'It’s Been a Year. This Must End': Californians Reflect on One Year of War in Gaza

One year ago, Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in an attack on southern Israel and took at least 250 hostages. In response, Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed more than 41,500 Palestinians and displaced millions. 

The conflict has sparked huge reactions all over the world, especially here in the Bay Area. Today, we hear from four local residents about how it has affected them over the past year.

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be some errors.

Rolla Alaydi [00:01:32] Even during the day, I’m going to my work, I’m not feeling myself. I feel like I aged 20 years in this last year. My name is Rolla Alaydi and I’m originally born in Gaza. Right now I’m in California, Pacific Grove. For the last year, I already lost more than 52 of my family members. As one person here suddenly, we have 21 family members to support. It’s just hard. So I have this table try to sell some items and ask people for some some donation, just for my family for now to survive. I’m doing this every Sunday, but I don’t if they’re even going to be surviving like the next hour or the next day. The siege in Gaza, it’s hard on me. Like I have a nightmare every night. I woke up in the middle of the night crying. Just the image of them being killed or bombed or being starved to death. It’s just haunting me every single day. It’s a tough year and I lost so many of my family. But I still believe in humanity and I get to the point…even if I lose all my family, I still have hope. And I’m going to have hope. I’m not going to give up. I’m going to keep speaking up and calling for the ceasefire and calling for the end of this genocide because this is not right. This must end. There is no way this is going to be forever like this. It’s been a year. It’s been a year.

Julie Bressler [00:03:25] I think a lot of what’s been challenged is where I sit as a Jewish person in the 21st century living in California. My name is Julie Bressler. I work as a rabbi at Temple Sinai in Oakland. War is horrible and complicated and people are dying and people have been kept hostage for 360 plus days and people’s lives have been ruined. I mean, all over that region, people of all different backgrounds and. And that’s all terrible. Part of it is how do we ever navigate these conflicts? And it makes me anxious about what can come next, because I think there is such a hope for this to move towards a more peaceful solution. It has been hard to sometimes feel that folks who are very clearly our allies struggled to accept the nuance of this right and accept some of the Israeli pain. I didn’t feel it necessarily from other allies, and that was hard. Two thirds of Israel was under siren attacks and bomb attacks. And thank God for Iron Dome shutting those down because it could have been a really different day. There was a terrorist attack in Yaffa right in a crowded place near Tel Aviv. And so. Right? Like…all of it needs to stop and it needs to stop so that everyone feels safe. Judaism is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is part of it. It is. We know we care deeply about Israel. We love Israel. And, you know, it’s a very special place, an idea to me that, of course, is always trying to get better as a place, always improving itself. And we are so much more.

Josh Healey [00:05:22] And if you had asked me last November if the bombing would still be going on, I wouldn’t have…we all knew it was going to be bad, but no one knew it was going to be this bad. My name is Josh Healey. I am the co-host of the Palestinian Jewish show Friday Night Semites, produced by Offsides Productions. And I live here in Oakland, California. I was arrested at the federal building here in Oakland. These are all Jewish-led protests. What was it last November? There were like 500, 600. There are deep splits within the American Jewish community, to say the least. Including here in the Bay Area. This week is not only October 7th anniversary, it’s the Jewish high holidays. And what is being said and who is being mourned and who is not being mourned, who is being grieved and who is not being grieved is almost as painful as the grief itself. That said, I do think you see in the Bay Area that the majority of people want an end to the bombing, want an end to the occupation that is underlying all of this. But our leaders don’t listen to us. And for Jewish people who know what a genocide looks like, the question is, does never again mean just for us or never again for everyone. It’s it’s heartbreaking. And, you know, I expect more of my people and I expect more of all of us, no matter who you are.

Sammy Obeid [00:07:12] I grew up in the Bay Area. My family has always been part of the Free Palestine movement and we would attend rallies, protests, vigils. My name is Sammy Obeid. I am a standup comedian and I am based out of Fremont, California. You know, I am I’m Lebanese, Palestinian. I’m involved in three ways. I have family in Palestine. I have family in Lebanon. And I’m an American, which means I am an American citizen, which means I’m an American taxpayer, which means this problem is uniquely mine. And I think that’s what a lot of people still don’t understand, is as we as Americans are the basically the driving force of what’s happening and also could be the ones who actively stop it if we work hard enough.