Songs of Survival and Hope - Review

 Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel

*****

(This review was first published in Times of Israel)

 

 

Sagui Dekel-Chen

                                          

On a warm August night before an audience of thousands at Kibbutz Nir Oz, a place that sits almost adjacent to Israel’s border with Gaza, Sagui Dekel-Chen hosted Songs of Survival and Hope. A concert that once seemed barely imaginable created an evening that saw the Negev dance.

Born and raised on Nir Oz, Sagui was 35 when he was kidnapped into Gaza on October 7th 2023. Taken amidst scenes of murderous carnage, that saw nearly all of his fellow members of the kibbutz’s defence team killed by Hamas terrorists and which left him with bullet wounds in his shoulder and leg, Sagui was to spend 498 days in captivity before his release on February 12th last year.

It was while he was held hostage that Sagui began to compose songs. These were to help him hold onto his mind while locked away in Gaza’s terror tunnels, and it was amidst the beautiful bright lights of this concert, that Sagui both told his story, and paid tribute to his most dearly loved ones.

The concert comprised some nine songs composed by Sagui, together with guest appearances from some of Israel’s leading music performers. Throughout, Sagui made it clear that his songs had not been written as words of “goodbye”, but rather as words written by a man who always knew and believed that he would one day be going home.

Simply dressed in black t-shirt and jeans Sagui opened the gig apologising for the fact that he was not a singer. He did himself a disservice. The evening was the definition of hallmarked excellence, for not only was Sagui’s singing a delight, but throughout the affair, from the staging, to the light show, to the drones and cameramen and not least the 11-piece band, the whole concert dripped with professionalism and talent. Sagui may not have been a singer when he emerged from the tunnels – but boy does he have a gorgeous voice now!

Understandably, the evening’s melodies danced with all of our emotions. My Corner had been written by Sagui in the dark depths of his captivity and spoke of how he had occasionally, and very rarely, caught sight of himself in a mirror during those months. Skeletal, broken, unkempt and unshaved the song painfully described his torment. It is worth noting that the Sagui that appeared on stage at Nir Oz is truly, physically at least, a man who has undergone remarkable healing and who looked fabulous!

Sagui Dekel-Chen and his wife Mili

More than just a beloved son of the kibbutz, Sagui is a husband to Mili and the father of three young girls, Bari, Gali and the youngest Sachar Mazal with whom Mili was pregnant when Sagui was captured. As the evening unfolded, we were offered a glimpse of the pain that Sagui suffered when, having seen so much slaughter on October 7th, he had resigned himself to his supposed tragic inevitable reality that Mili and the girls were dead.

When news eventually reached him that his release was imminent, Sagui told of how he started to prepare himself for attending their funerals – and when he heard at that time, over a terrorist’s radio, a snatch of Fields Of Gold by Sting, he resolved that that would be the music to be played at the funerals. As that song was played during the concert it was hard to stop the tears, recognising the sheer immensity of the physical and emotional trauma that Sagui had endured.

Miraculously, Mili and the girls all survived the horrors of October 7th, and that all five were re-united shortly after Sagui’s release, was another of the evening’s powerfully poignant themes. The evening’s painful ironies were spotlighted again when Sagui asked everyone in the audience who had held Sachar Mazal, before he had been able to, to raise their hands. Sagui had composed individual songs for each of his family, that spoke of speaking of their strengths and their sweetness. In listening to both himself and Mili speak of their daughters, the love that clearly exists within the Dekel-Chen family is beautiful and tangible.

The line-up of supporting artists was impressive with performers including Idan Raichel and Hatikva 6 joining Sagui on stage. Perhaps the most uplifting guest performance came from Marina Maximilian Blumin’s (almost) closing number, Back Again, a song that defined the spirit of Sagui, his family and the whole of Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Two weeks ago in London and in the face of a tsunami of hate, Boy George defiantly sung that We Will Dance Again. This week, at Kibbutz Nir Oz and inspired by Sagui Dekel-Chen, we danced!

Sagui Dekel-Chen and Marina Maximilian Blumin

Sagui's album can be downloaded here 

Credit for all images: Orit Pnini

Voices From The Tunnels

The entrance to the London tunnels

At an unmarked location in east London, Voices From The Tunnels was a week-long event that reported the inhumanity that Hamas is wreaking upon the hostages kidnapped from Israel on October 7th last year and who continue to be held in a network of subterranean tunnels. This horror story is ongoing for the 136 remaining hostages, not forgetting the continual anguish that their loved ones are suffering. Organised by the 7/10 Human Chain Project and working closely with Israel’s Hostages And Missing Families Forum the 7/10 team have aimed for authenticity in their displays, based upon a range of sources of evidence, including from a number of the hostages that Hamas have freed in recent months. 

