Video: Kubutz Residents Describe Life Under the Threat of Hamas

Israelis living in Kubutz communities have seen decades of violence from terrorist groups, Hamas particularly, working out of Gaza and Palestinian areas. In interviews with Breitbart News’ Tera Dahl, Kubutz residents both near Gaza and in Golan Heights describe decades of life near the enemy. 

Arieh and Datya Itzhaki, historians, authors, and lecturers living near the border with Syria in the Golan Heights, tell Dahl of the devastation caused by terrorists and the Palestinian government’s relationship with them since Israel left the area. The Itzhakis lived in Gaza before relocating to Israel, and experienced the deterioration of Gaza after the Israel government left the area. “Most of the people who were killed and injured were Arabs,” explains Datya Itzhaki, many who were publicly claimed to be in collaboration with the Israelis but actually possessed a good or service that those assaulting them wanted to take. “That was a way to achieve things that had no connection to anything they were talking about,” she explains.

The situation has become so dire that some neighborhoods closer to Gaza have evacuated their children. Shai Hermesh, currently the head of Sapir College in Ashkelon, Israel, has lived on a Kubutz near the Gaza border for more than 50 years. He shows Dahl the remains of mortar fire targeting a children’s playground in the area, clearly noting that there are no military targets in the area for Hamas to claim they are attacking: “There is no army here, there is no army base here, it’s all civilians.”

The playground is empty. “Children are not here because they have evacuated all of them,” he explains. The damage from mortar shells, he notes, “just shows what could be the result if, God forbid, what could happen in a situation where we are not prepared by any formal alert.”

For Tera Dahl’s first-person report from the Gaza border, click here.