Yesterday was intense. I’m still feeling exhausted and emotionally drained.
I spent ten years teaching about the Holocaust as I completed an MA on the subject at the Hebrew University. I met and interviewed many survivors during those years and heard them tell their stories week after week to high school kids here in Israel.
The survivors’ testimonies were very difficult and painful to listen to. The speakers often seemed to descend into a kind of a trance, to relive their horrendous experiences as they spoke and revived their dead loved ones and the destroyed world they came from.
That’s what it was like yesterday in kibbutz Hulit, Nir Oz and Magen, but worse. These survivors were talking about much more recent experiences. It was raw. They were grateful we were listening to them. All four survivors of the 7th October Hamas massacre of Israelis we met said that. A couple of them explained that this was their therapy, a part of their recovery.
There was Larry from Nir Oz from the neighbourhood near the Gaza side of the kibbutz that was totally wiped out. A neighbour of the Bibases, he and his son managed to somehow survive in the midst of the atrocities. They sat in their safe room, holding the steel door and steel window closed, hearing the shooting, the screams, smelling the fires raging outside around them while they waited for the army to arrive. They waited inside for hours after an eerie silence fell on their surroundings. They’d heard voices they knew in desperate cries for help, neighbours begging for their lives, and people being dragged away amidst loud shouting in Arabic until silence fell.
He told us he has attended 69 funerals over the past two years. I asked if I could hug him. He said yes and I did but I felt I was hugging the shell of a man, whose blue eyes looked as if he was still somewhere else. Probably still stuck in the horror of that day.
Larry’s testimony was the worst, the most shocking but the testimony of the “Rumbo” of kibbutz Magen we met, Issi Shemesh, was the most moving, the most inspiring.
Issi, a 67-year-old reserve officer in the IDF, still serving despite his age who had recently completed 237 days of Miluim (active military service). He greeted us with a broad smile and the words “I’m no Rumbo” while handing out plans for a reconstruction of a building damaged in the Hamas shelling of the settlement.
I was there with a JNF group from Australia, one of whom was my younger brother Jack and his wife Aviva (the main reason I joined that day). Issi emotionally expressed his appreciation for the support both financial and moral and promised that the kibbutz residents would be returning within a year.
He went on to describe how he and 13 other members of the kibbutz security squad held off hundreds of Hamas commandos that day, who had hit the kibbutz in three waves from down below. The kibbutz is built on a small hill overlooking the perimeter road around Gaza about 1 kilometer east of Nir Oz, which they could see burning below as they fought off the Gazans. He clearly was reliving the events as he spoke admitting to holding back tears as he told us “We were lucky”. He related how the leader of their group, Baruch Cohen, who was himself seriously wounded that day losing a leg that had to be amputated to save him, had spent years preparing for a terrorist attack, defying army orders to lock away rifles, preferring that each man held his own weapon in close proximity, training his group intensively and accumulating reserves of ammunition. Issi told us that one passionate member of the squad (“Meshuga ledavar”) refused to get into a safe room despite the shellings, waiting in hiding near the kibbutz gate, catching on camera the flight of missiles above and then first spying the approaching Hamas terrorists, warning the rest of their approach.
He made a point of telling us of the heroism of a young woman doctor who loaded two seriously wounded fighters into her car and drove eastwards out of the back gate thus saving Cohen’s life and almost saving the other guy. She was told they couldn’t send an ambulance and that she had to drive to Soroka hospital in Beersheva but she insisted that her guys would bleed to death before she got there leading to the decision to send the helicopter.
The stories I heard are so powerful I find it hard to write them down rather than just tell them to friends and family. I’m still overwhelmed both by the extent of the military failure that day, the irresponsibility of the Netanyahu government and the heroism of those kibbutzim and their members, who have shown such resilience and determination to overcome that tragic. traumatic day.
We should be worthy of these heroes and martyrs.
And we should continue their devotion to building a better, more peaceful future for all in this country .
Diary entry – Tuesday, November 4th, 2025, after a guided tour of the Gaza border settlements attacked on 7th December
Yesterday was intense. I’m still feeling exhausted and emotionally drained. No creative juices in me. I’ve been procrastinating about writing.
