3 questions about the Hamas attacks in Israel for cellist Maya Beiser, who lived through the Ma’alot massacre

For acclaimed cellist Maya Beiser, the weekend attacks in Israel by Hamas militants brought up painful memories from her childhood.

Beiser was raised in a small kibbutz, or communal settlement, in the Galilee region, roughly 85 miles from the Gaza Strip. She vividly recalls growing up in the aftermath of the 1974 kidnapping and killing of school children carried out by a small band of Palestinians in the town of Ma’alot. The latest incursion, she said, “awakened a kind of childhood PTSD.”

On Monday, Beiser drew parallels between the two events, and vented her despair over the massacre in a post on social media, asking, “How are humans capable of such deliberate horrific acts?”

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Yahoo News spoke with Beiser at her home in Massachusetts, where she was preparing to record a follow-up to her latest album, “Infinite Bach.” Some of her responses have been edited for brevity.

Can you expand a bit on what you experienced as a child growing up in Israel during the attack in Ma’alot?

I remember every night going to sleep and worrying whether the terrorists would come. That attack was so horrific because all these kids were at an elementary school and [the terrorists] kidnapped more than 100 of them, and in the end they killed 25 of them, cold-blooded, before the Israeli special forces were able to rescue the rest. It was something where you think there will never be anything worse than that. This was a time of constant threat and war. We grew up with this constant fear that we would be annihilated.

Every night we would put our clothes next to our bed in case there would be an alarm and we would go to the shelters. I actually loved going to the shelters because I felt safe there. At the same time, I grew up in a very socialist, liberal kibbutz and my father was friends with many Arab neighbors, including Palestinians. It was a very different time in Israel. There was a sense that there would be peace, that there would be a solution. This kind of religious radicalism that exists now — on both sides — was not there.

You mentioned in your post that you know people whose children attended the Tribe of Nova music festival and who are still missing. What more can you tell us?

I know people who were there who managed to escape and were saved. But some others managed to escape and went to the kibbutz Be’eri, which was where one of the worst massacres happened. Nobody knows where they are now. They vanished. There are a lot of people who don’t know what happened to their children. It’s just hard to imagine what these people are going through now. The majority of the attendees were in their 20s. It was like a rave party, like Israel’s Burning Man, that kind of thing. And many of them fought for Palestinian rights in Gaza.

It is such a huge movement, what’s been going on in Israel over the past six months since this very radical government — the most radical right-wing government in Israel’s history — took over. So many people I know have been on the street demonstrating every week against this government, not just the judicial reforms, but also the policies in the West Bank.

One of the horrible things that happened is these people [at the festival] were not protected. All these thousands of people were there, and people who were in those villages in the towns on the border [with Gaza] while the army were all up in the West Bank, protecting the radical settlers. That’s the truth that a lot of people don’t like to point out. Something like 80% of the Israeli army was [in the West Bank] and they kind of left these people to have to defend themselves. There was a well-known guy in a kibbutz called Kfar Aza, who ended up dying fighting against the terrorists. He was an outspoken person against the policies in Gaza. A lot of the people who lived in that area and some who went to the festival worked on trying to better the lives of the people living in Gaza.

Hamas is a small, radical, religious monster movement, just like ISIS, who are not representing the Palestinians. I’m getting a lot of reactions [to my post], people saying, “Well, this is the fault of the Israeli government and the treatment of Palestinians.” But it’s a false equation to say that. Nothing that was done — and there are a lot of bad things that have been done, a lot of mistakes and terrible things done to the Palestinians — but nothing justifies this kind of atrocity.

In your post you said you “used to believe that artists can change the world” and can help “moderate and root out the evil forces among us,” but now you’re “no longer convinced.” Can you elaborate?

I’m worried because I don’t see a solution to this radicalism that is going on everywhere — on all sides, really. It’s religious zealotry. I still believe as deeply as ever that to create art is the essence of the meaning for my life. I want to hope that maybe it will change somebody, but I don’t know. I think, “What would I have done in that moment in front of these people? Would I have taken the cello and played for them?” That wouldn’t have changed anything. They would have murdered me. I’m not able to understand this kind of behavior. There were a lot of people who would have done anything to appeal to their humanity.

It was instilled in me when I grew up that we have to work as hard as we can to spread love and peace, and that Israel will bring peace and find common ground with the people that surround us. We lived in our little utopian world, hoping against all odds that we’d be able to change things, but it’s very hard to see it’s going somewhere good because this kind of violence creates other kinds of violence, and the escalation is just so horrific. I don’t want to end on that horrible note. I think we need to keep creating our own meaning every day, no matter what happens. For me, that’s being an artist and a musician.