Where to start the saga of the Weissmann family? When ? In what city ? What generation? Basically, where does the journey begin? Yaakov Weissmann, 83, now patriarch, gives a mischievous smile. “It’s up to you to decide how far back in time!” he said. I can only tell my personal story, linked to that of Israel, which has become my base and my anchor; the land where my three daughters were born, my ten grandchildren, four great-grandchildren. A simple story, a Jewish story, an Israeli story that began one fine day in 1959, when I arrived in the port of Haifa from Marseille, crazy with hope, with a cardboard suitcase and a Tyrolean backpack. »
He pauses, arches his large frame, his forearms resting on his thighs. Then continues: “ As for the source, the reason for the journey… It is important to remember it. It is constitutive of my family history as well as that of the country. And it can be summed up in four words: hatred of Jews! This age-old and universal anti-Semitism which has thrown us onto the roads, fleeing persecution and pogroms. Until the advent of Israel. » He didn’t raise his voice, his smile remained affable. We are almost surprised that these terrible words can be spoken calmly, in a tone of evidence.
Especially since he immediately mentions the massacre perpetrated on October 7 by Hamas in the Jewish villages located around the Gaza Strip, it is to see it as a bloody confirmation of this historical fact. “See? Horror can always resurface. Again and again. The difference with the centuries of attacks and stalking that preceded us is that we now have a country. It is the only safe haven for Jews from around the world and it must remain so at all costs. We don’t have another one! » Hence the war ” to defend “. A war “existential” in which all Israeli youth are called to participate. “ What other choice? he sighs. The nature of this country is that it cannot afford to lose a single war. »
So. In a few sentences, he established a framework, gave a key, imposed a subtext on the story. And, deep down, half-heartedly admitted the anguish that gnaws at him, he who had chosen, more than forty years ago, to settle his family less than 400 meters from the Gaza Strip. An agricultural village, a moshav, was born, under the name of Netiv Haasara. Hamas terrorists entered there at dawn on October 7. Twenty residents were murdered. The twenty-three members of the Weissmann clan escaped.
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