Israelis can’t live with monsters on its borders anymore – a perspective from Kibbutz Kfar Aza revisited.
There is something very private about death – or at least there should be. Perhaps that is why murder is so horrifying. Life is the one thing that belongs only to the individual and the creator.
Invading your body to steal that spark of holiness is a defilement beyond words.
The Gazan invaders went a step beyond murder. They murdered with glee. Laughing with joy.
Signs of their enthusiasm remain, one year later.
How are you supposed to deal with places where this frenzy took place? Places where people you knew and loved had this done to them?
In Kfar Aza, the “young people’s neighborhood” remains untouched. While other areas of the kibbutz are being renovated and refreshed so that life can return to them, this neighborhood is frozen in time – from the bullet holes in the walls and the signs left behind by the rescue workers to the dishes left in the sink by people who will never have another morning. From here, hostages were taken and others were murdered. Here, the kibbutz decided that visitors could bear witness to the remains of the horror that occurred throughout their community.
Most of the homes are blocked off with red tape. These are families who wanted to keep those last moments between their loved ones and their murderers and the people who found them to themselves. Not private but also not open for all.
One family decided they want visitors to see. They want everyone to know.
A sign above the door calls upon visitors to enter. Here Sivan Elkabets and Naor Hasidim lived and died together. Their families added enlarged photos to the interior of the house so visitors could see the before, not just the after – an image of their bedroom, clean and neat in contrast to the mattress flipped upside down and the mess on the floor. Images in the living room of the happy couple. The last WhatsApp conversation Sivan’s dad had with his daughter and her boyfriend, Naor.
I couldn’t take in everything I was seeing. All I could see were holes everywhere… bullet holes… holes also from a grenade? The walls, the refrigerator, even the ceiling, riddled with holes.
The murderers were ecstatic.
This (below) is the entrance to their home. Just this is enough to convey the horror.
The holes in the washing machine. The door. The walls. On the wall under the window, in small letters instructions for the Zaka crew: “Human remains on the couch.”
The bigger writing on the other wall, a mixture of different crews who checked the house for safety and what other tasks needed to be done there. The writing in yellow indicates that on October 11th, 3 days after the invasion, there was a dead terrorist that still needed to be removed. On the door, the Zaka sticker from when the house was finally cleared.
Around the world many seem to have forgotten (or pretend not to know) what happened that day. We cannot. We will not.
We meant it when we said NEVER AGAIN.
About the writer:
Forest Rain Marcia is an American-born Israeli who lives in northern Israel. She’s a branding expert and storyteller. Her passion is giving voice to the stories of Israel illuminating its profound events, cherished values, and exemplary role models that transcend borders, casting Israel as an eternal wellspring of inspiration and strength for a global audience.
Forest Rain made Aliyah at the age of thirteen. After her IDF service, she co-developed and co-directed a project to aid victims of terrorism and war. These activities gave her extensive first-hand experience with the emotional and psychological processes of civilians, soldiers, and their families, wounded and/or bereaved and traumatized by terrorism and war (grief, guilt, PTSD, etc). Throughout the years, she has continued to voice the stories, pain, and strength of traumatized Israelis to motivate others to provide support and counter the hate that threatens Jews in Israel, around the world, and Western civilization itself through the understanding that what begins with the Jews never ends with Jews.
Inspiration from Zion: https://inspirationfromzion.com/
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
