When I wrote a series of posts this past summer which described our week in Poland visiting memorials to the 6,000,000 Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust, the pervasive themes of that week was that mankind should learn from the brutality that was inflicted on the world during World War II, and, particularly for the Jewish People (but with a distinct universal message), the theme of Never Again. Never again should there be such horrific brutality, and, with the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews now had a strong a capable army and the Jewish population of Israel had a credible defense that would protect them against their enemies.
Then came October 7th. Over 3000 Hamas terrorists breached the border and entered Israel in a coordinated planned effort to infiltrate the southern part of Israel. They came by paraglider, by pickup truck, by motorcycle, and on foot. They attacked a music festival filled with young adults and infiltrated the kibbutzim, villages, and cities along the Gaza border. After an excruciating 36 hours, over 1200 people were killed, and approximately 250 people dragged back to Gaza to be held hostage. Hundreds more were wounded and left for dead. This was the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. After the army responded and eliminated the terrorists who invaded Israel proper, Israel declared war on Hamas, which led to the invasion of Gaza and the destruction that we are seeing daily on our screens and newspapers.
The messaging since the events of October 7th has been, in many ways, very bizarre and startling in how it has been spun. We all remember the anti-Israel rallies in Montreal, Toronto, New York, and all over North America and Europe. Incredibly, these started on October 8th, days before there was any incursion into Gaza and any perceived “retaliation”. Since then, there has been a steady stream of information and misinformation about what happened and whether Israel’s invasion of Gaza was justified. Just today, I received a screen shot in one of my what’s app groups of a plastic surgeon in Montreal, who claims that the October 7th events are “trumped up” and that disgusting acts such as rape and beheadings “have been debunked”. Clearly, anyone can believe any story they wish, but at this stage, the wounds are still fresh, the sites of destruction are still mainly untouched, and there are unfortunately thousands of people who were eyewitness to what went on October 7th.
There has been a steady stream of groups who have come on missions to learn first-hand what transpired on those first days from October 7th onward. We joined up with a mission from Mizrachi Canada, led by Elan, who is the director. This is the 4th mission he has run either for Mizrachi or for various synagogues in Montreal and Toronto. Our group included about 40 Canadians and the program started with a meeting with the head of World Mizrachi, Rabbi Doron Perez. Rabbi Perez feels the pain of 10-7 acutely, as one of his sons was injured in a battle and one of his sons was kidnapped and is still missing. You can hear his story here:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/our-heart-one-child-married-one-child-missing/
As we were in Netanya, we did not hear Rabbi Perez, but we met up with the group at Camp Shura, an army base that is one of the centres for the Israeli Army’s Rabbinical Corps. In normal times, they provide spiritual services for soldiers and are responsible for preparation of deceased soldiers for burial. Although the base has a morgue and several experienced people in the laws of Jewish burial rituals, there has never been a time in the history of Israel when the hundreds of dead soldiers and civilians flooded into the base all at once. We met with a young Rabbi named Benzi, and with a woman named Noa Lewis, who are responsible for the preparation for burial of men and woman. What they described was beyond comprehension. It’s difficult to picture a scenario where there are wall-to-wall bodies in every room of a large airplane-hanger sized complex. There were bodies delivered in ambulances, pickup trucks, ice cream delivery trucks, vegetable trucks…it was a horrendous torrent of affected people. The condition of the corpses ranged from gunshots and recognizable, to beyond recognition because of severe burns, being struck by a high-speed rocket propelled grenade, or in the worst-case scenario, beheaded and mutilated. To see the carnage was one thing, but for this group of people who were there to ensure that those who were brought there were identified, properly treated according to Jewish Law, and then buried, keeping one’s composure was nothing short of a miraculous feat. Using facial recognition, dental records, fingerprinting, and DNA analysis, slowly but surely all who could be identified were and all have been buried. The base handled female and male soldiers as well as civilians and there were upwards of 1200 bodies in those initial days. It is to the credit of the amazing individuals working there that this was accomplished with the shortest possible delay and that they still had the fortitude and ability to share the nightmares with us.
From there, we drove to Tel Aviv to visit Hostage Square. This is an area adjacent to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and not far from the Theatre. Picture using the Quartier des Spectacles around Place des Arts in Montreal as a place where the families, friends, and supporters of the now 130+ hostages come daily to ensure that their loved ones, our sisters and brothers, are not forgotten. There is a mixture of displays with the names of hostages, art depicting their plight, a tunnel to encapsulate the feelings of those in Gaza tunnels, a large Shabbat table with empty chairs and place settings, and tents with people from the kibbutzim that were destroyed where survivors share their stories. Our group met Shai Benjamin, whose father Ron Benjamin, was kidnapped. He does not live in the south, but as an avid cyclist he was down near Kibbutz Beeri on a bike ride. Ron was kidnapped from his car trying to escape and has not been heard from. Shai by her own admission, has become “The CEO of the most difficult and most painful job I will ever have: director of the Bring Ron Benjamin Home company.” She has, along with the other families of those still held hostage, have set out to advocate for a way to bring those kidnapped back to Israel. Shai has spoken to the head of the UN, Hilary Clinton, European leaders, and multiple groups like ours. She shared both the story of her father’s imprisonment by Hamas, and the work the families are doing to keep the hostages’ plight in the minds of those who have influence. She asked us to also be witnesses to the daily horror of waking up not knowing the fate of a cherished loved one.
