“Be prepared, everyone in Israel is depressed now,” a journalist friend warned me before my husband and I landed in Israel on Aug. 7, exactly 22 months after Hamas perpetrated the terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which incited the Gaza war. Although she tried to arm me, nothing hit home like experiencing Israelis’ ongoing trauma, war weariness and despair with my own eyes.
According to the latest statistics, approximately 63,000 Palestinians (according to the Gaza Health Ministry) and 2,000 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, with an estimated 50 Israelis (both living and dead) still being held hostage.
For five days, we toured Israel with a delegation of seven other San Diegans on an American Jewish Committee fact-finding mission. We officially met with 17 Israelis, ranging from a Benedictine monk who led us in a soothing prayer for peace to a Bedouin police sergeant who teared up while he described rescuing 200 young people from the Hamas terrorist attack at the Supernova Music Festival in southern Israel; and a former spokesperson from the Palestinian Authority. They all shared one thing in common—a wish for the return of the hostages and an immediate end to the war’s escalating misery.
Among our presenters, I felt the strongest personal connection with Kazim Khlilih, a lean, 32-year-old Muslim Arab Israeli with warm green eyes who attained celebrity in 2022 as the first openly gay and Arab-Israeli contestant on the reality show “Big Brother-Israel.” He used his reality-TV star status as a platform for Israel advocacy in the post-Oct. 7 world.
When our delegation met with him on Aug. 12, Khlilih told us about the death of his cousin, Awad Dawarshe, at the music festival on that Black Shabbat. Dawarshe, a paramedic, was working there when Hamas terrorists descended on the site and opened fire, killing and wounding hundreds of festival-goers. Rather than flee the scene, he remained to care for the wounded. After hearing news of the attack, Dawarshe’s family frantically tried to reach him but got no response. His mother asked Khlilih to search local hospitals for his cousin.
While searching, he encountered a medic who told him that a Hamas terrorist had shot and killed Dawarshe. Khlilih shared that Dawarshe’s death destroyed his cousin’s mother, who is consumed by grief. “I suffered from depression, too,” he said.
This experience forged Khlilih into a courageous advocate against Hamas terror. He did not want his cousin to have died in vain. “Hamas does not represent Muslims. Islam should be ashamed of them,” he said.
Khlilih proudly served in the Israel Defense Forces and spoke passionately about his love for Israel as a tolerant democratic society. He wanted to make sure that our group understood that 2 million Arab Israelis live in the Jewish state and consider themselves woven into its social fabric.
“The war must end as soon as possible. I don’t see the reason for continuing it. I don’t know if I should say this, but I’ve been to Gaza on reserve duty, and it’s nothing but a pile of stones,” Khlilih said.
After our dinner with Khlilih and four other young Israeli changemakers ended at 8 p.m., our weary group debated whether or not to visit Hostages Square in Tel Aviv that night. Khlilih persuaded us to go. “I think there’s something special going on there,” he said, and insisted on accompanying us.
When we arrived at Hostages Square, Khlilih led us past the life-size photos of the remaining captives; the massive digital readout displaying the days, hours and minutes the last of the 251 hostages have been in captivity; and into a simulated terror tunnel for a disorienting walk through claustrophobic darkness.
He spotted his friend Qaid Farhan al-Qadi, a Muslim Bedouin Israeli who survived 326 days in Hamas captivity, and introduced us. Al-Qadi invited us to sit down and listen to his story. Hamas terrorists kidnapped him from a kibbutz, where he worked as a security guard, and into the living hell of captivity. He witnessed the terrorists murder a fellow hostage before they transported him into the total darkness of an underground tunnel. One of us asked how he kept his will to live. He said, “I had faith the IDF would come for me.”
His faith manifested in the reality of IDF soldiers discovering him alone in the tunnel after his captors fled. When asked how he copes now, he smiled ruefully and said, “Of course, I’ve had therapy, but everyone in Israel needs therapy now.”
I asked Khlilih how he knew al-Qadi would be in Hostages Square, and he said, “I didn’t for sure, but sometimes, he comes to tell his story. I think it’s therapy for him, and I’m glad you heard him. It’s important to know not just Jewish Israelis were hostages.”
Before I gave the charismatic Khlilih a goodbye hug, I told him I agreed the war must end Achshav! (Hebrew for “now.”) He grinned at my American-accented attempt at Hebrew and said, “Yes, now!”
After we returned to San Diego, I heard devastating news. There will be no more nows for Khlilih. On Aug. 25, first responders reported him dead at the scene of a traffic collision on an Israeli highway. Another heartbreaking tragedy in a country on the brink. A brave, honest and from-the-heart young man who strove to bridge the Arab-Israeli divide, Khlilih did not live to see the peace that must come soon—before Israeli society implodes under the weight of war and the ongoing captivity of the hostages.
Khlilih devoted himself to telling his dead cousin’s story, and now his deserves to be told and his name known.
May his memory be a blessing and a harbinger of peace. Khlilih’s legacy beams hope for future reconciliations between Arab Muslims and Israeli Jews into the current darkness.
