The kibbutz’s pub looks much as it always has. Trophies won by the communal village’s soccer team, the Kfar Aza Foxes, line a shelf above the bar. Residents, young and old, gather to swap news, share a drink or play a game of pool.It is the sort of scene that has played out for decades in Kfar Aza, a pastoral cooperative established nearly 70 years ago along the border with Gaza.
Despite the familiar trappings, nothing is the same.Not the pub — a facsimile of the real thing, lovingly recreated by displaced community members off the lobby of a hotel hours away from their devastated village. And not the people — whose homes were destroyed and whose families were torn apart by killing and kidnapping.Once a lush communal farm surrounded by sunflower fields, Kfar Aza, among the hardest hit communities in the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, is now blackened and scarred. The terrorists who stormed the kibbutz that day went house to house for hours, methodically murdering more than 60 people, including grandparents and children. They abducted 19 others, according to community members and the authorities.
Seven men and women from the kibbutz are still being held hostage in Gaza. Their absence is as palpable as their fates are unknown. Of those who returned to Israel last month, after more than 50 days of captivity, some learned their family members had been killed in the assault, others learned that loved ones were still being held hostage and they all learned they could not go back to their homes.
Of Kfar Aza’s 900 residents who managed to escape on Oct. 7, about half are now living at the hotel in Shfayim, a kibbutz north of Tel Aviv, because their homes lie in ruins. Other residents are being similarly housed at the government’s expense in rentals or at other hotels along the Mediterranean coast.
On a recent visit to the hotel, there were signs that the kibbutzniks were trying to create a semblance of their old lives. But like the rest of Israel, they are questioning if it is possible to restore what was lost.“The idea of home is a very powerful one,” said Ori Epstein, 53, Kfar Aza’s agricultural and business manager, who is among those staying in the hotel. “But it’s too early to know” about going back, he said.The communities along the Gaza border bore much of the brunt of the Oct. 7 attack, and now they bear the weight of the country’s grief. The decisions they make now — about how to rebuild, how to remember, whom to blame and whom to forgive — will resonate nationwide.
For many families, chief among those decisions is whether to return at all to the area along the Gaza border. Many Kfar Aza residents feel betrayed by the government, which they say did not do enough to protect them. Others worry about the outcome of the war in Gaza and whether the border will ever be safe again.
“If we don’t go back to Kfar Aza, Ashkelon and Ashdod will be next,” said Naomi Hershfeld, 51, referring to the coastal cities north of the Gaza Strip as potential targets for Hamas. “Then they’ll conquer Tel Aviv.”“If we don’t go back there, there’ll be no state,” she added, echoing a common sentiment across a country that has suddenly shrunk within its borders.Overall, nearly half of Kfar Aza’s homes were damaged or destroyed on Oct. 7, and the authorities say it could take two years to rebuild. The young adults’ quarter, where the 20- to 30-year-olds lived in rows of small apartments, is a charred monument to the tragedy. Some people talk about preserving the burned ruins as a memorial.