#Kibbutz Nahal Oz

[girlactionfigure]

wearetov

Shlomo Ron, 85: Sacrificed himself to save his family “They protected the kibbutz and guarded the border because the kibbutz border was the border of the state. Even when they were with small children, and in the years when things started up with Gaza, they never left,” a niece said.

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[johnlatter]

Hamas make 12 year-old Israeli watch atrocity videos - Why?

A revenge for the terrorists own lives being internally destroyed, perhaps...

Forcing Eitan Yahalomi to watch the footage may have been designed to induce psychological distress akin to what the terrorists themselves experienced in the years of post-trauma* rote learning and indoctrination that made up their childhood . 

Indoctrination leads to accumulated repression that can triggered by pre-programmed keywords and concepts resulting in outbursts of unnatural violence, a characteristic of the type of atrocities the Palestine terrorists from Gaza committed in Israel on the 7th of October 2023. On November the 29th 2023, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reported that 12 year-old Eitan Yahalomi had been kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the massacre on the first day of the war and had finally been released on November the 27th:

The truth about Hamas's treatment of hostages If previous hostage releases that took place this past week created the impression that Hamas is treating the Israeli hostages who are being held captive in the Gaza Strip well, Eitan's testimony depicts an entirely different reality. In an interview with the French news outlet BFM, [his aunt, Deborah Cohen] said that after speaking with Eitan, it was clear to her that he went through "terrible things" while in captivity. Hamas forced him to watch the uncensored October 7 documentary released by the IDF, she said.

The 12-year-old watched about 45 minutes of footage that portrays evidence of the gruesome attack carried out by Hamas terrorists. Many of the scenes take place in Nahal Oz where Eitan is from.

"They forced him and other children to watch it: the entire movie. Whenever another child would cry during the screening, they would threaten them with a rifle to silence them," Cohen explained.

"[They] would beat him," she said. 

"He is a 12-year-old boy: We are talking about a 12-year-old," his aunt said. "Maybe I am naive, but I did not expect to hear such descriptions. I wanted to hold onto the hope that he was treated well, but that was not the case. They are monsters."

*The childhood trauma in question is the archeotrauma (alt. archaeotrauma), the wound human beings, horses, and other animals sustain when their spirit is "broken".

Also see Evolution and Psychology Research.

Image Accessibility:

AI image (artificial intelligence) showing an Israeli boy hostage being held in the Gaza Strip watching a television that has an Hamas terrorist on the screen.

[starlightomatic]

hi, i just want to remind folks that a lot of people on here have personal connections to people who died or were kidnapped on october 7th. please keep this in mind when you want to understand why we react so much when people denying, minimize, or celebrate it.

a couple of months ago i met vivian silver's best friend. vivian silver was a long-time peace activist who was burned to a crisp so badly on october 7th that it took weeks to identify her body. my ex-boyfriend's family was friends with her as well, and they spent those weeks believing she was a hostage and hoping for her return, only to discover that she had been dead the whole time.

a couple weeks ago i met the sister of a nova festival survivor. she said that the hours when her brother was out of contact and they didn't know if he was alive or dead were both the shortest and longest hours of her life. another friend of mine lost five friends that day. yet another friend lost two friends who were on a biking trip in southern israel.

a couple who i know because they attended my childhood synagogue while in the US for two years lived in kibbutz nahal oz. they always told us how beautiful it was, and how they wanted us to visit it. now we can't; it's destroyed, with several of its residents killed. they and their two young girls miraculously survived after hiding in their safe room for ten hours before being rescued. a good friend of mine's boyfriend is from one of the kibbutzim that was destroyed, but he was not there at the time and so survived.

once, many years ago when the ex-boyfriend who i mentioned above (the one who knew vivian) were on a gap year in israel, i visited him on the kibbutz he was living on on a thursday night, and his friend gave us a ride to a bus station the next day to help us get to our shabbat destinations. the friend was headed on to visit friends at kibbutz be'eri, now destroyed, with over 10% of residents killed. i don't know if that man's friends survived.

another friend of mine, who was my coworker for several months when she was in the US last year, lived in metula in northern israel, on the border with lebanon. because of the war, she and many others are internally displaced within israel, because her home is not safe from rockets. recently, a mutual friend told me her house has been destroyed.

