Before the current war began, Rivky Tyberg focused on her role as the director of donor relations for Ezrat Achim, an organization based in Beit Shemesh that provides social and community services; Esther Bina Wieder worked in community outreach. Since October 7 – literally as soon as Shabbat ended – they and other employees began working around the clock to help more than 500 families who were evacuated to Beit Shemesh. Also, “there were so many volunteers – driving South to bring people here, getting furniture, donating clothing, and preparing 2,500 meals a day in our kitchen,” Tyberg said.
About 90% of those families have recently returned home. However, others are stuck because the local industry has not returned to normal. “An electrician, an air-conditioning specialist, and a gardener, for example, are commuting to Beit Shemesh for that reason. One woman who stayed here was a teacher, and she got a job in Jerusalem. So, when she goes back to Netivot, she has to go back and forth every day. Each one has to figure out what’s best for his or her situation, but it’s very complicated,” Tyberg explained.
“Some of the families are still here, not because they can’t go back but because they want to stay here. Some of them are traumatized. Naively, we had assumed that they were used to things like sirens, so it was surprising to see the panic they experienced whenever a siren went off. There was hysteria.
“When offered apartments, some refused to live on the ground floor and wanted to make sure there were bars on the windows. One woman had seen terrorists outside her window on Oct. 7. One kid wouldn’t shower because, at home, she was afraid a siren would go off and she wouldn’t make it to the safe room. Another child had severe medical issues because she used to be afraid to go to the bathroom. After Oct. 7, kids were whispering instead of talking because they had hidden from the terrorists.
“Among the 90% who went back, some were teachers who would have lost their jobs otherwise. Some children would have lost their places in the daycare center. They had no choice.
“It’s also difficult because the children [in the South] can’t be in school the whole day. They have to alternate because there’s a limited number of people who could be there safely in case a siren goes off. It’s based on how much space there is in the safe room,” Tyberg said.
“Also, you can’t just drop the children off; you have to take them to their classrooms,” Wieder said. “So, just imagine if you have multiple kids. Each one has two hours at a different time or on a different day, and each of them must be taken to the door of the classroom.”
The Magazine asked: How can the organization and volunteers continue providing so much assistance?
“That’s a daily conversation. We’re doing our regular work for the Beit Shemesh community, and then helping the evacuees,” Tyberg replied, adding that some of the people who offered housing now need their apartments back.
“We just feel like we can’t do enough,” she said. “The stress is insane. On top of being evacuated, there are brothers, fathers, and sons fighting. It’s an incredibly difficult situation.”
ACCORDING TO an agreement reached between the leaders of the Gaza border communities, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Finance Ministry, southern Israeli residents who were evacuated after Oct. 7 may return to their homes starting on March 1. However, they also have the option of remaining in the hotels, paid for by the government, until July 7, as was announced earlier this week.
In total, an estimated 200,000 Israelis were forced to relocate temporarily. The government provided accommodation at hotels and empty apartments, as well as offering a daily stipend to those who chose to find their own places. The announcement did not mention those evacuated from the North; with the ongoing fighting at the border with Lebanon and the unstable security situation, they are not yet going back.
NAVE AFGAN, 34, hails from Kfar Aza, a community of more than 700 people located three kilometers from the Gaza Strip. Sixty-two residents were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, and 19 were taken hostage. “I was not there on Oct. 7; I was out of town,” Afgan said, although his close family members were. They opted to find their own accommodation and have no idea when it will be possible to return to the kibbutz.
“At the beginning, we went to stay with family friends in Ramat Hasharon; afterward, we moved to Tel Aviv, to a rented apartment,” said Afgan, who lives with his girlfriend. His sister, brother-in-law, and their three young daughters took an apartment in Tel Aviv, using the stipend offered by the government.
“It’s not simple,” he said. “We have all moved two or three times in the past few months. My parents, about 60 years old, are now staying in a building in Herzliya that has only people from Kfar Aza. They don’t have a standard kitchen or a standard bed.
“My father works in the South, so he has to drive every day from Herzliya. My sister and her family rented their own apartment because they couldn’t manage in a small hotel room. She and her husband work, but it’s very difficult because the children only have half a day of school. My sister is trying to work remotely while they’re in school. Her office is in Beersheba, but they didn’t choose to stay there because the schools are in the Sharon District [in central Israel], which was the solution for the kibbutz, so they have to live nearby.
