This is part of a series, “Uprooted.” Each column is a curated monologue from an individual among the tens of thousands of internally displaced Israelis during the war with Hamas who were evacuated from the country’s northern border and the Gaza envelope.
For the last eight years, I worked in kibbutz management. I managed the demographic growth of my kibbutz and turned it into a field of expertise: How to grow the population. More than that, how to integrate people into the community. I gave tools to the establishment and the newcomers. In the last two years, I worked as the community manager in Kibbutz Nir Am. After October 7, I asked to leave the position.
Saturday, October 7
On Friday evening, we celebrated the anniversary of Kibbutz Nirim’s founding and went to bed late. I needed to clean the whole house because our new puppy urinated all over the floor. I hoped he wouldn’t urinate again during the night and that the kids wouldn’t sleep in too late the next morning. These are the concerns I have in mind as I say the next sentence: The biggest challenge of living near Gaza is the unbearable acceleration from zero to 200.
At 6:30 a.m., red alerts began. My 8-year-old son Sahar was with me, and my 5-year-old daughter Nadine was with my mother, who came over for the holiday. I thought it was a false alarm but then there was another siren.
When the second siren sounded, my son opened his eyes, and I said to him, “Come to the bomb shelter.” Usually, we don’t get overexcited by it. My mother and daughter were already in the bomb shelter, and we took the puppy and Mocha, our older dog. The rocket volley was serious. I said to my mother, “They’re overdoing it this morning. It sounds like we’ll be packing a bag soon and going to your place in Haifa.”
While we were getting ready, my boyfriend, who lives up north, messaged me, “Are you in your bomb shelter? They’re also shooting at the center.” I replied, “Are they crazy? Did they start a war?” and he responded, “It’s okay, come to the north and we’ll be together.”
Heavy bombings started, and then we heard gunfire, and an inner bell set off peels of terror. My gut said danger, Operation Protective Edge, infiltration.
In a split-second decision, which wasn’t really a conscious decision, I let the dogs out of the house. I ran between the windows and closed the blinds. I locked the door even though I like everything being open and filled with light and get nervous when everything is closed. There’s always a key in the door, and when my boyfriend comes over he locks it and I say, “We’re in a kibbutz, stop this nonsense of not trusting the world.”
Outside, there was constant gunfire. I realized that this was big. I took a bottle of water, cookies, a bowl, a glass bottle, a plastic bag and a pack of floor cloths from the kitchen to the bomb shelter. We sat there for 12 hours. The army only arrived after eight of them.
We heard shouting in Arabic on the paths, I heard them coming closer. I forced the children to change out of their pajamas into normal clothes. Meanwhile, I went out to the hallway by the bomb shelter which is also used as a closet, locked the door, got a dress off a hanger, and put it on. I told myself that I didn’t intend to die naked. No Hamas terrorist would come and find me without a bra and underpants. I wanted to minimize our bodies’ levels of exposure and vulnerability.
I realized that I was the responsible adult and had to manage the situation. Hysterical messages were flooding the Nirim WhatsApp group. I asked the children to get into the top bunk of the bed and get under the blanket.
And then the first wave of terrorists reached the house and I heard gunfire. I heard them walking around and messing with things. I didn’t say anything to the children. They understood that there were terrorists in the kibbutz and that the soldiers would come soon to get us out.
After the shooting party came a wave of looters. There was no drawer left unopened. They stole everything they could, from the car to jewelry and the laptop. I stood at the bomb shelter door and held the handle while at the same time messaging with friends from Nir Am. I understood that they had successfully prevented an infiltration into their kibbutz.
I sent a message to their managerial team: “I cannot believe I’m writing this to you, but I have terrorists in my house. If there is an evacuation, you’ll need to manage it without me.”
My boyfriend kept me going with empty promises that the army would be there any minute. At some point, I messaged him that I was only hearing gunfire from one side and that they were shooting in bursts. He changed the subject because we both knew the IDF doesn’t shoot in bursts. He wrote, “The IDF is on the way, hold the handle.” I was holding the handle while also playing card games with the kids. At some point, I wrote to him that I was tired, and he responded, “Almog, keep holding the handle.”
The IDF arrives
I don’t know what the soldiers expected to see when they arrived. An empty house, perhaps, that we had been taken hostage, or that we had been murdered. They came over to the bomb shelter and tried to open the door but I wouldn’t let go of the handle. My survival instincts told me to be quiet, but on the other hand, I knew that I had to communicate with them otherwise they would move on.
They asked if anyone was there, and I couldn’t let the words out of my mouth. And then they said, “We’ve come to rescue you, we’re from such and such a unit,” and it sounded plausible to me. I opened the door carefully, went out, and closed it behind me. They asked me if I was alone and I shook my head. They asked who was with me and I said the kids. They asked to see them, and if they had tried to move me to enter the bomb shelter, I would have fought them, but they asked and I allowed it.
When they left, I allowed myself to get Sahar some food. I walked barefoot on broken glass and suddenly heard whimpering. I looked out the window and saw the puppy. I said to him, “I see nothing is going to kill you, huh,” and let him in. As a thank you, he urinated on the floor.
