Israeli-American Peace Activist Killed by Hamas Saved 3 Others

An Israeli-American, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists, ended up saving three people, including two young children.

Thirty-two-year-old Hayim Katsman, a peace activist with a doctorate in international studies, shielded his neighbor Avital Alajem and “absorbed all the bullets” from Hamas terrorists invading Kibbutz Holit in Israel on Saturday, according to Forward, a Jewish publication.

The terrorist then kidnapped Alajem and took her to Gaza. Along the way, the terrorists took another family’s four-month-old baby and a four-year-old boy. But at some point during the kidnappings, the terrorists abandoned them, and Alajem was able to save the children and return to the kibbutz, according to the report.

“Hayim in Hebrew is ‘life,’” Alajem said. “That’s the meaning of his name. And he gave life to this planet as he saved me, and I was able to save two kids.”

Alajem told CNN: “I was saved because he was next to the door.” Alajem visited Katsman’s mother to tell her the story of her son’s sacrifice in person.

“One of my friends said, ‘Maybe he inspired her to do what she did,’” his mother, Hannah Wacholder Katsman said.

Wacholder called her son’s death “chilling” in a phone interview with Forward.

“My father grew up in Poland. He survived the Holocaust with false papers. My mother was a refugee from Germany who left after Hitler came to power. It’s chilling to me that my son died hiding in a closet,” she said.

Hayim’s doctoral research focused on religious Zionist communities, and the relationship between religion and radicalism,” according to the report. The Association for Israel students had called him and “emerging scholar.” He was also involved in various peace initiatives, including Mahsom Watch, which monitors Israeli military activity in the West Bank.

University of Washington professor James Wellman “noted the cruel irony of his death,” according to the report.

“This wonderful human being was killed who had no malice toward either side,” Wellman told KOMO News.

He had a “very deep concern for all the residents of Israel and the Palestinian territories,” Devin Naar told The Washington Post.

Katsman was described by others as a music lover who spent his time in the kibbutz working as a landscaper and a car mechanic. He also volunteered by coordinating and Israel-Palestine research group at the University of Washington and taught Hebrew to teenagers at Kadima, a Reconstructionist congregation in Seattle, the report states.

“Katsman was offered a three-year contract to teach in a small American college town, but his mother said ‘he couldn’t imagine living there,”‘ according to the report. “Instead, he returned to Kibbutz Holit. He’d originally moved there after completing his army service, helping to ‘revive this kibbutz that was aging and isolated, and frankly dangerous,’ his mother told the Post.”

Wacholder Katsman said waiting for her son’s body has “been a nightmare.”

“[On Monday night], ‘they told us they were starting the process,’” she said. “On Tuesday, we couldn’t figure out what was going on. We never dreamed we’d get to Thursday morning and we’re still — it could be any minute, it could be next week, we don’t know.”

But she said she knows her son is one of hundreds of civilians whose bodies are being processed after being murdered by Hamas.

“They are not equipped … to deal with that scale,” she said.