another friend of mine attended virtual synagogue with chaim katzman, a young man who spent time in the west bank protecting palestinian shepherds. when hamas fighters opened the closet he was hiding in to capture hostages, they shot him immediately, before taking hostage the women and children hiding in the closet with him.

in total, i have at least eight friends-of-friends who were killed on october 7th. the actual number is probably far higher, since i have a lot of friends in israel and many israelis lost people; but the eight is confirmed.

all of this to say: please understand when you're interacting with me and other jumblr bloggers that this is not theoretical to us. maybe to some of you, it's an academic excercise in seeing fanon's works in practice. maybe it's about decolonial theory and you might think "ah, well, decolonization is violent, what a shame but it was necessary." please remember it's easier to think that when you're not the one sitting at a shabbat lunch table with your mom's old friend who had to learn within the past few months that a woman she'd built movements with and was best friends with had been burned so badly she couldn't be identified for weeks.

i already know that people will believe the purpose of this post is to "generate consent for genocide" no matter what i say, but i'm going to say it anyway: nothing justifies genocide. nothing justifies the brutality that israel visits on the palestinian people. the people of gaza have gone through an order of magnitude more horror than what israelis have. the entire gaza strip is destroyed; people's homes, schools, mosques, orange orchards, everything. entire families have been killed with not a single surviving member. people have starved to death. people lack sanitation, menstrual products, and safe places to give birth. children are operated on without anesthesia. this is one of the greatest humanitarian crises of this century and it is israel's fault.

we need a ceasefire now; we needed a ceasefire yesterday; we needed a ceasefire months ago; we needed this never to begin. blowing up a child in gaza does not bring back vivian, it does not bring back chaim, it does not bring back my friend's cycling friends. it doesn't untraumatize the girl who waited hours to know if her brother was okay or the young family trapped for ten hours in their safe room. and i know for a fact that vivian and chaim would never have wanted this. not in their names, or at all.

so i am not posting this in an attempt to deny, minimize, excuse, or justify the genocide of the people of gaza, or to deny or excuse the nakba, the israeli raids in the west bank, settler violence, land theft both past and present, burning of olive trees, checkpoints and the restrictions on palestinian movement, the denial of right of return, and the fact that most palestinians do not have voting rights in the country that controls their lives.

i also understand that there are folks on here who have just as many personal connections to gaza -- or more -- than i do to israel. that it's deeply personal to them too, and they have watched as loved ones die, places they love and remember are bombed to dust, and people continue to minimize it, excuse it, or fight over semantics. i understand that this post will not land well for many of those folks, and that it will have activated people to hear me speak of nahal oz as a beautiful place i wanted to visit, because that land likely once belonged palestinian families, and was seized after its residents were herded into gaza during the nakba.

and.

people are human. humans deserve to live in safety. friends of humans who are harmed will feel pain, even if those friends lived on colonized land. i also live on colonized land, i am a settler. i live on the lands of indigenous peoples. when i looked up the nation whose land i live on, i can find information about their history but no information on where they went or whether they still exist. i don't know if they experienced a genocide and were all killed, or if they joined another people. i know i have never met any of them, and i live on their land.

and i'm not the only one. millions of people on this site are also colonizers of indigenous land. if you are not indigenous or Black, and you live in the US or Canada, you are every bit as complicit as my friends' dead friends in israel. your beautiful town is not morally better than nahal oz. you recognize yourself and your friends as people; you see their humanity.

i am beyond begging you to see the humanity of israelis, i think many of you can't. instead, this is my request:

remember, as you're doing your callouts, as you're describing me as evil and a person who needs to be blocked for the safety of your followers to i don't infect you or them with my evil:

i say and feel the things i do in large part from a traumatic event that occurred less than a year ago that i am personally connected to. please use what you know of trauma to understand that.

and then, if you can do that, maybe we can start to understand how trauma plays into why israel is the way it is; why trauma is actually the biggest player. so many of you have asked "how could a people who've been brutalized and oppressed brutalize and oppress another people?" my question: why would you expect that not to happen? trauma responses include fear, anger, aggression, compassion fatigue. when a population of descendants of refugees and genocide survivors, in a world that they believe to be out to get them, either supports or turns a blind eye to their government's atrocities, i am not surprised. saddened, but not surprised.

we then have to start asking: who enacted those traumas? when will we start to see the pain of both palestinians and israelis in light of the violence inflictated by far more powerful entities? by germany in the holocaust; russia and poland in the pogroms; swana arab countries in the persecution of jews post-WW2? who's at the top here? many of you are happy to believe it's jews pulling all the strings, but who set this in motion?

