Local media have often referred to the events that transpired here on Oct. 7, 2023, as a “miracle.”
In Alumim, a handful of defenders kept dozens of armed terrorists from reaching their small community’s residential heart, where dozens of children and women were hiding. None of the members of this religious kibbutz perished and it escaped the destruction visited on the neighboring communities of Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Nahal Oz.
Yet a massacre did occur in Alumim.
On the edges of the kibbutz, the terrorists from Gaza murdered 22 out of 24 Thai and Nepalese student workers, whose tragic fates have often been eclipsed.
Last month, an effort was made to commemorate the victims of Alumim, where more foreigners were murdered than anywhere else on Oct. 7.
Dozens of employees of the New Jersey-based financial services firm Cross River visited the kibbutz on Feb. 13, where they and kibbutz members lit candles in memory of the 10 Nepalese and 12 Thai victims of the attack.
Cross River’s CEO Gilles Gade also included Alumim in the itinerary of his delegation, which toured the sites of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel’s south, in recognition of one his employees, Pravesh Jiral, who was born in Nepal before immigrating to the United States. Jiral lit memorial candles for the victims and shared with his colleagues his feelings and some context on the victims’ life stories.
“Their dreams were cut short in a moment of terror. But today, as we light these candles, we ensure that their light does not go out. Their memory will endure in the hearts of their families, in the spirit of our two nations, and in the commitment we share to peace and resilience,” Jiral said.
The victims of Alumim are often described as foreign workers, but they and other foreign victims could be more accurately called foreign students, said Miriam Marcus, one of the members of Kibbutz Alumim.
“They’re in a program that’s run internationally through universities in Thailand or Nepal, they get credits for their studies here,” she told the Cross River delegation. And while the students “get decent wages, they’re here to get trained in farming and agriculture and then they learn to help make their country better,” she said.
One of the Nepalese foreign students of Alumim, Bipin Joshi, 23, is among the hostages still being held by Hamas and other terrorists in Gaza.
Security camera footage in Alumim provides a detailed record of the terrorists’ attack on the kibbutz.
The terrorists who attacked Alumim crossed the border on motorcycles and encountered some difficulties entering the kibbutz, partly thanks to the rapid response of the defenders. On the main road outside the kibbutz, a Hamas pickup truck rigged up to a large propane tank was rammed off the road by Israeli troops. It may have been headed into Alumim as an improvised bomb.
Even without it, the terrorists caused immense damage. They burned barns, killed cows and destroyed equipment before arriving at the living quarters of the foreigners on the kibbutz’s edge.
There, the terrorists rounded up 22 out of 24 foreigners and gunned them down in a building that they then torched. The two survivors hid from the attackers.
Remarkably, both survivors, Jakkrit Noiphoothorn of Thailand and Birendra Chaudhary of Nepal, returned to Alumim after being airlifted to their home countries. They have a five-year visa and are determined to complete their training program.
Marcus recalled the panicked calls of the Thai students on Oct. 7 to her husband, Stevie, who passed away two months after the attack due to a cardiac arrest. The Israeli Defense Ministry has recognized his death as a result of the Oct. 7 trauma and exhaustion.
“They were calling him, saying ‘Mr. Stevie, what do we do, what do we do?’ but we didn’t know what was going on,” Esther Marcus recalled. She added that it was “incredibly moving that they want to be a part of rehabilitating Alumim, that they feel good here, and it shows the depth of the bonds that are created here.”
Alumim and its regional council held several ceremonies in memory of the foreign victims, that were attended by Thai and Nepalese diplomats and survivors of the onslaught.
The shed and living quarters that the terrorists torched were torn down, but the kibbutz kept one charred wall—the one facing Gaza, whose bombed-out buildings are visible from Alumim. Nepalese and Thai flags hang on that wall, commemorating the tragedy.
In the days immediately after the attack, the structure bore harrowing witness to the terrorists’ brutality. The walls were splattered with blood, including behind a stack of rice sacks the victims had tried to pile up, possibly as a defense from the hand grenades that the terrorists lobbed into structures.
Alumim was among the first evacuated communities to return after the massacre. Undeterred by what had happened there, new foreign students from Nepal and Thailand have moved into Alumim and, together with Chaudhary and Noiphoothorn, are helping to rehabilitate the place. The newcomers tend to the small vegetable patch and herb garden that their murdered compatriots had planted around their living quarters.
Cross River CEO Gade, a longtime volunteer with Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service, has firsthand knowledge of the efforts to rehabilitate the ravaged Tekuma Region.
In the first six months of the Oct. 7 war, his New Jersey-based firm, which has 170 employees based in Israel, helped procure and ship medical equipment for hospitals, MDA and beyond. The company has also sent almost 100 of its U.S.-based employees to Israel on missions.
“We believe that to combat apathy and ignorance, we want every Cross River employee to be exposed to the atrocities of Oct. 7, and bear witness to Hamas’s evil. We stand alongside our Israeli colleagues, offering support, compassion and strength. These missions are a testament to our unwavering commitment to Israel’s recovery, as we witness firsthand its unbreakable resilience, in spite of the world’s indifference,” Gade told JNS.