When the position of security coordinator had to be filled in Kibbutz Nir Am last November, Ophir Liebstein, the head of the responsible regional administration, immediately thought of a young woman: Inbal Liberman, 25. “I hope you won’t have much to do, said Liebstein, That’s what the Israeli newspaper says Haaretzand the way the sentence is written there, it sounds a bit like a teacher explaining to the newly elected but somewhat reluctant parent representative that it wasn’t all that much work.
But this isn’t a parents’ evening, it’s Israel and there’s a war in Israel. Liebstein is now dead, murdered by Hamas when he tried to stand in the way of the terrorists. Inbal Liberman, the young woman, is alive – and she is responsible for ensuring that the people in her kibbutz are still alive and have not been massacred by the terrorists, like so many residents in southern Israel.
Liberman’s job as security coordinator: In the event of an emergency, the position remains until help arrives, for example the army. When the sirens went off around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, Liberman felt like her father described it in the report Haaretznot until after an extraordinary situation.
Kibbutz Nir Am is located west of the city of Sderot, less than a kilometer from the border. The fact that rockets are fired from the Gaza Strip is part of everyday life for people in southern Israel. Inbal Libermann also went into the shelter, usual procedure in the event of a missile alarm. But then she heard noise, unusual noise that sounded different than usual when Hamas fired its rockets. Liberman trusted her instincts. She called together her protection unit of twelve residents, had the kibbutz’s armory opened and spontaneously devised a defense plan. Each member of the group of twelve had to take post in such a way that possible intruders would have maximum difficulty. In fact, Liberman and her colleagues managed to repel the Hamas terrorists. No one from the kibbutz was killed, although the invaders tried to storm Nir Am for hours.
In the settlements of Be’eri and Kfar Aza, residents are said to have been slaughtered indiscriminately
According to current information, Hamas has killed well over 1,000 people in southern Israel, in an area where there are many kibbutzes, cooperatively managed settlements. The exact extent of the attack is still not recorded, a military spokesman said on Thursday morning. The terrorists carried out brutal murders at a music festival; 260 people died there alone. There are terrible stories from people, like that of 19-year-old Noam Cohen, who took refuge in a shelter with 20 to 30 other festival-goers. The terrorists threw several hand grenades into it. Cohen only survived because he stood at the back and hid under the bodies of others for ten hours until the Israeli army finally arrived.
Residents in the two settlements of Be’eri and Kfar Aza are also said to have been slaughtered indiscriminately, according to journalists who were granted access to the two places by the Israeli army. “This is something I have never seen in my life,” said Israeli Major General Itai Veruv. “This is something we imagined from our grandfathers and grandmothers in the pogroms in Europe and elsewhere. This is not something that is happening in the new history.” Israeli troops went from house to house to collect the bodies of civilians in body bags. Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog said that not since the Holocaust had so many Jews been killed in one day.
Amid all the horror, the people of Israel are grateful for positive stories like that of Inbal Liberman and her successful fight against Hamas. Many reports on social media said that the kibbutz protection force had managed to eliminate 25 terrorists. Liberman alone shot five intruders, it was said. It is doubtful whether this is true – apparently in reality only one terrorist was killed and another was injured, it says Haaretz. The story was probably inflated a bit, creating a hero saga. Liberman doesn’t want to be a hero, as she wrote on Instagram, according to the newspaper. The account is only visible to the woman’s followers, Haaretz quotes from it. “I want to tell you that you shouldn’t believe everything that is written. There are many false claims in the reports. I am not a hero.”
For now, Liberman has retreated to relative safety in a hotel in Tel Aviv. She doesn’t give interviews, but Ron Huldai, the city’s mayor, met her and thanked her. “For me, I still don’t know what exactly happened,” Lieberman writes. She will contact you at a later date and then comment in more detail. One thing is already clear: Israel will not soon forget the name Inbal Liberman.