A year after Oct. 7, Kfar Aza and Nir Oz are mostly empty, with residents in anguish
Survivors return briefly to visit their homes, sift through wreckage and shake their heads in disbelief that loved ones are still held hostage in Gaza
Five days after the October 7 Hamas attack, Batsheva Yahalomi described to reporters the harrowing hours in Kibbutz Nir Oz during which her husband, Ohad, was shot and the entire family was seized by Gazan terrorists.
Yahalomi and her two younger daughters managed to escape their attackers, but her 12-year-old son, Eitan, was taken to Gaza, as was his father. Eitan Yahalomi was released after 52 days of captivity in a hostage-prisoner swap during a weeklong truce in late November, but Ohad is still in Gaza.
Ever since, Batsheva and her three children have been temporarily living in a northern kibbutz, trying to rebuild their lives.
Last week, almost a year later, Yahalomi stood outside her Kibbutz Nir Oz house, the magenta leaves of a new bougainvillea plant snaking up the wall behind her while a banner displaying Ohad’s face and a message about his bravery was in the yard.
She guided journalists into her home, where the dining room table was strewn with random household items and the walls were pocked with bullet holes and stained with Ohad’s blood.
With great dignity, Yahalomi described, once again, the terrifying events of that day, as she and her children were grabbed by terrorists and placed on two motorcycles as they watched hundreds of Gazans stream into their kibbutz.
“It was like the exodus from Egypt,” said Yahalomi. She saw regular Gazans in flip-flops carrying TVs and driving kibbutz tractors as they moved between Gaza and the kibbutz fence. “Many citizens came to loot and [they had] big knives. I remember the knives because it was so violent and all so surrealistic. I saw Gaza getting bigger and bigger and the passage to the kibbutz becoming smaller.”
It was a chance sighting of two IDF tanks and a helicopter that gave Batsheva the moment she needed to escape with her two daughters from the stalled motorcycle they were on. They spending hours hiding and walking until they made their way back to one untouched corner of the kibbutz.
Batsheva Yahalomi was last notified in January by the IDF that Ohad was still alive, but then the military lost track of him. At the same time, a radical Palestinian group published a video of Ohad and wrote that he had been killed by IDF fire.
“I don’t know,” said Yahalomi, a slight, small-boned woman who radiates a sense of calm and poise. “I prefer to believe that he’s alive, but we’re not naive.”
Her son, Eitan, is recovering, but doesn’t like to go to sleep because that is when the nightmares come.
Most of the families in Kibbutz Nir Oz haven’t returned home yet. The small kibbutz was one of the hardest-hit of the southern communities on October 7; 117 out of its 400 residents were either killed or kidnapped. There are still 29 hostages from Nir Oz held captive in Gaza.
“These hostages are our family,” said Rita Lifschitz, whose father-in-law, Oded Lifshitz, 84, is still held a captive, while his wife, Yocheved Lifschitz, was released on October 28 along with another woman from Nir Oz. “All these grandmothers’ hearts are broken.”
Only seven out of 220 homes in Nir Oz were left untouched, said kibbutz resident Ola Metzger, whose in-laws, Yoram and Tami Metzger, were also taken hostage. Tami Metzger was released during the November ceasefire, but Yoram Metzger, 80, was killed in captivity, his body was found and brought back by the IDF this summer for burial in Israel.
“Our rituals are not as they should be,” said Metzger.
Ola Metzger, 45, who immigrated to the kibbutz from Kurdistan when she was 15, told of spending nearly 12 hours in her safe room on October 7 with her husband Nir and two teenage children. They were rescued by the army in the late afternoon.
They heard at least three or four groups of terrorists or looters enter their home, but no one succeeded in breaking into their safe room.
“It was Russian roulette,” said Metzger, who is currently living with her family in the nearby city of Kiryat Gat, along with most of the kibbutz members. “Some people got lucky.”