who denied jews safe haven before the holocaust, thus enabling this trauma to be inflicted in the first place? the US, and nearly all countries around the world. who restricted jewish immigration even post-holocaust, thus funneling huge numbers of jewish refugees into palestine, overwhelming the population even if israel had not been a colonial project? again, the US, and many other countries. who made double-promises and drew arbitrary lines in the region leading to decades of conflict? the UK.

who's funding this war? the US. Russia. Iran. don't be fooled that any of them care about israelis or palestinians. they have their own interests.

israelis and palestinians are the collateral damage in a horrible chess game that world powers have been playing for centuries. but they are not collateral damage, they are human beings, and their lives have value. collective liberation demands we look at the levels above the oppressor to see who is holding the strings, who put the puzzle pieces in place, who set off the levers and strings in a noxious rube goldberg machine that left nahal oz and be'eri in ruins and gaza destroyed almost beyond recognition.

my friends' little girls cowering in a safe room were never the enemy. chaim katzman hiding in a closet hoping the fighters would overlook it and leave him alive, or at very least capture him instead of kill him, was never the enemy. and they can't be; not if our goal is freedom and safety for everyone in israel/palestine. choosing who will dominate and who will be the oppressed minority in whatever comes next will not be the answer we need, and will not be liberation. just as zionism was not liberation. what can we build together, when this is all over?

what do we need to dismantle and destroy?

let's start with what we don't: homes. villages. cities. kibbutzim. orange trees. olive trees.

and who do we need to fight?

let's start with who we don't: the children.

[apollo-enthusiast]

Maayan Idan ז"ל

Maayan was murdered on October 7th by terrorists who broke into her home in kibbutz Nahal Oz. She was just 18 and 4 days old. One of the sweetest people. A friend. She loved Percy Jackson, and for every birthday, she and her friends would make each other blue chocolate chip cookies. Tsachi Idan, her father, is still held hostage in Gaza.

I hope that next year you will have your own memorial day, Maayan. You deserve one. To be buried at your home, if you'd like. You will always be fondly remembered - but I wish we didn't have to remember. Everyone misses you, I'm sure you know. I hope that Tsachi will come home soon and say the Kaddish for you. Rest in peace 💙🤍💙

Their story from October 7th, to those interested:

https://www.mako.co.il/news-israel/2023_q4/Article-c492f8253436b81027.htm

https://www.mako.co.il/home-family-relationship/Article-afd5bd0dc2f2c81027.htm

[bringherhome7]

This was the Zohar family.

They loved life, laughter and sharing happy memories together. Father Yaniv worked as a news photographer whilst mother Yasmin worked as an accountant. On October 7th, as rockets were fired into Kibbutz Nahal Oz, Yaniv rushed out to document the attack for the local newspaper he worked for. As he was reporting on the attack and witnessed a kidnapping, he was shot dead. His 13 year old son, Ariel, had gone out for an early morning run before the attack. When he returned home, his entire family were dead. His mother Yasmin, 49, and his sisters Keshet, 20, and Tehelet, 18 had been slaughtered. His grandfather Haim Livne was also killed during the attack. On October 17th, the young boy had to watch his entire family be buried during their funeral.Now the 13 year old lives as an orphan, forever traumatized by the events of that dark day. Source: Times of Israel

[dayinadream]

Clip1:

Israeli soldiers blow up the Shuja'iya neighborhood in Gaza as a gift to the settlers of Kibbutz Nahal Oz... so that they can have a view of the sea...

Soldiers from Unit 749 published a video saying that 30 houses were blown up in the Shuja'iya neighborhood so that the settlers of the Nahal Oz settlement on the Gaza Strip would have a view of the sea...

The leader of the Israeli settlement movement, Daniela Weiss, said that Gaza and the Arabs in it must be erased so that the settlers of northern Gaza have a view of the sea.

Clip 2:

The head of a large settlement movement in Israel demands that Gaza and the Arabs in it be wiped out so that the settlers around the Gaza Strip can see the sea.

The head of the Nahala settlement movement said that Gaza is a Jewish city and must be evacuated of Arabs, build settlements there, and correct the historical mistake that occurred by dismantling its settlements.

She pointed out that the settlers' demand is realistic and emotional. They want to see the sea, and to achieve this, it must be free of homes and Arabs.

