By Michael Newman OBE – Chief Executive, AJR
That was how I found myself travelling to the kibbutz where I had volunteered for six months in the mid-1990s, wondering how what I would find would contrast with my happy teenage memories.
The timing of my original stay at Nir Oz was significant, coming as it did in the middle of the two Oslo peace accords. At that time, it was normal to see Palestinian workers come to the kibbutz to earn a living and to help the kibbutzniks with farming the land.
The devastation of 7 October 2023 was particularly brutal at Nir Oz. Of the 400 residents, one quarter were killed, abducted or taken hostage into Gaza. Only six houses remained untouched. As Yuval, who was born on the kibbutz and lived there while I was a volunteer, described, it was Russian Roulette as to who survived.
Four units of attackers infiltrated with such ease that they were able to call their collaborators from Gaza to come and also perpetrate crimes. All together, some 900 aggressors committed atrocities there.
The perimeter fence was opened by simple car ramming. It enabled the attackers to take kibbutzniks as hostages, ripping them from their homes, families and their very dignity. Shiri Bibas and her two small children, Kfir and Ariel, whose images have been imprinted into our collective consciousness, are just three such victims of the bloodthirsty mob.
But this mob did not only target people. Animals were destroyed and one dog was also taken hostage, although the pet miraculously returned 18 months later.
And alongside the murders, assaults and kidnappings, what is less reported is the destruction of the very fabric of the kibbutz. The communal kitchen was torched, irrigation systems were destroyed, and the commercial paint company based there was torched.
While some kibbutzniks want to return – and there is a new neighbourhood in the process of being built – some find the idea to come back too psychologically traumatic.
Yuval’s father, Alex Danzig, had been a renowned exponent of Polish Jewish dialogue who had previously worked at Yad Vashem. He was kidnapped and murdered in captivity, before the Israel Defence Forces recovered his body. He is buried on the kibbutz.
Yuval’s mother, Rachel, miraculously survived by holding the lever of the safe room door for eight hours. Yuval showed me a picture of the bullet hole that passed just under the handle and the corresponding pockmark on the wall behind where she sat.
I knew it would be a devastating visit – and the contrast to my happy memories could not have been more stark.
Nir Oz is just down the road from kibbutz Be’eri and the site of the Nova Festival Memorial, another harrowing monument to terror, where the lives of so many young people were cut short.
There are many fault lines in Israeli politics, added to which is the very future of the kibbutzim. Nir Oz is less than 2km from Gaza; with a simple zoomed in picture phone image, you can see the devastation of Khan Younis.
The attacks of 7 October have been described as the worst atrocity to befall Jews since the Holocaust. There are indeed obvious parallels, not least that the attacks had all the hallmarks of the marauding Einsatzgruppen mowing down everyone in their sights.
Before visiting the kibbutz, I had shown Yuval some pictures from my time there, including one of me playing football. The pitch was directly behind the huts where the volunteers lived and, curiously, also in the picture was Yuval’s father. The kibbutz had long stopped using volunteers but instead housed Thai workers, who lived in the same huts as we volunteers had.
Comparing the pictures with the destruction before us, I described it as “a different lifetime”. Yuval corrected me; “It’s a different universe.”
