Report: Every day, Israelis come from a promontory transformed into an October 7 memorial to contemplate the war that is ravaging the Palestinian enclave and causing dozens of deaths every day.
Between two bombings, Liram, Afik and Emmanuel pass around a joint. On Thursday, July 17, at 6:30 p.m., like almost every evening, the three friends, 27-year-old Israelis who prefer not to give their last names, met at the top of Kobi Hill, the point overlooking the city of Sderot, on the edge of the Gaza Strip, to talk about work, travel and “stock market investments ,” they list. Just across the road, 1 kilometer away, past the highway, a few fields and a separation barrier, are Beit Hanoun and the northern Gaza Strip, which has been bombed continuously for almost two years.
“When I see and hear a missile falling on Gaza, I am happy,” says Afik, sitting all smiles in his shorts and colorful T-shirt, his pack of cigarettes and his cell phone in front of him. On the screen of the device, this watch shop manager shows a photo of Avi Megira, his uncle, shot dead on his motorcycle by a Hamas member in the streets of Sderot, during the October 7 massacres .
Facing his two friends, a trader and an employee of the large printing house in Kibbutz Be’eri, close to the Gaza Strip, the young man, “frightened” by the proximity of the border with the Palestinian enclave, wants to believe that the release of the last 50 Israeli hostages, of whom only 20 are still alive, will only come at the cost of this violent military operation. Even if “millions” of Palestinians have to die, he adds. According to the latest figures shared by NGOs, the United Nations, and the Hamas Health Ministry, more than 58,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have already been killed by the Israeli army since October 7.
In the evening, as the sun sets, the sky glows red. As the trio prepares to leave, around 8 p.m., a column of smoke zigzags in the distance. The detonation that follows, a few seconds later, confirms that a new explosion has just taken place on Palestinian soil, just across the hill.
The “Sderot Cinema”
In twenty-one months of relentless military operations, the Sderot promontory has become the place where many Israelis come to contemplate this war that is rarely seen on their television screens. After a short climb up a sandy path, for just 5 shekels (a little over 1 euro) in contactless payment, binoculars on tripods allow visitors to examine the string of gutted buildings in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. In case of a slight thirst, as summer temperatures approach 40°C, visitors can refresh themselves thanks to regularly restocked drinks dispensers.
On June 6, the municipality and the NGO Israel-is, founded in 2017 by three former Israeli army officers, inaugurated the first permanent memorial dedicated to October 7 here. In addition to an art installation topped with a commemorative plaque, a large screen was installed in front of several stone benches to project a “virtual reality experience” of the Hamas attack. Narrated by documentary filmmaker Stephen Smith, who has worked on Holocaust remembrance, the film overlays images of the Gaza border area with audio recordings captured during the killings, for the benefit of passing tourists.
In mid-July, a video showing several dozen people and their vehicles parked on the hill was widely shared on social media. First posted by ultra-Orthodox journalist Yedidya Epstein on the Chamal news site , the footage describes the viewpoint as the “best show in town .” On X, some Israelis prefer to call it, unironically, the “Sderot cinema . “
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Despite their bravado online, spectators of the ongoing massacre in Gaza are more timid in front of the press and, for the most part, refuse to explain their reasons for coming. ” Le Monde ? ” asks Oren, laughing. Between two photos of the sunset over the enclave taken on his smartphone, he claims to have family in Carpentras, in the south of France. “Fascists.”
Curiosity and challenge
That same evening, two cousins, Hadard Corsia, 16, and Paz Hadarman, 27, whose first name means “peace” in Spanish, came to the hill for the first time. Out of curiosity as much as defiance, they explained. During their last family dinner, which ended in an argument, an uncle criticized them for never having come here.
Through binoculars, Paz Hadarman focuses on a multi-story building, completely destroyed. She doesn’t take her eyes off it. “Disturbed ,” the employee of a shoe brand in the Tel Aviv area talks, in random order, about the Gazan civilians forcibly displaced or killed, her parents who used to go to the beach in Gaza before Israel’s withdrawal in 2005, and her friends who are reservists in the Israeli army. The young woman sighs before coming back down from the promontory: “The more we support violence, the less stable the Middle East will be.”
Holding hands with Oz, 5, and Smada, 8, Benyamin, 20, who prefers not to give his last name, just wanted to kill time. “I’m showing my partner’s children what’s left of Gaza ,” explains the waiter at a local sushi restaurant, wearing a green T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “ feel deeply.” This is the third time he’s watched the sunset over the destroyed enclave. Despite the insistence of his friends, who “all the time” invite him to come here to chat and drink beer, this Sderot resident prefers to relax elsewhere.
In three weeks, he will have to begin his military service and worries about the danger, while insisting that he is “not afraid to die for [his] country if necessary .” Today, Benjamin still does not know exactly which unit recruited him. “I hope it will not be one of those battalions sent to Gaza.” In front of him, the sun has completely disappeared, but not the column of smoke from the last explosion, which leaves a persistent trace in the sky.
