“Are you someway okay??????” he wrote at 1:15 a.m. on Oct. 28.
One verify mark. No response.
That they had met on-line in 2019, after Heymann donated to a fund that helped Om Ayan’s father get most cancers therapy within the West Financial institution, and stayed in contact over time. They knew the names of one another’s dad and mom and youngsters, had shared images of their properties and hobbies. It was solely a friendship, each stated, by no means romantic. However it was Heymann’s solely window into Gaza and Om Ayan’s solely contact with an Israeli.
The horrors of Oct. 7 and the battle in Gaza introduced them nearer, every discovering within the different a refuge from disappointment and isolation. Heymann, a peace activist who felt more and more lonely in wartime Israel, knew somebody in Gaza understood him. Om Ayan, below siege and bombardment, knew somebody in Israel was pondering of her.
Om Ayan, 28, shared her story on the situation that she be recognized by a nickname, fearing for her household’s security.
It was unusual, Heymann stated, to really feel so linked to her. But right here he was, questioning once more if she was nonetheless respiratory.
“My pricey? are you there??????? please please ship me signal of life please,” he had written two days earlier than. They at all times texted in English.
“Im alive dont fear,” she had responded then. “We’re not okay.”
Heymann, 48, had already misplaced individuals in Israel. Would he must mourn her too?
On Oct. 7, it was Om Ayan who texted first.
Earlier than the warfare, they’d messaged sporadically, when their busy lives allowed — sending household updates, images, properly needs.
“I hope that it will likely be the start of a wonderful new 12 months for you,” she wrote on Jan. 1, 2023.
In Might, her husband bought a allow to work in Israel. Her daughter Aylin had simply been born.
“Ship me his # and i’ll name him,” Heymann wrote. “Additionally — I’ll give him youngsters’s garments.”
“On probably the most primary degree, we’re each dad and mom of younger youngsters,” he stated, sitting in his ethereal Jaffa loft on a transparent, heat December day.
“We each shared this sense of an absence of humanity round us,” Heymann stated. “So I believe we discover consolation in one another.”
It was a friendship he not often talked about in dialog with different Israelis. After Hamas militants and allied fighters streamed into southern Israel on Oct. 7 — killing about 1,200 individuals and taking greater than 250 hostages into Gaza — he was much more hesitant to say it.
Heymann had a highschool classmate who was shot in entrance of her youngsters. The daddy of a detailed pal was taken hostage by Hamas.
Many Israelis, shocked and traumatized, felt nobody from Gaza could possibly be trusted. There have been calls on social media for revenge, for killing everybody in Gaza. He nervous about Om Ayan: “It was the very first thing I thought of.”
The vitriol was no shock. It was a well-known hatred. “For those who develop up in Israel, they put in your blood, they put in your veins ever since you’re zero years previous that everyone is towards you,” Heymann stated. “Most of all Arabs.”
However there have been those that resisted, and he had discovered a way of neighborhood amongst them. Now, some activists he had protested with, fought for peace with, have been turning their backs on the motion.
“There are such a lot of nice causes for Israeli Jewish individuals to be afraid for his or her lives now, and to be filled with hate, and rage and the feeling of revenge,” he stated. “It’s pure.”
“To ask or to want or to demand individuals in such a situation additionally to have compassion and mercy for the Palestinian individuals in Gaza … is sadly fairly an enormous factor to ask,” he stated. “And I’ll hold preventing to vary their minds.”
Heymann has Palestinian flags tucked away in his residence, which he used to take out for peace marches; he would take photos of the demonstrations and ship them to Om Ayan.
His youngsters attend an Israeli-Palestinian bilingual college. He already hopes that his 9-year-old son will refuse necessary navy service, even when it means going to jail. There are stickers on his toilet tiles with the identical message in Arabic, Hebrew and English: “Democracy and occupation can’t coexist.”
On the afternoon of Oct. 16, Heymann’s buddies known as him, nervous. He had posted on Fb that whereas nothing may justify Hamas’s assault, Israel bore some duty for blockading Gaza and denying Palestinians primary human rights.
