'Between two flames': the Bedouin family that came to embody tragedy and courage on Israel's darkest day | Israel-Hamas war | The Guardian
By: rorycarroll (the Guardian)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Zeadnas saw one family member killed, four kidnapped and another hailed a hero for saving dozens from Hamas death squads, yet as a community their position is far from simple
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When Hamas militants launched a murderous attack on southern Israel on 7 October, three branches of the Zeadna family experienced very different fates.
Abdul Zeadna, 29, was taking a weekend break from his factory job and camping on Zikim beach, two miles from Gaza. He was shot so many times that his corpse looked like it had been "smothered" in bullets, said a relative.
Yosef Zeadna, 53, a dairy farmer, was abducted from a kibbutz with his daughter Aisha, 16, and sons Hamza, 21, and Bilal, 24, and taken to Gaza. Hamas posted a photo of Hamza and Bilal lying on the ground, stripped to the waist, guarded by armed men.
A Hamas video showing Hamza and Bilal Zeadna and two other abducted men. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Observer
Another Yosef Zeadna, a 48-year-old minibus driver, had been due to collect seven young women from the Supernova music festival that afternoon. Alerted by their texts and calls to an unfolding massacre, he raced to the scene, packed 31 people into his 14-seater and sped away through fields, avoiding gunfire from Hamas death squads. Other festival-goers in their own cars followed him and also reached safety.
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One family member murdered, another four taken hostage and one transformed into a hero - the Zeadnas are a remarkable embodiment of the tragedy, angst and courage of Israel's darkest day.
The family, however, do not fit neatly into the binary narrative of Israel's conflict with Hamas, and the faces of the four who were abducted do not appear among the posters of hostages that have been seen around the world.
The Zeadnas are Israeli citizens, but as Muslims and Bedouin Arabs they are also part of a marginalised minority, about 4% of the population, that has a fraught relationship with its Israeli identity and the state of Israel.
"We are stuck in the middle between the racism of the Israeli state and brutality of Hamas," said Ata Abu Mdegem, the mayor of Rahat, a sprawling Bedouin city of 76,000 people in the Negev desert that is 20 miles east of Gaza. A sculpture of a Qur'an marks the entrance. The Israeli flags that line other towns are fewer and less visible here, though there is one in the mayor's office.
Ata Abu Mdegem, the mayor of Rahat, said the Bedouin city was left vulnerable by Israel's failure to build rocket shelters. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Observer
Since its foundation, Israel has harassed and neglected Bedouins, seizing their lands, demolishing homes and failing to build rocket shelters, said the mayor. "We were left naked. And then Hamas attacked. What they did to us was unforgivable - it was a stab in the heart."
At least 19 Bedouins were among the more than 1,400 people killed in the Hamas onslaught. Most were believed to be members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), which has a tradition of using Bedouins as scouts and trackers.
The anger and grief are visceral but Bedouins are not cheering the reprisal airstrikes and ground offensive that have laid waste to Gaza and killed more than 9,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Many Bedouin families have relatives in the enclave, and Gazans are fellow Arabs and Muslims.
Daham Zeadna said Bedouins want security and to live in peace. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Observer
For the Zeadna family, whose name can also be spelled Alziadna, the dilemma is agonising. While mourning Abdul, they must walk a political and public relations tightrope that balances Israeli acclaim for Yosef's courage with an appeal to Hamas to free the four relatives held hostage.
"We are between two flames," said Daham Zeadna, 35, a brother of Yosef the van driver. "If you do things the Israeli way, you are Jewish in the eyes of Hamas. If you do things the Palestinian way, you are Hamas in the eyes of Israelis."
The festival-goers rescued by Yosef thanked him on social media, and Hebrew-language newspapers lauded his courage. President Isaac Herzog visited Rahat last week and embraced him as "an Israeli hero" and part of "the beautiful face of the state of Israel".
Yosef said his action was simply humane and that he was happy to have saved lives. He is, however, paying a price: Hamas has threatened him and he is suffering anxiety, requiring medical help, said his brother.
Handout of photographs of Yosef Zeadna, a dairy farmer, and his sons Hamza and Bilal, who were abducted by Hamas. Photograph: The Observer
The Zeadnas think the best chance of saving their abducted relatives is to discreetly cast them as a different category from the Jewish Israeli hostages. They have not joined other hostage families at rallies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem nor added Yosef, Aisha, Hamza and Bilal to the posters that have become a global campaign.
However they hesitate to make direct appeals to Hamas via Arabic media lest they join those Palestinians who have been detained or sacked for social media posts expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza, said Daham.
Bedouins are trapped in a vice, he said. As Israeli citizens, they pay taxes and serve in the IDF but suffer abuse from Jewish settlers and prejudice from the state, which has ignored requests for shelters, despite their city's vulnerability to Hamas rockets.
Bedouins feel solidarity with Gazans - before the conflict, a relative used to obtain medical treatment for people in the enclave - yet some Gazans accuse them of betraying Arab identity, said Daham. "They shout at us that we are Israelis, but we were here before Israel. Where do they want us to go?"
The family want the conflict to end and for their abducted relatives to return home, said Daham. "There shouldn't be a need for heroism. We want security and to live in peace."
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One family member killed, four were taken hostage and one with brass balls saved dozens of Israelis.
How so very sad, it's difficult to wrap ones head around how the Bedouin are being treated.
even after all the shooting stops, the shit show in israeli gov't has just begun...
