A year after the Hamas attacks, Kibbutz Beeri yearns to move on, but the calendar refuses to turn. War has become the background noise of whatever future is coming.
By Steve Hendrix, The Washington PostAn empty grave lies next to those of Rinat Segev-Even, 44; Chen Even, 45; and two of their children, Alon, 16, and Ido, 14, who were killed in Kibbutz Beeri on Oct. 7, 2023.
The gate is repaired now and topped with new concertina wire. But most wounds are still fresh here - one of the deadliest places on Israel’s deadliest day. Raanan is among a few dozen residents who didn’t wait for the kibbutz to rebuild - or for the war next door to end - before coming home. This community, like Israel, is stuck in the purgatory of Oct. 7. The country yearns to move on, but the calendar refuses to turn. Dozens of hostages are still held in Gaza, and more than 140,000 Israelis remain displaced from their homes near Gaza or along the Lebanese border. After a surge of unity following the attacks, Israel is riven by divisions and fears of economic collapse. Faith in the government has cratered. War has become the background noise of whatever future is coming.
An Israeli flag inside a home that was destroyed at Kibbutz Beeri. Before Oct. 7, Beeri was populated by peaceniks. The kibbutz organized retirees to drive Gazan medical patients to hospitals in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Palestinians worked in its fields and local businesses.There are few here, or anywhere in Israel, who still believe that. Israel’s war on Hamas has killed tens of thousands of people and trapped more than 2 million in a grinding cycle of displacement, hunger and disease.
Though the United States and Israel’s Arab neighbors have demanded that a path to Palestinian statehood be part of any resolution to the conflict, support for such a move within Israel has fallen to its lowest level in decades. A July poll found just 21 percent of Israeli Jews favor a two-state solution, a 13-point drop since Dec. 2022.
On Oct. 6 last year, the kibbutz held a celebration to mark its 77th birthday, an event that brought dozens of visitors and former residents to town for that fateful weekend. Natasha and Gal Cohen stand in the backyard of their home at Kibbutz Beeri. The Cohens are among the few residents who have come back to the kibbutz.
The majority of residents are not ready to return, Gal acknowledges. Some might eventually feel comfortable moving back to a new neighborhood of houses the kibbutz is clearing land for on the side farthest from Gaza. Others may never again want to live so close to whatever Gaza becomes.An Israeli soldier looks at a bed stained with the blood of a victim inside the bedroom of a home at Kibbutz Beeri.
Soon she heard shots in her own house, and men began pulling on the safe room’s steel door. A few weeks before, though, Raanan had installed an extra deadbolt, a $5 precaution that she credits with saving their lives. That evening, she walked to the kibbutz dining hall. To pass through Beeri with her is to hear a numbing inventory of death.
The four bookkeeping staffers were killed and all the files destroyed. Beeri’s chief financial officer remains captive in Gaza. Natasha has helped fix the accounts, including canceling 700 of its residents’ credit cards, all in Beeri’s name. Restoring the kibbutz is like crisis-managing an enormous extended family, she said.
Then, he pulled up a video on his phone, showing the bodies of three fighters lying near his door - killed by a sharpshooting neighbor a couple of houses down. “The house was burned, but they said he was shot first and bled to death,” she said, sipping a drink in the shade of her porch. Near her front door were symbols spray-painted by army searchers - an ominous rune of shapes and numerals - signaling her house was free of booby traps and contained zero bodies. On the home of her closest family friends, though, the number was four.
A dog belonging to one of her neighbors, who was also packing up household goods, loped by. After a year cooped up in a hotel room, he was exulting in his old haunts. “He loves being home,” Miles-Itach said with a smile.
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