Brandon Kramer’s documentary Holding Liat follows an Israeli family torn apart by the Hamas attacks, but clinging to hopes of reconciliation
W
hen Hamas attacked southern Israeli communities on 7 October 2023, unleashing a devastating retaliation against Gaza that is still under way nearly two years later, those few who still hoped for peaceful coexistence were among the first to die.
The hardest-hit kibbutz, Nir Oz, has nearly 70 year-old roots in the Jewish socialist youth group, Hashomer Hatzair, which advocated for equal rights for Jews and Arabs in a binational state. Before the attack, volunteers from the kibbutz transported critically ill Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals for treatment.
Liat and Aviv Atzili were staunch liberals, a history teacher and an artist-mechanic, progressive parents to their three children. When Liat, a US-Israeli dual national, would complain about some difficulty in life on the kibbutz, Aviv would remind her of the plight of 2.3 million Palestinians living a couple of kilometres away, walled up in the tiny Gaza Strip.