I’m not sure words can convey my feelings, nor that I’ve thought this all through enough. But I’ll try. I don’t want to bore myself or anyone else.
I spent ten years teaching about the Holocaust as I completed an MA on the subject at the Hebrew University. I met and interviewed many survivors during those years and heard them tell their stories week after week to high school kids here in Israel.
The survivors’ testimonies were very difficult and painful to listen to. The speakers often seemed to descend into a kind of a trance, to relive their horrendous experiences as they spoke and revived their dead loved ones and the destroyed world they came from.
That’s what it was like yesterday in kibbutz Hulit, Nir Oz and Magen, but worse. These survivors were talking about much more recent experiences. It was raw. They were grateful we were listening to them. All four survivors of the 7th October Hamas massacre of Israelis we met said that. A couple of them explained that this was their therapy, a part of their recovery.
There was Larry from Nir Oz from the neighbourhood near the Gaza side of the kibbutz that was totally wiped out. A neighbour of the Bibases, he and his son managed to somehow survive in the midst of the atrocities. They sat in their safe room, holding the steel door and steel window closed, hearing the shooting, the screams, smelling the fires raging outside around them while they waited for the army to arrive. They waited inside for hours after an eerie silence fell on their surroundings. They’d heard voices they knew in desperate cries for help, neighbours begging for their lives, and people being dragged away amidst loud shouting in Arabic until silence fell.
He told us he has attended 69 funerals over the past two years. I asked if I could hug him. He said yes and I did but I felt I was hugging the shell of a man, whose blue eyes looked as if he was still somewhere else. Probably still stuck in the horror of that day.
Larry’s testimony was the worst, the most shocking but the testimony of the “Rumbo” of kibbutz Magen we met, Issi Shemesh, was the most moving, the most inspiring.
Issi, a 67-year-old reserve officer in the IDF, still serving despite his age who had recently completed 237 days of Miluim (active military service). He greeted us with a broad smile and the words “I’m no Rumbo” while handing out plans for a reconstruction of a building damaged in the Hamas shelling of the settlement.
I was there with a JNF group from Australia, one of whom was my younger brother Jack and his wife Aviva (the main reason I joined that day). Issi emotionally expressed his appreciation for the support both financial and moral and promised that the kibbutz residents would be returning within a year.
He went on to describe how he and 13 other members of the kibbutz security squad held off hundreds of Hamas commandos that day, who had hit the kibbutz in three waves from down below. The kibbutz is built on a small hill overlooking the perimeter road around Gaza about 1 kilometer east of Nir Oz, which they could see burning below as they fought off the Gazans. He clearly was reliving the events as he spoke admitting to holding back tears as he told us “We were lucky”. He related how the leader of their group, Baruch Cohen, who was himself seriously wounded that day losing a leg that had to be amputated to save him, had spent years preparing for a terrorist attack, defying army orders to lock away rifles, preferring that each man held his own weapon in close proximity, training his group intensively and accumulating reserves of ammunition. Issi told us that one passionate member of the squad (“Meshuga ledavar”) refused to get into a safe room despite the shellings, waiting in hiding near the kibbutz gate, catching on camera the flight of missiles above and then first spying the approaching Hamas terrorists, warning the rest of their approach.
He made a point of telling us of the heroism of a young woman doctor who loaded two seriously wounded fighters into her car and drove eastwards out of the back gate thus saving Cohen’s life and almost saving the other guy. She was told they couldn’t send an ambulance and that she had to drive to Soroka hospital in Beersheva but she insisted that her guys would bleed to death before she got there leading to the decision to send the helicopter.
The stories I heard are so powerful I find it hard to write them down rather than just tell them to friends and family. I’m still overwhelmed both by the extent of the military failure that day, the irresponsibility of the Netanyahu government and the heroism of those kibbutzim and their members, who have shown such resilience and determination to overcome that tragic. traumatic day.
We should be worthy of these heroes and martyrs.
And we should continue their devotion to building a better, more peaceful future for all in this country .
A novel by Yehiel Grenimann 