“They were on the kibbutz on Oct. 7. They left after 22 hours, and my parents left after 30 hours, hiding all that time.”
Asked how he and his partner were planning to move on, he said, “We have no clue. I don’t understand anything that has happened in the past four months. I’m just trying to focus on the stable things in my life, like my work, because when I try to look forward, it’s very difficult. I have no clue what we’re going to do in the next few years or where we will live because we really loved the kibbutz.”
They meet with other kibbutzniks about once or twice a week, mostly in Tel Aviv. “We lost many friends. Being together makes it a little less difficult,” he said.
“I think the evacuees from all the kibbutzim near Gaza are in the same situation,” he added. “Most of us really can’t make any big decisions about the future. I’m sure there are those who want to go back, but not everyone.
“It’s painful. All of us went to therapy. I finished my therapy; I hope the trauma won’t catch me again. Others are still going for treatment, and others haven’t even started yet; it’s too early for them.
OSI GLICK is from Kfar Maimon, a moshav in the South. “For us, it was a miracle that the terrorists came very close to the fence but didn’t manage to enter. We’re right near Be’eri. Of course, we heard everything and were inside the safe rooms for the entire time. We left the next day. We were in Tel Aviv for a week, in an Airbnb, and afterward joined our community that was in Jerusalem.”
She and her husband own Psiffas, a clothing store. “We were given the option to stay in the hotels until the end of February,” she told the Magazine earlier in the month. Of course, there was no business during the evacuation.
“My store is in Netivot, and the mayor decided a couple of months after the attacks to go back to normal as much as possible and reopen all the businesses. So, I’m driving back and forth from Jerusalem to keep the business going, as well as for the sake of clients in the southern region who were not evacuated, like in Ofakim, Ma’agalim, Sharsheret, and Netivot.
“We created a schedule – half a week in Jerusalem and half a week at home in Netivot – as more and more people are returning home. Until now, the schools and daycares were all closed, but now that they are reopening, families are returning. It appears that by next month, everyone will have gone back. Everyone is traumatized.
“The business has been suffering,” she continued. “I feel that people like me, with a business, are like the farmers – we must be on site. But it’s not the same.”
RONIT BART, a native Jerusalemite, has been living on Kibbutz Sa’ad for the last 29 years. The terrorists didn’t infiltrate Sa’ad, “something we are extremely thankful for.” At 6:30 a.m., the sirens sounded, and the residents were told to go into their safe rooms and not to come out. Meanwhile, at the entrance to the kibbutz, there was a shootout in which a standby squad prevented terrorists from entering Sa’ad.
Over the past few weeks, families have started going back, mostly those with no small children. “The situation is very different from the kibbutzim that were harmed. We’ve been doing a lot of thinking and talking and trying to decide how to continue from here. I think that over 90% are planning on returning to the kibbutz. It’s important to us that those who were kidnapped will, hopefully, come home,” Bart said.
“Nobody was kidnapped from the kibbutz,” she clarified; rather, “the kibbutz members who were wounded or killed weren’t on the kibbutz at the time. They were either fighting on the roads or helping at Kfar Aza.”
After the massacre, the entire kibbutz remained together in hotels at the Dead Sea. “In the beginning, it was important to stay together for the first couple of weeks. But at some point, it was understood that it wasn’t a good solution for a lot of families. It was more important to make sure that they were in a good place and able to care for themselves and not sacrifice the family for the community; they had to do what was best for them. That was made very clear, and a lot of families have left over the past few weeks.
“Most of the people on the kibbutz work in the South, so a lot of them were unable to work. A few people stayed on the kibbutz to tend to the cows and the fields; the emergency standby squad stayed there the whole time, and about 10 people wanted to make sure that we didn’t lose any of our crops. The chicken coop could not be operated, so that had to stop. We had a mushroom factory that had to stop working.”
Communities situated within four kilometers of the Gaza border are scheduled to return in August, not including those like Kfar Aza, which will require at least two years to rebuild. As for those situated between four and seven kilometers from the border, the government is encouraging them to return home by the end of the month.
“There is chaos in the sense that although many people want to go back to the kibbutz, that doesn’t necessarily sit well with our local community leaders,” Bart said. “They want something to work as leverage to make sure the army finishes the job in Gaza and that they receive what they need to keep the communities safe.”
