The kibbutz Kfar Aza es un microcosm of the early days of this war and also a glimpse of what may come next.
As of Tuesday morning, fighting continued in the kibbutz, which is one of the Israeli farming communities located along the border with Gaza. Therefore, they are only now collecting the bodies of their Israeli residents who died when Hamas crossed the border fence from Gaza in the early hours of Saturday.
Soldiers who spent much of the day in the ruins recovering civilian bodies said there had been a slaughter. It seems likely that much of the killing occurred in the early hours of Saturday’s assault.
Caught off guard, it took the Israeli army 12 hours to reach the kibbutz, said Davidi Ben Zion, deputy commander of Unit 71, an experienced team of paratroop soldiers who led the assault.
“Thank God we saved many lives of many parents and children,” he said. “Unfortunately, some were burned with [cócteles] Molotov. “They are very aggressive, like animals,” he added.
Ben Zion claimed that Hamas militants who killed families, including babies, were “just a jihad machine to kill everyone, [a gente] no weapons, no nothing, just normal citizens who want to have their breakfast and that’s it.” Some of the victims, he said, were decapitated.
“They killed them and cut off the heads of some, it is something horrible to see (…) and we must remember who the enemy is, and what our mission is, [por] justice where there is a right side and everyone has to be with us,” he said.
Another officer pointed to a bloody purple sleeping bag. He stuck out a swollen toe. He said the woman under her had been killed and beheaded in the garden of her house. I did not ask the officer to move the sleeping bag to inspect the body. A few meters away was the blackened and swollen corpse of a dead Hamas attacker.
Kibbutz Kfar Aza adds to the considerable evidence that is accumulating of war crimes committed by Hamas militants. Like other Israelis, the community was taken by surprise.
Their first line of defense was the kibbutz guards, residents with military experience who patrolled the perimeter. They died fighting the attackers.
Their bodies were removed on Tuesday morning from their positions in the center of the kibbutz and, like the other Israeli dead, wrapped in black plastic, carried on stretchers to a parking area and placed in a line waiting to be recovered. .
Residents of Israeli border communities have come to expect periodic rocket attacks since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. They accepted danger as the price of life in the countryside in a close-knit community that still retains vestiges of Gaza’s pioneering spirit. the first Zionist settlements.
Residents of Kfar Aza and other Israeli communities along the Gaza fence enjoyed a good quality of life, despite the threat of Hamas rockets. In the houses, gardens, and open areas of the kibbutz, a concrete shelter was never more than a short run away.
All houses had reinforced safe rooms. They also had outdoor terraces, barbecues, swings for the children and fresh air. But no one – not here in Kfar Aza or anywhere else in Israel – imagined that Hamas would be able to breach Israel’s defenses and kill so many people.
Israelis’ horror and rage have been mixed with disbelief that the state and army have failed in their fundamental duty to protect their citizens. The bodies of the Hamas attackers who killed so many of them have been left to rot in the sun, lying in the open where they were killed, in bushes and ditches and on the kibbutz’s wide lawn.
Near their bodies are the motorcycles they used to break into the kibbutz after crossing the border fence. The remains of a paraglider, used to fly over Israeli defenses, are also there, removed from a path into a garden.
The next common experience with other border settlements was that the Israelis needed fierce fighting to recapture Kfar Aza.
As we approached the entrance to the kibbutz on Tuesday morning, hundreds of Israeli soldiers were still deployed along its perimeter. We could hear their radio communications.
A commander gave the order to open fire on a building on the Gaza side. Almost immediately, bursts of automatic weapons fire began directed toward Gaza. The thud of airstrikes continually echoed from Gaza while we were in Kfar Aza.
Israel suffers collective trauma after the massacre of so many of its fellow citizens on Saturday. But hundreds of civilians are also dying in Gaza. International humanitarian law clearly states that all combatants must protect civilian lives.
It is clear that the murder of hundreds of civilians by Hamas attackers is a serious violation of the laws of war. Israelis reject any comparison between the way Hamas kills civilians and the way Palestinian civilians are killed in its airstrikes.
Major General Itai Veruv, who was nearing retirement and led the fight to retake the kibbutz, insisted that Israel respect its obligations under the laws of war.
“I am sure that we fight for our values and our culture (…) we will be very aggressive and very strong, but we maintain our moral values. “We are Israelis, we are Jews.”
Veruv flatly denied that they had suspended their obligations regarding the laws of war. However, it is certain that as more Palestinian civilians are killed, Israel will face increasingly harsh criticism.
That is part of the vision of the future that Kfar Aza offers. So is the attitude of a soldier I spoke with, who did not want to give his name. Like so many other Israelis, the experience of the early days of this war, and what he has seen, reinforced his decision to fight.
When they arrived, he said, it was “chaos, terrorists everywhere.” I asked him how difficult the fighting was.
“You can not imagine”. Had he had to do something like this before as a soldier? “Not like this.”
What will happen next? “I don’t know, I do what they tell me. I hope we get in.” Inside Gaza? That would be a tough fight. “Yeah. “We are prepared for it.”
The soldiers came mostly from reserve units. Historically, Military service was considered a vital part of nation buildingwhich unites a country that can tend towards divisions.
Davidi Ben Zion, the officer who led the first wave in the fight for the kibbutz and saw the carnage left by Hamas, acknowledged that Israelis had deep political divisions, but insisted that they were united now that they were under attack.
A strong smell of rotting flesh wafted under the warm Mediterranean autumn sun. The soldiers removing the bodies walked carefully among the ruins of the houses, alert for unexploded explosive devices, which could also be booby traps. A pomegranate lay on a garden path.
As they worked to recover the bodies, from time to time warnings of rocket fire from Hamas caused them to take cover. After we left Kfar Aza there were more alerts.
