The sheer terror of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel stunned the world.
On a major Jewish holiday, Hamas fighters descended on southern Israeli communities via pickup trucks, boats and motorized hang gliders. About 1,200 people were killed — marking the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust — and roughly 250 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war shortly afterward, pledging that Hamas “will pay an unprecedented price.” Israeli airstrikes pummeled Gaza, and the ensuing war ignited a humanitarian crisis that’s still mounting: The death toll has topped 40,000, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.
As the one-year anniversary of the start of the Israel-Hamas war approaches, the pain of the conflict thousands of miles across the globe has touched the Chicago area in so many ways.
The north suburban grandmother of a 23-year-old slain American Israeli hostage says she’s in disbelief that her grandson is gone.
A Palestinian American attorney in the south suburbs mourns her aunt who was killed in Gaza when an Israeli bomb leveled a nearby home.
A local emergency room doctor who served a medical mission in Gaza recounts the trauma endured by its children as they face malnourishment, illness and the psychological scars of war.
A North Shore rabbi prays for the hostages while helping his synagogue through a recent spike in antisemitism in the war’s wake.
Islamophobia and anti-Arab discrimination hit a fever pitch over the past year, ranging from disturbing rhetoric to vandalism to acts of violence. The politics of the fighting overseas has reverberated in city halls and college campuses here as well as nationwide, sparking protests and infighting, with the potential to influence the contentious November presidential election.
One year after the Israel-Hamas war’s inception, bloodshed in the broader Middle East is escalating and spreading.
To the north, Lebanon has been rocked by a wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah. Deaths there have been estimated at around 2,000, including women and children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed late last month, an assassination touted by Netanyahu as a “historic turning point.”
Iran retaliated on Tuesday, launching missiles into Israel — and inching the Middle East closer to the precipice of a regionwide war. Netanyahu vowed that Iran “will pay,” a threat eerily similar to his message to Hamas nearly a year prior.
“This must stop,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement Tuesday, condemning the broadening of the conflict and multiple escalations. “We absolutely need a ceasefire.”
The hostages
For almost 11 months, Leah Polin had clung to the hope that her grandson would survive the captivity of Hamas and return home.
American Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped at the Tribe of Nova music festival in the Negev desert during the Oct. 7 attacks, on the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah.
Although the grandmother was terrified, she somehow remained certain that he would live and one day reunite with his family.
“We knew he was very strong. We knew he had a lot of love to him,” said Leah Polin in her north suburban home, during a recent interview with the Tribune. “People just didn’t expect Hersh to die. He was going to be the one to survive and tell the story.”
The son of Chicago natives Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, Hersh Goldberg-Polin and his family relocated to Jerusalem in 2008.
His mother and father returned to Chicago to plead for their son’s release during a speech at the Democratic National Convention in late August.
“Hersh, Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you. Stay strong. Survive,” his mother said before the audience at the United Center.
Days later, their son’s body was recovered from a tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah, along with the bodies of five other hostages. The Israeli Health Ministry said autopsies showed they were all shot at close range; the six had been killed shortly before Israeli forces were to rescue them.
“When we heard it, I was like, not Hersh, it can’t be,” Leah Polin recalled. “It was disbelief more than shock.”
She recalled attending her grandson’s September funeral in Jerusalem, where crowds of mourners lined the street to the cemetery. Amid the terror and tragedy, Hersh had become “everybody’s son,” Leah Polin said.
“It took on a national significance, not just a private event,” she added.
Also taken hostage on Oct. 7 were Judith Raanan of Evanston and her teenage daughter Natalie, who had been visiting family at Nahal Oz kibbutz; the mother and daughter were released in late October.
Gov. JB Pritzker lauded their “immense strength and bravery in the face of unthinkable terror.”
“We must continue to advocate and pray for the safe return of those still held by Hamas,” he said in a statement. “We will not let those who use terror as their weapon win.”
Nearly a year after the attacks, about 100 of the hostages still remain unaccounted for.
Leah Polin wears a silver dog tag around her neck inscribed with the words “bring them home now” in Hebrew and English. At a recent memorial service for Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Skokie, the grandmother pledged that she and her family “will continue to work until the rest of the hostages are free.”
Photos of her grandson with the captions #bring_hersh_home and “kidnapped” are still affixed to her front door.
“There will be hope until every last one of the hostages are accounted for,” she said in her home.
A mural of Jerusalem decorates one of her walls; it includes the image of a dove flying above the city skyline.
“I pray every day that there will be peace,” she said. “But I don’t know how they will get there.”
‘Deeply personal’
Fidaa Elaydi of Bridgeview was about five months pregnant when Israeli air strikes rained down on Gaza on Oct. 7.
The excitement of the first kicks and flutters of her baby in the womb “came with a dark cloud” as the horrors of war afflicted her large extended family there. The 36-year-old lawyer described a dissonance in anticipating the joy of a new life coming into the world while “Palestinian mothers bury their children every single day.”
