First part
Two months after armed men from the Hamas terrorist group stormed and destroyed Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Israel’s southern border, death is still in the air.
The place looks like a cemetery of burned and destroyed houses.
This assault on three kitbuzim: Kfar Az, Nir Oz and Be’eri; and the Nova Music Festival where thousands of young people had fun began one of the bloodiest wars between Israel and Hamas.
After the deadly attacks on Israel on October 7, a war broke out that had a six-day truce, the last week of November, to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, and carry out an exchange of those kidnapped by Hamas with Palestinian prisoners in Israel. .
The traces of the massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Aza are everywhere: burned homes, collapsed roofs, rubble and twisted iron intermixed with remains of furniture, clothing and all kinds of clothing and items.
In many windows and walls you can see the holes left by the impact of the machine guns. There are still the shells of the burned cars.
It is as if a bomb had exploded in the place, although what exploded were the thrown grenades.
In the middle of the street, in a playpen-type baby stroller, there are bullet casings.
No one lives anymore in the picturesque Kfar Aza Kibbutz, located three miles from the Gaza Strip. From the back of this kibbutz you can see the buildings of Gaza.
This agricultural community went from being a peaceful paradise to a place to which none of its inhabitants want to return.
Currently, the site is guarded by members of the Israel Defense Forces.
Days after Saturday, October 7, the day Hamas attacked this Kibbutz around 9:30 in the morning, news reports reported that there were corpses scattered in the streets and bags with bodies on the basketball court.
Kibbutz Kfar Aza is one of three farming communities on Israel’s southern border that were devastated by Hamas.
At the Kfar Aza Kibbutz he visited The opinion About 750 people lived there. 62 were murdered, including children, elderly women, women and men. Some were shot, others burned, and still others decapitated. Hamas gunmen killed them in their beds, safe rooms, dining rooms, gardens and wherever they found them.
They took 18 kidnapped people, until November 28 when The OpinionWhen he visited the place, seven of them had been released as a result of the truce in the Israel-Hamas War. There are still many missing.
And not even the pets were spared, most of them were gunned down as could be seen in a 45-minute video from the Israeli Armed Forces that shows how Hamas members, all very young, entered Israel, shooting to kill who were in their way on the road, and arrived at the kibbutzim and killed entire families, giving thanks to God after each execution, as if they were making an offering.
Even in an audio you can hear one of them calling his father to brag that he had killed more than eight Jews, while his father responds that he is very proud of him, and passes it on to his mother so she can share “the good news.”
The 45-minute video was made with the own videos that Hamas published on its social networks and the videos captured by the cameras in the kibtuzim’s homes.
Diklá Shmriz, a woman, daughter of Argentine-Jewish parents, is the first time she has gone to Kibbutz Kfar Aza after October 7.
In this community they consider her a strong woman because she has not lost her strength, even when her 26-year-old son was kidnapped by Hamas.
“It is very difficult to come. There are people who still can’t. “I don’t know if I’ll want to come back to live here again.”
Many Israelis of Argentine and Brazilian origin lived in this kibbutz.
How do I survive after the attacks?
“I live like everyone else in this kibbutz. “What is most difficult for me is to see the signs with the numbers of dead and kidnapped that the army has placed outside each house.”
Major Roni Kaplan, spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, states that between 350 and 200 Hamas terrorists arrived at Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7.
“Many stood on top of this house to murder the security people,” he says while accompanying a group of Hispanic journalists on a tour of what remains of Kibbutz Kfar Aza; and he shows the house where the kibbutz superintendent, Ofir Libstein, lived, who lost his life fighting to protect the community from him.
His 19-year-old son, Nitzan, also died during the massacre. His body was found 12 days later. Father and son were buried two hours apart.
“In this place they killed everything from babies to people over 80 years old. That day of the attack was a Holiday, the Day of Sukkot (one of the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar). The families were in their pajamas when they came to their homes to kill them,” says Major Kaplan, an army reservist of Uruguayan origin who was called on an emergency basis to serve as a spokesperson for the Spanish-language media after the Hamas attacks.
