“Are you somewhat okay?????” He wrote at 1:15 a.m. on October 28.
One check mark. no answer.
They met online in 2019, after Heyman donated to a fund that helped Umm Ayan’s father obtain cancer treatment in the West Bank. He stayed in touch over the years. They knew the names of each other's parents and children, and shared photos of their homes and hobbies. They both said it was just a friendship, never romantic. But it was Hayman's only window into Gaza and Umm Ayan's only contact with an Israeli.
The horrors of October 7 and the conflict in Gaza brought them closer together, finding in each other a refuge from grief and isolation. Heyman, a peace activist who felt increasingly alone in wartime Israel, knew there was someone who understood him in Gaza. Umm Ayan, under siege and bombing, knew that someone in Israel was thinking about her.
Umm Ayan, 28, shared her story on the condition that she be identified by a pseudonym, out of fear for the safety of her family.
It was weird to feel so connected to her,” Heyman said. However, here he was again wondering if she was still breathing.
“Dear? Are you there??????? Please please send me a life sign please,” he had written two days earlier. They always sent text messages in English.
She replied then: “I'm alive, don't worry.” “We're not okay.”
Heyman, 48, had already lost people in Israel. Should he grieve for her too?
On October 7, it was Ayan's mother who sent the message first.
Before the war, they exchanged letters intermittently, when their busy lives allowed them to do so – sending family updates, photos, and well wishes.
“I hope this is the start of a beautiful new year for you,” she wrote on January 1, 2023.
In May, her husband obtained a permit to work in Israel. Her daughter, Aileen, had just been born.
“Send me his number and I will call him,” Heyman wrote. “Also-I'll give him baby clothes.”
“At the most basic level, we are both parents of young children,” he said, sitting in his loft in Jaffa on a clear, warm day in December.
“We shared that feeling of lack of humanity around us,” Heyman said. “So I think we find comfort in each other.”
It was a friendship he rarely talked about in his conversations with other Israelis. after Hamas and allied fighters streamed into southern Israel on October 7, leading to their deaths. About 1,200 people and more than 250 hostages in Gaza – he was more reluctant to mention it.
Hyman had a high school classmate who was shot in front of her children. Hamas took the father of a close friend hostage.
Shocked and shocked, many Israelis felt that no one from Gaza could be trusted. There were calls on social media for revenge, to kill everyone in Gaza. He was worried about Ayan's mother: “That was the first thing I thought of.”
The harsh criticism was not surprising. It was a familiar hatred. “If you grow up in Israel, they are injected into your blood, into your veins since you are zero years old, and everyone is against you,” Heyman said. “Most Arabs.”
But there were those who resisted, and he found among them a sense of community. Now, some of the activists he protested with and fought for peace are turning their backs on the movement.
“There are a lot of great reasons why the Israeli Jewish people are afraid for their lives right now, full of hatred and anger and a sense of revenge,” he said. “It's normal.”
He added: “We ask, desire, or demand that people living in such circumstances have compassion and compassion toward the Palestinian people in Gaza… which is unfortunately a big thing to ask for.” “I will continue to fight to change their minds.”
Heyman has Palestinian flags hidden in his house, which he raises at peace marches; He would take pictures of the demonstrations and send them to Umm Ayan.
His children attend a bilingual Israeli-Palestinian school. He already hopes his 9-year-old son will refuse mandatory military service, even if it means going to prison. There are posters on his bathroom tiles with the same message in Arabic, Hebrew and English: “Democracy and occupation cannot coexist.”
On the afternoon of October 16, Heyman's friends called him, concerned. He had posted on Facebook that although nothing could justify a Hamas attack, Israel bears some responsibility for the blockade of Gaza and depriving Palestinians of basic human rights.
People told him that his name, photo, and home address were posted on right-wing Telegram channels. It took him two weeks to tell his partner, who was out of the country with their children.
But he told Umm Ayan on the same day.
He moved out of his home and stayed at a friend's apartment, where he lay awake that October night, praying for an answer from her.
More than 24 hours later, his phone rang.
“They cut off the internet in the Gaza Strip for two days. It just came back, but we have no phone charge.
Shortly after October 7, as airstrikes hit northern Gaza, Ayan's mother wrapped her 7-month-old daughter, silencing her cries, and packed a bottle of milk, a pacifier, vaccination papers and medical records. She was two months pregnant with her second child.
Before she left her apartment in Gaza City, she reached for the key – not knowing if she would need it again.
The war waged by Israel against Hamas has killed more than 28,000 people in Gaza, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, many of them women and children.
She fled to her mother's house in Khan Yunis, where she was born. It was difficult to provide water, milk and food for her family. By the time she texted Heyman, she had not showered in more than two weeks.
Ayan's mother kept her contacts with him a secret.
“It is difficult to explain to the Arabs here that you are talking to an Israeli,” she said. “[They] He may think that you are betraying your country and sharing security news with him.”
In fact, she was asking if he could send her some money so she could buy flour, a tent, and some medicine. I asked him about his condition and the health of his mother and children.
As the fighting in her hometown escalated, she took her family south, to Rafah, where she, her daughter, her husband and his three children from a previous marriage were crammed into one tent. The rain fell, soaking through their nylon walls. Ayan's mother told Hyman on December 15 that she was worried about her health.
He was on his way to a demonstration in Tel Aviv when I texted him. Thousands of Israelis gathered to demand the release of the hostages and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Heyman was one of the few protesters calling for an end to the war.
Onlookers shouted insults they.
On December 30, Umm Ayan fled Gaza. Her brother had the citizenship of another country and applied to remove his family members. The papers came after weeks of waiting.
“There's hope maybe you'll get out of this nightmare soon?!?! Praying for you all the time,” Heyman wrote when he found out.
But the departure brought special suffering to Ayan's mother, who asked that her current location not be revealed for security reasons. Her husband's three older children were not allowed to come with them, and had to stay with their aunts in Rafah. They were already sick from sleeping outside in the cold. Her husband cried.
I wrote to Heyman the day I crossed the border.
“I am now safe. I escaped death as a result of the Israeli bombing.”
“Amazing amazing!” he exclaimed in a voice note. “Wow I'm so glad you left.”
“My sisters and children are still under bombardment there,” she said. “😭😭”
He replied: “I pray for them, my dear.”
Now, in a strange apartment of her own, Ayan's mother reaches for her daughter in the middle of the night, as she did on nights under bombing. Doctors told her she had high blood pressure, which could put her pregnancy at risk. They tell her to try to relax. But she is glued to the news, terrified for those still trapped in Gaza.
Heyman raised money for her family to help them adjust to their new lives. He continues to attend peace marches, sometimes taking his son with him.
when he was His partner and children left Israel for the winter, so he decided to stay.
“They are my memories, they are my language, and they are my food,” he said. “I will always fight to make it a better place.”
Ayan's mother feels the same sense of belonging to her home, but her home has been destroyed. She doesn't know if she'll ever be able to come back. But one day she hopes to be able to meet her Israeli friend.
“Just looking into his eyes would be nice,” she said.
He immigrated Harb in London contributed to this report.