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇱 🚨

ISRAELI MEDIA REVEALS OCCUPATION ARMY INSTITUTED THE "HANNIBAL DIRECTIVE" ON OCTOBER 7TH, KILLING HUNDREDS OF ISRAELI CITIZENS

📈 A infographic series by Palestinian news outlet the Quds News Network on the admission on Sunday, July 7th, of the Israeli media that the rumoured "Hannibal Directive", ordering the Israeli occupation army to fire on Israeli citizens who were taken hostage by Palestinian Resistance forces, and brought to the Gaza Strip, during the events of October 7th, 2023.

According to report published by Hebrew media outlet Haaretz, the Israeli occupation's Security apparatus ordered the occupation army to fire on any civilian vehicles headed towards the Gaza Strip, regardless if Israeli citizens were inside them.

This policy was instituted at the various sites where the Resistance penetrated during its incursion on October 7th, following reports, which surfaced during the chaos of that day, that Resistance fighters had kidnapped several Israeli citizens at the Erez Crossing, north of the border with the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli occupation forces responded by deploying "Zik" military drones, possibly referring to the Elbeit Systems Hermes 450 loitering munition, which targeted sites in Erez, as well as the Re'im military base near the location of the infamous Nova music festival.

The drones were also deployed to Nahal Oz, northeast of Gaza, and Kibbutz Nir Oz, east of central Gaza, all of which resulted in the deaths of an untold number of Israeli citizens, with some estimates suggested to be in the several hundreds.

The Israeli occupation army also deployed Merkava tanks to Kibbutz Be'eri, where Zionist soldiers reportedly fired shells at Israeli citizens who were being held captive in a civilian residence, killing at least 14 Israeli colonial settlers.

This was even admitted by the Israeli occupation forces, General Barak Hiram, who admitted to the Hebrew media that he prioritized the mission he was given by occupation leadership, over the lives of Israeli citizens being held captive.

Additionally, occupation aircraft also bombed several sites near the border with Gaza, due to orders they were given stating that "no vehicle should return to Gaza."

#videosource

#originalsourceHaaretz

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[beardedmrbean]

In the early hours of October 7, 2023, the Idan family of Kibbutz Nahal Oz was shattered when Hamas terrorists infiltrated their home. As the family tried to take refuge in their safe room, the terrorists murdered their eldest daughter, Maayan, in front of her parents and siblings, and then abducted the father, Tzachi. The scene was broadcast live on social media, forcing the nation to witness their agonizing last moments. 

At the same time, in Kibbutz Holit, 16-year-old Rotem Matias lay hiding under his mother's lifeless body, texting his sisters the heartbreaking news: "Mom and Dad are dead. Sorry."

In Kfar Aza, Roee Idan was killed while holding his 3-year-old daughter, Abigail, as his older children watched in horror. Their mother, Smadar, was also shot before their eyes. Afterward, the children hid in a closet, trapped with their mother’s body, unsure of their younger sister's fate, who was later abducted into Gaza.

ISRAELI POLICE SAY EXTREME SEXUAL VIOLENCE, RAPE BY HAMAS TERRORISTS WAS SYSTEMATIC

These are just a few of the countless stories documented in a new report released on Tuesday, co-authored by Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, founder of the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes Against Women and Children, and Dr. Michal Gilad and Dr. Ilya Rudyak. The report introduces the term "kinocide" to describe the systematic targeting and destruction of family units during the attack- an unprecedented atrocity that goes beyond typical warfare.

"A crime without a name for victims without a voice," as Dr. Elkayam-Levy described it. "The perpetrators not only killed but deliberately sought to destroy the very foundation of human society: the family."

"The hardest crimes to witness were those involving families," Dr. Elkayam-Levy continued, "While the Hamas perpetrators celebrated their violence, chanting religious slogans and broadcasting their actions on social media, the terror was not confined to the immediate victims-it was amplified globally."

"The use of social media was crucial in spreading the terror, inspiring similar acts of violence elsewhere," Merav Israeli-Amarant, CEO of the Civil Commission, told Fox News Digital. She referred to this tactic as the "terror theater" a term coined by legal scholar Tehila Schwartz Altshuler, explaining how the broadcasts were designed to radicalize and incite other terrorists.