He describes the Kibbutz as a beautiful place full of well-tended gardens, with people helping their neighbors in Gaza.
“There was a coexistence. “They took them for chemotherapy treatments in Tel Aviv.”
Israel had issued work permits to 18,000 Palestinians to work in construction and agriculture; and these workers crossed the border daily to work both in Israel and in the occupied West Bank territories.
The soldier speaks with sadness about the youth neighborhood, the most affected by the Hamas attacks in Kfar Aza.
“Many were burned alive and their homes were set on fire. The dreams of young people were buried in this place; They tied their hands before killing them. “They cut a pregnant woman’s belly, took out the fetus, murdered it and then showed it.”
But that was not all, he says that the terrorists recorded what they did, they had body cameras where their actions were recorded.
“The Nazis hid everything they did. The Hamas terrorists made them public on the networks, proud of all the Jews they massacred. What will happen is that our entire generation will live with post-trauma and that there will be no peace in this area.”
At times, Major Kaplan is optimistic: “the release of the hostages is a light of hope, that one day we will be able to live in peace.”
After the tragedy, all the inhabitants of Kibbutz Kfar Aza as well as those of the kibbutzim in the north and south of Israel were evacuated and taken to hotels.
The Kibbutz were born as a socialist experience at the beginning of the last century, whose main mode of survival was agriculture. They were privatized in the 80s; and some have currently diversified their sources of income by establishing high-tech companies or industrial plants. Today, there are 270 kibbutzim in Israel.
On October 7, Hamas killed around 1,200 Israelis. Thousands were injured and 240 were taken hostage, many of them babies, children, grandmothers, women and men.
During the six-day truce, Hamas freed 105 civilian hostages: 81 of them Israelis, 23 Thais and one Filipino. It is estimated that 138 remain kidnapped in Gaza.
In exchange, Israel freed 240 Palestinian prisoners, all of them women and children under 18 years of age.
Before the Hamas attack, 30,000 Thais worked in Israel’s agricultural fields, based on an agreement between Thailand and Israel.
After the devastating and unexpected attacks by Hamas, global solidarity turned towards the people of Israel, but after Israel’s armed response, and thousands of deaths began to fall on the Gaza side, much of public opinion gave the back.
US Senator Bernie Sanders, a critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu, opposed giving $10 billion in emergency aid to Israel as part of the national security spending plan.
Although it considers it appropriate for the United States to support Israel to protect its citizens from missile attacks, it disagrees with the military approach used in the War against Hamas due to the thousands of civilian deaths it has left.
As of December 5, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 15,299 had died in Gaza.
Major Kaplan clarifies that Israel is not fighting against the Palestinian people, nor against Islam.
“We are fighting a terrorist group that wants to destroy us. In our Magna Carta it says that Israel exists, and when Israel fights it does so in accordance with International Law and Judeo-Christian morality.
“I don’t understand how anyone who adheres to International Law is criticized. Perhaps in the United States there were those demonstrations when there was war in Syria, in Cambodia, in Myanmar or in Yemen when civilians were intentionally murdered.
“Perhaps Hamas does not have to adhere to International Law, it is a double standard: one for Israel and another for the rest of the world.
“We do our utmost to minimize harm to civilians. Our goal is to dismantle Hamas, return the hostages and provide security to our citizens.”
The Israel-Hamas War truce that began on Friday, December 24, ended on Friday, December 1.
*This series of reports is made possible thanks to a fellowship from Fuente Latina, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded and directed by Leah Soibel. It has offices in Miami and Mexico City. Fuente Latina’s mission is to remove linguistic and geographic barriers, empowering journalists and influencers to cover stories about Israel and the Middle East. For more than 11 years, Fuente Latina has awarded fellowships to more than 350 Hispanic media professionals from 12 countries. sess. Much of the informative content generated has won awards.