KFAR AZA, ISRAEL — The tranquility of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a small Israeli group only a mile from the Gaza border, was shattered on Oct. 7, 2023, by a brutal Hamas-led assault that left 67 residents useless, 19 kidnapped and virtually each family scarred by violence. The assault was one of many deadliest within the nation’s historical past and uncovered the vulnerability of a group outlined by its optimism and hopes for peace.
The scars are nonetheless seen at Kibbutz Kfar Aza a yr and a half after 250 Hamas terrorists launched a brutal assault towards the comfortable farming group in southern Israel. Buildings stay pockmarked with bullet holes, and almost each house in an space put aside for younger kibbutz residents was destroyed within the fierce preventing.
About 950 folks lived in Kfar Aza when the primary wave of militants used paragliders to fly over the fence line separating the kibbutz from the Gaza Strip. After explosives have been detonated on the predominant gate, dozens of Hamas pickup vans and bikes poured via the hole.
Two hostages taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, twin brothers Ziv and Gali Berman, 27, are nonetheless being held someplace contained in the Palestinian enclave, officers consider.
Shachar Shnurman wryly calls himself one of many junior residents of Kfar Aza as a result of he has lived there solely 25 years. He was at house on Oct. 7 and alerted to the assault by a collection of textual content messages from kibbutz officers. They stated terrorists have been capturing folks contained in the group and warned residents to hunt shelter inside their protected rooms.
Mr. Shnurman’s house is on the highest elevation within the geographic middle of Kfar Aza. On that day, it was a pure gathering spot for folks, together with Hamas militants.
“Within the first few hours, my spouse was asking me when the military was going to come back. I informed her one other half an hour,” he stated. “Just a few hours later, she requested me once more, and I informed her ‘one other half an hour.’”
A neighbor who wasn’t within the kibbutz that day known as and requested him to find his spouse. Mr. Shnurman armed himself with a pocketknife, the one weapon he had, and slipped out of his home.
“Within the kibbutz, everyone, and most of your neighbors are mates,” he recalled. “I discovered my next-door neighbor after she had been murdered.”
Mr. Shnurman’s spouse started crying when he informed her.
“I informed her, ‘That is no time to cry. Now’s the time to combat,’” he stated. “We determined that we might combat for our lives if the terrorists tried to get inside our home. However they didn’t get inside.”
The terrorists raced into Kfar Aza from the breach within the fence. The kibbutz’s “younger era” neighborhood was the primary the attackers encountered. Greater than a dozen of the 18- to 35-year-old residents there have been killed, and a minimum of seven have been kidnapped and brought into Gaza.
Indicators positioned in entrance of the bombed and burned-out properties inform the names of a few of these killed within the first minutes of the assault. “Ofir Shoshani was brutally murdered inside this home,” one learn. “Yuval Buyum was brutally murdered on this home,” learn one other.
Burned-out shells that when have been residences are pockmarked with bullet holes and scorched by hearth. Kibbutz officers stated Hamas burned a number of the residents alive inside their properties, together with many with their palms sure behind their backs.
Different buildings have been decreased to rubble by Israeli tank shells within the ensuing battle that lasted for days. Hamas fighters tossed grenades into a number of the properties and later barricaded themselves inside throughout their remaining, determined combat towards the advancing Israeli forces.
Shahar Schnurman and his spouse hid inside their protected room till they heard the arrival of the Israel Protection Forces late that evening.
Mr. Schnurman is one in all about 30 Kfar Aza residents who’ve returned to the kibbutz because the preventing stopped. He stated the military would like that everybody keep out till the federal government’s struggle with Hamas involves an finish.
“The federal government doesn’t help us to come back again,” he stated. “I made a decision that I gained’t ask the military what to do. Each time somebody tells me, I ask the place they have been on October seventh.”
Some work crews are within the kibbutz attempting to restore the harm whereas Israel Protection Forces troops stand guard towards any new Hamas incursion.
Orit Zadikevitch was born and raised at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. She later married and raised a household there. Her grown kids weren’t there in the course of the assault, however her husband and brother-in-law have been killed. Her 84-year-old mom survived solely as a result of she wasn’t found by the invading Hamas militants.
“She was all by herself. She couldn’t attain the protected room,” she stated.
Ms. Zadikevitch recalled going into Gaza to swim within the heat waters of the Mediterranean when she was rising up. It was a time of hopeful optimism when many Kfar Aza residents dreamed of peaceable relations with their Palestinian neighbors.
After Oct. 7, she stated these sentiments have been gone.
“We’re nonetheless at struggle. We’re nonetheless preventing. We nonetheless need all of our hostages again,” Ms. Zadikevitch stated. “It’s going to take a very long time earlier than we will construct some belief between us.”
About quarter-hour from Kfar Aza is the positioning of the Supernova Music Competition, the place Hamas terrorists killed greater than 360 folks and took 40 hostages.
Lots of the victims have been sexually assaulted, and others have been discovered with their genitals mutilated. The carnage was usually recorded on GoPro cameras carried by the Hamas fighters.
The Nova Web site, because it has develop into identified, has develop into a makeshift memorial to the younger folks on the music competition. The primary stage stays intact, and images of the victims are affixed to posts sunk into the bottom. Household and family members have left behind flowers and different private keepsakes.
Yevgeny Postel’s girlfriend left a message at his memorial web site: “Yevgeny was a pure-hearted, delicate and caring one that all the time put others earlier than himself,” she wrote. “He was all the time the primary to supply assist wholeheartedly, a pal who will stand by you it doesn’t matter what.”
Elad Bouhnik, 16, got here to Nova Web site along with his classmates and stated the expertise made him unhappy.
“These folks didn’t do one thing unhealthy; they simply died,” Mr. Bouhnik stated. “They needed to bop and luxuriate in life, they usually simply obtained slaughtered. That is what our enemy can do.”
