NIR OZ, Israel — A ray of light shines through the empty window, the dust and ash glittering in the a beam of winter sunshine.
This was once the home of an elderly couple: Chana Katzir, 77, and her husband, Rami. He was murdered during the October 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas terrorists, killed in the house’s “safe room.”
Chana Katzir’s wheelchair in the ruins of her home. The 77-year-old, whose husband was murdered, is now a hostage in Gaza. Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
She is a hostage in Gaza, though she relies on a walker and a wheelchair. She was forced to appear in a propaganda video released by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist group.
Their home is a ruin. It was set on fire — like several others on this small community of 400 residents — when the terrorists cut the gas pipes and ignited the fuel still flowing. Almost nothing is left, or recognizable. The roof is twisted and collapsed; shingles lay shattered on the floor; steel beams are twisted from the heat. Rami’s remains could not be identified until weeks later.
And yet, through the dust kicked up by a group of visiting journalists — there is that ray of light, a tiny bit of hope that persists.
A ray of light illuminates the dust and gloom in the ruins of the Katzir family home, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Breitbart News joined a media tour organized by Israel-is and MediaCentral, the same groups that organized a mission to Eilat last week to visit the families of Kibbutz Nir Oz, who were evacuated to a hotel in the aftermath of the attack.
Nir Oz, founded in 1955, means “furrow of strength.” On October 7, it was the front line in a battle of armed terrorists against largely unarmed civilians.
The sign at the entrance to Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
This is the place they left behind — an idyllic collective farm, with a world-famous botanical garden at its center, and a society organized along the old socialist ideals. Everyone pitched in to help with the farm work, everyone donated a third of his or her salary to the collective, and everyone shared in each other’s lives.
Everywhere, there are still signs of life — and especially children — suddenly, brutally interrupted.
Toys lay scattered on the ground near many houses; a Minnie Mouse bicycle sits in the grass, half-melted from the heat of the fire that consumed the family home nearby.
A Minnie Mouse bicycle lies half-melted near a burnt family home. Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
A damaged rocking horse next to a home burned by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 attack. The family survived. Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Several homes still have sukkahs — the traditional tents erected during the holiday of Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles — in various stages of destruction. October 7 was the last day of the holiday, but the residents never had a chance to dismantle their tents.
A fallen sukkah, with paper chains, typically made by children as decorations, scattered on the ground, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
A sukkah damaged by fire that consumed the main house in the October 7 terror attack, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
A half-fallen sukkah sits near a plastic play house, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Many were peace activists, who volunteered to help Palestinians from Gaza — just 1.6 kilometers away — when they needed transportation from the border crossing to hospital facilities located in Israel.
The attack shattered hope for coexistence, and it turned a “paradise” into the “eighth level of hell,” in the words of one resident.
Almost no community in Israel suffered more than Nir Oz. As Breitbart News noted last week, one-fourth of the roughly 400 residents of the kibbutz were murdered, or kidnapped. Nir Oz residents account for about a third of all hostages taken to Gaza.
The area is still a closed military zone.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) patrol vehicle, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
While the journalists visited the kibbutz, there was a rocket attack launched from the vicinity of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip to the west, where the Israeli military has not yet focused its efforts.
Rocket trails rise above the Gaza Strip after an attempted attack on Israel, as seen from Kibbutz Nir Oz, just one mile away (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
As the group took cover in a bomb shelter, the Iron Dome boomed overhead, intercepting the rockets, restoring a sense of calm.
Another rocket attack — while we are visiting the scene of the October 7 Hamas terror attack. Journalists run for cover into the bomb shelter. pic.twitter.com/dLtAKjTcDU
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) November 21, 2023
Some residents were making their first visits back to the kibbutz in more than six weeks.
Talma Atzili, 78, told Breitbart News that she survived by hiding under her bed as Palestinian terrorists ransacked her house. Her home is still standing. But her son, Aviv Atzili, and her daughter-in-law, Lian Beinin, are hostages. “I would give anything to see them again,” she said. She hopes the community will return; she has lived in the kibbutz for 58 years, ever since completing her military service in the mid-1960s.
Talma Atzili stands in front of her house as she visits for the first time after the October 7 terror attack, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
“This is my room,” she says of her house. “The whole kibbutz is my home.” But she knows it will be difficult, after so much loss.
Down the street lived Carmela Dan. Her 13-year-old granddaughter, Noya, was visiting on October 7. They hid in the safe room during the attack; the bloodstains on the floor, near a stuffed animal and a baby crib, testify to the horror they endured.
A crib, stuffed animals, clothes, and blankets litter a bloodstained floor in a “safe room” burned by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 attack, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
A closeup of a stuffed animal on the floor of the home belonging to Carmela Dan. She and her granddaughter, Noya, were taken by Hamas and later found dead after the October 7 attack, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
They were taken away by Hamas, but were later found dead. The home itself was burned and is unsalvageable, like 50% of the others.
Irit Lahav, 57, who spoke with journalists in Eilat, returned to the kibbutz for the third time to guide the media around, together with fellow survivors Ron Bahat, Eran Smilansky, and Benny Avital.
