My heart is still in Gaza
The tragic incident of Oct. 7, 2023: The kibbutz, Israel, of a civilian hostage or an Israeli prime minister
On Oct. 7, 2023, my freedom, security and peace were brutally taken from me. I was taken from my home that day. The fields, farmland and homes of our kibbutz became battlefields as terrorists killed, kidnapped and burned their victims. A quarter of the community that I was a part of for 56 years was either murdered or kidnapped. I am 86 years old; in my life, I had never experienced this sort of horror.
Thousands of Israelis with the means to do so have chosen to leave Israel since Oct. 7; others are considering or planning emigrating. The Civil Disobedience movement began before the attacks and continued after a brief break, with new focus on the hostage crisis and demand for early. Images of former army chief of staff Dan Halutz being forcibly removed by the police from the street at a sit-in in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence and relatives of hostages being roughed up by law enforcement officers, were a further example.
It was a year ago today, the longest war in the country’s history, and many Israelis are wondering if the value of a Jewish homeland is worth it if it fails to save the lives of civilians kidnapped from their homes. Will I ever feel safe again? And what kind of future do I have here if the only vision our leaders are offering is endless war?
At one of the recent mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling for a hostage deal and for early elections to replace the Israeli government, one protester held up a sign reading: “Who are we without them?” referring to the hostages. There were several placards that said: Give me one reason to raise kids here.
The sister of a former Israeli prime minister has counseled the kibbutz members all year long, and she says there are questions from the inferno.
Silence is what helped keep the survivors of this small community alive the day of the attack. The hid from their safe rooms along the Gaza border to a hotel on the Dead Sea.
Israeli authorities say about 1,200 people were killed last Oct. 7, as Hamas led thousands of attackers bursting out of Gaza, ambushing Israeli towns and communities. One out of 13 people lived in the village of Kibbutz Be’eri, which has been devastated by more than 100 deaths.
Israeli village october-7-kibbutz beeri-hamas attack-anniversary: witnessing the biggest loss from Oct. 7
The head of the kibbutz said he was exhausted after each funeral. “Because it brings [back] everything, and we cry again.”
The Israeli community near the Gaza border has been burying its dead in temporary graves further away because it’s safer to gather back at home now that the war is over.
Then she saw the man she had heard all day loading gun cartridges in her home. He was sitting outside, she says, stripped naked by orders of the military, and guarded by an Israeli soldier.
When she was finally rescued that night, and led out of her safe room, she found her living room floor covered in rows of grenades, gas canisters, explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and rifles. She understood. Her home had been transformed into the attack headquarters. Neighbors all around her were gunned down.
He says the survivors are taking sleeping pills to cope with the trauma and will not be able to see the destroyed homes. “I believe we’ll have to take them all down in the end.”
The homes that were attacked last year are a short walk away. There are bullet holes, shattered windows, a pair of children’s shoes and other items in the debris.
A grieving mother and her son in Kibbutz Be’eri, Israel: “The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7”
A couple hundred families have moved back to Kibbutz Be’eri. Cohen, the head of the community, is overseeing an ambitious project to bring the residents back within two and a half years.
“I said to myself, what do you want? Should we continue living? I also can’t. I really thought about it. She said that she wanted to live. I have a family and I have more than one grandchild. I draw. I’m learning to kayak to deal with my fears. I do everything to give meaning to life after they’re gone.
At the time of his death, she wanted to be with him. She felt guilty that she wasn’t with her family in the worst moment of the day, because she hadn’t lived on the kibbutz any longer.
The funeral was attended by Batya Ofir. She recently reburied her own brother and his family in the kibbutz cemetery, after viewing his partially decomposed body be exhumed from its temporary grave.
At Kibbutz Be’eri one recent afternoon, teens and their parents walked quietly out of the cemetery after a funeral for a mother and her son, who were reburials in recent months.
Source: The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7, one year later
The tragedy of a boy lost in a kibbutz: how Israel fought back against Hamas in the Gaza Strip
At the beginning, when I gave guidelines to the therapists, I smiled and said, how are you? Because these people don’t know that it still matters. It is important that they know that their wellbeing is still relevant. The life instinct wants to see that someone calls him back.”
