Feeding the Cats in Kibbutz Nir Oz

"Oded can't take Palestinians to the hospital, because he is kidnapped by Hamas, and he's still in Gaza."

"He doesn't believe in sorrow, he doesn't believe in Hamas."

"He believes in the Palestinian people."

Rita Lifshitz, Nir Oz resident

Nir Oz resident Rita Lifshitz stands in front of the kibbutz's destroyed dining hall.  Photo by Bryan Passifiume /Postmedia

Nir Oz is a kibbutz in southern Israel that had a population of 400 people. It was founded about 40 years ago, and 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz was a co-founder of the kibbutz, a retired journalist and peace activist. His house, where he lived with his wife Yocheved, is now destroyed, and Oded remains in the hands of the Palestinian terrorists. On October 7 the elderly couple was at home when Hamas terrorists burst into the kibbutz; both husband and wife taken hostage. Yocheved was pulled out of her bed, her oxygen machine disconnected. Her release from captivity took place on October 23.

 

The kibbutz is located just under two kilometres from the eastern border with Gaza. A fairly leisurely walk's distance. Oded Lifshitz spoke Arabic fluently. A longtime correspondent for a defunct left-wing newspaper, he would often drive Gazans to hospitals in Jerusalem for medical treatment. The home they shared in the kibbutz was torched and is barely recognizable. Many of the homes in the kibbutz received similar treatment, looted and torched on that unforgettable Sabbath and holiday day in October.

 

The remains of Oded and Yocheved Lifshitz’s home in Nir Oz

 

One in four of the kibbutz's residents were either murdered or kidnapped by Hamas operatives, some by other terrorist groups who had also entered Israel through the gaps they created in the border fence, groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Filtering through with them as an estimated three thousand terrorists flooded into Israel, were ordinary Palestinian civilians who also took some of the 252 hostages back to Gaza with them.

Israelis living in the kibbutz were aware of how vulnerable they were living in such close proximity to the Palestinian territory. Over the years a number of Israelis had been targeted and killed by Hamas snipers and rockets. The farming community had been urged by authorities to plant crops suitable to night-time harvesting in an attempt to avoid visibility in daylight hours, to eliminate the possibility of being shot at and killed. Over 150 of the terrorists had entered Nir Oz through gates in agricultural fences, just before 7:00 a.m. that fateful morning.

 

The first order of business for the terrorists was to kill the kibbutz's security forces; once done, the following hours of horror were spent breaking into homes to find people to kill. When the inhabitants had sequestered themselves in their safe rooms, the terrorists simply set fire to the houses to force the families out of their homes while gunmen waiting on the exterior shot them dead or took them to Gaza as hostages. House following house, gutted by fire, remnants of children's toys littered the interiors.

 

The residents that survived the unspeakable carnage were evacuated. The only people left in the community are local security heads. Tacked on the front doors of the ruined homes are posters of each missing and murdered resident. Kibbutz members return sporadically, drawn by their memories and the presence of the town's cats, once pampered and part of the domestic scene, now wandering about the kibbutz on their own. Food and water is refreshed regularly, left out to feed the cats.

 

A cat stands in front of what remains of a piano in a home’s torched living room.