His identify, photograph and residential tackle have been being posted on right-wing Telegram channels, individuals advised him. It took him two weeks to inform his companion, who was in a foreign country with their youngsters.
However he advised Om Ayan the identical day.
He moved out of his residence and stayed in a pal’s residence, the place he lay awake that October evening, praying for a response from her.
Greater than 24 hours later, his telephone dinged.
“They lower off the web from the Gaza Strip for 2 days. It simply got here again, however we don’t have telephone charging,” her message learn.
Shortly after Oct. 7, as airstrikes hammered northern Gaza, Om Ayan wrapped up her 7-month-old daughter, hushing her cries, and packed a milk bottle and a lollipop, vaccination papers and medical data. She was two months pregnant along with her second baby.
Earlier than strolling out of her Gaza Metropolis residence, she reached for the important thing — not figuring out if she would ever want it once more.
Israel’s warfare towards Hamas has killed greater than 28,000 individuals in Gaza, in keeping with the Gaza Well being Ministry, lots of them girls and youngsters.
She fled to her mom’s home in Khan Younis, the place she was born. Water, milk and meals for her household have been exhausting to come back by. By the point she messaged Heymann, she had not showered in additional than two weeks.
Om Ayan stored her communications with him a secret.
“It’s tough to elucidate to the Arabs right here that you’re speaking to an Israeli,” she stated. “[They] might imagine that you’re betraying your nation and sharing safety information with him.”
In actuality, she was asking if he may ship her some cash, so she may afford flour, a tent, some medicines. And he or she requested how he was doing, concerning the well being of his mom and youngsters.
As preventing escalated in her hometown, she took her household farther south, to Rafah, the place she and her daughter, husband and his three youngsters from a earlier marriage crammed right into a single tent. Rain poured down, soaking their nylon partitions. Om Ayan advised Heymann on Dec. 15 that she was nervous for her well being.
He was on the best way to an indication in Tel Aviv when she messaged him. 1000’s of Israelis had gathered to name for the discharge of hostages and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However Heymann was one among solely a handful of protesters to name for an finish to the warfare.
Onlookers shouted curses at them.
On Dec. 30, Om Ayan escaped Gaza. Her brother had citizenship overseas and utilized to get his relations out. The paperwork got here by means of after weeks of ready.
“There may be hope that’s perhaps perhaps you can be out of this nightmare quickly?!?! I pray for you on a regular basis,” Heymann wrote when he discovered.
However leaving introduced its personal agony for Om Ayan, who requested that her present location not be disclosed for safety causes. Her husband’s three older youngsters weren’t allowed to come back with them and needed to keep behind with their aunts in Rafah. They have been already sick from sleeping outdoors within the chilly. Her husband wept.
She wrote to Heymann the day she crossed the border.
“I’m now secure. I’ve escaped the dying of Israeli bombing.”
“Wonderful, wonderful!” he cheered in a voice notice. “Wow I’m so blissful that you simply left.”
“My sisters and youngsters are nonetheless below bombardment there” she stated. “😭😭”
“I pray for them dearest,” he replied.
Now, in an odd residence of her personal, Om Ayan reaches for her daughter in the course of the evening, as she did through the nights below bombardment. Medical doctors inform her she has hypertension that might put her being pregnant in peril. Attempt to chill out, they inform her. However she is glued to the information, terrified for these nonetheless trapped in Gaza.
Heymann raised cash for her household to assist them modify to their new lives. He continues to attend peace rallies, typically bringing his son alongside.
When his companion and youngsters left Israel for the winter, he determined to remain.
“It’s my recollections and it’s my language and it’s my meals,” he stated. “I’ll at all times combat with a purpose to make it a greater place.”
Om Ayan feels the identical pull of residence, however her home has been destroyed. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be capable to return. However she hopes someday she will meet her Israeli pal.
“Simply to look him within the eyes,” she stated, “could be good.”
Hajar Harb in London contributed to this report.
