A Spark of Hope – Transcript

By Agatha Khishchenko

Voices in Order of Appearance

ABC News Report
Host Introduction: Hazare Renne-Glover
Nogah Rotstein
Agatha Khishchenko
Rabbi Kolin
Miya Rotstein

This is an ABC News Special Report. We are coming on the air with breaking news. Stunning developments in Israel as Palestinian militants fired thousands of rockets into Israel overnight in a surprise assault by land, sea, and air.

Hazare Renne-Glover:

This was the news that the entire world woke up to on October 7, 2023. The loss of life and extent of the attack would unfold in the upcoming days, but for some New Yorkers the news came quickly: their family members had gone missing.

Reporter, Agatha Khishchenko, is here to tell the story.

Nogah Rotstein:

Yeah it was, I mean it hit me hard. And, for sure, those first, those first weeks were, like, really painful and difficult.

Agatha Khishchenko:

That is Nogah. She lives in Brooklyn and has a deep connection to Israel. Her parents are Israeli and she has lots of family there. On October 7, she found out her cousins, twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman, were abducted from their home in Kibbutz K’far Aza and taken hostage into Gaza.

Nogah:

The kibbutzim there as well, are close to Gaza, so part of their establishment, I think, was having an understanding that they were also, like, the first wall of defense if something like this were to happen. But I think after years of living in relative peace and safety, they weren’t, you know, on guard in the way that they were expected to be or could have been.

Agatha:

Over 60 residents of the kibbutz were murdered, and another 18 were taken hostage into Gaza.

Gali and Ziv are 26 years old and lived in the youth village section of the kibbutz. This was the first area to be invaded by the terrorists, and the younger residents took the brunt of the attack.

Nogah:

A lot of the people from, a lot of Palestinians who worked on the kibbutz, were employed by them and gardeners and day workers, um, who they trusted and had relationships with, were the ones who, you know, shared where people lived, who would be home, what day, so they had a lot of information to go on.

Agatha: Through talking with surviving members of the kibbutz, Nogah pieced together Gali and Ziv’s last moments before they were taken hostage.

Nogah: One of them was in their safe room. One of the brothers. The other was comforting a neighbor who was, you know, freaking out and tried to try to calm her and make her feel better and, so it’s, we don’t even know if they’re together.

Agatha: I first met Nogah at her synagogue, Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. Nogah is a mom of two young daughters, ages three and six. She’s struggled with what and how much to tell them about Gali and Ziv being kidnapped.

Nogah: I didn’t get into much detail, but they, they knew that, like, something happened in Israel. They, you know, she still refers to the, like, the bad guys and my cousins. I mean, I’m so grateful that they’re too young, or young enough that they don’t ask as many questions, or they don’t have to know.

Agatha: As Nogah and I talk, children from the synagogue’s Hebrew day school giggle and run in the hallway. The synagogue has been a source of support for Nogah. I wondered how the Jewish community here had been affected by October 7.

Rabbi Kolin: And so that morning, oof, still gets me. We all woke up to news that we didn’t really understand.

Agatha: That’s Rabbi Stephanie Kolin. She’s one of the rabbis at Congregation Beth Elohim.

Rabbi Kolin: And then as the hours unfolded, it was really clear. It was…it was like 230 hostages, 250, something horrible. It was 1,200 people who had been killed. There were rapes. There were assaults. There was, you know, some of the greatest atrocities.

As the days unfolded, we, like everybody else, were asking ourselves, okay, like, how can we help?

Agatha: While the community was reeling from the attack, Rabbi Kolin found out that Nogah’s cousins had been kidnapped.

Rabbi Kolin: We thought, oh my God, this is our member’s family that’s trapped somewhere. In the hands of dangerous people, in some dangerous place, with no information. And so, we thought, well, what if we could sort of adopt K’far Aza, their home, so that we would have some sort of, Nogah would know that she’s not alone, and then our sisters and brothers in K’far Aza would know that they were not alone. And we could feel like we were doing something that made a difference.

Agatha: Like Nogah, Rabbi Kolin has a young daughter. I wondered how much do you tell your children when something unprecedented like this happens. Do you hide it from them or do you tell them what’s happening?

Rabbi Kolin: Anybody who was a parent, is a parent, who during that time was trying to make it through these days when the first information was coming out and the first pain was really becoming real, and not tell our children.

Because they’re too small. It’s too scary to know that someone could come into your home because you’re a Jew, and kill you, or kill your parent. Too scary for our children, which meant that we weren’t talking about it most of our day. So Nogah, keeping this from her children, came into this office and like finally could talk.

Agatha: Still, the synagogue tried to do what it could, creating a task force to raise funds and help the living members of Kibbutz K’far Aza.

Nogah: The idea is to, to walk, walk alongside them, so hopefully for longer term, but seeing how we can help them rebuild.

Agatha: To date, the synagogue has raised $320,000.00, with a sizable amount coming from one anonymous donor. Incredibly, that donor is not even a member of Congregation Beth Elohim.

The funds have gone to various needs of the surviving members of the kibbutz. Money has been allocated for therapy, summer camps and educational programs for the children. The synagogue also focused on the youth village where Gali and Ziv lived.

Rabbi Kolin: Some went towards, um, those in Gali and Ziv’s age group because they were the hardest hit as a demographic. We wanted them also to know that there’s a pathway ahead of them too and they’ll regain their footing and they’ll find their way too.

