šļøThey/Them | 30+ | Happily Married to @variouslengthsofwire Just a collection of random things. Fandom related. Catch me on AO3 as RenkonNairu; https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenkonNairu
I donāt have the fortitude to check out the comments today, but the post is here.
Eliya Cohen thought his girlfriend, Ziv Abud, was dead when he was kidnapped at the Nova festival. Now they are looking forward to getting m
Eliya
I met Ziv in 2011 while growing up near Tel Aviv. We were both 14 and I saw her crying because her boyfriend had left her. Trying to help, I said, āDonāt cry. You are young, pretty and you will have a good life ahead of you.ā She eventually messaged me on Instagram and we started hanging out together. I learnt quickly that she has the most beautiful soul and her love for me was like nothing I had ever experienced. Later we moved in together and we were together every day until October 7, 2023.
Part of my job was organising festivals and we spent many weekends with our friends, listening to music, drinking and having fun. The Nova festival, held in the Negev desert in southern Israel, was something we were all looking forward to. Even after we saw the missiles in the sky that day, we thought, āAh, this is Israel. It is a normal day.ā So we carried on dancing. It was only when I got a call from my aunt, who was also at the festival, that we realised something was not right. She was screaming, saying that someone in her car had been shot. I said to Ziv, āWe should get out of here.ā
We drove with Zivās nephew and his girlfriend, heading for the main road, but there was a police roadblock. We turned the car around and drove maybe five minutes until we saw a bomb shelter ā a common sight near the border. More people joined us in the shelter, but we were all talking and joking. Although it was scary, we had seen it before.
Then suddenly the terrorists were outside the shelter and they were going to kill us. A grenade rolled into the shelter and exploded. Another grenade and we are fighting, picking up the grenades and throwing them out of the door. It was like this for 40 minutes until the terrorists fired a rocket-propelled grenade.
I donāt know how, but my mind was still working. Ziv fainted and I knew the only chance to save her was to bury her underneath the dead bodies. Two of those bodies were her nephew and his girlfriend.
The bullets were still coming into the shelter and I was shot in the leg, but then I was dragged out and loaded onto a truck. The last thing I saw was a terrorist pointing his gun into the shelter and firing a hundred bullets. I was sure Ziv was dead.
I was driven to Gaza and thousands of people were on the streets celebrating. I was more scared of these people than I was of the terrorists. The terrorists wanted to keep me alive, a hostage for negotiation. Those ordinary people wanted to kill me. They wanted the respect that would come from killing a Jew.
I was held for 505 days. In the tunnels was the worst ā no light, no sleep, beatings, being stripped naked so they could laugh at us, no food, no water. There was a wonderful day when we realised we were so far underground that there was damp on the walls. We would lick the walls. At least we had a drop of water. I put my trust in God. I knew they would not break me.
The days blurred into one, but when we heard a rumour that Donald Trump had been elected it made my group of four hostages very excited. Two weeks later our captors told us three of us would be released. Just three, not four. I was lucky enough to be one of them but knowing one of us was still in captivity filled me with guilt. Alon Ohel was freed eight months later.
Then I saw my family. And Ziv. She was alive. It wasnāt real, but it was. Of course then I found out what had been happening in the world. The marches celebrating the murders and rapes, babies being slaughtered. The only reason people can mock is because we are Jewish. If it happened to other people they wouldnāt.
Even after I was released I didnāt allow myself to continue with life. How could I see a doctor or start my therapy when the other hostages werenāt free? The 20 remaining living hostages were released last October.
It has taken a long time but Ziv and I now try to think about the future. I bought an engagement ring before October 7 and have now had the chance to propose. We will marry this summer and build a family with many children in Israel, in the land where they tried to kill us. For me, thatās the biggest victory of all.
Ziv
The bomb shelter we were in on that day in 2023 ā on Route 232 near the Kibbutz Reāim ā is now known as the shelter of death. The first grenade exploded and the sound, the smell, the dead bodiesā¦ not even bodies, arms and legs and blood. I was scared like I have never been scared before. I peed myself three or four times.
The last thing I remember is holding Eliyaās hand and him covering me with dead bodies. I think I heard him scream, saying heād been shot. Then one of the terrorists began shooting into the shelter ā a machinegun. So many bullets. I could feel them hitting the bodies on top of me ā thum-thum-thum ā making the bodies shudder and move. And then nothing.
I woke up at 11am and the attack had started at eight. There was me and six other survivors in the shelter, and we had no idea what was going to happen. Would the terrorists come back? We sat with our dead friends for seven hours until we were rescued and taken to a hospital. I tried to call my sisters and they said they had seen a picture of Eliya. I thought they were lying, trying to make me happy, but then I saw the picture on the news. He was alive but he was in Gaza ā a hostage.
