Shahar Shnorman was the first resident to return to his destroyed home village. Why he doesn’t mind prying eyes – and how the old residents argue about the future of the kibbutz.
Shahar Shnorman sits in a lawn chair outside his house during the interview Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Newspapers are on the table, birds are chirping, and the 62-year-old’s wife, Ayelet Cohen, is cooking inside. The idyll seemed perfect if it weren’t for the thunder of bombs being dropped at the same time on Gaza, three kilometers away. And if it weren’t for the graffiti signs on the house walls that mean: The house is free of terrorists. On October 7, Hamas murdered families in their beds here and shot friends of Shahar Shnorman. Of the 700 residents, more than 100 died on October 7th and others were kidnapped.