As Elkayam-Levy and her team dug deeper, they realized that similar tactics have been documented in conflicts across the globe, from Argentina and Iraq to Syria, Sierra Leone and Myanmar. "We’ve been in contact with survivors of kinocide, including Yazidis, who have shared their experiences. The pain is universal. This has happened before, but it never had a name," Dr. Elkayam-Levy said.

In collaboration with the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, the commission worked to identify these patterns of abuse and ensure that kinocide is recognized as a distinct crime. The new report, released after a year of research, includes interviews with survivors, visits to the sites where the atrocities took place, and an extensive review of evidence. The goal is to bring kinocide into international legal discourse, advocating for its urgent need to be recognized as a distinct crime.

'I WILL BE HAUNTED FOREVER’: ISRAEL’S HORRIFIC VIDEO OF HAMAS ATROCITIES LEAVES VIEWERS SHOCKED AND SICKENED

Professor Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada and International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, stated, "Silence in the face of such evil is not neutrality; it is complicity. Worse still, there has been denial, justification, and even the glorification of these heinous acts, underscoring the moral and legal imperative to act decisively against such crimes. The dangers of antisemitism are not just the oldest and most lethal of hatreds- they are also a presage of global evil, as evidenced by the events of October 7."

"We need an international coalition to address this systematic targeting of families," Elkayam-Levy said. "But international law has failed the survivors of October 7. The current legal frameworks do not adequately protect families in these kinds of attacks."

The report, which has been endorsed by international law experts and human rights activists worldwide, highlights the urgent need for legal and social recognition of kinocide. However, despite the report’s widespread endorsement, Elkayam-Levy expressed her concern over the international community’s response. 

As someone who faced the denial of prominent figures in the international human rights community in response to her last report on sexual violence on Oct. 7, she said, "We live in dark times when international law is weaponized against us (Israelis) in terrifying ways. As an international human rights scholar, I never imagined that we would live in a time when such abuse is directed at us. It really scares me."

[girlactionfigure]

May his memory be a blessing.

[eretzyisrael]

By RICHARD FERRER IN KFAR AZA

Eight months before Machmud arrived at Batia Holin’s home to kill her, the two had jointly launched an exhibition aimed at promoting peace and unity between Israelis and Palestinians.

After connecting through a Facebook group for residents on the Israel-Gaza border, the pair spent months sharing pictures on WhatsApp of daily life from both sides of the fence. This seemingly heartfelt exchange blossomed into a poignant exhibition entitled Between Us, dedicated to bridging the divide. Due to the dire risks involved, they never spoke directly. ‘Normalisation’ (interacting with Jews) is the most serious crime a Gazan can commit.

“We didn’t discuss politics,” Batia tells me as we walk along the Gaza barrier fence on the outskirts of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Machmud – who told her he was a 28-year-old photographer from the Gazan town of Shuja’iyya – was one of 300 Hamas terrorists who breached the border on the morning of October 7 and entered her kibbutz.

The 71-year-old, who has lived on the kibbutz for more than 50 years, has dedicated her life to coexistence. The idea of collaborating with a Palestinian across the border, someone who experienced the same sights and sounds yet lived a vastly different reality, deeply resonated with her sense of purpose.

“Machmud and I wanted to show the world that, despite the circumstances in which we live, we share the same hope for a brighter future. That despite the obstacles, most people on both sides of the fence just want to live in peace.”

Batia Holin beside a banner displaying pictures of hostages from Kibbutz Kfar Aza that remain in captivity.

Their exhibition opened in Israel on 4 February 2023 in nearby Kibbutz Nahal Oz (where 14 people were killed and seven abducted), with plans for it to tour the United States. One of its most striking exhibits was photographs of the Mediterranean Sea, showing the same beach border from opposite perspectives: one looking north, the other south.

Machmud was, of course, unable to be there in person, so he wrote Batia a touching email: “I hope this project will influence and improve understanding, quality of life and security on both sides of the fence. I hope that with the help of my photos, Israeli society and the whole world will know that the Gaza Strip is not only a place of rockets and missiles but a place worth living in. I hope that with the help of my photos, Israeli society will see that in Gaza the people are simple, love life and are not fighters and terrorists. This exhibition, for me, is hope for a peaceful life.”

Batia at her Between Us exhibition

Today, in the wake of such unimaginable brutality, Batia’s dreams seem heartbreakingly naïve. Her faith has been so profoundly shattered that she fears there may not be a single adult in Gaza who shares her vision of peace. “The hardest feeling is the sense of total betrayal,” she tells me.