The evacuation
That night, they gathered the kibbutz in the community center and we slept in one of the centers for children. The next day, they let us pack in the afternoon and had two buses waiting for us. One to Eilat, and one to the center of the country. The theft of the car was one of the more challenging things for me. I’m an independent woman, and freedom of movement is very important to me.
Oren, my ex-husband, went to Eilat with the kids, and I went with the Nir Am community that was evacuated to Tel Aviv. Three days later, it became clear to me that I couldn’t continue managing a community because my kids were falling apart, as was I, and we needed time to recover. Nir Am’s chairman told me, “Almog, I’m taking over. Go take care of the kids and yourself.” So I went to Eilat.
At first, a lot of therapists came to the hotel and I used their help. After that, I tried to create a schedule of work interviews and meetings. Looking for a job became complicated, limited and vague because I didn’t have a house, wasn’t at my best, and couldn’t take on anything big.
In the early days, I walked around without an ID or a wallet. I had no way to prove that I was who I said I was. After a few days, an Interior Ministry booth was set up in the hotel to allow people to renew their IDs and passports.
We were given a lot of donations that allowed us to get organized. My mother gave me her credit card, my sister gave me her wallet, relatives sent some money, my aunt sent me a collection of creams I like, and a friend of mine gave Nadine a suitcase full of arts and crafts materials. Each thing helped us gather ourselves a bit more and feel more in control.
The helping hand reached out to us by the people of Eilat was extremely valuable. If Eilat wasn’t in the south, I would move there. Like many others, my financial and occupational security was greatly damaged. I couldn’t have taken my daughter to a dance studio, my son to soccer, and myself to therapy sessions if not for the compassion and generosity with which we got the thing we needed that I could no longer afford.
Turning point: Budapest
In December, I was sent to Budapest as part of a delegation from the Jewish Agency’s Zionist Enterprises Department. Four times a day for four days, I told our story to various parts of Budapest’s Jewish community, and when you tell your story time after time and answer questions, you see it from different angles.
When I got back, it was clear to me that I needed to move forward. More than that, it was clear to me that the way I agreed to raise my kids near the Gaza border was not normal.
Our children grew up in bomb shelters so that we could make it inside within 15 seconds without having to pull them out of bed. Suddenly, I understood that agreeing to live like that was my first sin. I got back from Budapest, and all at once, I knew that I wasn’t willing to let my kids pay the mental price anymore, not even so that I could say, “We don’t leave home,” and feel like a hero. I understood that I wanted to leave.
Who am I now?
When I studied shamanism, my teachers would go away on trips, and each time, they returned with a small gift for the students. One of the trips was to Greece, and my teacher gave me an egg made of plaster with a horse totem and said something that I have never forgotten even though it was 20 years ago.
She said, “I’m giving you a gift that is also a warning. An egg is the most nourishing and embracing home. It allows you to develop inside it quietly and safely. But if you don’t gather the strength to break the shell at the right moment, the house may become a death trap.”
This is true about the bomb shelter, which was a protective place that could become a death trap if you didn’t get out of there in time. The same could be said for the hotel, the cover of community, the casing that saves us and is essential but I’m giving it up to move on. Being torn away from the community is an unimaginable fracture. It means abandoning and shedding everything that made up your identity.
Nirim in Beersheba
In January, the Nirim community decided to move from the hotel in Eilat to a residential complex in Beersheba. All you need to do is put the kids in the car with the small amount of equipment you have and move. Educational programs were found, and everything was arranged and maintained. You arrive at an organized and furnished home, where everything has been taken care of, and it is incredible. That is the power of community.
Choosing to leave is like getting out of a river flowing in one direction and swimming against the current to a whirlpool. You distance yourself from the egg, but the egg is also your home, family, and community. It’s your best friends, the people you sat with for a beer or coffee for 15 years.
Leaving now is like leaving religion. No one tells you not to go, everyone understands you, but you’re leaving the current and are left naked, and it’s a loss of many sources of strength: The physical, spiritual, and social home. Getting up and leaving is like breaking the eggshell, but it’s difficult, and I need to find a home.
I’ve been considering returning to the area I grew up in, to the scenery of Haifa and the surrounding mountains. When everything breaks, you want a place your heart recognizes. For the same reason, Oren doesn’t want to leave. His family, friends, work, and life are in the south.
We’re in a complicated limbo. We’re on good terms, and suddenly I want a different reality and he is second generation in Nirim, an excellent agricultural equipment mechanic, a man of the land who has lived in that area his whole life. He doesn’t want motion and change, and it isn’t easy.
Cracks
The magnitude of the crisis of October 7 didn’t end there. There are still hostages in Gaza. War. The fracture that was created is like tectonic movement. More cracks formed in places that were already cracked. Places that were close to each other were smashed together.
I think we’re going to see a wave of families breaking up from the towns near the Gaza border. In my opinion, it will hit across the country because the influence of what happened to us echoes. We’re in national trauma. At first, it made us stick together, but under the surface and under the slogan “Together we will win” and all the bullshit from that anesthetic, the trauma threatens our foundations.
