Until the morning of October 7, 2023, Kfar Aza was a sort of small earthly paradise and an oasis of peace in Israel inhabited by a small community surrounded by greenery a few hundred meters from the Gaza Strip. Life went smoothly until that Saturday morning when thousands of Hamas terrorists entered Israel, attacking military bases and kibbutzim around the Palestinian enclave. Armed with machine guns they broke in, looting, killing, raping and kidnapping. Of the 950 inhabitants of Kfar Aza, 63 were killed, 19 kidnapped and of these, five of them are (perhaps) still in the hands of terrorists in Gaza. Time has stopped here and the gardens remain in bloom among the gutted and burned houses, the debris, and hundreds of bullet holes in the walls, ceilings and doors of the houses. Outside the houses there are photos of the victims and many are young boys and girls and young couples who had begun to live together in this little paradise. That morning everything was swept away by the sadistic fury of Hamas militants first and then by Palestinian “civilians”. During the visit they told us that the terrorists knew exactly where to go, they had detailed maps, they knew who was armed and who wasn't and they even had the floor plans of the individual houses. They had all this information because it came from Palestinians who worked on the kibbutz. After the Hamas men raped and massacred everyone they encountered, hundreds of “civilians” arrived from Gaza and made havoc of the corpses which they then took to the Strip and ransacked the houses, taking everything away. What we see is shocking and during the visit to the kibbutz a young female soldier tells us in detail what happened. When the sirens began to sound at 6.30 on the morning of October 7, the residents immediately locked themselves inside the shelters, a sad habit for those who live in this area, with only 15 seconds to reach the bunker. The missile warning went on for 15 minutes and then the first wave of terrorists arrived in pick-ups and from the sky with rudimentary hang gliders. Locked in these safe rooms, set up to resist missiles and certainly not attacks by armed militiamen, the inhabitants of the kibbutz tried to resist, but many were killed and others kidnapped. A few hours later there was the second wave in which some Gazans also participated. A man who continues to live here tells us: «It is important that you see things. Kfar Aza, like other communities in the surrounding area, thought that on the other side (of the fences) there were not only terrorists but also people who were not involved. I was among the volunteers who accompanied Palestinian patients from the crossings to Israeli hospitals, believing in the vision of building a better future. The so-called not involved stole, killed, kidnapped and took away things and bodies on October 7th. We understood that we had to look at them differently and that's something we now have to deal with.”