“The sense that everyone in Gaza was involved, even those who claim to oppose Hamas. I realise how awful that sounds. It truly is awful. But I cannot think anything else today. The past 17 years since Hamas took over Gaza have been difficult and it’s got worse over time. Before the attack, people called life here 90 percent heaven, 10 percent hell. Now it just feels like hell.”

Batia heard Machmud’s voice for the very first time at 10am on October 7 when she received a phone call from an Israeli number she did not recognise. He told her he was inside the kibbutz and asked if Israeli soldiers were nearby.

Burned-out homes in the kibbutz. Sixty-four residents were murdered

“I was so confused,” recalls Batia with a shudder. “At first, I thought Machmud must have heard about the attack and was calling out of concern. It didn’t take long to realise he had a different reason. He wanted to cause me harm. I didn’t speak to him. I just hung up. I didn’t have time to think about the call until two days later. Terrorists were everywhere. My husband and I were just trying to survive. Later, I gave all the details I had about Machmud to the army. His phone number, personal information he’d shared, screenshots of our chats. I have no idea what happened to him.”

[adropofhumanity]

"i*****i soldiers blow up the shuja'iya neighborhood in gaza as a gift to the settlers of kibbutz nahal oz so that they can have a view of the sea. soldiers from unit 749 published a video saying that 30 houses were blown up in the shuja'iya neighborhood so that the settlers of the nahal oz settlement on the gaza strip would have a view of the sea. the leader of the i*****i settlement movement, daniela weiss, said that gaza and the arabs in it must be erased so that the settlers of northern gaza have a view of the sea" —via palestine.graph on instagram

[angrybell]

Clemens Matanga, a citizen of Tanzania, 22 years old, who came to Israel to study agriculture, was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from Kibbutz Nahal Oz in the October 7 massacre. The Tanzanian government announced that his body was found by the IDF. The "freedom fighters" of Hamas executed him.

[mariacallous]

Communities in Israel’s south were hit hard by Hamas’s terror attack on Oct. 7, during which more than 1,400 people were slaughtered and over 200 kidnapped. Many in those communities have lost loved ones in recent weeks and are fighting for the return of their family members held hostage in Gaza, but how do they view Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza, which have killed thousands? And what will it take for residents to move back to places they once called home?

While his personal story of survival has been documented, Foreign Policy spoke to Haaretz journalist and Nahal Oz resident Amir Tibon about how he views the Netanyahu government in the aftermath of the attack, his community’s response to the destruction in Gaza, and what he would consider a successful outcome to the Israel-Hamas war.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Foreign Policy: Amir, describe your community of Nahal Oz.

Amir Tibon: Nahal Oz is one of approximately 20 small, tight-knit communities that are situated along the border and mark the place where the state of Israel begins and ends. Most of these communities have a more liberal, left-leaning political tendency.

The residents of these communities have said for years that if we want to have a better future, Gaza needs to have a better future. That’s a big part of the tragedy of what happened on Oct. 7. The communities that were attacked are the same communities that advocated to build new industrial zones on the Gaza border, to bring workers from Gaza into Israel, to bring international investment into Gaza. Now we are at a loss of words after what happened to us.

FP: Did southern communities like Nahal Oz feel that the government had neglected them before Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7?

AT: There is a clear difference between how Israeli governments over the years have dealt with attacks on our communities and attacks on larger, more populated areas in Israel. For many years, Hamas or the Islamic Jihad fired rockets toward our communities and the government responded in a very tactical, limited way. Whereas if they shot a missile toward Tel Aviv, that garnered a much tougher response. It’s absurd because a missile launched at Tel Aviv is less dangerous than a missile shot toward our community, because Tel Aviv is protected by the Iron Dome, which could block the rocket in most cases. The communities on the border are not covered by Iron Dome because we’re too close to Gaza. An attack on our community was always treated as not that strategic or worth it in terms of a military response.

Hamas used that in a very smart way, because in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 7 attack, they kept testing the Israeli military along the border fence with nightly demonstrations in which they would rattle the fence and try to cut parts of it, and the military did not respond in a very forceful way. It allowed it to happen.

FP: Would you have ever imagined that this was possible?

AT: When we first moved to Nahal Oz, the biggest threat was the cross-border tunnels that Hamas had dug underground in order to enter Israeli territory and attack military bases. When we first moved, there was always a group of 20 combat soldiers stationed inside the kibbutz. That gave us peace of mind because we knew if a group of Hamas fighters popped out of the ground, there would be a battle, and they would not be able to overtake the community.

