Thursday, March 06, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
by Forest Rain
“Because here, I feel at home”
Each generation has defining moments that give
rise to the questions: “Where were you when…?” and “What was it like when…?” In
America, for my mother’s generation, it was “Where were you when Kennedy was
shot?” and “Where were you during the moon landing?” In Israel, that generation
will tell you where they were when the Yom Kippur war started. For my
generation, it was “Where were you when Rabin was murdered?”
Today, the defining question is: “Where were you on October 7th? What was it
like?”
In a year of doing
agriculture volunteer work, we’ve asked every farmer that question. Each has a
unique story. Farmer Kobi told us that he lives in Kibbutz Nirim with his
beautiful wife Anat “Nati” and their two small children. He explained almost
dismissively “In between the trees here in Gvulut our security forces found a
lot of munitions… terrorists were hiding here. They [the IDF] took care of
them.”
It was at home, in
Nirim, where he had his October 7th.
First, he explained,
it is important to say that his family was granted a miracle. They survived
with only a little damage to their house.
Kobi told us of that
Shabbat morning, of the Red Alert sirens that at first seemed like the “normal”
type of attacks the border communities had become used to. (It is not normal
that any family would get used to sirens alerting them to rockets slamming into
their communities, trying to kill them).
Kobi and Nati rushed
their children to the home's safe room. They considered what they needed to
wait out the attack: food, water, toys to keep the kids occupied… regular
things like that.
Again that word,
“regular” …
Quickly they realized
that there was nothing “regular” about what was happening. Their house was
closest to the entrance to the Kibbutz. The invaders came from the back of the
Kibbutz, through the fields between them and Gaza. This meant that the invaders
went to other homes before they came to theirs.
Kobi described hearing
gunfire everywhere. Gunfire that sounded different than that of the guns our
soldiers use. Listening and not hearing our soldiers.
He described his
eldest son, then 3 years old, asking what was going on, the indescribable fear
and the dilemma of what to tell a small child. “We told him what we wanted to
hear. We lied but he’s just an innocent child. He didn’t need to know… We told
him that people want to take our house but that the army was here to protect us
and everything would be fine.”
Someone asked him:
“Did you have a gun?” He answered, “No. I had a kitchen knife. That’s
all."
A calm, strong but
gentle man, Kobi had to pause in his story before he could continue. His face
flushed, and he struggled to steady his voice. When he continued he changed
from speaking in the first person to the third person. “The parent that could
keep it together distracted the kids. The other held the door of the shelter.”
He spoke of dark thoughts
that flooded the mind. Understanding that they might “have to do the worst
possible to prevent the invaders from doing the worst possible to them.” He
didn’t explain what he meant, and we didn’t ask. The horror was more than
obvious and his pain, in a memory of terrible thoughts he faced more than a
year ago, was not something anyone would want to dig into.
Kobi told us of the
enormous relief of hearing Israeli gunfire. Even before knowing if they would
be rescued in time or not, just the fact that soldiers were there, fighting for
them lifted a terrible burden.
He didn’t describe
their rescue. He told us of the bus ride to Eilat on Sunday after they were
evacuated (the attack began Saturday morning and they were only evacuated on
Sunday). He said: “The entire trip everyone was utterly silent. Out of the
window, you could see the road we travel every day strewn with bodies and
burned cars. Bodies of terrorists. Bodies of Jews. Everywhere. We gave the kids
the phone to look at. They didn’t need to see what was outside the window.”
Israelis are loud.
Happy Israelis sing and shout. Upset Israelis complain and shout. Thinking
about being in that silence makes my blood run ice cold...
Kobi’s family was
granted a miracle. They survived physically unscathed. He told us of others who
were killed, whose homes were destroyed, and about not knowing when they would
be able to go back home. Now living in temporary housing in Be’er Sheva, they
are ok (how do you define ok after all of that?)—but it’s not home.
A fellow volunteer
changed the subject and asked why he was wearing flip-flops in the field
instead of proper work shoes. Kobi looked at us all with a big grin and said: “I
have work shoes and of course wear them when I need to but I wear these here
when I can because here, I feel at home.”
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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