Israel's Hidden Heroes Delivering Babies Under Fire | An Interview with Gila Zarbiv

Now you came, you said 2007.

I've been coming to Israel for about 20 years myself.

And you've noticed, you've seen sort of a journey of circumstances from 2007 through to today.

And I want you to tell me a little bit about sort of the feeling in Israel when you first came and and what sort of normal life became while you were living and studying and working there, and how that's changed.

I know that there's a lot in there, but I think it's important for people to understand sort of what life is like on the ground.

Those are really good questions.

So when I first moved here, we've already, you know, 2007, it's almost 20 years ago.

It's crazy.

We've already had intifadas.

They've been multiple, multiple wars.

And I came at a relatively quiet and almost peaceful time.

I met my husband during a time of a lot of stability.

My babies were born with a lot of stability.

And then we had the war in Lebanon where Mazen was gone for a long time.

He was gone for about three months in those days.

Nowadays, it's years.

But in those days, that was a really long time.

And it was really our first introduction to understanding if we want to live here, the unique aspect of being in Israel is Unlike other places where I've lived, I'm originally from the United States.

We spent some time in Canada.

There's something very unique about Israel that if you want to live there, you must fight for it because it's not a given.

Our home is not a given.

Our existence is not a given.

Our life is not a given.

So that was the first time being thrust into this reality that if we want to be here, we need to actually give our blood, sweat, and tears to this place.

And then we had a little bit more of relative peace.