I'm sure that there are going to be some very dramatic changes to be made.
It is indeed sad, but not difficult to understand. This is why multiculturalism isn't going to work in most cases. When we have a limited, defined space and two groups with different ideas about what should go on in it, there's going to be problems commensurate with the degree in differences in those ideas. In the case of the Jews and a lot of non-Bedouin Arab Israelis vs the Bedouins, it's a fixed lifestyle as opposed to a nomadic one. That's a hard, if not impossible, problem to overcome, especially in a postage stamp sized state such as Israel, because each side has nearly diametrically opposed views of land use.
That isn't to say Israeli Jews are justified in what they are doing, especially the manner in which they are doing it. With Netanyahu in power, it's basically "Israel is a Jewish state and we'll do what benefits Jews". However, I'm simply pointing out what happens everywhere, everywhen in human history.
Besides that, however, there's another problem. Jewish birth rates in Israel are 3.2 and for Arab Israelis, 2.9. That's pretty high for a first world nation. At some point, even the non-Bedouin Arabs are going to have problems with Bedouins having an outsized plot of land to themselves. In short, Israel is growing and all those people will need a place to live, regardless of political views.
My personal view is, while I decry the nationalistic policy of Netanyahu's government, the Bedouins would do well to see the writing on the wall and start working toward a different future. Because the country is growing, they're not getting any more space and they're all going to need a place to live. If I were them, I'd spend whatever treasure they have on getting the best education for their children they possibly can manage, for a start.
Netanyahu will not always be in power and the vast majority of those living in Isarel prime, do not like the mistreatment of the Bedouins. Personally, I look forward to his departure.
As do I. He doesn't seem to represent the spirit I've always associated with Israelis.
Actually, space isn't the problem, racism is. The Bedouins number around 210,000 in Israel proper and most live in the Negev desert and are not nomadic. The city of Rahat is a Bedouin city with a population of over 70,000. One should remember before the Jews were on that land the Bedouins were there. If, after what the Jews experienced in the Holocaust they use the same methods against minorities that have fought and died defending Israel all the while using excuses to break the law in the West Bank and flat-out racism within Israel then they have lost their way and the religious excuse has no validity.
He should practice what he preaches, one only has to look at how they treat Ethiopian Jews in Israel.
Thank, Kavika. Looks like I have more reading to do. For instance, not sure if racism is the right term or if it should be culturalism, since all groups involved are semitic. Are you saying that Netanyahu and those who support him are not simply looking out for Jews alone at the expense of the other groups but more, only certain racial categories of Jews? That's one of the things your comment will have me looking at. I was vaguely aware of some kerfuffle over Ethiopian Jews, for instance, but that was about it.
As for Bedouins not being nomadic anymore, same thing. I guess I assumed that was one of the traditions that they were trying to keep alive since it seems to me that is almost what defines a Bedouin. I'll have to reexamine that assumption.
Stop giving me homework!!! : P
Yes, that is what I'm saying, Drakk. Research Moroccan Jews of which there are about a million in Israel. In 1948 the Mossad convinced Moroccan Jews living in Morroco to immigrate to Israel. The complaint from many of them they are not really accepted and are treated like outsiders and some over the years have returned to Morocco.
As for the Bedouins, some are still nomadic but more and more the transition to a more urban life is taking over.
LOL, hey that is the way we keep our brains active and learning.
Will do. It seems to me that what makes a Jew a Jew (in my mind at least) is their connection to God through the covenants. My first impression on all of this is that, because the Israeli government doesn't appear to be operating on this principle, it allows other criteria to be deciding factors. Apparently, for some Jews, some other criteria eclipses the one that seems most relevant to me.
Anyway, I'm off to work. See ya.
I agree with that, Drakk.
Have a good night and anytime you want we can take this up again.
Israelis are like any other people. There are those who are bigots and most who are not. The Bedouins were always liked and even a big part of tourism there.
As for the Felashens, it was Israelis who brought them over from Africa and paid for it. So obviously, not all Israelis are bigots. The people who had the worst of it was them Yemenites, who were mistreated by the original Israelites. It is a black mark on their history.
Yes, they are and that is the point.
They are a big part of tourism yet the government will not build bomb shelters for them in Rahat and in the West Bank they are killing them and or driving them out.
Yes, that is true and I don't believe that I said all Israelis are bigots it is also true that they are treated like second-class citizens. Netanyahu and the present government are pushing the nationalist line and it shows and in my opinion, will cause Israel problems now and in the future.
Yes, that is a black mark on the history of Israel in that same time period many others came to Israel, Jews from the Balkans being another group, and the "Children Affair'' is reminiscent of American Indian children and the US government, no?
Yet at the end of the day, a Bedouin, Yosef Zeadna, who saved dozens of Israelis with no weapon just his bus and lost one relative killed by Hamas and four others kidnapped expressed his thoughts.
Is he right or wrong? Note, he said the ''Israeli state'' not the people.
Just to be clear and so there is no misunderstanding I firmly believe that Israel has the right to defend itself and to eliminate Hamas or any country or terrorist organization that attacks it.
This sums up my point of the whole thing. Everyone in the region right now is stuck between the Israeli state nationalists and the brutality of Hamas. Those two groups seem to feed each other.
Sadly that is true and even if Bibi is removed from office will the next government stop this illegal killing?