‘Kidnapped, dead or fighting for their lives’: Hampton Roads residents react to Israel-Hamas war
A year from now, Maya Ostrov and Naomi Friedland, 18-year-old Israeli emissaries completing a year of service in Hampton Roads, will be in combat training with the Israel Defense Forces.
Their friends are already there.
“Friends from our school who went to summer camp with us just three months ago are kidnapped, dead or fighting for their lives in hospitals and military bases,” Ostrov said at a community solidarity gathering hosted by the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater in Virginia Beach Tuesday morning.
“Hearing about Israeli soldiers making their way to fight and protect our country is not as calming as it was before, knowing it is now our friends who are fighting and risking their lives,” Ostrov said.
Tuesday marked the fourth day of the Israel-Hamas war after Hamas militants launched a massive surprise attack during Simchat Torah, a major Jewish holiday that marks the end of the annual cycle of Torah readings.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in Israel and more than 830 people have been killed in retaliatory strikes in Gaza and the West Bank, according to Associated Press reports. President Joe Biden condemned the attacks by Hamas and expressed support of Israel defending itself.
Grief and anger showed in the faces and voices of many at the rally, where several rabbis, cantors and other representatives of Jewish organizations spoke, as well as U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. Organizers estimated about 200 people attended.
Rabbi Ron Koas, who grew up in Israel and moved to the U.S. about 15 years ago, came to Hampton Roads in 2021 as the senior rabbi for the Beth El congregation in Norfolk.
Just as he was about to begin services on Saturday, his girlfriend learned that three members of her family had been kidnapped.
“Today is the first day that I really let myself cry,” he said.
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“We are witnessing the face of evil,” said attendee Dr. Alan Wagner, a Virginia Beach ophthalmologist. “There is no justification for murdering children. There is no justification for taking grandmothers away to be hostages. There is no justification for the barbarism. And that’s what we’re fighting.”
Some Hampton Roads residents, though, such as members of the Facebook group Hampton Roads for Palestine, see the situation somewhat differently.
“I don’t condone violence, at all,” said group founder Meredith Lincoln, who is from Virginia Beach.
A former preschool teacher of Spanish and sign language, she was briefly involved in Occupy Wall Street, but for the last 10 years, advocating for Palestinians has been her only activism.
“I think the only way to stop the violence is for Israel to give the Palestinians their human rights, to stop the siege on Gaza and treat them like human beings and not animals,” she said.
Another member of the group, Richmond resident Nancy Wein, is a co-chair of the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights.
“What happened on Saturday was horrific,” Wein said. “What Congress is giving full support to is equally horrific, and it’s a continuation of what Israel has been doing in Gaza.”
Wein, 67, is Jewish. Until about 10 years ago, she said, she didn’t know much about Palestine. Then, she read a book called “The Lemon Tree” about the friendship between a Palestinian woman whose family was evicted from their home and a Bulgarian Jew who moved into it.
“I get particularly upset at the members of the Jewish federation who can turn a blind eye towards the atrocities that are being committed in the name of the Jewish religion,” she said. “This has nothing to do with my religion.”
Rabbi Israel Zoberman, the founder of Temple Lev Tikvah in Virginia Beach and a past national interfaith chair of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said he visited Israel this summer to protest some of the actions of the Israeli government and to advocate for democracy.
While he criticizes some aspects of the government, he said, he agrees with the need to fight back now.
“For 2,000 years our people were persecuted,” he said. “However, this time, we respond with force. … Civilized people don’t behave like that, and that’s why Israel has to do what it has to do.”
The Israeli teenagers Ostrov and Friedland, who graduated from high school in June, deferred their mandatory military service for a year to participate in the ShinShinim program, which brings up to around 100 recent graduates to the U.S. each year.
Despite the shocking attacks in Israel this weekend, they will finish their year of service here, they said.
“Our job hasn’t changed. Our job was to represent Israel, to raise awareness, both for the Jewish community and the non-Jewish people in America,” Ostrov said.
Friedland agreed. “It just became much clearer, and much more needed,” she said.
Katrina Dix, 757-222-5155, katrina.dix@virginiamedia.com