Entering a derelict warehouse, one is confronted with a row of hospital beds, a stark reminder that so much of the maze of Hamas’ tunnels has been constructed underneath Gaza's hospitals and other humanitarian sites such as places of worship and schools. Under the Geneva Convention such places should not be used deliberately for combat purposes, nor should civilians be used as human shields. But the world is already aware that Hamas cares little for the rules of war, with Voices From The Tunnels proving a testimony to the terrorists’ disregard for the sanctity of life. Walking past a scooter similar to that used in the witnessed-by-the-world kidnapping of Noa Argamani, one descends a damp staircase to the warehouse’s cellars...

Hospital beds above the tunnels

These cellars are no fairground attraction, the damp and crumbling rooms having been painstakingly transformed into chambers of horror. We learn of 12 year old Eitan Yahalomi, forced in his captivity to watch a looping video of the atrocities of 7/10. Of Mia Shem whose injured arm (she was shot on 7/10) was operated on in the dungeons by a vet, without anaesthetic and of the appalling degradation meted out to the old and the young. The cellar's final tableau is of the sexual violence that Hamas has inflicted on the hostages, mostly (but not exclusively) upon the young women from Israel that have been held captive. 

The scenes are horrific, but Aviv who was guiding my small party around the cellars told of even more harrowing detail. That of the women hostages released so far, three were found to be pregnant by their Hamas rapists and had been able to undergo abortions in Israeli hospitals. A number of young Israeli women remain held in the tunnels and a pervading fear (one of many) is that some of them too may be pregnant through rape and forced to take their pregnancies to full term. The barbarity of what is being perpetrated in the Hamas tunnels, like so much of the carnage of 7/10, defies comprehension.

A further sobering thought is that these tunnels, now identified by the IDF to criss-cross the length and breadth of the Gaza Strip, have cost millions of dollars to construct and be fitted out with utilities such as electricity and plumbing together with furniture. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) funds, together with cash from other sources, that should have been spent on improving Gaza’s social infrastructure – schools, hospitals and the like -  has instead been diverted into building this fabric of terror.

One can only wonder to what extent UNRWA was aware of how its support was being used? In such a small enclave as the Gaza Strip, it defies belief that UNRWA was ignorant of such malevolent activity. With Hamas having vowed to repeat the pogrom of 7/10 again and again and with its founding charter calling for the eradication of Jews, it is hardly surprising that Israel is now seeking to destroy both Hamas’ fighters and its hundreds of miles of hellish tunnels and fighting capabilities.

UNRWA Update 29th January 2024

The article above  was first published on 21st January 2024. 

The news of recent days has reported that at least 10% of UNRWA employees have been found to be connected to Hamas, with a number of those having a direct involvement in the atrocities of October 7th. It is believed by many commentators that this figure of 10% is likely to be an understatement. 

Click here to read my thoughts on having seen the 45 minute film collated by the Israeli Defence Forces, collated from footage taken on 7 October 2023 by Hamas terrorists and Israelis

Oct 7 2023 - Hamas Massacre – Collated Raw Footage

“7 October 2023 - Hamas Massacre – Collated Raw Footage” is a 45-minute film prepared by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and drawn from found-footage taken from the body cameras and mobile phones of neutralised terrorists and Hamas social media broadcasts, along with media from the security systems of Israeli citizens’ homes and even, sickeningly, from an Israeli kindergarten where acts of terror were perpetrated. Footage was also obtained from the mobile phones and dashcams of some of the victims and the cameras of the Israeli rescue services. 

Much has already been written about this film, now in its 19th iteration as the IDF collate and add more evidence to this graphic and harrowing archive of 7/10. The film itself is a work of painstaking effort and detail, documenting a fraction of the depraved crimes committed in southern Israel on that day. 

The filmmakers have strived to protect the dignity of the victims. The consent of the families of the victims has been obtained and where the faces of the dead may have been clearly identifiable, these have been blurred. As a further measure, all those who have attended the film's screenings have been required to leave their mobile phones or other recording devices, outside of the screening room. 

