Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, a retired professor of Middle East history in Israel, has an extraordinarily detailed account of the events of October 7 as seen from Kibbutz Alumim, a religious kibbutz on the Gaza border. He spoke to many of the survivors and reviewed documents captured from Hamas terrorists.
Fortunately for Alumim’s residents, they would be spared the worst of the horrors visited on neighboring kibbutzim, thanks to a combination of good fortune, apparent mistakes by the Hamas attackers, late-arriving assistance from various security forces and, most of all, the courage and resourcefulness of its plucky defenders. Alumim’s 41 foreign workers—22 Thais and 19 Nepalis—on the other hand, were far less lucky, and paid a terrible price.
Maddy-Weitzman ends with a moving consideration of what the members of Kibbutz Alumim and its neighbors think and worry about now:
What does the future hold? Prior to October 7, a common mantra among the kibbutzniks in the Gaza envelope was that their lives there were “95-percent paradise and 5-percent hell.” Nearly all of Alumim’s residents hoped to return home, but on one condition: There could be no restoration of the status quo ante that had included the “5-percent hell” and ultimately left them vulnerable to marauding terrorists. But after October 7, could the authorities be trusted to achieve this, and if so, how? Kibbutz spokesman Dani Yagil was succinct: “They destroy, we’ll build,” in line with the pioneering ethos that had led to the establishment of Jewish settlements in the area in 1946, two years before the state of Israel was founded, and the founding of Alumim in 1966 by dedicated idealists.
Others, especially those with young children, weren’t so sure. After all, as Eitan Okun related, half of the children in the kibbutz were already in therapy before October 7, owing to the constant stress engendered by Color Red warning sirens. How could they, as parents, have subjected their children to this? And could the destruction of Hamas’s military capabilities and ability to rule, the declared goal of Israel’s war against it, really be achieved? And what about the profound fissures that had opened up in Israeli society in the preceding year, and that were now reappearing again, five months into the war? Overall, there seemed to be a longing for more pragmatic voices that could lead Israel away from the abyss into which it was staring.
The fight for home on October 7 had been won. The fight to keep and renew that home, both the kibbutz itself and the nation as a whole, was far from over.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/black-sabbath-kibbutz-alumim-hamas