We then spent more time at hostage square, hearing other stories and then drove up the coast to Kibbutz Shefayim, a kibbutz with a guest-house/hotel near the Mediterranean Sea, about 20 minutes from our apartment in Netanya. The Shefayim Hotel has become the home of the majority of those who survived the massacre in Kfar Aza, one of the communal villages that are about 800 meters from the border with Gaza. We met with two senior members of the kibbutz, Liora and Yankele, and heard their respective stories. Liora gave us a full description of the October 7th massacre; in fact she started with October 6th and the lovely family Shabbat and Simchat Torah Dinner that evening. She had two of her granddaughters, her son and daughter-in-law sleeping over that night. At 6:30 AM, sirens went off, usually signaling the bombardment of a few rockets, which is a regular occurrence in the southern region of Israel. They thought that it would be a short-lived alert, but then their phones started pinging with WhatsApps saying that the kibbutz had been infiltrated by dozens of terrorists. More about that when we describe our visit to Kfar Aza. What transpired for Liora’s family was a 35-hour horror show in their safe room, with family members alternately holding the door handle so that the terrorists could not enter. They were fortunate not to be hit by bullets shot into the safe room, and successfully kept the doors barred and were not captured or killed. They were ultimately rescued by the IDF; a battalion arrived at the kibbutz hours after the infiltration. Many, many, people in the kibbutz were not so lucky. For example, Liora’s son was the head of the civilian protection brigade, a group of volunteers who were responsible for patrolling the kibbutz and ensuring the safety of the population from the occasional infiltrator. Her son responded quickly to the terrorists and brought together the other 5-6 men who were part of the patrol. However, there were too many Hamas terrorists, and this group did not survive. One of his last acts was to call the head of the civilian brigade at Kibbutz Saad and tell him to lock the gates and prepare for the attack. Thanks to this advance warning, Kibbutz Saad was able to repel the attack and was relatively spared.
Our group had dinner at the hotel with residents of Kfar Aza. Many people chatted and tried to provide at least some notion that these survivors were not forgotten. We sat with a woman named Yael who had three kids in post-secondary education who had escaped and whose family were all OK. Yael owns an HR company and is trying to put together the pieces of her business again now that the situation is more stable. Life has been pretty much on hold for the past 4 months.
Wednesday morning, we awoke bright and early (well at least early) to drive from Netanya to Jerusalem to re-join the mission. We went south to Kfar Maimon, a religious agricultural kibbutz specializing in green leafy vegetables. There is a major worker crisis since the war; there are no Arab workers, with those from Gaza or the West Bank being barred from travel in Israel, young men being drafted back into the Army, and many foreign workers having left when the war started. Our mission there was to help pick green leaves called “Aley Selek” which means Beet Leaves but was really some type of Swiss Chard, like a veggie that is used in soups. Very green and crunchy! So, armed with knives and boxes and mud on our shoes, we harvested leaves in a tent designed to keep the majority of bugs out, making this lettuce easier to clean and pest free. Of course, a group of 40 Canadians were about as efficient as 3-4 Thai workers, but we did fill many crates and definitely enjoyed being outdoors; sampling the fruit of the adjacent orange orchards did not hurt either!
On the way to Kfar Maimon, we stopped briefly at the “Car graveyard”. Over 800 vehicles were found damaged, burnt and/or abandoned, often with occupants inside. These cars have been carefully combed through to find any traces of human remains to be able to be properly buried. Even 4 months after the horrors of 10-7, there are still many cars that have not been completely painstakingly inspected.