Then in late November, her aunt was killed in Gaza when an Israeli bomb leveled a nearby home. Shrapnel from the explosion hit the home where 65-year-old Zainab Elaydi was staying in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the force of the blast launching her body outside and decapitating her, Fidaa Elaydi recounted.
Relatives were grateful they were able to collect her aunt’s remains and give her a proper burial, which other grieving families weren’t always afforded, she said.
“Some of the earliest days of the war were the most brutal, with entire families wiped out. And the bodies wouldn’t be recovered from the rubble,” she said. “They couldn’t bury their dead, or it would just be fragments of a body, and they had to guess what belonged to whom.”
Her mourning is compounded by a sense of guilt and complicity, she said, because the United States supports and aids the Israeli military.
“Because of my role as an American and the role my taxes played in funding these massive bombs that were used to kill her,” she said.
The war ignited mass protests across the Chicago area and the nation, particularly on numerous college campuses where pro-Palestinian demonstrators erected encampments in the spring, often coming into conflict with administrators and law enforcement.
The dissension at universities continues this academic year: College students across the country are pushing back against revised guidelines governing protest and political speech at many schools — including DePaul University, Northwestern University and Loyola University — enacted in response to student demonstrations urging an end to the war and calling for divestment of university funds from institutions with ties to Israel.
Near the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, throngs of pro-Palestinian protesters called for an end to the war and a halt of military aid to Israel.
Among them was Michal Eskayo, 56, of the Lincoln Square neighborhood, who describes herself as an anti-Zionist Jew. She said she has family in central Israel and grew up spending her summers there; she hopes to return one day when there’s peace, perhaps as a volunteer in the West Bank.
She criticized the Democratic Party for not including a Palestinian speaker in its convention lineup. Many who oppose the war have been wrestling with how to cast their vote in the heated November presidential race, particularly Muslims and Arabs in battleground states.
While Eskayo plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, she said she will do so reluctantly.
“I don’t want to vote for an administration that gives Israel carte blanche to do whatever they want to do,” she said.
A Pew Research Survey released Tuesday found slightly more Americans want the United States to help resolve the Israel-Hamas war. Nearly a quarter of those surveyed said the U.S. should take a major role in ending the war, compared with 20% in February; 37% supported a minor role, compared with 35% of those who were polled eight months ago.
When the war first broke out, Palestinian American Lena Hussien took her children out of school so they could attend a national protest in Washington, D.C. They’ve demonstrated at other pro-Palestinian actions locally.
“We looked at it like ‘Wow, we’re going to these protests. Things are going to change,’” said the 42-year-old from Orland Park.
Yet as the conflict creeps into its second year, Hussien said she feels hopeless, stemming from a sense that “nobody cares” about Palestinian deaths in Gaza.
As for Fidaa Elaydi, she said has lost faith in her elected officials.
“I’m almost embarrassed to talk to my relatives,” she said. “Because I’m part of the force that’s displaced them. That’s deprived them of everything that they loved and taken away their homes and, in some cases, their relatives.”
In her office in south suburban Worth, a framed poster of Jerusalem hangs behind her desk, featuring the words “Visit Palestine” beneath images of an olive tree and the Dome of the Rock.
Fidaa Elaydi gave birth to her son in February.
She named him Zain, to honor the memory of her aunt Zainab.
“For me, what is happening in Gaza is deeply personal,” she said. “Because I love Gaza. And people I love are in Gaza.”
Generation of war
The devastation and suffering in Gaza was unlike anything Dr. Thaer Ahmad of Bridgeview had experienced before.
In January, the Palestinian American emergency medicine physician served a three-week medical mission with the nonprofit MedGlobal at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the second-largest hospital in Gaza at the time.
“These hospitals were totally overwhelmed. They were understaffed. The health care workers were overworked,” recalled Ahmad, who had volunteered in Gaza several times before the war. “The hospitals doubled as shelters, for the women and children mostly, who were living in the hallways. We didn’t have supplies for it to function as a proper hospital let alone function as a shelter.”
The physician was particularly fearful for the generation of children raised during the war, who suffer from malnourishment and trauma.
“You’re noticing that a lot of these children are small for their age. A lot of the infants are not growing like you’d anticipate,” he said. “We saw that starvation was used as a weapon of war. … You’re going to start noticing irreversible developmental effects on these kids.”
His medical mission ended abruptly, a few days earlier than planned, when he was evacuated from the hospital as Israeli tanks surrounded the building.
Shortly after that, Nasser Hospital was raided and shelled by Israeli forces, temporarily halting hospital operations. Israeli military officials had said they had “credible intelligence” that Hamas held hostages at the hospital and that the hostages’ remains could be inside, according to The Associated Press.
In April, Ahmad made national headlines for walking out of a private meeting being held to discuss the war with President Joe Biden, Harris and other Muslim Americans. As the gathering approached, Ahmad said, he had grown disturbed by recent media coverage about U.S. weapons sales to Israel.
Before exiting the meeting, the doctor gave the president a letter from an orphaned 8-year-old girl in Rafah.
