Black Sabbath (Kibbutz Alumim 10-7 2023)

[Valin]

Tablet

The defenders of Kibbutz Alumim fought off Palestinian terror squads on Oct. 7 and saved their homes and families
Bruce Maddy-Weitzman

Mar. 20 2024

collection

This article is part of Hamas’ War on Israel.

See the full collection →︎

 

The evening of Oct. 6 was especially festive at Kibbutz Alumim, one of the two religiously observant kibbutzim among the communities that dot the Gaza envelope, the part of Israel’s fertile northwestern Negev region adjacent to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Most of Alumim’s 500 residents and their guests had gathered at the kibbutz’s synagogue to celebrate with song and dance the start of the Simchat Torah holiday, one of the two most joyous days on the Jewish calendar. Many of them didn’t finally retire until after midnight.

Ordinarily they would have returned to the synagogue the next morning to continue the celebration. Instead, at 6:29 a.m., they were suddenly roused from their beds by a deafening cascade of rocket launches from a nearby Iron Dome anti-missile battery, and the resulting booms marking the interceptions of some of the thousands of missiles launched from Gaza, less than 4 kilometers away. The usual Color Red warning alarms were barely audible amid the deafening tumult. So many intercepts were being fired that it was as if the Iron Dome firing mechanism was somehow stuck in the “launch” position. After a few minutes, the firing stopped completely, apparently because all of the battery’s available missiles had been used.

After more than 15 years of intermittent attacks from their neighbors, Alumim’s residents ostensibly knew the drill: One had 30 seconds to scurry into reinforced rooms (mamadim) and remain there for 10 minutes, until the risk of being hit by rocket or mortar fire, or falling shrapnel from the interceptions, had passed. This time it was different. The unprecedented barrage of rockets and mortars was quickly followed by a sustained ground assault by thousands of heavily armed men at 30 different points along the border. Their mission, explicitly defined in documents later found on the dead bodies of their commanders and on computer files, was to kill as many people as possible, to take hostages, and wreak destruction on both civilian and military installations.

A map of Alumim found on the body of one of the Palestinian commanders showed two different lines of attack. The one carried out by the first squad was pointed toward the nerve center of the kibbutz—the nishkiya (armory), the secretariat, and the kibbutz’s “war room” (hamal), a below-ground, two-room complex monitoring the various security cameras spread around the kibbutz. A similarly detailed plan for neighboring Kibbutz Sa’ad described the location of the secretariat (“a significant source of information for our forces”), the dining hall (a place to gather hostages), and the animal feed factory (a suitable place for the forces to gather and replenish themselves). For whatever reason, however, the first wave of attackers at Alumim didn’t follow the plan, instead choosing to try and first secure the front gate and adjacent areas of Road 232, the north-south artery parallel to the Gaza border.

(Snip)

The massacre of the foreign workers remained a sore point for some, and particularly for Hunwald. Could more have been done to save them, for example, by immediately moving them en masse into the kibbutz’s residences, after the first wave of killings? The question gnawed at him, even while he acknowledged that no one had had a clue that the initial penetration of the kibbutz by the 10 terrorists was only the beginning of the ordeal. Some KK members emphasized that the subsequent large-scale massacre and kidnapping of the foreign workers had essentially bought the kibbutz defenders valuable time and even somewhat thinned out Hamas’ ranks, lending a special poignancy to what had happened, and reinforcing their sense of responsibility and indebtedness. As the first shock of the events gradually faded, and the kibbutz members began coping with their new status as displaced persons, the enormity of the Oct. 7 events gradually sank in. Some kibbutz members made sure to publicly and repeatedly emphasize that the Thai and Nepali workers were part of the Alumim community. Assistance was extended to the wounded, and ceremonies made sure to include reference to their sacrifices. By the beginning of February, six of the 10 Thai workers who had survived the ordeal and gone home, as well as one who had left before Oct. 7, had returned and were welcomed with open arms.

What does the future hold? Prior to Oct. 7, a common mantra among the kibbutzniks in the Gaza envelope was that their lives there were “95% paradise and 5% hell.” Nearly all of Alumim’s residents hoped to return home, but on one condition: There could be no restoration of the status quo ante that had included the “5% hell” and ultimately left them vulnerable to marauding terrorists. But after Oct. 7, could the authorities be trusted to achieve this, and if so, how? Kibbutz spokesman Dani Yagil was succinct: “They destroy, we’ll build,” in line with the pioneering ethos that had led to the establishment of Jewish settlements in the area in 1946, two years before the State of Israel was founded, and the founding of Alumim in 1966 by dedicated idealists.

Others, especially those with young children, weren’t so sure. After all, as Eitan Okun related, half of the children in the kibbutz were already in therapy before Oct. 7, owing to the constant stress engendered by Color Red warning sirens. How could they, as parents, have subjected their children to this? And could the destruction of Hamas’ military capabilities and ability to rule, the declared goal of Israel’s war against it, really be achieved? And what about the profound fissures that had opened up in Israeli society in the preceding year, and that were now reappearing again, five months into the war? Overall, there seemed to be a longing for more pragmatic voices that could lead Israel away from the abyss into which it was staring.

The fight for home on Oct. 7 had been won. The fight to keep and renew that home, both the kibbutz itself and the nation as a whole, was far from over.

This story is based largely on in-depth interviews with most of the Alumim defenders and a number of others who played crucial roles on that day. It was supplemented by captured Hamas documents provided by the IDF spokesman’s office; by a moving meeting with Alumim’s surviving Thai workers, conducted with the help of Leila Djamel; by the input of Dr. Ada Gansach-Wilson regarding the kibbutz’s Nepali workers; and by a number of published items. Special thanks go to Alumim’s Stanley Kaye, and to Bar-Ilan University professor Joshua Teitelbaum.