Feigele Salomon, Argentine (75 years old), lives in Hatzerim, a kibbutz (agricultural commune), located 30 kilometers from the Gaza border, near Beer Sheva and next to an Israeli air base.. Grandmother of six grandchildren, she has lived with her husband Adash in Hatzerim since 1967 and in the early hours of Sunday morning she woke up there before the alarms sounded because the ground began to shake from the rockets.. “It felt like 'Boom, boom, boom!'” he says.. This is how he learned about the beginning of Hamas's worst attack on Israel.
At the request of their children, Adash and Feigele went to take refuge on Sunday at the home of a daughter and her 10-year-old grandson, within the same kibbutz, because it has its own bunker.. This Monday they have already returned to their home, from where they say, by telephone, that the family is fine, but they are still in a state of paralysis and do not remember having lived through such a brutal situation in sixty years, with hundreds of dead, dozens kidnapped. missing and more than 5,500 rockets launched in a day and a half.
“Many times they shoot rockets, it's not something new. This time, at six-thirty on Sunday morning I woke up, before the sirens began to sound, blaring every two minutes,” says Feigele.. “I heard them (the rockets) fall and everything shook, sometimes it was Israel's systems to intercept them, which managed to bring them down along the way. It felt 'boom!', 'boom!. “They threw away a terrible amount.”
And he continues: “In my population we have not experienced what in other kibbutzim that are attached to the border with Gaza. A thousand Hamas terrorists entered there like crazy, on motorcycles, in trucks, with a large amount of weapons.. They shot everyone, it was a civilian population. They went house to house killing people. “People went into their shelters, but they beat them and set fire to their houses to make them come out and kill them.”
“They went house to house killing people, people went into their shelters, but they beat them, they burned houses so that people would come out and kill them”
Feigele and Adash stay informed of what is happening at the border through the testimonies of survivors on television news. But Feigele is convinced that they are not showing them all the images there are: “The terrorists recorded their atrocities and they do not show them in all their crudeness.”
This Argentine living in Israel breaks down when she remembers the drama of a music festival in nature, where 260 bodies have already been found. “They took the boys down (killed them) as if they were ducks at a fair. It's awful”.
This electronic music party in nature that ended in tragedy was attended, precisely, by a 21-year-old young man from another kibbutz, Samar, where Yuuval has resided, an Israeli who for security reasons gives a fictitious name and explains that the family still still doesn't know anything about his whereabouts. “I know the boy well and the situation his family is going through is terrible, complaining on social media about misinformation,” explains Yuvaal from his town, 200 kilometers away from Gaza.. Yuuval says there are about 2,000 injured people in hospitals and his neighbor's family hopes they can find him there.
Feigele, the Argentine from Hatzerim, is also very affected by the case of the kidnapping of an 85-year-old woman. “What does it mean to take an 85-year-old woman? It means not having any morals or ethics, it is not a war of soldiers, it is one of terrible violence and cruelty.”
For Yuuval, the situation is a consequence of the recent bombings to regain control of the Gaza Strip, and he hopes that the “revenge” that the Government of Israel has promised does not put more lives in danger, especially because there are still “children , elderly, Israeli men and women kidnapped in the area”.
Feigele has a neighbor whose daughter lives in another kibbutz next to the border, in Sderot, who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists along with 50 other people in a dining room.. Hours later they managed to be rescued, but there are still missing people in that Kibbutz. “They don't know what happened, it's been two days and everything is too uncertain”. Those rescued, for their part, left the community without clothes or shoes.. At the Feigele Kibbutz, the neighbors have organized to send clothes and groceries. Although there have been recent political differences in the community, especially over judicial reforms, the attacks, he says, have brought everyone together to lend a hand to those who have been left with nothing.
The precedent of Yom Kippur (1973)
Feigele looks back and says that the closest thing to what they are experiencing would be the attack on Yom Kippur, the holiday of October 6, in 1973.. That year her husband was called up to the reserves. It was six months, and she was raising two babies alone. “But that was a war on the front, with soldiers, not with so many terrorists in the manner of an invasion, we had never seen this before.”
The peculiarity is that now suicide bombers have attacked the civilian population and are promised paradise if they die killing, where virgins await them, explains Feigele.. “And so they go…. It's crazy and they commit any atrocity. Which, on the other hand, is something that has nothing to do with religion or the law of Islam,” he laments.
In the Kibbutz where he lives, it is thought that the reaction of the Government of Israel will be strong, because the aggression was very great.. “The Government says that this is going to be long, hard and that we must have patience and strength.”
He describes the situation in the towns bordering Gaza as “hell”, with areas without water or electricity, looking for what to eat and how to avoid attacks.. While further in, where they live, the situation is one of total paralysis. Nobody goes to school or work, and they have been told to stay safely at home. “Now they hardly fire rockets, but there is no work, there are instructions to stay close to home, stay next to the shelters, everything is paralyzed.”
The couple has plane tickets to travel to Madrid on Wednesday, October 11, in two days. They want to come visit Adash's sister, but they don't know if they will fly. “The problem is getting to the airport and having flights. The situation changes every minute. I don't know what can happen. I have the clothes next to the suitcase, but I haven't put them inside yet. We'll see”.
“(We try to give children information that they are able to understand and that does not cause them stress”
They worry about how their children and grandchildren are left. “It's normally one's fear, what the TV shows of the parents of the kids at the nature festival, who still don't even know where their children are.. It's something terrible. It's something that disarms you.” Regarding how his grandchildren, the youngest in the family, between 10 and 18 years old, are experiencing the new war, he explains that since they were born in Israel, it is not entirely new to them.
Feigele explains that young people have been educated “to master their fears and not feel insecurity”. It can be difficult to explain, he acknowledges, “but my children try to carry, even locked up at home, a certain normality.”. My daughter plays ball inside the house with her 10-year-old son, monopoly, with the cat…. “We also try to give them information that they are able to understand and that does not cause them stress.”. Feigele, however, remembers that other families have had worse luck.. “Here we are further away, it is not like those who live next door, that is hell: they have killed entire families, one next to the other…. terrible”.
For his part, Yuuval, after condemning “this dirty, crazy and inhuman war” perpetrated by Hamas, asks to frame it in several decades of conflict and considers that international intervention is “more necessary than ever to achieve, if not peace, then an agreement.” lasting development that benefits both communities.