report
One month after the Hamas attack, residents return to Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Many houses have been destroyed and those who survived the terror are traumatized. How can things continue there?
Ralph Levinson and his son Alon are going back to their home: the Kibbutz Kfar Aza – even if this home no longer exists. The car slowly drives up to the heavy, yellow, metal gate. Israeli army soldiers dressed in olive green stop the car. The soldier on duty uses the radio to clarify whether Levinson is allowed to enter the kibbutz. He identifies himself as a resident. The military quickly gave the okay.
Until that Black Saturday, October 7th, Ralph Levinson lived in Kfar Aza – for more than 40 years. Until Hamas terrorists brutally attacked the kibbutz, which is located just two kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
Now Levinson, who grew up speaking German in Namibia, drives past vehicles riddled with bullets. Some houses have burned out and many of the facades have bullet holes. After a few minutes, Levinson reaches his house. A fire alarm beeps. Not much is left of his garden, the apartment is almost undamaged – only there is no electricity, as he notes.
Ralph Levinson has returned to his destroyed home. He doesn’t know yet whether he can live here again.
More than two days of fighting in the kibbutz
Ralph Levinson and his wife were incredibly lucky. The Hamas fighters fired rifle volleys at the house, but no one entered the apartment. When the first shots were fired, the two pensioners reacted: “Then we went into the bunker and locked the door to prevent anyone from getting in. And there is also a steel plate in front of the window.”
The two stayed in the bunker for 24 hours. Only very rarely did they stick their heads out of their shelter. “We kept hearing the explosions and stuff,” Levinson remembers. “But we didn’t know exactly what was happening. There was no telephone either.” The two had thought there were two terrorists on the kibbutz – or “one, three, four, five – not 300.” Then the neighbor came into the house scared: “She said she saw men dressed in black on the lawn with a white band around their heads. And my wife said they were Israeli soldiers.”
Kfar Aza is only two kilometers from Gaza – Israeli soldiers and Hamas terrorists were closer to each other than anywhere else.
The fighting in Kfar Aza lasted more than two days. In hardly any other kibbutz did the terrorists and the Israeli military face each other so relentlessly. More than 100 people were massacred, including many infants and children.
“The children have a very serious trauma”
Alon Levinson, Ralph’s son, walks over broken glass in the house next door. There is rubble everywhere. It’s his best friend’s destroyed house. It’s working in Alon’s head. He thinks about the future. “I grew up on a kibbutz and I wanted my children to have a happy and free childhood,” he says. “But of course: This act of purely diabolical terror has changed everything. We now have to find a new way. We can’t just come back here. The children have a very serious trauma.”
His father Ralph also has worries about the future. He wanted to spend his retirement years in Kfar Aza with his wife. But for the 71-year-old, the future is completely open. There are many questions: “What is the security situation? Whether Hamas will really disappear? And whether a stable government will come to Gaza that we can live with and that won’t fire rockets at us.” They have already come to terms with the frequent rocket fire for 20 years – “but not at all with such a terrorist attack.”
There are deeply traumatized people who have lost their children: “They can’t move back into this cemetery where they lived before. That’s simply impossible.”