The atrocities that occurred on October 7th and travel warnings notwithstanding, my husband and I traveled to Israel in July this year. We’ve been to Israel every year for the past few years to visit friends, eat wonderful food, walk the streets, speak Hebrew, contribute to the economy to the best of our ability and to generally soak up the lively atmosphere that is quintessentially Israel. This year was clearly different and yet we were more determined than ever to get there. Neither of us has family there, but our connections run deep. My husband is Israeli, having moved to Australia 40 years ago and I lived there during my teenage years, completing high school in Jerusalem.
Confronting us as soon as we walked towards the customs booths at Ben Gurion airport were pictures of every single hostage that were placed along the length of the ramp. We usually hurry to clear customs, but were literally stopped in our tracks. My husband burst into tears, the devastating reality of 251 innocent kidnapped men, women and children hitting us hard in the face upon our arrival. The dichotomy of devastation and Israelis love of life and general positivity accompanied us throughout our stay.
Two days after our arrival, we joined a UIA day trip to the south to bear witness to the devastation that Hamas perpetrated. Nothing prepared us for what we were confronted with that day. In Sderot twenty police were murdered. The station demolished. All that remains is a makeshift memorial to those who were murdered, a more permanent memorial is yet to be determined for the site.
Our next stop was to the Supernova music festival site near Kibbutz Re’em, approximately five kilometers from the Gaza border where 364 victims were gunned down and slaughtered by Hamas terrorists. Some 4,000 innocent trance music lovers were caught by surprise at six in the morning by frenzied barbarians, who, according to some sources, while busy gunning down, raping and kidnapping innocent victims at Nova, failed to reach their original designated destination. Some say that the victims of Nova may have saved the lives of others by sacrificing their own.
Our tears flowed freely at this chilling site where all that remains are stakes with photos of the beautiful, young, innocent victims attached to them, our incredulity of this unprovoked attack deepening as we moved around. Families visit the makeshift memorials to place flowers or memorial candles. We could frequently hear the nearby sound of guns and artillery fire booming from the IDF artillery startling some in our group. The site is called a forest, but it is merely young Eucalyptus trees whose trunks are barely wider than the width of an adult leg. One cannot begin to imagine what these young concert goers went through when they realised that they were being chased and gunned down by terrorists. Running to find shelter and cover, they were hunted and caught like animals. The evidence of the atrocities perpetrated on the day are too gruesome and horrific to repeat and out of respect for the victims I choose not to recall them here.
Our guide recalled many stories of heroism that took place on that day. Rami Davidan, a farmer from Moshav Patish, located about 16 kilometres from Gaza rescued some 700 young people. Using his vast knowledge of the area, he was initially sent the location of a friend’s son who was at the festival and was now hiding from the terrorists in the bushes. He located the boy, bundled him and 20 other frightened and traumatised people into his car and drove them to safety. He repeated this trip again and again, recruiting family and friends by phone and text to do the same. At one point he received a location ping from a girl who had escaped the party and was cornered by five terrorists. He instinctively shouted at them in Arabic to hand the girl over to him as they were being chased by security forces. Thinking he was a Bedouin, they handed her over to him and ran. He is reported to be struggling with the trauma of what he witnessed on the day and the barbarity of the perpetrators, yet overwhelmingly proud of what he,his family and friends courageously did.
Author of The Choice, Czechoslovakian born, American psychologist and Holocaust survivor Edith Egers is quoted as saying “ With courage, we can all overcome our pain and create a life of meaning and purpose”. This is not to say that Rami had no purpose prior to this life changing event, but this event has given him the opportunity to learn, to grow and to accept the enormity of how many lives he changed on that day.
Kibbutz Be’eri was established in 1946 and has approximately 1,000 residents. On October 7th, 101 residents were murdered by Hamas terrorists and 20 were kidnapped into Gaza, some later murdered. The kibbutz, one of Israel’s wealthiest, is best known for its printing factory, Dfus Be’eri, that prints cheques, envelopes, and photo albums.
Met at the entrance by a kibbutz member who was on a fishing expedition on October 7th, tried unsuccessfully to get back to defend the kibbutz. His brother, murdered by the terrorists when they stormed the medical centre on the Kibbutz. We stood at the burned remains of the houses where people tried to save themselves by hiding in their safe rooms, many without success. The only thing I can compare this to, if at all appropriate, is some of the death camps that I bore witness to in Poland where death and devastation pervade. The kibbutz members have not yet decided whether to keep the remains of the houses as is, or to demolish them so as not to have them as a constant reminder of what happened on the day.
The Car cemetery near Tekuma was established after extensive forensic investigations of the 1800 abandoned cars. Unsure of what to do with the large number of cars that were burned and destroyed by the terrorists, it was decided to take them to an area that has now become a memorial site. The burned cars have been stacked four cars high, one blue coloured car amongst the charred remains of the other cars that stands out amongst the carnage as a symbol of hope and a sign that not all was destroyed on that fateful day.
Emotionally spent and devastated, unable to properly articulate what we had seen, we turned to action rather than words. In the days and weeks following, we visited injured soldiers at Tel Hashomer hospital. Young boys, some without arms, legs, or eyes displayed nothing less than heroism, recounting their stories about how they fought the enemy, lost their army brothers and survived with horrific injuries, only waiting for the day when they receive the green light to go back into action. Some will never return to the battlefield, but to quote Viktor Frankl “ Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”. These brave young men choose to live with the hope that one day they will rejoin their brothers to fight for Israel, their homeland.
Erans Angels and Revitals Chamal (War room) are just two of the other charities that we volunteered for. Incredibly selfless people doing incredibly selfless acts of acquiring and providing food, clothes, equipment to those in need is truly humbling to see. It was an honour to meet and work with these amazing people who have given up their lives to dedicate them to the needs of others. My faith in humanity was restored while in Israel during its darkest hour.
