The Gaza Envelope Does Not Forget, but It Knows How to Smile Again: The Garden Pub Comes Back to Life

Video: The “A Sip of Shikma” project arrived at the opening party for the performance season in Netiv HaAsara / Editing: Gilad Man Mannheim

However you look at it, the moshav of Netiv HaAsara is a symbol. For years of drip attacks that turned into a deluge, it stood as a symbol of the determination of the Gaza envelope residents to hold on to their land. On October 7, it became one of the sad symbols of the failure and the heroism, and the fact that today, more than a year and a half later, only about 40% of the evacuated residents have returned is a sign that the road to victory is still long.

Perhaps that is why the moshav, one of the first places we contacted as part of the “A Sip of Shikma” project to strengthen the pubs in the Gaza envelope communities, a joint initiative of Walla and CBC Israel, the producer of Shikma beer, is also among the last places where events related to the operation are still being held. The contact person was Micha Biton, born in Sderot and a resident of Netiv HaAsara. For Micha, a musician at heart and by profession, there was a modest request, help purchasing a lighting truss for the live performances held outside the “Hagen” pub, the community pub of Netiv HaAsara.

The operation enlisted Yossi Adizas, Walla’s head lighting technician, and A.B. Noam Electronics, who designed the optimal lighting for the site. It was installed just before winter and put into storage, in the hope that by the start of the outdoor performance season, the settlement would already be full again. And yet, a new spring arrived in Netiv HaAsara.

Shikma sent beers to the event, as many as we could drink, and from Tel Aviv came the Sanadrink crew with the lovely mixologist Ray White, who prepared no fewer than three different cocktails based on Shikma beers. Hot pizzas were collected from the Pizza Hut branch in Sderot, donated to the event by “The Hut,” and so the friends arrived, first one by one, then family after family, and finally the whole community.

We would say the cocktails flowed like water, but the truth is they flowed like Shikma beer, together with an atmosphere that can exist only in a place like this, at a time like this. Between the drinks and the cocktails, a few words of blessing were also heard. Haim Yellin, the former head of the Eshkol Regional Council, spoke emotionally about local resilience, and about how “there are people whose healing is to be here and restore the thing that happened to us.” Then Micha took the stage. He sang, spoke little, but gave a clear sense of a beginning.

In the audience sat friends who until recently had not dared to return, and suddenly they were back. One of those present said simply, “These days this is the only place I go. Good people, nice people. The pub is amazing. Shikma beer, of course.” The pizzas were finished, the beers kept being poured, and in the heart, between memory and the future, hovered the understanding: we do not forget what happened here, but we are learning, little by little, to smile again.