THERE ARE 450 residents on Kibbutz Nirim – about 200 families, according to resident Adele Raemer. Located two kilometers from the Gaza border, Nirim was one of the main targets of Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. At least five people were killed, many were wounded, and five were taken hostage to Gaza. The survivors were evacuated.
“We were in Eilat for three months, and now we’re in Beersheba,” Raemer said. In the beginning, most people stayed in the Eilat hotels, but then “people started leaving because it was really hard for a family with children to live in a hotel room.” On the other hand, “the strength of a kibbutz is being a community, being together.
“My daughter has three girls, ages two, six, and eight. They were on the kibbutz on Oct. 7. These children were highly traumatized. In Eilat, they refused to leave the hotel and insisted on sleeping in bed with their parents. They were sure that terrorists were going to drive over in a truck and kill them.
“There were Jordanians who worked in the hotel, so they heard Arabic, and they were scared. Throughout the time we were there, there were incoming rocket warnings from Yemen, so we were still running to the stairwell and the basement.
“Finally, at one point, my son-in-law convinced them to come out for dinner, and on the way back to the hotel, there were sirens; that finished them off completely. Every time he left the hotel room, my daughter would have to sit with them in the stairwell until he came back.
“There was a beautiful children’s center in the hotel with a big Gymboree, games, and a swimming pool. There were things for them to do in the hotel, but they wouldn’t leave the premises. My daughter realized that she needed to get them out of there because it was very noisy and unsettling, and it wasn’t only kibbutzniks.
“If there had been some forward planning, they would have put kibbutzim together because it’s a more homogeneous population. But, of course, there was no planning; we arrived on Oct. 8.
“Nirim isn’t Kfar Aza or Be’eri. We did not see that amount of devastation. I think we have about 25 houses that will have to be bulldozed, and 45 houses that are severely damaged and will need a lot of work.
“We are fixable, and they’re starting now to call people in the houses that were boarded up to come and get what they want before they’re completely torn down. I don’t know if this is going to happen, but the goal we set is to be back at Nirim in August or September.
“The accommodation in Beersheba is amazing. On the one hand, the city is perfect. It’s our go-to town for shopping and medical appointments. The hospital is where I had all my children. Beersheba is our town; it’s a 40-minute drive from Nirim. A lot of people work in Beersheba.
“The problem is that, unlike kibbutzim like Re’im that are using two high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv and are all together there, we are spread out over four different neighborhoods in Beersheba. So, it’s about a 15- to 20-minute ride, depending on traffic, to go from one end to the other, which is a major problem.
“The elderly who need it are in the senior facility. Then, there are two neighborhoods with apartment hotels in the Old City that were completely furnished – no one has lived there yet, and I hear that it’s beautiful. In the Old City, there are, I think, 12 families – not families with kids, just couples or singles who don’t have young children.
“There’s the building that I’m in where there are 15 of us who don’t have children living with us, and there’s Schunat Hapark (the park district), which is opposite IKEA and near JNF Park. That is where all the families with children are centralized. The kindergartens and babies’ houses are being opened there in garden apartments. The high school kids are going to school in Kibbutz Shuval, about a half-hour bus ride away. The primary school is in a kibbutz-style school.”
As for the trauma, the “kids are adjusting. Once you’re in a calmer place, then everything can get calmer. They’re all getting help to one extent or another.”
How is she personally handling the trauma? “I’m dealing,” Raemer replied. “I have days that are better and days that are worse. I try to keep myself busy.”
Resident of southern kibbutz demands ‘real security’
‘If the US is a true friend, it will let our country do what it needs to do’
The South has been suffering missile attacks for many years, although the climax was Oct. 7.
Adele Raemer has been living on Kibbutz Nirim, situated about tow kilometers from the border with Gaza, since 1975. Nirim was one of the main targets of Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. As a longtime resident of the South, Raemer has been doing public diplomacy work for several years, communicating with the world via formal and informal media and bringing attention to the intolerable situation endured by the residents of the region.
Raemer, a native of New York, made aliyah in 1973 and served in the IDF. She often relates her personal experiences from her safe room; indeed, that is what she did on the day of the massacre as terrorists were invading the kibbutz.
The following are excerpts of the Magazine’s interview with her.
