Two Young Women — One Israeli, One Palestinian — Whose Lives Were Devastated by Oct. 7 & the War in Gaza That Followed
Agam, an 18-year-old Israeli, and Ghada, a 23-year-old Palestinian, pictured in side-by-side screengrabs from the documentary "A Year of War: Israelis and Palestinians."
It’s been a year since the Oct. 7 attacks and the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
That span of time has changed everything for two young women — one Israeli, one Palestinian — who share their stories in a new documentary from FRONTLINE.
“I’ve forgotten who Ghada was and how I used to live,” says 23-year-old Ghada, who lives in Gaza. “If I want to remind myself, I go back to my phone and look at photos. My dream was to start a solar energy company. To be honest, my dream now is for my family and I to make it out alive.”
Agam, now 18, was taken hostage on Oct. 7 after gunmen stormed her kibbutz. She recalls the attack that day, saying, “I can only remember a sort of sigh of relief as I was about to die. After five hours of being scared to death, it’s finally happening. I certainly didn’t think they would kidnap us. It didn’t cross my mind.”
The two young women’s harrowing experiences — which include the deaths of close family members — are documented in A Year of War: Israelis and Palestinians, a 90-minute FRONTLINE documentary premiering Oct. 15 on PBS stations and online.
In the film, Agam is among the Israelis who recount what it was like to live through the Oct. 7 attacks, the deadliest day for Jews since World War II, with around 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage. And in Gaza, where more than 40,000 people have reportedly been killed in Israel’s retaliation against Hamas, Ghada is among the Palestinians who describe — and record — the large-scale devastation.
In this excerpt, Agam recalls her time being held captive by Hamas in Gaza, and says she tried to connect with her captors in order to survive: “My mother and I often asked them questions such as, ‘If we were to enter your house and kidnap your children and wife to Israel, what would you do?’”
Many times, Agam says, her captors “suddenly screamed at us in the middle of the day to put on a hijab, to put a dress on, and told us, ‘We’re leaving. We have to run.’” She describes shooting and explosions, and says, “We were right in the middle of a battlefield.”
“I was trying to come to terms with the fact that my life is now in the hands of a terrorist organization: From now on, I have to rely on Hamas,” Agam says. “Of course, I didn’t trust them. I was dying from fear. Their control over me was total.”
In the below excerpt, Ghada describes the war’s impact on her 3-year-old sister, who she films asking, “Where’s the bombing?” as an explosion is heard in the background.
Her sister “gets very afraid,” Ghada says. “She’s supposed to be learning, reading. She’s learned things she shouldn’t have to. She knows we could die at any moment.”
Ghada also describes being displaced by Israeli military operations around 15 times — and then returning to her family’s neighborhood to find their home destroyed.
“We couldn’t recognize anything,” she says. “The destruction was unimaginable.”
As Ghada and her family surveyed their ruined apartment, she says her mother began to sob.
“It was,” she says, “the first time I’d seen her break down completely.”
Through individual accounts from Palestinians and Israelis like Ghada and Agam, the documentary offers a visceral portrait of a conflict with no end in sight.
“I thought, in another universe, we might live together,” Agam says in the documentary, adding that after her experience, she now believes “the gap is so deep” and “the opportunity is gone.”
“My family, or I, could die at any moment,” says Ghada in the film. “There’s no future at all.”
For the full story, watch A Year of War: Israelis and Palestinians. The documentary will be available at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App starting Oct. 15, 2024, at 7/6c. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c and will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. A Year of War: Israelis and Palestinians is a Top Hat production for GBH/FRONTLINE. The director is Robin Barnwell. The producers are Robin Barnwell and Toby Fitzpatrick. The senior producer is Dan Edge. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
