One year ago, Hamas militants infiltrated Be'eri kibbutz. It was one of many coordinated attacks across Israel that began the Israel-Hamas war — and a delayed response by the Israeli defence force has been blamed for some of the 101 deaths, and dozens taken hostage.
It's 7:15am on October 7 , 2023. In her home on the western edge of Be'eri, Ayelet Hakim hears the community loudspeakers deliver a recorded message.kilometres from Gaza , red alerts are depressingly frequent, and usually signal a rocket has been fired from the strip towards Israel . They mostly overfly the kibbutz.
He finds him in a laneway between two buildings, on the ground, wounded. Another Be'eri resident, reserve army general Yossi Bachar is with him."Hagi says, 'I can't breathe. I'm dying. Help me.' I said,' OK, I'm going to take you to the clinic. Give me a minute to see where the shooting is from.' And I went to the bushes ... and a hail of bullets were fired at me.
"Our car was hit with many bullets and we took cover, and there were two other squads of special units next to us, so I was right in the middle, trying to control that battle and coordinating between those two squads."Inside their safe room, Ayelet Hakim and her family are starting to realise just how much trouble they're in.
"We saw the messages that the army isn't coming, and there's no army, and there's no soldiers, and there's nobody here to save us." Small groups of soldiers are in Be'eri. An Israeli military report says that by 11am, about 26 soldiers are moving around the outskirts of the kibbutz. "I said, 'OK, but you know people are getting killed over there. Hamas is there, we need to take over the kibbutz.' And for the third time, I was very nervous, you know, coming back to him and , 'We need to move. We don't have time, and it's going to be dark.'"When the soldiers do move in, Ziv is astonished to see them go in on single rescue missions, squad by squad, rather than attempt to retake the entire kibbutz.
What would she say to the army's top commanders – those responsible for the chaotic and slow response on October 7?There is no publicly available inquiry into Israel's failings on and before October 7 – just a brief report summarising what happened in Be'eri."The IDF did not fulfil its mission to defend the residents in the most grave manner and failed in its mission," the report says.
"If you would ask on October 6th, every child or citizen in Israel, they would all say that we absolutely rely on the army to defend us ... once we have a problem. And the military failed, completely failed." He's the driving force behind a private inquiry that's investigating failures on and before October 7, in the absence of a formal Israeli inquiry.
Some of the worst damaged homes in Be'eri have been demolished, and there are plans to knock down the houses in Ayelet Hakim's district. People were killed or abducted from most of the homes in her neighbourhood, the closest district to Gaza."The truth is all I want to do is come back and live on kibbutz Be'eri, and now I can't," she says.
Be'eri Be'eri Massacre October 7 Gaza Israel Gaza Kibbutzum
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