Are you optimistic that you’ll be getting your lives back together? Are people feeling positive?
I can only speak for Adele [myself]. Adele is feeling positive. The army has a lot of work to do, and we have to do it thoroughly – really, really thoroughly – because we cannot have a situation like we had before.
And yet, before Oct. 7, I had a sense of security. On October 6, before I went to bed, I told my son, who had slept over, ‘If you don’t see me in the morning, it’s because I’m going out before sunrise to take pictures of a field of wildflowers.’ That’s the sense of security that I have to get back again, to feel that I can get into the car before sunrise and go to the field and take pictures.
But it has to be more than just a sense of security. It has to be real security because we learned on Oct. 7 that a sense of security dissipates with the morning fog. It has to be something much stronger, much more solid.
Do you believe this will happen?
It has to happen because if you give up on Nirim, if you give up on the western Negev, then you give up on Israel.
How are you dealing with the trauma of Oct. 7?
I’m dealing. I have days that are better and days that are worse. I try to keep myself busy. For example, I have my flag project: I’m doing portraits of people with an Israeli flag but in black and white, and I’ll turn it back into color when we go back home; that’s one project that I’ve built for myself. I’m also documenting people’s stories, at least for historical purposes.
Also, I’m giving a gazillion interviews and am going abroad – I went abroad twice already – to speak to lawmakers in the US and Germany. I’m going abroad in a few weeks to talk to the Christian media at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m starting to fundraise for the kibbutz, so I’ll be in Canada.
Days that I’m not busy – those are the days that I fall. Yesterday, in the morning, I had only one interview and afterward nothing, except for putting my computer together, and in the afternoon I was weepy. I was thinking. So I try to keep myself as busy as possible, doing things that I feel are significant.
I am a trained medical clown, but my clown has been comatose since COVID. I’m hoping that during my time in Beersheba [where the Nirim community is residing temporarily], I’ll find the emotional wherewithal to revive her. I was a high school English teacher for almost four decades and a teacher trainer of English and digital pedagogy in later years. This was my first school year of true retirement.
How do you feel about the US pressure on Israel now?
I think that if the US is a true friend, it will have to let our country do what it needs to do. In the past, Americans pressured us into things that were not good for us, and this is something that we have to be able to figure out for ourselves.
What the answer is, I certainly don’t know. I certainly want our hostages back as soon as possible, before anything else. On the other hand, we must destroy Hamas; we have to disarm Hamas, and the population there needs to be re-educated. It happened in Nazi Germany. Look at Germany today. It’s very supportive. They were re-educated, and that must happen in Gaza.
You’ve been active in promoting dialogue with Gaza and urging Israel to find a way to make peace. Have any of your views changed since Oct. 7?
My views have not changed; my beliefs have changed. I read an article this morning that hit me right in the gut. A Jewish Iranian-born journalist said our big mistake is believing they want the same thing that we do. But that’s not true because their entire culture is so different. We cannot look at this conflict through Western eyes.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that in Gaza, they want the same things that we do and that they’re just like us. Do you think that’s true?
So that’s what this Iranian-born journalist is saying. No, they don’t want the same things that we do. They don’t value the same things that we do, and as far as they’re concerned, comfort and safety for their families are not priorities.
Their priorities are getting rid of the Jews and turning Israel into Palestine. He was talking about Iran, and I’m talking about Hamas; but Hamas has done such an excellent job at education that they have poisoned an entire generation to hate Jews and to believe that all we want is their deaths.
People have been saying that since the beginning of the war, there has been so much unity in Israel. Do you think the country is united now, notwithstanding any thoughts about how there has to be a reckoning after the war?
The people are behind the army. The volunteer spirit has been just amazing, especially after what we went through before Oct. 7 [i.e., the deep division in the country over the proposed judicial reforms]. I did not agree with the reforms at all. I thought they were horrible. There needed to be reforms, but the way they were being done was in the worst way possible, and I went to protest in my area.
I went to photograph protests and did what I could do in that sense, but I did not go to the big protests because I felt that they were dangerously divisive from within, as well as sending dangerously divisive messages outside to our enemies. That whole period was breaking my heart. I was saying, ‘I can deal with rockets; I can’t deal with this.’
So, keeping that in mind, I look at the volunteerism now and the coming together, and I hope people remember this and preserve it.