Most big-business news reports on the pogrom carried out by Hamas that killed over 1,300 people in Israel Oct. 7 leave out one important fact — hundreds of Arab citizens of Israel rushed to aid the victims of the Tehran-backed anti-Jewish slaughter.
The vast majority of those murdered by Hamas were Jewish civilians. But there were also at least 21 Thai farmworkers and a dozen Bedouin Arabs among the victims. Arab citizens make up 21% of Israel’s population.
“We saw that there was enormous chaos and realized we must do something,” Sleman Shlebe, a Bedouin resident of the northern Negev, told Haaretz. He rapidly recruited 600 unarmed volunteers, mostly from the Azazmeh Bedouin tribe, who took off in all-terrain vehicles to the areas where Hamas had struck.
“We had heard about people missing from both the Arab and Jewish communities, and knew that thanks to our exceptional familiarity with the south we could help,” he said. They divided into teams for “gathering information, rescuing and administering first aid.” Their effort came to the attention of the local government and police, who dispatched guards to provide an armed escort for the effort.
“Together with armed teams, we entered Jewish communities where there were terrorists,” he said. “We collected the survivors from the [Supernova dance] party who were hiding outside for hours.”
One of the 260 murdered by Hamas gunmen at the Supernova festival was paramedic Awad Darawshe, a Palestinian from northern Israel. When the leader of the first-aid tent where he was stationed ordered them to evacuate, he refused. He was shot to death while bandaging one of the injured.
While Shlebe lives in Bir Hadaj, a Bedouin farm village that was only recognized by the Israeli government in 1999, most of the volunteers are from “nonrecognized” villages in the desert.
Those Bedouin communities have been in a decadeslong fight to press the Israeli government to provide services like water, electricity, bomb shelters and schools.
“Many of us feel that the state has abandoned us, but we haven’t abandoned it,” Shlebe said.
Many Arab workers toil alongside Jewish co-workers in Israel. Some are in the same unions. In many parts of the country workers have formed joint Jewish-Arab community groups that work to prevent violent disputes in their villages and towns.
Lucy Aharish, the first Muslim Arab newswoman on Israeli television, expressed the views of many Arab citizens of Israel about Hamas’ deadly assault on One World CNN. “This is genocide,” she said. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people, she added. “What Hamas is doing in the name of religion is not being a Muslim. This is being a monster.”