We’re broken, crushed, devastated. We’re not okay, and we won’t be okay. We suffered hell, and we’re still suffering. The mind and the heart can’t comprehend or contain the horrors and magnitude of the tragedy. So many of us were brutally murdered. Some kidnapped, some still missing, and all of us, all of us, maimed.
In the morning, when I hadn’t grasped the scope of the tragedy, I tried as usual to tell my precious, sweet young children that it would be over soon. That it was only rocket fire from Gaza.
Romi, my five-year-old, asked, “Mom, if Gaza is shooting at us, can they also come to us?” and I confidently told her, as someone who’d been living in the region bordering the Gaza Strip for 34 years, who had thought she was safe in her own home, in her country, from the worst evil that befell us, I replied, “No, my Romi, they can’t. Our army protects us.”
My dear, brave husband was called in to the security squad of the kibbutz right at the beginning. I don’t know how you can function and fight for your home when your most precious loved ones are helplessly barricaded, without food and water, waiting for the nightmare to end. I don’t know how you stay alive!
My husband, Sa’aroni, saved us. Once every hour-and-a-half, two hours, he called, screaming that there were so many of them, telling us not to let them into the safe room, to fight as hard as we could. Short conversations, one-and-a-half seconds long, just to verify that we were still alive. Honestly? I was sure we wouldn’t survive.
The conversations and messages we heard between members of the kibbutz, between family members, and the unfathomable knowledge that both right here in my current home in Kibbutz Be’eri, and in my childhood home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the same horrors were transpiring, made my thoughts unimaginable and torturously painful. Slowly, I realized that they were a huge mob, butchering and massacring us with so much ammunition and a desire to kill. I don’t know where I found the strength to carry on. To call a neighbor to help me watch over my children.
“We understood there was no real way to fight, and we prayed.”
We spent 13 hours locked up in our safe room. 13 hours in the dark, gradually moving all the furniture to barricade us in, and block bullets and grenades. We understood there was no real way to fight, and we prayed. Prayed to make it out alive.
(Our safe room after 14 hours of hiding)
Homes were burned, bombed, people were murdered, kidnapped, and there is no way to grasp it, no way to fathom how to go on. I’m a young mother, and I explained to my children that they must be quiet or we would get killed. That Daddy wasn’t here because he must protect us, and he’s with the army. But the army took forever to arrive. And he wasn’t with the army. For so many long hours, they were only a few, a small security squad, against so many cruel evils. The vile, horrendous terrorists, there were so many of them, and they massacred us in every way possible.
"Through it all, I thought to myself that I would probably not make it out of there alive. I literally prepared them for how to save themselves if I die."
They had come fully armed. Equipped. Prepared. They were hundreds. Through it all, I thought to myself that I would probably not make it out of there alive. I tried in every way possible to care for my most precious loves, my children who were with me, and worried for my husband defending us out there. Tried to figure out how the rest of my family were doing, each blockaded in their own homes, in Kfar Aza and Be’eri. With my last few of my phone battery, I started drafting farewell messages.
I explained to my kids that if they start shooting at us and we hear Arabic, they must immediately climb into the closet in total silence, and mustn’t utter a single word until they hear complete quiet. I literally prepared them for how to save themselves if I die. It’s incomprehensible. It can’t ever be understood. It makes no sense!
In the evening, after nightfall, my husband called and said, “I’m coming to get you out, we’re evacuating citizens.” My hero saved us, but he didn’t manage to save so many others, including his own dear, beloved father, may he rest in peace, who was taken hostage and murdered. The tears choke us. They pour at every look, every word, every attempt to shut our eyes. Please, let us wake from this nightmare already!
We remain broken, devastated, crushed, and we have nothing. No home to go back to. We have no way to go back. And there are many, so many, who are no longer with us. Who will never be with us again. There are no words.
Amit D.