‘That could have been us,’ say Kibbutz Sa’ar residents after direct rocket hit on house
Residents describe how their pastoral home has been turned into a community of fear, where they have almost no time to respond to warning sirens of incoming rockets
Reporter at The Times of Israel
KIBBUTZ SA’AR — There has been a cynical joke making the rounds in Kibbutz Sa’ar in northern Israel that people first hear the boom of explosions and then, only after that, the warning sirens.
On Wednesday afternoon, residents said that was more or less what happened when the terror group Hezbollah launched a barrage of 30 rockets toward the Western Galilee and towns east of Haifa. One of the rockets slammed into the community, scoring a direct hit on a house, wounding two people, one seriously.
Galilee Medical Center said one of the wounded, a 53-year-old man from Majd al-Krum, was in critical condition. A 52-year-old man from Mazra’a was in moderate condition.
Both suffer from shrapnel wounds. The pair were working on renovations in the house, which did not have a protected area, so the two men tried to run to a nearby building. A 26-year-old man, also from Majd al-Krum, was being treated at the hospital for shock.
The homeowners saw a previous house they owned — in a different part of the kibbutz — destroyed in the First Lebanon War in 1982. They were renovating this house when rockets struck it again.
The barrage came not long after the terror group fired waves of rockets at the Carmel and Wadi Ara area in northern Israel as well as the city of Safed.
On the edge of the evacuated zone
Kibbutz Sa’ar is 7 km (about 4.5 miles) from the Lebanese border and a little over one mile from the northern evacuated zone, where some 60,000 residents have been evacuated from 32 communities.
From the edge of the pastoral kibbutz, one can see one of the rolling valleys of the Western Galilee, and then the hills of Lebanon. In 1971, when he was 17, future comedian Jerry Seinfeld volunteered on the kibbutz for a short period of time.
Residents said the kibbutz had been particularly quiet since Sunday, when the IDF Home Front Command warned residents to stay close to shelters because of escalations in Hezbollah attacks.
The damaged house sits on a walking path lined with trees in an older part of the kibbutz.
Soon after the explosion, there were dozens of kibbutz residents inspecting the damage. Under renovation, the yard held a mixture of construction site materials and rocket debris.
Itamar Horner, 17, who lives nearby, said that he had just finished a class on Zoom since schools have been closed since Sunday.
We used to hear about explosions in other places and think, ‘those poor people,’ and now it happened to us
“We heard the boom, and we didn’t even have time to close the door of the safe room,” Horner told The Times of Israel.
“This is a horrible reality,” he said, standing at the site with his kibbutz friends. “We used to hear about explosions in other places and think, ‘those poor people,’ and now it happened to us.”
The kibbutz has 950 members. There are dairy cows and avocado groves; the kibbutz is now building a shopping center at the entrance.
A member of the kibbutz’s emergency response team, who asked that his name not be used, said that the day after October 7, when thousands of Hamas terrorists stormed Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking some 251 people hostages into Gaza, many of the kibbutz members self-evacuated even though they were south of the evacuated zone.
Hezbollah in Lebanon began firing at Israel on October 8.
He said that he, his wife and family, spent three months abroad, because “if we’re going to be refugees, we might as well be tourists.”
He then came back to the kibbutz, he said, adding that almost all the residents have returned as well.
When asked if he thought they would stay, he joked, “people will forget this after two or three days.”
High intensity
But Ayat Akawi, a social worker in the Mateh Asher regional council, where the kibbutz is located, said that several people called for help, suffering anxiety and distress after the explosions.
She arrived at the kibbutz with Alegra Davidi, the director of Mateh Asher’s social services, to “calm people down,” Akawi said.
“We ask what would help them,” she said. “Most important of all, we are just with them.”
“The war continues at a high intensity,” said Moshe Davidovich, head of the Mateh Asher Regional Council and chairman of the Confrontation Line Forum, a group that represents the 60,000 residents of the 23 municipalities, villages, and regional councils along Israel’s northern border who have been forced from their homes. He arrived at the kibbutz soon after the rocket attack.
“I have been calling on the government since 2018 to address the issue of insufficient protection in the north,” he said, particularly in confrontation line communities,” adding that this is a “very difficult time.”
Davidovich told Channel 12 that residents have “basically zero seconds” to take cover when the sirens start.
Garden of Eden
Hadas Ron, 64, who grew up on the kibbutz, and now lives in a neighboring community, said that she and her family had lived in the house that was hit for several years in the late 1980s.
“That could have been us,” she told The Times of Israel.
Growing up, she said, she was used to going in and out of bomb shelters.
“But it was still the Garden of Eden,” she said. “Despite the dangers, it’s still a very good life.”
Wednesday’s rocket barrages were the latest in several days of sharply escalated violence along the northern border following 11 months of more limited cross-border fighting.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza during the war against Hamas there.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria without any injuries.
The IDF carried out fresh waves of airstrikes in south Lebanon during the day and warned that a ground offensive could be the next step.