The biggest mistake that successive governments led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made was to spend billions constructing an underground wall to block the tunnel threat, and then removing the soldiers out of those communities, saying they were no longer necessary since there was a wall. There was opposition to it from the southern communities. We wanted those soldiers present in case the wall didn’t function properly.

We never imagined Hamas militants would just take a tractor and SUVs and run over the border fence. Had there been 20 soldiers inside each community, it would have been a completely different scenario, because wherever Hamas was met with an armed and prepared Israeli force, they failed to cause massive damage. The places where they caused massive damage are the places where they were met with no opposition. That’s where they managed to kill dozens or hundreds of people in some cases. It was a terrible mistake to remove the soldiers from the communities as a result of an overreliance on this magic underground wall.

FP: How is your community holding up right now?

AT: Since Oct. 7, while government and state institutions have collapsed, there has been an amazing revival of civil society. Nahal Oz, a community of 500 people, is being hosted by a kibbutz in north-central Israel called Mishmar HaEmek, close to Haifa. They opened the door and their hearts to us. They emptied a boarding school on their property, and that’s where we have been sleeping. They are operating a dining room with three meals a day, a kindergarten for our children, and they’re now working on putting our older kids into the regional school. I’m not wearing my own clothes right now. These are clothes that I received from people who donated clothing.

FP: Comparisons have been made to the Holocaust. What is the trauma like within your community right now?

AT: Fifteen people out of a community of 500 were killed by Hamas terrorists. Approximately 10 people are still missing. Some of them will probably end up being announced dead, and some of them are kidnapped in Gaza.

We are in a constant state of mourning. Every day, someone else is announced dead. We are living from funeral to funeral. We’re trying to support the children more than anything else and to keep them happy and safe and create a normal life for them in this completely abnormal situation. The founding generation of our community who came in the 1950s to live in this kibbutz have spent their entire lives building up this community on the border out of a strong belief that this is the right thing to do. They are now living through the darkest hour of this community with 15 dead and many others missing, or injured, and the uncertainty of whether or not we can come back home.

FP: Would you ever actually want to move back?

AT: We want to go back already, but there are certain conditions that must be met. First of all, we need to have a real sense of security. We need to see the military presence again in our area and not have forces removed for other missions. We need to have our ability to protect ourselves and not only rely on the military. Members of our security team must obtain weapons permits, and we need them to be trained and armed and ready for response. We need an investment in fortifying some of the institutions in the community, including the children’s kindergarten.

More than anything else, we need a leadership that we can trust. In the 10 months leading up to this disaster, the current government ignited an internal civil  , instead of preparing Israel for war with its enemies.

FP: Israel’s leaders have called for Hamas to be wiped off the face of the earth. How do the people within your kibbutz view that desire?

AT: There are different views within the community, but broadly speaking we’re not interested in revenge. What’s important is creating security. Hamas is not going to be part of any security framework that we can live with. The need to eradicate Hamas is not because we want to avenge the deaths of our neighbors and friends. It’s because they tried to kill each and every one of us, and given an opportunity, they will probably try again.

There is a great sense of betrayal because our community and other border communities supported initiatives by successive Israeli governments to bring workers into Israel and allow them to work in agriculture, construction, and other industries. Within our communities, we had workers from Gaza coming in every day to work in the kibbutz to provide money for their families. Some of these workers had nothing to do with the attack on Oct. 7, but others contributed intelligence. They took pictures of our homes. They wrote down details about who lives where, the likelihood of a weapon in the home, how many children, etc. Nobody in Israel is going to support this kind of initiative after what happened. Hamas caused immense damage to any prospect of a normal future between Israel and Gaza.

FP: How are people looking at the immense destruction and dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza?

AT: It’s heartbreaking. It’s sad. We don’t want innocent people to die, but it’s a war. Hamas opened war against Israel and chose a deliberate kind of war in attacking and kidnapping civilians. That has nothing to do with military combat.

Hamas knew what they were bringing upon the people of Gaza. They knew that the second they did all of those things, they sealed the fate of thousands of people in Gaza, because Israel cannot accept and must respond in the most forceful way. There is a clear understanding that Hamas is waging a war of destruction against our country. A big part of the tragedy of what Hamas did is that it opened the door to a terrible reality for the people of Gaza.

