Land of Massacre

Have you ever been to a land of massacre? The Israel Daily News Podcast spent the day touring Israel’s southern border. The cities of Sderot, Kibbutz Mefalsim, Be’eri, and Re’im, where the Nova music festival was hosted, are now void of people—except for the army, reporters, and a few individuals.

First, we visited Sderot, where we saw homes in ruins. This city is resilient; its residents are accustomed to living under rocket fire and have endured 25,000 rockets since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. On October 7th, when Hamas entered with two brigades, 45 people were killed in the city. They took over the police station, leading to a 26-hour battle with local Israeli officers. The army eventually brought tanks to the station and demolished it to halt the conflict.

The next stop was Mefalsim. I exited the minibus and stood immediately in front of a handful of dead terrorists in black body bags. I can still smell the awful stench of the rotting bodies, thinking about how these individuals were just 1 km away from where they grew up in Gaza.

Next, we visited Kibbutz Be’eri, from which many hostages were taken. A colleague of mine has a friend who lost his entire family there. Countless homes in Kibbutz Be’eri were torched and many had no roofs. The location smelled of burned flesh and bodily excretions. We met a survivor from Kibbutz Beeri who refused to come on camera. He hid with his wife and daughters until the terrorists were cleared out and is now volunteering to salvage sentimental keepsakes and important identification documents from his neighbors’ homes.

Residents of Kibbutz Be’eri wonder why some homes were completely torched and destroyed, while others were just shot through the door.

In Kibbutz Be’eri, we saw two Toyota pickup trucks left behind that Hamas had entered. In many homes, the only items standing were those found in the safe room. The day ended at Re’im, where the Nova outdoor nature party was held. Two hundred sixty young people were murdered one-by-one by Hamas terrorists while running for their lives. Volunteers who came to clear the corpses reported women’s bodies were raped in life and in death.

“Here in Re’im, the scene speaks for itself.”

The field was covered with tents that had not been folded closed, camping chairs left un-collapsed, 6-packs of waters, cans of tuna, and even streamers blowing in the wind between tree branches. People left everything behind as they sprinted into the woods, hid under cars, pretended to be dead, or lay in silence under trees and bushes for hours on end, hoping not to be found.