KIBBUTZ BE’ERI, Israel — Buildings blown apart. Walls, homes, riddled with bullet-holes. Bloodstains, shattered glass. Spent bullet casings. Crushed bicycles. A kindergarten with a massive hole from a rocket-propelled grenade.
This is the scene at one of the communities hit hardest by Palestinian terrorists on October 7.
On this collective farm a few kilometers from the border with Gaza, 108 residents were brutally murdered, out of a population of about 1,100, meaning the kibbutz lost 10% of its residents.
The victims were children, the elderly — even a pregnant woman whose belly was torn open, her unborn child stabbed.
I visited the kibbutz, together with dozens of other journalists, in a convoy of two armored buses. We were to have visited a different kibbutz, but the IDF closed the road — and it was just as well, because that one was targeted by rocket fire from Gaza, shortly after we were to have arrived.
We arrived at Kibbutz Be’eri to find that soldiers had set up a mini-camp — with tanks, armored vehicles, and jeeps guarding the complex, even though its surviving residents have long since been evacuated.
And then we entered the abyss.
Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart News Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsWe began in front of the kindergarten, now a tangle of mangled steel and smashed toys.
For me, the saddest moment was seeing paper chains on the patio of the kindergarten, where children had obviously made decorations for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, whose last day was the day of the attack. My children in L.A. had done the same.
From exile, in a hotel, the survivors are trying to stick together, to keep the rhythm of kibbutz life going, and to make plans to rebuild, and return.
Kibbutz Be’eri, known to Israelis as a popular seasonal destination to see wildflowers, has become a symbol of the innocent civilians murdered by Hamas, a place to bear witness to the unspeakable atrocities that Hamas carried out there.
It has also become a symbol of the heroism of those who rushed to defend their families, their neighbors, and even complete strangers — those who dared to fight back, and win, with the few weapons they had, when the army and police took hours to mobilize.
Rami Gold, 70, a resident of the kibbutz, spoke about how he and about ten neighbors battled 120 Hamas terrorists for several hours, down to their last bullet, until finally Israel Defense Forces (IDF) resevists arrived to give them ammunition.
Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsYossi Landau, a first responder with the ZAKA service, which attends to the remains of the dead as well as treating the wounds of the living, choked back tears as he recalled some of the scenes he found when arriving at the kibbutz.
Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsThroughout his talk to the group, there were explosions in the distance — from Israeli artillery, bombs, and the Iron Dome system, which prevented Palestinian rockets from landing — and reminded all of us that we were still in a war zone, with an invasion of Gaza imminent.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.