Agatha: Seven months out, and the synagogue’s task force continues to meet and plan for upcoming fundraising events.

Meanwhile, posters of the missing hostages are ripped down and defaced, antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment is rampant, and protests continue on the streets and at our college campuses.

I wanted to know how Nogah felt about these issues happening locally while Gali and Ziv were still being held hostage in Gaza.

[Doorbell…sound entering apartment]

Multiple Voices (Agatha, Nogah, Miya (her sister), and Andrew (Nogah’s husband)

Hi! How are you? Hi. No. you…..

[sounds of Andrew cooking, kitchen noises as the sisters make tea and coffee, all three of them talking]

[background noise sisters laughing about a private joke]

Agatha: That’s Nogah and her older sister Miya, and Nogah’s husband Andrew. Nogah and Miya are so close, one minute they are laughing over a private joke, and the next they are opening their hearts to me about the situation in Israel.

Agatha: How does the sentiment in New York and this anti Semitism and the protests, how does that make you feel as two people with family members that are being held hostage?

Miya Rotstein: It’s like, how could you tear, how could you dehumanize a human? A. And how could you dehumanize someone who, who is part of my family story? You know, yeah, I think, I think that the tearing down of posters, the, the antisemitism. It’s, it’s so, the tearing down the posters is so specific that I can’t wrap my head around that.

How dare you, you know, how dare you tear down something that honestly doesn’t affect you. What do you care that that poster is up there?

Yeah, it’s very upsetting. If I were to witness like that poster of, of my cousins, like, being torn down, I a hundred percent would probably flip my shit if I saw that happen.

Agatha: When I met with the sisters, Miya had just returned from a trip to Israel and the sisters talked a lot about Israeli resilience and sacrifice after October 7.

Nogah: I hate to say it, it’s like a sacrifice. Like, you know, there’s going to be death and loss. But even every soldier who, you know, is fighting are those who have, like, volunteered to be back, to come back from wherever they were.

Agatha: And then there are the hostage negotiations. When I first asked Nogah about it, it had been five months since Gali and Ziv had been kidnapped.

Nogah: Yeah, it’s like the buildup of hope, you know, when the first hostages were released and I was just like, ecstatic and watching, you know, watching every moment and every story.

Hopeful, um, and then, just heartbreak every time one of the, you know, they’re just turned down or the demands are extreme and…they’re just pawns in this game and they need to also, they can’t necessarily give in.

Agatha: By giving in, Nogah means weighing the safety and security of Israeli citizens against future terrorist attacks, to the ongoing negotiations to release the hostages.

Nogah: How can we, you know, what’s the, what is a life worth?

And how can we, how can we give them back these terrorists and give them that? You know, I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s impossible.

Yeah, these two young men are, are…worth a lot. They’re not, they’re not going to be the first to be released. And, and, when the first negotiations were happening and the, you know, the women and the children, were released and I was getting, like so many messages and texts like, “Are your cousins out?” I’m like, no.

Agatha: I wanted to know more about these brothers. What were Gali and Ziv like?

Nogah: On Shabbat, they would bring flowers for their mom every Shabbat, and that they would also bring a bouquet for their, for the caretaker, their aid for the dad, just like, you know, the, yeah, like the level of thought and care.

Agatha: I spoke to Nogah again in early May. It’s been over 215 days since Gali and Ziv were taken hostage. There have been no hostages released since the end of November 2023.

Nogah: I just want to shake people and be like, they’re still there, like this is still happening. You know, I know there have been other issues that have grown since then. But like…

[crying]

I just feel like they have already been forgotten by the world.

Agatha: While Nogah and all the hostage families remain in an excruciating limbo, not knowing the fate of their loved ones, unable to grieve, the task force at the synagogue is planning a tribute to Kibbutz K’far Aza to honor the work they were doing to promote peace with their neighbors.

Rabbi Kolin: There was a family in K’far Aza that would each year create, and run a kite festival. And so all the kids and all the families would get together and they would paint kites. They would go out and fly the kites. And one of the deep values of flying these kites was to fly them high enough so that their neighbors in Gaza could see them.

The kites, which were meant to be these symbols of hope, um, were destroyed and covered in blood.

Agatha: That festival was meant to take place the day after October 7.

Nogah: It was such a loving, beautiful sign of friendship and solidarity.

Agatha: Rabbi Kolin hopes this will be a bridge to help K’far Aza heal, but also to promote peace between the communities.

Rabbi Kolin: People are deserving of a chance for peace. And so, we want to fly some kites and think of our people and think of their people. And think that one day we’re going to be telling a different story than the one that we have to tell right now.

Agatha: And for Nogah, she tries to hold onto hope that Gali and Ziv come home.

Nogah: A spark of hope in something that seems so much despair and darkness, but… I can’t imagine where all of them are, and like, what their suffering must be like, or conditions and everything, part of me is like, I don’t know. I just hope that wherever they are, that they’re at peace.

[crying interspersed between words]

Whether it’s alive and just having some kind of source of, grounding, or just coping, like, that they’re ok somehow. And whether that’s like, not here…

Agatha: Living in this no man’s land of grief and the unknown is what is so difficult for Nogah. For now, every Friday night, as she lights the Shabbat candles and says the prayer over the challah bread with her family, a photo of Gali and Ziv is displayed next to the candles. Hoping and praying the brothers will be home for the next Shabbat.

[Nogah and her kids singing the Hamotzi prayer over the challah…]