Most were not. The door to the home of Yair Yaakov was blasted open with a grenade by the terrorists. Yaakov was killed, his body seized by the attackers along with his living , Meirav Tal. Tal was released from Gaza in late November.
Groups of journalists clustered around the simple front door of another Kibbutz Nir Oz family, the Bibases. The sidewalk outside the Bibas home was familiar from te footage recorded by terrorists as they nabbed a terrified Shiri Bibas, who was clutching 4-year-old Ariel and baby Kfir. Her husband, Yarden Bibas, was abducted separately that day.
Next door in the row of kibbutz homes is the house of Itzik Elgarat, 69, also still held captive in Gaza.
On a recent Monday, one week before the first anniversary of October 7, Kibbutz Nir Oz was mostly quiet and calm but empty, the occasional sound of gunfire or the boom of an explosion in Gaza interrupting the birdsong.
A fantastical ficus tree with multiple roots provided shade in the central lawn of the kibbutz, where the smell of the charred homes still lingers. Several sukkah huts still stand, a year after the attack.
The kibbutz was preparing to vote in 40 new families on October 11, said Ola Metzger. Now some of those families are living in apartments with the rest of the kibbutz in two apartment buildings in Kiryat Gat.
“We’ll build new houses,” said Metzger.
Yifat Zailer, first cousin to Shiri Bibas, stood in the kibbutz’s Strawberry kindergarten, where her cousin’s eldest, Ariel Bibas, had just begun a new year last September.
His name, along with his fellow kindergartners, is printed on a sticker above a hook outside the front door. Inside, all is blackened and filled with soot, the ceiling drooping, and the small tables, chairs, games, and books all ruined by the terrorists’ fire.
“No matter how many times I’m here, I’ll never get used to it,” said Zailer, who lives in Tel Aviv with her young family but is one of the relatives central in the struggle to bring her cousin and family back home to Israel. “In my worst nightmares, I never expected it would be this long.”
Zailer’s aunt and uncle, Shiri’s parents, Margit and Yossi Silberman, were murdered in their home near Shiri and Yarden, their house completely burned.
“No one can tell us anything; this entire family vanished,” said Zailer, adding that her children, aged 3 and 18 months, have a different mother now, one who is less patient and less present as she continues to battle for her cousin and family.
It’s similarly quiet in nearby Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where 62 people were killed and 19 taken hostage on October 7 from a community of 1,000 residents.
Twelve of the Kfar Aza hostages were released, while two, Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, were killed by accidental IDF fire. They were two of the hostages taken from the young generation neighborhood of the kibbutz, where the younger kibbutz members, mostly in their twenties, lived side by side in small, one-bedroom homes.
Around half of those young residents were brutally murdered, while the other half were yanked across the fields, some assaulted, and then taken to Gaza.
Kibbutz resident Zohar Shpak, 58, is one of the few kibbutz members currently living in Kfar Aza. Shpak is a lawyer who moved back to help clean up the kibbutz, which includes an ongoing search for the head of one of the murdered kibbutz residents who was savagely decapitated by the terrorists.
“They didn’t just kill people but did horrible things,” said Shpak, who was raised in the north with the threat of Katyusha rockets from Lebanon, and moved to Kfar Aza to raise his three children.
Shpak is also working with the October 7 Justice Without Borders group which is suing UNRWA for its responsibility in the international crimes committed on October 7.
He was in the safe room of his home with his wife, daughter, grandson and two dogs for 22 hours on the Saturday of the massacre, and by Monday morning was clearing dead bodies. The kibbutz wasn’t fully cleared of terrorists until four days later.
He pointed across the fence that circles the community to the easily visible neighborhoods of Shejaiya and Jabaliya on the Gaza Strip. The terrorists crossed through a small gate as well as the main entrance when they attacked on October 7.
His wife and family are still evacuated from Kfar Aza, but Shpak is staying put.
He’s in his own home, but nothing is the same.
“We have houses now,” said Shpak, “we don’t have homes.”
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