After our “Swiss Chard” Harvest, we drove to Kfar Aza. As noted above, this kibbutz was among the worst affected. Mizrachi Canada, primarily thanks to many in the Toronto community, have been providing financial support to many of the programs going on for the survivors of the pogrom and to the rebuilding efforts. Thus, Elan has built many bridges with members of this broken community. We were met by a young woman named Lir, 27 years old, who has been taking groups around the kibbutz and describing the events of 10-7. Kfar Aza had a population of 900 and about 400 homes and apartments. 69 people were killed and 17 were taken hostage, meaning almost 10% of their population was decimated. Lir explained that there were 3 waves of infiltration: paragliders who breached the fence (remember that the kibbutz is only 800 M from the Gaza security fence) at 6:29 AM, a second wave of terrorists in trucks and motorcycles, and once the carnage was well underway, townspeople, women and children came in and started looting the homes of the dead. There is footage of all of this, from bodycams on the terrorists, plus the testimony of eye-witnesses. Lir explained that the Hamas infiltrators first attacked the area where the young adults and couples lived. I won’t post too many pictures, but trust me when I tell you that the number of bullet holes per home reaches into the hundreds, and many homes were torched or bombed with grenades or RPGs leaving them in shambles. The destruction was painful and difficult to see. On many homes is a sign of who lived there and whether they were killed or kidnapped. Remember the movie Hotel Rwanda, and scenes of bodies and destroyed homes? One would hope to never see such abject devastation; but there it was, in front of us, as a reminder that there is true evil in the world.
In all, men, women and children were killed, including people over 80 years old and one resident in a wheelchair. The Hamas terrorists were indiscriminate and utterly merciless. It took many hours (for some up to 37 hours) for the IDF to arrive and slowly get the area under control and evacuate those who had hidden in safe rooms
Lir discussed how people living in Kfar Aza really believed in peace. They knew that the rockets were a fact of life but felt that it was important to build bridges. The mayor of the region who was killed among the others in the civil patrol had even started working on a plan to construct a factory on the border specifically to employ 5000 Gazans. These were idealists and their world view has been completely shattered.
As Jews, we draw back on our roots to try to bring some light to bad situations. Mizrachi Canada created a project to recover used Torah Scrolls and bring them to communities. On our visit, a special Torah Scroll was dedicated in memory of members of the Mark family from the city of Otniel, near the ancient city of Hebron. This family had lost a father to a terrorist attack, a brother to a car accident, and in the current war, another brother and cousin. The brother who fell in battle in Gaza had been among the forces who rescued and evacuated people from Kfar Aza. Thus, his siter Shira arranged with the Toronto community and Mizrachi to dedicate a new Sefer Torah to the synagogue in Kfar Aza. You may recall that I described a special Torah dedication this summer in Poland. By its design, this celebration was more low key, as few members of Kfar Aza were present. However, Lir’s father, a community leader, promised that when Kfar Aza was rebuilt, there would indeed be a full-blown celebration. Amazingly, we were joined by the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, and a group of European UN ambassadors who were in the south visiting. As Ambassador Erdan said, this was a true testament to the resiliency of the Jewish people.
From Kfar Aza, it's a short drive to the site of the Supernova Music festival. There were 4000+ participants in the this multi-day festival that has been a feature of the fall season in Israel for many years. The partygoers were attacked at dawn; there was limited security and the area is a large grassy enclave that stretches for acres. By mid morning, 40 were kidnapped, 364 were killed and many wounded by bludgeoning, gunfire and grenades. What stands today is a large memorial with pictures of each participant who was either killed or captured. They represent a large swath of young people in their 20's and 30's with their whole lives ahead of them, taken much too young. On the site, we met a young woman named Ariella, who was part of a small group that were on border patrol. Their platoon was overrun by terrorists as well, and almost the entire group of 30 young people were killed. Ariella provided not only the details of the horrors she and the others faced but shared poems and letters that they had written; these were real people with sensitivity, hopes and dreams that were cut short in their prime.
https://open.spotify.com/track/28tCQKMuSmbrGKgBVwDON0?si=eP-a5E37R2-QQZsLZCtOoA
Our day ended in Kisuffim, where we sponsored a BBQ dinner for a group of soldiers guarding the southern front. This was definitely appreciated and we thanked these men for helping to keep the border safe.
This is obviously a lot heavier than the usual family-oriented blog. Of course, what is going on currently is a very serious conflict. And I admit this is a one-sided view. However, the truth is that there was a mass murder that was committed on October 7, 2023, the likes of which has not been seen in a democratic country since the Second World War. It’s essential to understand and remember that the current Gaza conflict did not happen in a vacuum, and that thousands of real lives, men, women and children have been directly affected by this unprecedented and merciless attack. May those who perished be remembered and their memory be a blessing for us all.
Shabbat Shalom
Barbara and Bruce
This morning, we were able to attend Aryeh’s Siddur Celebration, as all of first grade in his school were given their own Hebrew Prayer Books, a momentous occasion for a 6-year old! The kids put on a presentation of songs and dances, there were a few speeches (though not few enough 😉) and a cute one-person play where one of their (very talented) teachers played all the roles. I think Aryeh was pretty excited to not only have his parents in attendance but two grandparents as well, as you can tell from the beaming picture posted with the blog. 
