Just one day before the two-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel, Israeli authorities have demolished multiple structures belonging to Yousef Zyadna, a Palestinian Bedouin citizen of Israel who drew widespread praise across Israel for rescuing 30 Israelis from the deadly Nova music festival massacre. The demolitions are part of a long-running state campaign targeting unapproved construction in Bedouin communities in the Negev (Naqab) region, and Zyadna’s neighborhood faces a total of 65 pending demolition orders that threaten to displace dozens of families.
According to local Israeli news outlet Local Call, dozens of Israeli bulldozers entered Zyadna’s neighborhood near the southern Bedouin city of Rahat on Monday, leveling a warehouse and chicken coop owned by Zyadna, as well as the home of his nephew. The newlywed nephew had already demolished the home himself to avoid the humiliation of a state-forced demolition, social commentator Zachary Foster reported on social media. Zyadna, a part-time minibus driver, drove to the festival grounds in the early hours of the October 7 attacks to ferry trapped attendees to safety, an act of bravery that later earned him a public award at Israel’s Friends of Zion Museum.
Despite the loss of his family’s property, Zyadna says he holds no regret for his actions on October 7. “These are our values. This is how we were raised,” he told Local Call. Tragically, the Zyadna family already suffered devastating loss from the October 7 attacks: four family members were taken hostage by Hamas, and while two were released in a November 2023 hostage exchange, two others—Hamza and Yousef—died in captivity, with their remains only returned to the family in January 2025. Zyadna says he holds Ottoman-era land documents that prove his family has lived on the land continuously long before the founding of the State of Israel, and he remains defiant in the face of the state’s demolition campaign. “I will not leave my land,” he said.
The demolitions have drawn sharp condemnation from Israeli opposition politicians, who describe the action as a moral failure that betrays the spirit of coexistence Zyadna came to represent. “Yousef Zyadna is an Israeli hero and a symbol of coexistence,” said Knesset member Naama Lazimi of the opposition Democratic Party. “Monday’s demolition is a moral and ethical disgrace. The shared trauma and solidarity of October 7 cannot remain only in ceremonies and speeches. It must also be expressed in policy, in recognition of heroism, and in the state’s responsibility toward all of its citizens.”
Zyadna also revealed that he has required ongoing mental health treatment in the years since the October 7 attacks, but the Israeli state has provided no financial support for his care. He canceled a planned scheduled media interview just days after the demolition, inviting reporters to instead come to his neighborhood to see the destruction firsthand.
The demolitions targeting Zyadna’s community are part of a broader policy pushed by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has made clearing so-called illegal construction in Bedouin Negev communities a central policy priority. Ben Gvr frames the campaign as an effort to “restore governance” to the region, and just one day after the Rahat demolitions, he celebrated additional home demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem on social media platform X, writing, “The bulldozers of governance never rest for a moment.”
Bedouin communities make up roughly a third of the Negev’s total population, numbering around 320,000 people. For decades, Bedouin communities in the region have faced systemic displacement and dispossession, and they remain among the poorest and most socially marginalized groups in Israeli society. Rahat, the city near Zyadna’s neighborhood, was itself established decades ago as part of a state campaign to force Bedouin communities off their ancestral grazing lands and into concentrated, state-approved settled communities.