An early extract from the film, that evidences the IDF’s editing skill, is from footage taken from the dashcam of a victim’s car that is unwittingly approaching a group of terrorists that are clearly armed with assault rifles. The dashcam captures the terrorists taking aim at the vehicle and the car's windscreen fracturing as it is hit by bullets. The fractures increase and we then see the windscreen glass being spattered by flecks of the victim’s blood. The terror and pain that the car's driver must have experienced is left to our imagination. The film then cuts to terrorist-filmed bodycam footage of the same shooting, that shows the same car approaching the terrorists. We see them taking aim and shooting, their bullets fracturing the cars windscreen. We then see the murder of the driver. 

There are so many other episodes to this short film. This lists some of them:  

• the intercepted radio communication from a Hamas commander, instructing the terrorists to bring a victim’s corpse back with them to “let the people play with his body”

• the recorded phone call from a terrorist to his mother, screaming his exhilaration down the line at having “killed 10 Jews with his bare hands”

• not just the murders that are on film, but the desecration of the victims’ bodies. On my witnessing the decapitation of a dead Israeli soldier my most overwhelming emotion, after the revulsion, was that of thankfulness that at least the young Israeli was now free of the fear and free of the pain and humiliation that his tormentors were raining down upon his body.

• the image of a young woman’s beautifully manicured nails on her now rigid and lifeless hand, her arm unscathed while her head and torso had been charred beyond recognition.

• the burnt out line of cars attempting to have fled the Nova music festival – a scene more resemblant of a Hollywood disaster movie, than a real life rave.

• the reality that however fast a victim can run, bullets travel faster.

The overarching image of the film however is the evidenced complicity of so many civilians from Gaza. A large number of the murderers appeared to be ordinary Gazans with no uniform other than, for some, bulletproof vests. So many of them clad in tracksuit bottoms and trainers, laughing and joking amongst themselves. Ordinary blokes.

And then wilfully slaughtering both Jews and non-Jews. 

Civilians were dominant too in the clips of victims being driven in pickup trucks and jeeps through the packed streets of Gaza amidst cheering crowds who were either beating the living victims, or desecrating the bodies of the dead. To our civilised Western minds, the horrors of 7/10 defy comprehension.  

This short film documents only a small percentage of the crimes perpetrated by Hamas that day. But the IDF filmmakers who have compiled the film are talented individuals whose skills transcend those usually found in post-production suites. Clearly the IDF filmmakers have laboured over footage drawn from countless sources, to piece together such a thorough narrative. The human resilience that must have been required from the IDF editors to craft such sequences is remarkable.

7/10 came from evil, but has spawned countless acts of heroism in so many ways as individuals have responded to the day’s horrors. The film unit of the IDF are heroes too.

Antisemitism: {{{ A Musical }}}

Camden People's Theatre, London

**

Writer and composer: Uri Agnon

Directed by: Emma Jude Harris

Maya Kristal Tenenbaum

There are times when life does not so much imitate art, as swamp it in a ghastly tsunami. So it is with Antisemitism: A {{{Musical}}} that plays its fiction against the horrific real-life/real-death backdrop of a pogrom that has seen hundreds of Jews tortured, raped and slaughtered in southern Israel, antisemitism being openly celebrated across the Western world and the United Nations’ Secretary General today pronouncing that Hamas' murderous rampage against Jews, barely two weeks ago, “did not happen in a vacuum”.

There may well be a sound moral underscore to this show, but the evening itself falls far short of expectations. Written by Uri Agnon, the 75 minute piece is drawn from the antisemitism experienced by Agnon on moving to London from his native Israel. Maya Kristal Tenenbaum plays Agnon's Protagonist and whilst her performance is excellent, her reference points aren’t so much explained to the audience as force-fed, and then at breakneck speed. Much of the dialogue is too niche and too much of the plot, ridiculous. David Merriman’s musical direction is spot on, but the sound balancing is awful and in the first twenty minutes or so, much of what’s being sung or spoken is hard to discern. Hannah Bristow and Amy Parker as the show’s two narrators are as good as Tenenbaum, but they have also been given disappointing material to work with.

Elsewhere there are occasional projected and narrated tweets, drawn from the real life cesspit of social media, that appear to be a low-budget imitation of last year’s Jews In Their Own Words, seen at the Royal Court.

There is possibly a fine show struggling to emerge from this musical - but this ain’t it.

Runs until 28th October

Photo credit: Cam Harle