People will ask themselves, am I living the life I want to live? Why do I stay with this loser? Why do I stay with a boss who screams at me? Life is short. A minute ago a Hamas terrorist almost murdered me.
I’m not willing to lie to myself anymore. I have kids to take care of, and I don’t want to raise them near an active volcano. I know firsthand how hard and unbearable it is to leave home. I feel bare to the bone, all my nerves are raw. It’s possible that tomorrow I’ll break and go back, but I have to do this experiment. I have to raise my kids in a safe place for them.
In December, I took the kids and our stuff, left the hotel, got into the car, started it, and drove to my mother in Haifa. She said to me, “My home is your home,” and in the meantime, I’ve started an intensive search for our next house.
I’m searching mainly for kibbutzim in Lachish and the Judean foothills so that the kids can be close to Oren and so I can give them a similar way of life and education to what they’re used to. I think it’s the right way of life for people.
For the moment, they’re studying over Zoom, and I’m with them most of the time. It’s difficult because as long as I don’t find a place to settle in, there isn’t really any routine. It depends on Oren. If he doesn’t want us to stay in Haifa until the end of the year, I’ll find a solution until I can settle in a permanent place.
How does your mind work in a seemingly endless in-between situation?
It feels like pushing off the wall of an ice rink in ice skates that you cannot control. The ice is smooth and cold, and you don’t know what to do with your feet and hands, you’re moving from the force of the push, and you feel like you’ll crash at any moment.
That’s my current situation. I gave up on everything that lent support so that I could live. Did I do the right thing? I don’t know. Sometimes we need to agree to go into the unknown to let life in.
Somewhere is a home waiting for you
I see all sorts of apartments and it exhausts me because none of them are as nice as the house I had. Many of them are small and damaged, and I’d need to live like a dog to live in them. The whole process is disappointing because they show me a damaged and broken room, and I say, “But there’s no kitchen here, how will I cook for my kids?”
My insistence on kibbutzim is limiting because they don’t have a lot of options. A lot of kibbutzim are helping communities that were evacuated together but not individuals who decided to leave. The individuals are forced to make all the effort alone.
Most kibbutzim don’t have any houses suitable for families available because evacuees from the north went down to the center, and those from the south went up to the center, and there is no one organizing it all. There’s no one to put out an organized announcement once a week saying there are five apartments in Kibbutz Heftziba and three apartments in Kibbutz Na’an, for example.
The Kibbutz Movement could do it in 30 seconds, but its people don’t want to weaken the communities and open the door to departures which forces people who don’t want to go back to their kibbutzim, like me, to find solutions themselves. Wouldn’t it be okay to help traumatized people whose lives were shattered even if they don’t want to go back?
I think that the Kibbutz Movement needs to allow whoever doesn’t want to go back to kibbutzim that were hit on October 7 to be absorbed into communities and not just be hosted for a few months. I’m trying to promote my view to the Kibbutz Movement because I want to keep living in a kibbutz but don’t want to keep living on the border. I want to live in a reality in which the bomb shelter is not an inherent part of the routine.
I was in contact with three kibbutzim. In one, they found an apartment but there was no room in the education system, in another, there was room in the education system, but they couldn’t find us an apartment, and the third is working on a caravan solution, but they will only be ready in six months. Another kibbutz has a waiting list of former members who left and want to be reabsorbed, and even though I said I wanted to be absorbed, the answer was, “Our members come first.”
They’re all right, and this is the situation. The simplest thing for me would be to leave the Kibbutz Movement and rent a house in a moshav or a small neighborhood, but I’m insisting on the kibbutz because of my kids and because I believe in the idea.
The future
I want a good community where I can put down roots, stay, and flourish. I want a good social and educational environment for kids, and I want to live in a place where I can make a home. The things I’ve been shown in kibbutzim make me ashamed of the people who showed them to me.
It’s inconceivable that, as a mother with two small children, I’ve been shown a worn-out one-bedroom made for singles living alone. True, my house was destroyed, but I don’t have to live in a kennel. I’m a self-respecting adult human. I can give up on the idea of the kibbutz and live elsewhere, but I don’t want to. Please, be aware of what you’re showing people.
I’ll be able to relax when I feel like I’ve arrived at a home and not a temporary shelter, and I’m scared that the government will only give compensation to people who go back to the Gaza border. I hear that that’s what they’re talking about even though they promised to take care of those who don’t go back as well.
Right now, I’m living off of others’ favors. I haven’t been reimbursed yet for the damage to my home or for my stolen car. I’ve spent many hours on the phone in the last two weeks to advance my payments.
I call the appraiser, and he says that he hasn’t received the file, and then I call again to figure out where the file is. I don’t have extra energy. I’m living on fumes, scratching the walls.
My longing for home is intense. The loss of a home is so awful, something that is extremely difficult to bear, and often, when it hurts, you want to stop the pain and put a band-aid on and think about it later, but “later” never comes. It’s like not calling an ex you know mistreated you even though you really want to.
Difficult decisions never become easier. Once before, I decided to leave because my kids went through trauma, but I didn’t do it. Now, it’s an awakening, and it requires appropriate action.
