(Editor’s note: DAILY TRIBUNE is one of only eight major newspapers worldwide granted the rare opportunity to visit ground zero of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023)

NIR OZ, Israel — It’s been almost nine months since the deadly attack by the Hamas terrorists on a tiny kibbutz community just a little under two kilometers from Gaza’s eastern border, but Rita Lifshitz is still nursing the wounds caused by the abduction and murder of her family and friends.

Lifshitz, 60, recounted to visiting journalists the horrors of the terror attack where more than 1,000 members of her kibbutz were murdered, kidnapped and raped on that fateful Saturday morning of 7 October.

Before the press tour, Lifshitz briefed the international media about the dangers of wandering around the community. It had become a ghost town with scorched and wrecked houses containing broken floors, melted appliances, burned wood, and even a charred grand piano still sitting in a destroyed living room — a sorrowful reminder of life before the terrorists turned the area into hell on earth.

“These are the bomb shelters. If you hear the siren, you have only 15 seconds to go inside one of them,” said Lifshitz, who was wearing a black shirt, tight jeans and high boots and had a face that reflected the strength and courage of every Israeli in their war against terror.

“If we are not close to one, we lay down on the ground and hope for the best,” she said.

“But there will be no bombs here. They will not shoot here because they know that there are no people left here so it’s just a waste of time for them.”

“Also, you’re with me so nothing will happen to you. Those Hamas terrorists are afraid of me,” she added.

‘Like a family’

A kibbutz is a kind of utopian community where the members strive for self-reliance and minimize their dependence on the outside world.

The first kibbutz was a combination of Zionist and socialist movements founded in 1910 in Degania Alef. Since then, it has grown to be one of the most important communities in Israel a few kilometers from the Israel border with Palestine.

“I came here from Sweden in 1982 with my entire family. But eventually, they all went on with their lives and I was the only one left in the kibbutz with my parents-in-law and my son, Daniel Lifshitz. My father-in-law, Oded Lifshitz, was taken by Hamas and is still in Gaza,” Lifshitz said as she led the journalists to the 100-seat dining room.

“We are a community here. We live here like a big family. We are still like the kibbutz of the old times. This is our dining room. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner here except on Saturdays. There is no difference on how we treat members aged 18 and those aged 85 here. We are all in this together and do things together. We are a very close community,” she said.

But everything changed on the morning of 7 October.

Terror attack

Lifshitz said the terror started on what was supposed to be one of the most festive days of the year in the Jewish calendar.

“It was a very peaceful Saturday morning. The night before, we had a little celebration in this area,” she said, referring to the day that marks the end of Sukkot, a weeklong celebration to commemorate the harvest season and the time Jews lived in the desert after being freed from slavery in Egypt.

It also coincided with Jews around the world preparing to celebrate Simchat Torah, a holiday that inaugurates a new annual cycle of reading the scrolls and is observed in Israel one day earlier.

“But on the following day, the Black Saturday came. There was the attack that changed our lives and the course of Israeli history forever.”

“On that day, I had 18 family members who were kidnapped and 13 family members who were murdered. There was no army here. They came when the Hamas were gone — after they murdered, after they kidnapped, after they raped, after they stole everything, they could and destroyed 80 percent of our houses that now need to be rebuilt. There were only four houses that Hamas terrorists did not enter.”

“They went on to destroy our kitchen, our supermarket, our kindergarten with children from ages three to six. And they took all our grandmothers and grandfathers to Gaza to murder them,” she said.

Lifshitz said the grandmothers had shown tremendous resolve in the face of terror. In fact, some of them came back following days of horror with Hamas in the Palestinian-occupied Gaza.

“Our grandmothers came back,” Lifshitz said, fighting back the tears. “Our grandmothers, they are such a strong generation. They are strong for their children, grandchildren, for their husbands, and especially for Israel.”

“They were at home in the 1960s and ‘70s taking care of the children when their husbands were going to war for Israel. In ‘82, they had their husbands and sons out in the army. So they were made out of special material.”

‘Come home now’

She said she was in the Israeli capital, which is nearly an hour from their small community, when the deadly attack happened.

“We left for Tel Aviv to bring back my granddaughter a few hours before the Hamas came in. And then, I went to babysit for my granddaughter’s mother’s child, so I didn’t go back to Nir Oz immediately. It turned out that I was lucky because at 6:15 a.m., she told me, ‘Grandmother, there are rockets in Tel Aviv!’

“So I told her to close the window and at 6:30 I got the announcement from Kibbutz Nir Oz that we needed to go to the bomb shelter because there was an ongoing attack. I was in charge of the elderly so I immediately helped them.

“If I had gone back to Nir Oz, I would have also been taken by Hamas as well. Maybe I would not be here now talking to you, maybe I’d already be dead.”

The trail of terror created by Hamas was too much to bear.

“We have 35 still left in Gaza,” said Lifshitz, adding that her 83-year-old father-in-law, journalist Oded Lifshitz, had yet to return after being taken hostage.

“He was a peace fighter. He was a journalist. He once interviewed (former Palestinian president Yasser) Arafat. Once a week, he takes (Palestinian) children from the Gaza border to chemo in a hospital in Jerusalem.

“But we hope that he is not with Hamas. We hope that there is a family in Palestine that is keeping him safe for all the good things he had done for them.

“We need Hamas to release him. We need him to come home — now.”