On Oct. 7, 2023, Israel faced its darkest day. A coordinated mass murder attack by Hamas terrorists took the lives of 1,200 Israelis, many of whom were killed in their homes, in kibbutzim, villages, towns and the city of Sderot, and at the Nova music festival. In addition to the unprecedented massacre, 251 people were taken hostage to Gaza, 97 of whom still remain in captivity. Thousands of Gazan terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory, taking control of entire areas in the country’s south, devastating communities in the region and leaving behind them a trail of trauma and overwhelming grief.
And yet, the western Negev region is on the slow, steady road of recovery and healing. The Jerusalem Press Club organized a detailed tour of the area on Tuesday.
The region’s approximately 64,000 inhabitants were evacuated in the wake of the massacre, and some 50,000 have since returned home as, on the other side of the border, the Israel Defense Forces continues to dismantle Hamas.
Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, located just 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) from Gaza, was one of the communities targeted on Oct. 7. Once a thriving agricultural hub, it now bears the scars of war, with houses still empty, some of them burned out.
Four residents were murdered and the entire population remains evacuated, although they intend to return when the time is right.
Shira Aviv, the community manager of Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha and a mother of four, recalled when Hamas terrorists breached the kibbutz’s defenses and reached her home.
“The moment we heard terrorists trying to get into the window, I had a child, that was 8, he was saying, ‘Here is the army.’ At that moment I told him, ‘No, you need to be quiet; this isn’t the army, it’s terrorists.’”
The exchange encapsulates the surreal and horrifying moment of realization shared by many western Negev residents that fateful morning.
Aviv noted how the community is now trying to rebuild, stating, “We are still working on rebuilding the trust, the circle of trust, with all the circles. Also in our personal families and our houses.”
However, the road to recovery is long for the kibbutz’s 420 residents, all of whom are still displaced.
Gal Hammer, the kibbutz’s maintenance and utility manager, was on the rapid response team during the attack. His firsthand account revealed the chaos of the invasion’s early hours. At 6:30 a.m., when the first rockets were fired, residents initially followed their routine of retreating to shelters, but the duration of the bombardment soon signaled that something unusual was occurring.
“For 30 minutes, we heard explosions. The communication between us was problematic, internet was down, we couldn’t communicate on WhatsApp,” Hammer recalled.
The kibbutz’s rapid response team had only four rifles available to defend against heavily armed terrorists; the Israel Defense Forces had removed other weapons from the armory for fear of theft.
The working assumption, said Hammer, had been that the response team would only need to hold up a small number of terrorists for the approximately 15 minutes it would take for the IDF to arrive and take it from there. But those assumptions did not take into account the sheer scale of the attack that materialized that morning. Hamas had thoroughly planned the attack, bringing maps that marked key locations, including the house of the community leader, Aviv. By 7 a.m., the terrorists had taken control of the kibbutz.
The attackers systematically moved from house to house. Hammer described how they murdered four residents, including Sylvia Mirensky, an 80-year-old woman, whose house was set on fire. A Holocaust survivor, 81, who ran from her home barefoot, managed to make it to the home of Marcello Cohen, a member of the security team who is today the kibbutz’s security chief. His predecessor in the role, Rami Negbi, was killed trying to stop the terrorists.
Hammer himself was trapped in the safe room in his home with his family, while terrorists roamed outside, stealing and looting. Israeli security forces arrived at 2:10 p.m., hours later, by which time just one terrorist was left in Hammer’s home. The others “tried to steal my car, and were killed by a helicopter,” said Hammer. “The terrorist in my home slowly tried to enter our safe room,” which Hammer had previously installed a lock on (the safe rooms, designed to protect against rockets and missiles, typically do not have locks). When the terrorist saw he would be unable to get in, he lay down on a mattress nearby and waited to be arrested, said Hammer. “He had a green [Hamas] ribbon. They put it over his eyes,” Hammer said, describing the arrest that ended the threat.
Shira Aviv noted the tremendous psychological toll on the survivors. “We spent 26 hours in the shelter with my children, and 36 hours passed [from the moment of the attack] until we left the kibbutz,” she said.
