understand how the West still supports Israel. “Resistance in Ukraine is a right. But resistance in Palestine is terrorism. This is a double standard. We can see that. We have watched Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission) saying that Russia has committed war crimes but when Palestinians resist, then Israel “has a right to defend itself”."
“For now, all Palestinians are united. We stand together”.
“Words end. No words.”
Dr Olivier Wolf, a Luxembourger from Esch-sur-Alzette, moved to Israel twelve years ago. He now works and lives in Tel Aviv and took the time to explain what it is like living in Israel right now and shielding his young children from the news.
“I am not an expert on Israeli politics, I can just share sentiments that I have and that other people might have,” he said.
Olivier explained that after being born and raised in Luxembourg, work first drew him to Israel. Now it has become his home, and his children are born and raised there. He said that Jewish identity is complex and complicated. Internal and emotional forces led him to start an academic career in Israel and he now finds he is very happy living in Israel, although Luxembourg is still where he is from.
Talking about the current political situation inside Israel as well as Israel’s war on Hamas, Olivier said that after the massacre on October 7, everything looked different.
He spoke about taking part in the massive demonstrations that took place in Israel to protest against the government’s plans to change the way the judicial system works. He personally feels that the way that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government has dealt with the Palestinian conflict, the suffering of the Palestinian people and with Gaza is a paradigm.
Now the paradigm has shifted and the population knows that. He added that now is not the time to discuss it, “now is the moment to save your home, to save the country. The public debate is how to save the hostages and how to make the war end. Only when the war ends, will difficult questions be asked.”
Sam asked Olivier what he remembered about the day on October 7. Olivier was woken up by a siren, but the children slept through that first siren. On the second siren, he was aware that missiles were flying over Tel Aviv.
Because he was looking after the children that day, he avoided looking at the news, but was aware of what was happening. Only in the evening did he allow himself to watch the news. Olivier found the news both unfathomable and unbearable.
He described the events as “slaughter, carnage, a massacre of kids who went to a party in the desert.” Eventually stories of that day came out in the media, which Olivier again describes as unbearable. In order to protect himself, he created an emotional distance to the news. Otherwise he would have spent days just crying: “when you read first-hand accounts of the atrocities committed against children and adults, words end. No words.”
Olivier described how people, anyone between the age of 20-40 jumped in their cars and went to their military bases and put on their military clothes, ready to fight. They were ready to bring the hostages back and to save the country. Schools and kindergartens were shut, with constant sirens over Tel Aviv.
On the question of how the Israeli retribution on the Hamas attacks is viewed in the world now, Olivier responded by saying that seen from his perspective, the world’s response is unbearable.
He does not believe that the attacks on October 7 can be seen as part of a narrative for de-colonisation. The attacks, for him, were not about people fighting for freedom from a colonial power; they were orchestrated by a terror organisation that oppresses over two million of its own people and kills Jewish civilians. Olivier said it was unacceptable to legitimise or understand the massacre of October 7.
Olivier also pointed out that images which are being shown around the world of the terrible suffering of the people of Gaza, are not shown in Israeli media. He added that there are also stories from an Israeli perspective which are not shown outside of Israel, showing a bias against his adopted country. He feels that it is time to acknowledge who is at fault and to put Israel at fault, feels problematic.
On the subject of growing anti-Semitism in Europe, he said “it’s dangerous to be recognised as a Jew in Europe and that’s very worrying.”
In conclusion, Oliver summed up his opinion of the conflict: “I’m against annexation, against occupation, against not recognising the suffering of the Palestinian people, against not recognising their claim for a state. That’s where you find me, but given what has happened on the October 7, facing that, the paradigm of left and right has shifted…I would claim for the longer future as well.”
To listen to this interview in full, take a look at the Sam Steen Show on RTL Play.
For more on the latest news on Gaza, read our live ticker.