Survivors Irit Lahav and Ron Bahat at Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Smilansky recalled hiding in the safe room in his family while a Hamas-aligned journalist broadcast live from the kibbutz, evidently having known in advance that Hamas intended to attack.
This was actually Kibbutz Nir Oz. https://t.co/2QwTOFe8TF
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) November 21, 2023
Avital, a member of the kibbutz’s first response team, described the challenge of trying to keep the children of the kibbutz safe during the attack.
Benny Avital, a survivor and first responder, left, and survivor Eran Smilansky, right, describe their experiences of the October 7 terror attack with reporters, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
He, like others, sent goodbye messages to friends once he realized the chances of survival were slim. His brother was killed; his own children survived. When the terrorists finally left and he emerged from his family’s safe room, after more than six hours, he was stunned by the eerie silence.
Coming back was harder than he thought it would be, he says: he had been numb during the attack and in the days that followed, but now he finally had to face everything that he and Nir Oz, had lost.
Lahav reiterated heartbroken feelings about peace with her Palestinian neighbors in Gaza, which she had also shared with journalists in Eilat. “We thought there was a partner on the other side… no! They want to kill. … They were proud,” she recalled.
Lahav took reporters to the kibbutz’s communal dining hall, an important gathering space. In her previous visits to the kibbutz, it was the one place she could not bring herself to enter. This time, after shedding some tears, she made it through the doors, riddled with bullets.
Bullet holes in the door of the dining hall, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
A large bullet hole frames journalists in the communal dining hall of Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Inside, the dining hall had been converted into a memorial for the dead and a monument to the hostages and those still missing, with a poster of each individual set at each chair at every table, along with memorial candles.
A memorial candle flickers at a place set with a placard honoring the murdered and kidnapped victims of Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Inside the adjacent mail room, the mailboxes of those murdered were marked with a red label; the mailboxes of the hostages were marked in back.
Through the dining hall’s kitchen — destroyed by fire during the attack, just months after being renovated — the smell of death lingered; the army used the refrigerators in back to store the bodies of the dead until they could be buried. Even more than six weeks later, the bloodstains remained on the floor, and flies buzzed through the putrid air in the storage room.
Some distance away, the dormitory for the farm’s Thai farmfworkers — recruited on contracts lasting several years, to help the residents of the kibbutz manage the workload — was a chaotic mess, the likely result of a tough struggle against the terrorists.
The living quarters of the Thai farmworkers, ransacked during a stuggle during the October 7 terror attack, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
In the end, three survived. But five were kidnapped — and nine were murdered in cold blood –nearby, in a concrete “safe room.”
The room where 11 Thai farmworkers were murdered in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
A bloody handprint, likely left on the wall by a terrorist, during the muder of Thai farmworkers during the October 7 terror attack, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Other foreign workers endured the attack: some survived, but agriculture student Clemence Felix Mtenga, 22, died in Hamas custody.
In the fields they once tended, many crops have been left to rot. The kibbutz could not finish harvesting its peanuts; nor could it bring in its renowned pomrgranates, aside from the few that residents managed to pick during visits to their homes.
Nir Oz could not even sow its winter wheat, because the kibbutz’s tractors had been stolen by Palestinian looters during the attack.
But thanks to the efforts of the military’s home front command, and an army of private volunteers, there is hope for the avocado crop.
Maj. Nir Boms and Lt. Gali Dror told reporters that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had undertaken a civilian mission as well as a military one in the ongoing conflict: to help residents recover lost property and pets; and to help save the harvest in the “Gaza envelope” region hit by the terrorists, which accounts for 60% of Israel’s fruit and vegetable production annually.
Maj. Nir Boms (left) and Lt. Gali Dror (right) of the IDF Home Front Command, discussing efforts to help the agricultural communities of the “Gaza envelope,” Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
As they spoke, several dozen volunteers — some members of the kibbutz, some from elsewhere in the country — loaded large avocados into crates, and drove the crates away in tractors, each vehicle loaned to the kibbutz by neighboring communities.
Volunteers load avocados in the grove of Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, November 21, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
One of the volunteers is Irit Lahav’s daugher, Lotus. They survived the October 7 attack in their home’s safe room by jamming an oar against the heavy door. Terrorists returned five times to the house but never succeeded in dragging them out, nor did they set the house on fire. “We made our peace with death,” Lotus recalled.
As if on cue, a streak appeared in the sky: a missile from the Iron Dome missile battery, flying east to west to intercept another Palestinian rocket, launched at another community nearby.
Iron Dome intercepts Palestinian rocket over avocado grove, near Kibbutz Nir Oz. Gaza is west, to the left; the Iron Dome missile, launched from Israel, is traveling right to left, east to west. pic.twitter.com/G9LXDnXc3H
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) November 21, 2023
These are the dangers that volunteers endure to bring in the harvest, and to keep the hopes of Nir Oz alive.
What was once a “strong furrow” may yet be a strong foundation for the new life that is to come — for a new, stronger Israel that is yet to be.
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.