FP: How are you thinking about conflict opening up on the northern border?

AT: Without U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to get personally involved, come to Israel to meet with Netanyahu and the war cabinet, to send the aircraft carriers and deter Hezbollah, we could have had a regional war on multiple fronts, not just an Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. That regional war would have meant total destruction of countries like Lebanon and maybe Syria. It could have spread to Iran, and it would have led to massive damages in Israel, and it would have led to a crazy outbreak of violence in the occupied West Bank. By coming here and stopping that from happening, President Biden has saved the lives of tens of thousands of people.

FP: What would you consider a successful outcome in this war?

AT: It doesn’t matter how many Hamas militants we kill in Gaza, or the damage we will have caused to their military infrastructure. If, a year from today, I cannot put my daughters in the kindergarten in Nahal Oz and drive to work in Tel Aviv with peace of mind, we have lost the war.

If these communities are flourishing again and people are able to raise their children there, Hamas will have lost and Israel will have won.

FP: Can you imagine a scenario where Netanyahu is able to rehabilitate himself after this and remain the leader of Israel?

AT: We will not allow that to happen. The people of the Gaza border area will never forgive the failed, corrupt, dysfunctional government of Benjamin Netanyahu for what they did to us, for how they abandoned us at our time of need. Not just on that morning, but in the weeks that followed in which we’ve seen the complete collapse of the country.

If he had even a shred of integrity, he would have already resigned. He’s Israel’s Neville Chamberlain, who signed agreements with Nazi Germany thinking that he could buy time and bring peace. Benjamin Netanyahu did the same thing for years. He strengthened Hamas, allowing Qatar to bring them millions of dollars.

[airathecat]

Ditza Heyman (84 years old), freed hostage, from Kibbutz Nir Oz - she worked in the Nahal center, and there she met her first husband. She is the unifying thread of the family and is known for her chicken soup, cholent and fruit cakes. Ditsa is a beloved and loving grandmother. Since her husband died, she has lived alone and adopted a cat named Mia. Alexey Zheleznov

[omgellendean]

A long thread by "Propaganda and Co" about the events on October 7. Some well known by now, some new to me.

A. Golan: The terrorists shot them? Y. Porat: No, they were killed by the crossfire. Understand there was very, very heavy crossfire. A. Golan: So our forces may have shot them? Y. Porat: Undoubtedly. Source: Kan, an Israeli state broadcaster

Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says

"He fended off terrorists who attacked his house but was hit by soldiers' fire in a tragic incident." Ran Posloshani, a resident of Nahal Oz (haaretz)

"Niv Ayos was killed by IDF fire while driving on Route 4 on his way to one of the army bases." "On my child's body, in the autopsy, there were 100 bullets." (maariv)

Apache pilots couldn't differentiate Israelis from Palestinians "The pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian" "Some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors." "These are hundreds of 30 mm cannon shells (the effect of a spray grenade for each shell) as well as the Hellfire missiles." (ynet)

"I choose such targets that I tell myself that the chance that I will shoot at abductees here as well is low. To tell you 100%, it's not." Lt Col. A., an IDF Apache helicopter pilot (mako)

"An investigation into the incident also revealed that an IDF combat helicopter that arrived at the scene from the Ramat David base fired at the terrorists and apparently also hit some of the revelers who were there." (haaretz)

"At some point the helicopter shot at the terrorists, the driver and the others. There was screaming in the tuk-tuk. All the terrorists were dead and we were alive, except for one for one of the women with us."(october7)

IDF Brig Gen Avi Rosenfeld ordered an attack on his own base on Oct 7 "The division was compelled to request an aerial strike against the base itself in order to repulse the terrorists." (haaretz mondoweiss)

“The commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages." (haaretz )

"I arrived in Be’eri to see Brig Gen Barak Hiram and the first thing he asks me is to fire a shell into a house [where Hamas were sheltering]." Lt Col Salman Habaka, an Israeli tank commander. He says, "The first question that comes to your mind is – are there hostages there? We did all the preliminary checks before we decided to fire a shell into a house." (theguardian)

"They're actually bodies that were so badly burnt, we thought they were ours. In the end, apparently, they were Hamas terrorists." Mark Regev, Israeli ambassador to UK.

In an Oct 7 meeting with high ranking officials, “Hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the captives into significant consideration.” Bezalel Smotrich, Israel Finance Minister (theguardian)

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