VISUALS ON VIOLENCE

Pogroms were our past; our Gazan neighbours brought them back to the present.

South African photojournalist Ilan Ossendryver ‘focuses’ on Israel’s devastated south.

I have always heard about our Eastern Jewish roots, where my grandparents came from, and the many Pogroms (Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently”) we Jews faced there, resulting in many Jews being murdered, raped, and burned.  It was history that we were taught.  We thought it would never happen again.

 But it did, and history has repeated itself, this time, in our time, in front of the world, in Israel, a country meant to protect us against such evils.

On 7 October, the Pogrom happened in real time, broadcast live, filmed and boasted about by Hamas perpetrators for the world to see.  It was a textbook Pogrom, as you would read in history books. 

What was, became a present-day nightmare reality. My images capture the absolute hate and devastation that was wreaked across the southern part of Israel in towns and Kibbutzim. The reality Jews woke up to. Evil taking place in their safe, peaceful places of life, their houses, their rooms, their towns.

Israel and her people are in mourning.  But this time, the history of this massacre will always remain a reminder of what we as Jews face, a world that mostly do not like us. This time the reminder is not far away deep in eastern Europe, but here in Israel, two hours away from Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish People.

On October 7, 2023, Kibbutz Reim, located on the border of the Gaza Strip, experienced a large scale, brutal terrorist attack when dozens of Hamas terrorists penetrated the Kibbutz, slaughtering and injuring a large number of civilians, women, children and senior citizens. Near the kibbutz, a mass massacre was carried out at the Nova Music Festival, in which at least 364 people were murdered.

These were homes where families lived collectively on a kibbutz. Kids played on the lawns. Only nature provides now the colour; the black and grey are the residue from the monsters from Gaza.

Scars and ash from a pogrom – not in Eastern Europe of the 1940s but in Southern Israel today.

The burnt remains where once life was vibrant.

The monsters from Gaza who did this came not like Cossacks on horseback but on Toyota white trucks, motor bikes and motorized gliders.

Not only did they murder and mutilate but took away hostages, the posters of two appear on this door.

No floor, no roof remains but worst of all – no people.

Grey skeletal structures is all that is sadly left.

Charred remains of a kibbutz home where once love and laughter reined.

This relic tells of the old and infirmed that were not spared.

Israel’s national flag reminds that Jews will survive and again thrive.

Where once was habitation, now  lies desolation.

Is it any wonder copies in Arabic of Hitler’s  ‘Mein Kampf’ have been found in Gaza when this is what Gazans unleashed upon Israel.

About the writer/photoprapher:

Ilan Ossendryver has been a photojournalist for over 25 years covering international news events such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Gulf War, the war in Lebanon, the Israeli Jordanian peace agreement, and the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin. He photographed at Hosni Mubarak’s palace in Cairo where the late Yitzhak Rabin met Yasser Arafat for the first time. He also documented life under Apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela. He has covered two American presidents, seven Israeli prime ministers, as well as many well-known people from Leonard Bernstein, Pavarotti, FW De Klerk, Michael Jackson and Gorbachev.
Illan’s photographs have appeared in many international newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Forbes, Der Spiegel, South China Morning Post, The Times of London, The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Yedioth Acharanot, Maariv and The Star of Johannesburg. He is currently the resident photographer of the Johannesburg based Jewish Life Magazine and the South African Jewish Report.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).