By Delly Hezel and Markus Neumann
Since October 7th, Israel has been in a state of emergency – the scale of the brutal Hamas terror is unlike anything the Jewish state has ever experienced. At least 1,200 Jews have been slaughtered, burned, raped, or abducted – simply because they are Jewish. Fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, Israel is experiencing a new trauma.
CSI staff member Delly Hezel spoke with Jewish survivors of the terror attack. Israelis were also visiting the Black Forest at the time of the massacre. Markus Neumann, a board member of Christians Standing with Israel in Germany, spent anxious hours of uncertainty with them.
Yafa and Arik: 40 hours of anxiety and trembling in the shelter
By Delly Hezel
On October 16, almost a week after Hamas's attack on Israel, I met with Yafa and Arik in Jerusalem. Although they escaped relatively unscathed, they experienced something horrific in the Moshav Sdei Avraham, located in the far south of the Gaza Strip. For 40 hours, the two were in their shelter—without electricity, water, or any contact with the outside world—because countless rockets were being fired and destruction was rampant. All they knew was that terrorists had entered the country and that they had to wait in the shelter. Initially, they maintained sporadic contact with the outside world, but eventually their cell phone batteries died. The uncertainty of what would happen next, and whether they would survive, was terrifying for them.
After 40 hours, they decided to leave the shelter because they could no longer endure it. They immediately contacted a security guard from Sde Avraham, who informed them that a temporary corridor would be opened through which the Israeli army would release people from the moshav. Everything had to happen very quickly, so they packed only a small bag and joined the others fleeing through the corridor. They drove north through fields and via Ofakim. Upon arriving in Ofakim, Yafa and Arik could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Friend or foe?
It was terrible for her not knowing who had survived, where others were hiding, and whom they could trust, because the terrorists were also wearing Israeli army uniforms. It was therefore almost impossible to distinguish friend from foe. Eleven of Yafa's schoolmates were killed. And she knows some of the students who are being held hostage in Gaza, including many girls.
Yafa and Arik are currently staying with friends in the north for a short time, along with their two dogs. They are incredibly grateful that they and their children, who were drafted into the army, are still alive. That's the main thing, they told me – regardless of whether their house is still standing or not, which they didn't yet know at the time of our conversation.
Nurik and Inbal: A German-Israeli Perspective
By Markus Neumann
In the first week of October, my longtime friend Nurik and his girlfriend Inbal visited me in the Black Forest. Nurik had planned a special surprise: he proposed to Inbal! Two days later, on October 6th, we started our three-day tour through southern Germany. We headed towards Lake Constance and Mainau Island; it almost felt like a honeymoon. But the next morning, everything changed abruptly, and the following hours and days would turn into a nightmare. Nurik and Inbal had to witness from a distance the massacre perpetrated by terrorists from Gaza, whose attack on Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, where Nurik's parents, brother, and sister lived with their two children, and fear for the survival of their family and friends – completely shocked by the unimaginable.
Early in the morning of October 7th, Nurik was in contact with his family members at the kibbutz by telephone. They had been told to go to their bomb shelters because terrorists had broken in and the kibbutz was under heavy rocket fire.
Nurik's brother Ofek decided to take over patrol duty and sent a picture to his family, which would be the last sign of life from him for the time being. His sister was home alone with her two children, so Nurik's father, after consulting with his wife, decided to go to her. She sent him back, saying, "We're okay, go back to Mom, she needs you more." On the way back, however, so many rockets struck the kibbutz that Nurik's father had to seek refuge in the bomb shelter at his son Ofek's house. He was now trapped there, as too many terrorists had by then infiltrated the kibbutz. He was still able to stay in contact with his wife, but no one heard from Ofek again.
Anxious waiting
Hours upon hours passed; the uncertainty, the realization of helplessness, was agonizing. It was almost unbearable. Could Ofek not contact them because he would then be tracked and it would be too dangerous? Or was it worse? Would Nurik's mother be strong enough to hold the door to the bunker shut from the inside if terrorists tried to force their way in from the outside? Would the terrorists, as had become known in other kibbutzim, set the houses on fire? On top of that, the power systems had been destroyed, leaving his family in the dark.
The terrible anxiety about life and death was accompanied by the incredibly high tension from constantly reading the news. On Arab television, we saw the first videos: people being murdered and violated. Pure horror… Agonizing hours passed until, finally, in the early evening, Israeli soldiers arrived to help. One by one, the survivors were freed from their shelters. There was still no word from Ofek; that evening, he was one of six people missing from the kibbutz, along with three others who had died.
Painful farewell
We had arrived at our accommodation in Bad Tölz. Nurik and Inbal decided to fly to Israel to be with their family as soon as possible. They tried unsuccessfully to get tickets through the Israeli airline El Al. Our friends at Scuba Reisen were able to help them book a flight from Munich for Sunday morning. When I went to take them to the airport early that morning, I learned that Ofek had been found dead in the kibbutz during the night. His photo from the day before had indeed been the last sign of life. All I could do was hug Nurik; it broke our hearts. The farewell at the airport was brief, intense, surreal, painful, and full of deep connection—would we ever see each other again?
All the residents of Kibbutz Nir Yizhak were evacuated, just like everyone else in the entire Gaza Strip. The families had no time to process anything. For Nurik's family, there was no time to bury Ofek, no time to organize a period of mourning. The parents, as well as the sister and her children, are themselves traumatized. How will everything go on? When can they return to their home? Are they even capable of living there again, of ever setting foot in the place of their greatest real-life nightmare? This is just one story among hundreds, perhaps thousands. One experience of a Christian alongside two Israelis.
This article first appeared in our newspaper "Israelaktuell," issue 135. You can order the newspaper here . We would also be happy to send you several copies for distribution.