“We understand how this community is feeling in a deeply painful moment,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response at the time.
On Wednesday, 99 doctors and nurses who volunteered in Gaza during the past year released a signed letter pleading with Biden and Harris to “stop the flow of arms to Israel and push for an immediate and lasting ceasefire.”
Several health care workers from the Chicago area, including Ahmad, were among the signers.
The letter chronicled some of the health care horrors of Gaza: Infant formula mixed with unclean water fed to malnourished babies. Reemergence of the polio virus due to missed vaccinations and destruction of sanitation infrastructure. Women undergoing C-sections without anesthesia. Infections from lack of basic supplies, including soap.
While Ahmad intended to return to Gaza later this month for another medical mission, he said he’s been told that Israel has barred doctors of Palestinian descent from entering. CNN reported in July that Israel has blocked health care workers of Palestinian heritage from volunteering in Gaza, citing World Health Organization internal memos.
“I feel like I’ve failed my people,” Ahmad said. “Because I had the privilege to leave (Gaza) and I have the privilege of being born in the United States — and I haven’t been able to utilize any of that to bring about any sort of progress, any sort of reprieve, for my people.”
Each day, Ahmad says he’s fearful more destruction and violence will befall the region.
“I’m worried tomorrow I’m going to wake up and look at my phone and have to see that a school was hit or another hospital was rendered defunct,” Ahmad said. “As we are approaching 365 days, it’s been a miserable year. And I think it has affected all of us.”
MedGlobal, the nonprofit that organized his mission, recently lamented the growing humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, where more than a million people are estimated to be displaced.
“Lebanon’s healthcare system is now at a breaking point,” warned the Chicago Ridge-based charity’s website.
‘Torch in the darkness’
Each week, North Shore Suburban Synagogue Beth El in Highland Park posts on its Facebook page a watercolor portrait and short biography of an Oct. 7 hostage.
Oded Lifshitz, 83, from Nir Oz kibbutz smiles through square-framed glasses and a white mustache. The similar likeness of Gali and Ziv Berman, 26-year-old twin brothers from Kfar Aza, is shown in side-by-side pictures.
“We pray for their redemption,” the Facebook post concludes.
“Oct. 7 is deeply engrained in our minds,” said Associate Rabbi Alex Freedman, during a recent interview with the Tribune.
The synagogue keeps a chair on the bimah — a raised platform in the sanctuary — that sits empty, to represent those in captivity of Hamas “who are not home,” he said. A table is also decorated with portraits of the hostages.
The past year has been difficult in many ways, including a rise in antisemitism “far away and in our own backyard,” Freedman noted.
The Anti-Defamation League reported “unprecedented levels” of antisemitic incidents in Illinois since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
There were 102 incidents statewide from Oct. 7, 2022, to Oct. 1, 2023, including harassment, vandalism and assault. The ADL anticipates that the total will nearly triple during the same period one year later “when we have completed our investigations on all of the incidents submitted,” said ADL Midwest Regional Director David Goldenberg.
Nationwide, nearly 8,900 antisemitic incidents occurred in 2023, a 140% jump from the nearly 3,700 incidents recorded in 2022, the ADL reported; this was the most since the ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979. The rise was largely due to more than 5,200 antisemitic acts recorded that year following Oct. 7, “reflecting global trends as Jewish communities worldwide faced heightened tensions and hatred in response to the massacre and conflict — on campuses, in the public square and at anti-Israel demonstrations,” the ADL reported.
Islamophobia and anti-Arab discrimination have also spiked locally, climaxing with the mid-October fatal stabbing of Wadee Alfayoumi, a 6-year-old boy of Palestinian heritage, in Plainfield Township. Police have called the slaying a hate crime.
Nationwide, the Council on American Islamic Relations reported receiving more than 8,000 complaints in 2023, the most in its three-decade history; nearly half of the incidents that year were tracked in October, November and December.
At the Highland Park synagogue, Freedman plans to address this climate of antisemitism during his sermon later this week on Yom Kippur, which ends the 10-day span known as Judaism’s High Holy Days. The Oct. 7 anniversary falls at the midpoint of that period this year.
“We Jews simply feel more alone in America today,” his prepared sermon says. “And we Jews see Israel being isolated on the world stage.”
The rabbi said earlier this year his child had asked him, “Why do some people hate us?”
“We adults are responsible for shaping the world our young people inhabit. We must do all we can to protect them from all dangers and harm, even as those will never truly end,” the rabbi’s sermon concludes. “And we must also transmit our core values to the next generation, which will strengthen them in scary moments and serve as a torch in the darkness.”
While the period following the attacks has been arduous, Freedman said during the interview that the year has also brought “renewed energy and renewed commitment to being part of the Jewish community.”
“More people have come to synagogue than before. More people have attended our classes this year than before,” he said. “More people get security and pride from being part of the Jewish people. … And so our faith is stronger. Our commitment is stronger than ever before.”
The Associated Press contributed.