I cried myself to sleep every night but each morning I would tell myself that I would make sure Eliya came home. I was part of the delegations travelling around the world, telling people about October 7. When he was finally released and I saw him again, after 16 months, he was so thin, my Eliya, and like a ghost.
When I was a child I heard people talk about the Holocaust and how much people hated Jews, but I thought that people had changed. Then I saw marches all over Europe, defending what had happened. People would stop me in the street and say Hamas is not a terrorist group, they are fighting for human rights.
Of the people who were murdered, we knew 48 of them. [Official figures put the death toll of the October 7 attacks at 1,200.] My nephew and his girlfriend are gone. I suffer from PTSD and still have nightmares. When I tried on my wedding dress, there was nothing, no happy tears. October 7 changed us, it changed everything, but we have hope. Our wedding is going to be our moment. It is our present from God.
The Nova Exhibition London is open in Shoreditch until July 5. Tickets and information at novaexhibition.com. Proceeds will go towards supporting Nova Music Festival survivors and bereaved families
#and with shows that could actually withstand PhD level dissertations #the fans show up like why is this complicated why is it not a coloring book for toddlers (via @ariaste)
I often see posts about curating your own online experience that make the point, ācontent creators arenāt your parents.ā And, yes, that is absolutely true! And I try not to be like āas a parent,ā but as a parentā¦
EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.
When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (āWhat are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?ā Etc.) and she asked, āWhat do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?ā
I piped up like, āOh, he doesnāt watch TV without one of us in the room,ā which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, āYes, but that wonāt always be the case, so make sure youāre talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.ā
So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: āTurn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what youāre feeling.ā
The answer is NOT āAsk your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,ā because thatās just not possible ā and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later heās going to be out in the world where we canāt control what he watches or reads. That doesnāt mean we donāt try to make sure heās watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means thatās not the only safeguard he has ā and thatās a good thing.
So yes, content creators arenāt your parents and arenāt responsible for making sure you never see anything you donāt like ā but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didnāt, take it from me, your internet mom:
Turn it off.
Walk away.
Talk to someone you trust about how youāre feeling.
And leave the person who created the thing that upset you alone.
I have put Iocaine powder in one of these two goblets. You choose, then we both drink.
If you choose the more popular option you are poisoned, and must log off and do something you are putting off. If you choose otherwise, you may reblog and keep scrolling!
gender essentialism is soooo funny bc it's like "this is what women are like" and you're like "I've met women and many of them, if not the majority, have not been like that" and it's like "well women SHOULD be like that" and you're like "why should women be like that" and its like "because that's what women are like"
If things related to Jewishness or Judaism immediately make you say Free Palestine you are an antisemite. If you cannot see a Star of David without thinking Free Palestine then you are an antisemite. Thatās all there is to it. āBut thereās no bad time to advocate for a free Palestine!ā Yet you donāt say it on LGBTQ pride posts. You donāt say it to random Christian people. You donāt say it about random posts about disabled people. There is one and only one minority whoās existence elicits a flood of āfree Palestine.ā
i get so emotional every time i think about fanfic culture. it's just so beautiful that people are writing and anonymously posting these thousand-word stories about characters we all love and not even getting any money or public fame from it. it's literally just for the love of the game.
shout out to everyone who participates in fanfic culture, be it reading or writing fanfics. you are contributing to such a lovely thing <3
i genuinely donāt know how to explain to some of you that the USA isnāt the Source Of All Evil in the world in a way that youād actually understand it
there are places where honor killings are legal and queer people get the death penalty and you canāt sell property to people of a certain ethnicity and virtually everyone is part of a singular religion. the supreme court just upheld birthright citizenship, something most countries donāt even have.
please understand that the rightward trend in US politics is alarming but mischaracterizing the US as the Worst Place On Earth is just fucking dumb as shit!
"Oh yeah, we have an outdoor Corgi, he just gets so bored cooped up inside all day. He knows to stay off the road. Don't worry, he's way too smart for coyotes and the neighbor's know to look out when they drive past."
"Us? Oh, of *course* our Dachshund sleeps inside- we just let him out in the morning and make sure he comes back for dinner. He just does his own thing, no worries."
"Um, you know it's not humane to keep a chihuahua confined to an apartment? They're dogs, they're natural predators. They need to experience hunting behaviors or they get depressed. No we don't leash ours, he absolutely hates it, we just let him come and go whenever."
Yall get how fucking stupid that sounds, right? So stop letting your goddamn cats get eaten and attacked and infected and hit by cars
A toddler would probably love full unattended access to the neighborhood too, but we don't do that either, do we
It's 2026, "keep your damn pet in a house or in your view" should not be controversial