Matan Malichi, a resident of the kibbutz, placed his wife and children in the safe room and waited outside of it. Five terrorists entered his home, spent 20 minutes in his living room, snacking on his food, before one went to the safe room to massacre those inside.
“Matan was outside of the safe room and the first thing he saw was a barrel heading toward the room with his kids and wife. He fired two shots, the terrorist fell, Matan took his rifle, the terrorist stood up like a zombie, from the drugs, the steroids, and Malichi fired on the terrorist using the terrorist’s weapon. He fell down but didn’t die immediately. Later, he had to kill the terrorist with his bare hands so that the other terrorists who returned to the area wouldn’t hear him,” said Aviv.
Four to five waves of murderers washed over the kibbutz, beginning with the Hamas terrorists and ending with armed Gazan mobs.
The Oct. 7 massacre marked the start of a multi-arena conflict. IDF Spokesperson Maj. David Baruch spoke on the kibbutz about the multi-front nature of the war.
“From that moment on, we thought we were starting a one-front conflict which has developed into a multi-front conflict, not by our choice. Things happening in the north, Syria, Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Judea and Samaria as well,” he said. He stressed the central role of Iran in orchestrating these attacks, stating, “Iran is willing to fight Israel to the last Arab.”
In Gaza, IDF forces have significantly degraded Hamas’s command structure, but the terror organization remains a persistent threat, he added. “We’ve managed to disrupt their tunnel system of over 700 kilometers [435 miles] of underground tunnels … yet they still have other abilities; they’re still fighting,” Baruch noted.
In the wake of such devastation, Israel has turned its attention to rebuilding its communities and restoring some semblance of normalcy. The Revival Authority (Minhelet Tekuma), established in October 2023, is spearheading efforts to rehabilitate 45 localities impacted by the attacks. With a 19 billion shekel ($5 billion) budget allocated over a period of five years, this Israeli government initiative is unprecedented in scope. The authority’s goal is not merely to rebuild what was lost but to create something stronger and more resilient.
“We’re not going back to Oct. 6. We want to do it better. Build back better, to develop and bring prosperity to the communities and to the region,” a representative of the authority explained.
The efforts extend beyond physical reconstruction, with a focus on psychological healing, too, with many survivors participating in overseas trips and retreats. Community leaders, such as Aviv, are taking on the heavy responsibility of guiding their residents through the aftermath, and have therefore been flagged by the Revival Authority as key people to support.
“Our job is to empower these people,” said the source. “We needed to understand how to empower local leaders to carry out this holy mission.”
After setting up the directorate quickly in the days that followed Oct. 7, and subsequently finding alternative accommodations for those who remain evacuated, the Authority is also focusing on long-term planning. It is also working with multiple sectors, based on the understanding that the challenge of rehabilitating the area is too great for any single government, local municipality or local community. The goal is not just to resettle the area, but also to build back better, said the source, and turn the Gaza Envelope region into a flourishing, attractive region of the country.
“Each child [here] is getting seven to nine times more in education investment than the average child in Israel,” the source from the Revival Authority shared, emphasizing the importance of addressing the unique needs of traumatized children.
The area now includes 288 orphans.
Meanwhile, among the grassroots efforts is the Atid LaOtef (Future for the Gaza Envelope) movement, a civic organization born directly from the trauma of Oct. 7. According to Ohad Cohen, founder and CEO of the movement, explained that while the government’s Revival Authority is responsible for rebuilding infrastructure, Atid LaOtef is focused on restoring the spirit and resilience of the people, and creating a new, regional identity that empowers local residents to influence and inform decision-making about their region.
Cohen, a former IDF officer who served in Gaza, left his hi-tech job to focus on building this effort. He emphasized the movement’s Zionist mission. “We are choosing life, we are choosing to rebuild our communities,” he said.
Liora Ben Tsur, a mother of three from Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, also embodies the spirit of resilience intermixed with grief. “On Oct. 6, I gave birth. The next day, my husband called and said, ‘I’ll do everything I can to save us,’” she recalled.
