From Nov. 7-14, a Men’s Mission from the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County traveled throughout Israel, visiting with those impacted by the atrocities on October 7th and strengthening bonds between Federation, our Israel-based partner agencies and the people we help. While on the mission, Co-Chair David Friedman reflected upon what he had experienced after visiting a kibbutz devastated by Hamas’ terrorist attacks.
November 11, 2024: Today, we bear witness.
As we climb back on the bus, leaving behind a place whose significance will ripple for generations and change the history of Am Yisrael, I need to write this while my thoughts are fresh in mind, and my emotions are high and raw. There is a lot to process, and I plan to journal more later, when I’m back in Florida, and can review my photos and more clearly collect my thoughts.
Our morning was spent at Kibbutz Nir Oz, surely one of the saddest places on the planet. Nir Oz is less than one mile from Gaza and directly overlooks the city of Khan Yunis. Sporadically, we can hear explosions, and as we leave, we see and hear a drone flying over Gaza. It is a clear, beautiful morning, and we see the City of Rafah in the distance.
Blooming from the desert, Kibbutz Nir Oz had been named one of Israel’s official botanical gardens. This is truly paradise lost, with large shade trees, flowers and succulents growing everywhere. It must have been a beautiful place when filled with the sights and sounds of the idyllic life of its 400 residents. Today, the trees here appear to be weeping, understandable given the inhumanity they silently witnessed on October 7th.
We are guided by a kind and gentle man named Shlomo, who has called Nir Oz his home and its residents his family for 57 years. He embodies the incredible strength and resilience of the entire nation of Israel, moving forward in the face of unimaginable sadness and suffering.
On that most evil of days, Hamas killed and/or captured 117 innocent people here. More than 100 of Hamas’ Nukhba forces spent eight hours in Nir Oz, completely conquering this small kibbutz, looting, raping, kidnapping and murdering its residents. Bodies of some of the murdered were taken to Gaza in anticipation for use in future negotiations with Israel. Of 120 homes here, only six were left untouched.
In addition to the armed terrorists, more than 1,000 Gazan civilians – men, women and children of all ages – made as many as four round trips between Nir Oz and Gaza, taking everything they could carry or drive. Then they simply all left, leaving an incomprehensible ocean of pain, death and destruction in their wake. The IDF arrived much later, making Nir Oz the only kibbutz where not a single bullet was fired by the army to protect and rescue the residents.
As far as the eye can see, there are burned and bullet-riddled houses, some with cracked walls and torn roofs from the grenades that were thrown at them. Some are simply burned to the ground, including one with an elderly person’s walker sitting in what was perhaps the outdoor courtyard of the residence. Outside each house are flags in various colors and coded with stickers, denoting each home’s residents as “murdered”, “captured”, “rescued”, etc.
As we stand on the porch of the Bibas family home, the familiar images of the beautiful redheads, then-9-month-old Kfir and his big brother, then-4-year-old Ariel, haunt me, as they have for more than a year. We see the children’s toys and their parents’ wine and olive oil, sitting, waiting for the family to return home. The boys and their parents have now been in Hamas captivity for more than 400 days.
We are heading now to Kibbutz Be’eri, and later, the site of the Nova festival. Meetings with Nova survivors and hostage families will follow.
Today, we bear witness.
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