The First Anniversary of the War Between Israel and the Middle East: Why Israel Has a Right to Lose Its Children, Or Why Hezbollah Has Left Israel
Israel is in a crisis after the death of Hamas fighters in the Gaza war a year ago. As a result of a multifront war that is only intensifying and expanding, it is a shrunken country with tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from northern towns and kibbutzim. They had to cope throughout the year with loss, shock, rocket fire and overwhelming fear for their safety from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran itself, but that was compounded by turmoil from within.
I wonder what I am thinking about on the first anniversary of the war between Iran and Israel. Something my strategy teacher, Prof. John Arquilla of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, taught me: All wars come down to two basic questions: Who wins the battle on the ground? Which one wins the fight of the story? Even after a year of warfare, in which Hamas and Hezbollah have inflicted terrible pain on one another’s forces and civilians, no one has won the battle for the story. The first war between Arabs and Israelis has a name, but neither side have a clear win or a clean story.
And what story is Iran telling? It has a right to help establish failed states in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq so it can destroy Israel? And by what right has Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel that the Lebanese people and government had no say in and are now paying a huge price for?
The Israeli Inferno: What Happened to the Last Days of the Oct. 7 Abrupt Attacks on Kibbutz Be’eri
Thousands of Israelis with the means to do so have chosen to leave Israel since Oct. 7; others are considering or planning emigrating. Many thousands more have also taken to the streets week after week, engaging in acts of civil disobedience, which began before the Oct. 7 attacks with protests against the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul and, after a brief pause, resumed with a new focus on the hostage crisis and demand for early elections. Images of the former Israeli army chief of staff being removed by police from the street during a sit-In in front of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence were a further example of this.
“The Israelis, we all were on the radio, hearing them whispering to the radio people: ‘Why doesn’t anyone come? Where are everybody? Where is the army? They’re in my house, they’re shooting at me.’ We will remember this for the rest of our lives.
At one of the recent mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling for a hostage deal and for early elections to replace the Israeli government, one protester held up a sign reading: “Who are we without them?” referring to the hostages. Another placard read: “Give me one reason to raise kids here.”
The sister of a former Israeli prime minister has counseled kibbutz members all yearlong, and says there are questions from the inferno.
Silence is what helped keep the survivors of this small community alive the day of the attack. Silence is what they carried out of hiding from their safe rooms along the Gaza border to a hotel on the Dead Sea that took them in.
Israeli authorities say about 1,200 people were killed last Oct. 7, as Hamas led thousands of attackers bursting out of Gaza, ambushing Israeli towns and communities. Kibbutz Be’eri suffered the biggest loss of any single village: 102 people killed — about one out of every 13 people living there.
The Israeli village mourns the biggest loss from Oct. 7: The kibbutz beeri-hamas attack-anniversary
The head of the kibbutz said he was exhausted after every funeral and had to deal with it again. “Because it brings [back] everything, and we cry again.”
This tight-knit Israeli community near the Gaza border is digging up its dead from temporary graves further away and reburying them back home, where it is safer to gather now, a year into the Gaza war.
The man she had heard loading gun rounds was in her home. He was sitting outside, she says, stripped naked by orders of the military, and guarded by an Israeli soldier.
When she and her family were rescued that night, they found the living room floor covered in a lot of weaponry. She understood: Her home has now been turned into the attack headquarters. Neighbors all around her were gunned down.
He says that others who survived the attack are taking sleeping pills to cope with trauma and can’t help but look at the destroyed homes. I think we will have to take them all down.
The homes that were attacked last year are a short walk away. Kids’ shoes are in the debris, there is bullet holes, windows are shattered, and it is October 7.
Source: The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7, one year later
“The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7 one year later,” said Batya Ofir, a resident of the Kibbutz Be’eri neighborhood
A couple hundred families have moved back to Kibbutz Be’eri. Cohen is leading a project that will bring residents back to their homes within two and a half years.
I asked myself, what do you want? To continue living? I can also not. I had to think about it. And then I decided that I wanted to continue to live,” she says. I have a family and a bunch of kids. I draw. I’m learning to kayak, to deal with all my fears. I do everything I can to give meaning to life now that they’re gone.
She would have preferred to be with his body when it was unearthed. She had not lived on the kibbutz any longer and felt guilty she wasn’t with her brother and family in their worst moment on Oct. 7.
Batya Ofir attended the funeral. She recently reburied her brother and his family after viewing his partially-decomposed body, which had been placed in a temporary grave.
At Kibbutz Be’eri, one recent afternoon, teens and parents walked quietly out of the neighborhood cemetery after a funeral for a mother and her 15-year-old son — two of the many reburials of recent months.
Source: The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7, one year later
How Many Palestinians Live in Kibbutz Be’eri, Israel? A counsellor’s guide to a village in the Dead Sea
When I gave guidelines to the therapists in Be’eri, I asked how they were. Because these people don’t know that it still matters. They need to see that their wellbeing is still relevant. The life instinct is to see that someone calls him back.
They are very concerned about the future of this place. Many of them leave the country. She says that their parents told them that they died in the Holocaust. There is nothing but hopelessness and helplessness. The trauma is national.”
A boy in the kibbutz lost his entire family, his parents and two siblings. Do we tell him about each individually, or do we tell him about them all together? she says.
Roth has also counseled former hostages who returned from Hamas captivity in Gaza, families whose loved ones were killed in captivity, and Israelis who didn’t experience a personal loss but still suffer from sleeping difficulties, anxiety attacks and depression.
It took many weeks to account for everyone: who was dead, who was captive in Gaza. Roth sat with the survivors of Kibbutz Be’eri in the Dead Sea hotel basement as the village secretary read the names of 27 identified bodies and 108 people unaccounted for.
The Israeli military investigated the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri and found that there were about340 attackers who invaded the community and took seven hours for significant numbers of Israeli forces to arrive.