On Oct. 7, a day after giving birth, Ben Tsur, horrified, was reading WhatsApp messages from kibbutz residents pleading to be rescued. “I started to get messages from friends in the kibbutz, saying, ‘they are trying to butcher us, they are raping us, help.’ I knew I needed to do something. I called the police and the army, and every contact I knew—I was a reporter in the south. Meanwhile, I had no connection to Dor [her husband] and the children. I told Asif [the newborn] ‘it could just be you and me.’”
Eventually, Ben Tsur was able to mobilize her two brothers from Arad, some 100 kilometers (63 miles) away, who arrived at the kibbutz by walking through the fields from adjacent communities to avoid RPG fire.
“I got a message from a neighbor saying, ‘I’m here with my two babies. I told her my brothers are on the way, hold the door. I knew that my house would be next—she was my neighbor,” Ben Tsur recalled.
Her brothers eventually got to her husband, provided him with a firearm, and went to search for Ben Tsur’s mother. “When they got to the guest house, they saw my mother lying on the ground, with a lot of blood,” said Ben Tsur.
Marcelle Talia had heard the rocket sirens and explosions, and grabbed some candy to give to the grandchildren. She had been heading in their direction to be with them, when terrorists saw her on the road and shot her.
Quoting Ecclesiastes, Ben Tsur said, “A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot.”
Sderot, one of the closest cities to Gaza, was also heavily impacted by the Oct. 7 attacks. The city, which has long endured rocket fire, was almost entirely evacuated after the horrors of that day, which saw some 60 terrorists enter it in pickup trucks.
One of the first images that spread widely from that day was of a police vehicle coming under machine-gun fire, an attack that injured a policeman and policewoman.
Sderot Police Station became one of the most intense battlegrounds that morning, with six officers losing their lives during the assault. The Sderot Municipal Deputy Police head, Shai Smadja, provided a detailed account of the battle, which lasted 25 hours, with 26 terrorists killed.
Prior to this battle, a car containing two young girls was found abandoned near the police station, which was swarming with terrorists. Amer Odeh Abu Sabila, a Bedouin construction worker, had attempted to drive the girls and their mother to the police station after their father was murdered. Both adults were shot dead, and police found Romi, 6, and Lia 3, in the backseat, with Romi screaming for help. “Are you of Israel?” she asked the heartbroken police officers who rescued them.
Following the devastation, Sderot has shown remarkable resilience. The city’s population has since grown by 1,000 residents, and local initiatives are at work to rebuild the community. On Tuesday, the city was teeming with activity, residents conducting their daily affairs in a powerful display of resilience.
Ben Friedman, COO of Nature Growth, shared how his company, originally an ag-tech incubator, pivoted to provide workspaces for displaced residents of Sderot. “After Oct. 7, we created a space for tenants to work and enjoy for free,” Friedman said. The incubator plans to relaunch fully in 2025, but for now serves as a vital support system for residents struggling to rebuild their lives.
At the end of the tour of the region, Iris Haim, mother of Yotam Haim, a 28-year-old musician kidnapped by Hamas, shared her story. Yotam was held in captivity for 70 days before he was accidentally killed by IDF forces while attempting to escape.
The tragedy “was a shock to everyone. The shock was so great to all of the people in Israel that everyone was in despair,” she said. “The soldiers said they could not continue to fight,” she added.
“And I heard that, someone came to our shiva and told me this … I left my role as a mother and took the role of a citizen in Israel. I sent [the soldiers] a message, I said I am not angry, I want to hug them. I said that we love them. We know that this is not their fault but only Hamas’s fault. I invited them to our house. We cannot judge them,” she continued. “We were just very, very sad, not angry. I said that soldiers in Israel are like our sons, they are ours. We are the army, the army is us,” she added.
The soldiers involved in the incident did end up visiting her home and receiving an embrace from Iris.
She said that her son, along with the other two hostages who escaped with him for five days in Shujaiya in eastern Gaza, were “free people for five days. They breathed not the air of the tunnels, but the outside air.”
Yotam, who wanted to be a combat soldier but could not due to a number of mental health issues, expressed his bravery by creating a strong bond with the hostages he was with. “He was so strong, friendly, and powerful. That’s the way we are remembering Yotam,” said Iris. “We are in a real existential war. Yotam was part of this war, as a hero.”