“They are extremely anxious about the future of this place. Many of them leave the country. Because their parents told them that in the Holocaust, those who didn’t leave, died,” she says. There is hopelessness and helplessness. The trauma is not limited to a single country.
There is a kibbutz where a boy lost many relatives, including four members of his family. Do we tell him about each individually or do we tell him about all of them together? she says.
Roth has also counseled former hostages who returned from Hamas captivity in Gaza, families whose loved ones were killed in captivity, and Israelis who didn’t experience a personal loss but still suffer from sleeping difficulties, anxiety attacks and depression.
It took many weeks to account for everyone: who was dead, who was captive in Gaza. Roth sat with the survivors of Kibbutz Be’eri in the Dead Sea hotel basement as the village secretary read the names of 27 identified bodies and 108 people unaccounted for.
When the Israeli military eventually published its investigation into the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, it found about 340 attackers had infiltrated the community and that it had taken about seven hours for significant numbers of Israeli forces to arrive to fight off the invasion there.
A year after the Hamas attack, Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, while its operations in the occupied West Bank have expanded significantly.
Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the United States and several other nations, has seen its control over territory in Gaza diminish over the past 12 months, leaving a political and logistical vacuum that international aid groups have struggled to fill.
Forced displacement in the Gaza Strip is still continuing even though the cease-fire talks between Hamas and Israel are on hold.
The father of seven has been in and out of the area of northern Gaza in the last 12 months, he was moved four times in the last year.
When Hamas-led fighters attacked communities in southern Israel a year ago, they killed more than 1,200 and seized about 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Musleh was a teacher on his way to school that day.
He blames Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the suffering both sides have suffered, but he says peace will only be possible if Israeli citizens oust their premier.
A group of Palestinians waving their flags and holding anti-occupation signs gathered in the main square of the city of Ramallah.
Basma Abu Sway said last year’s war in Gaza was one of the most important in Palestinian history, and that she came to mark one year since.
The killing of a father killed in the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan: Ibrahim Assi, a resident of Ramallah, Palestine
On Monday the Palestinian advocacy group, Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, announced that Israeli military forces had arrested 45 people through Sunday night into Monday morning across the West Bank.
Rima was in Ramallah on Monday and said she was worried that Israel’s actions after Oct. 7 last year would make their occupation of Palestinians stronger.
The family and locals say Israeli settlers killed his father in his village in the central West Bank on December 2.
The Israeli military told NPR that they responded to a physical confrontation between Palestinians and Israeli citizens in Qarawat Bani Hassan with riot disposal means and live fire and that the circumstances of Assi’s death were still under review.
The mother of Ahmad Assi showed bloodied clothes and a sweatshirt with a bullet hole in the back. A necklace with a picture of a dead dad is being worn by Assi’s daughter, who is five years old.
When my father was killed, I began to work and spent money on the house. I was responsible for the house because of my smart and managing ways.
He may keep his haircut. But he has the hardened hands of an older working man, no longer hanging out with friends, devoting himself, instead, to work, faith and family.
In the Middle East, the barbershop is not just a place to cut your hair. It’s also a good place to hang out and chat with people from all over the world. Not long after Noor gets his trim, the village’s mayor, Ibrahim Assi, enters. He is not a close relative of Noor. It is a small community with strong family ties. There is a poster of a man outside.
The mayor explains that Qarawat Bani Hassan is surrounded by an ever-expanding network of Israeli settlements and outposts. The United Nations says that about half a million Israeli settlers live in the West Bank. The settlements they live in are deemed illegal by the international community. Israeli politicians like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, have promoted their expansion, and they’re growing through a web of smaller outposts.
settlers entered the village, damaging property, burning cars, wounding one man and shooting the father dead, he says. His lifeless body was found hours later in an olive grove on the outskirts of Qarawat Bani Hassan.
It is important to pray from morning to night. He fought back the tears and said an Islamic funeral prayer on the porch outside his home.
He says he tells him what is happening, what they are doing, and who is coming over. He told me last time that he should take care of my family and brothers.
Noor Assi’s table at a carpenter’s shop in the western Banks of Israel: The Israeli occupation of the West Bank
In a carpentry shop in the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Noor Assi is at work packaging a wooden table. He tears off strips of tape, tying it to padded cardboard, before flipping the table on its side.