Remembering Hayim Katsman Z"L

I am proud to share that I am helping to raise money for a community center in Rahat in honor of Hayim Katsman Z”L and would be incredibly honored if you would consider supporting this cause.

Hayim and I didn’t know each other before he was killed on October 7th, but we did exist in the same community of Israeli activists fighting for equality and for all peoples between the river to the sea.

I know his sibling, Noy, and following Hayim’s murder by Hamas, Noy publicly spoke out against revenge but instead to work for a just future, stating clearly that this would also be the most proper way to remember Hayim’s life.

Hayim means life in Hebrew, and from everything I know of him, he embodied both living fully and simply. Even in his death, he used his own body to shield his neighbor, saving her life. She later went on to save two children the same day.

Some could call Hayim a peace activist, and that would not be wrong. Yet sometimes the term “peace” activist can connote an ignoring of the existing structures that have created the violence we are in, or can minimize the blatant power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians. In his daily and academic work, it’s clear that Hayim was a political activist who understood that peace can only truly be achieved with justice and an overhaul of the current political systems that Israelis and Palestinians live in.

Hayim was an academic and a thinker. In his last piece, which you can read in full here, he strategized a new way forward for the Israeli left, requiring it to relinquish its desire and hold on to ethnonationalism.

But he wasn’t just a writer or a philosopher, though his contributions will remain with us indefinitely. He was a gardener and an activist. He spent days doing a protective presence in the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank, gardening, DJing and working together with the community of Rahat, a Bedouin city in the Naqab/Negev, to create two community gardens.

To continue his work and emulate his values, we are raising funds for a sustainability center in Rahat to be called the “Hayim Center” in Arabic. The center will educate the public about ecological values ​​and will be led by Rahat community members for whole community.

Please join me in supporting this cause and honoring Hayim’s life.