Israel’s kibbutz Be’eri became the symbol of Hamas’ brutality. Some survivors are determined to return

Scorch marks and bullet holes scar the battered walls of the Haran family home in kibbutz Be’eri. Its tiled roof has caved in, windows smashed, littering the floors with sharp shards of terracotta and glass – the debris, still untouched, of a day of horror for Israel.

“This house tells the story of Be’eri,” says Yarden Tzemach, a farmer and surviving resident of the kibbutz, one of the Israeli communities near Gaza that was overrun by Hamas militants last year.

“In this house, people were murdered. A family, including three children, were kidnapped from here,” he says.

Outside, beneath the fruit trees in the back yard, a toddler’s ride-on toy car, adorned with stickers of Winnie the Pooh, sits amid the rubble, a stark reminder of the lives shattered here.

In some neighborhoods of Be’eri, barely a building was left intact. More than 100 of its 1,100 residents were killed and another 30 abducted to Gaza on October 7.

Home after home was burned out or reduced to rubble and – a year on – many remain as poignant monuments to an ongoing trauma. At least 10 residents of the kibbutz, all friends and neighbors of each other, are among the more than 100 Israelis believed to still be held hostage.

Progress on a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas has repeatedly fallen apart to the anger and despair of hostage families.

‘Best recovery is coming home

In the main administration building of Be’eri, two large aerial photographs hang side by side near the entrance. One is an image of the kibbutz from April 2023, showing ordered rows of neat, white buildings set in lush gardens. The other, taken just after the October 7 attack, shows the same homes blackened and destroyed in the militants’ rampage.

“They killed my sister over there,” says Amit Solvy, pointing to a house on the map, five rows in from the fence that runs around the kibbutz.

Elsewhere in the administration building, two posters are taped in a window – one showing the names and faces of the kibbutz residents who were killed, and another listing those who are held hostage.

Solvy, the Be’eri finance chairman, himself an Israeli veteran of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, is one of nearly 100 residents to have so far returned. Despite his personal loss, he came back to his house three months ago and is now helping lead efforts to bring kibbutz Be’eri, formerly a self-sustaining farming community, back to life.

“I said to all the people that the best recovery is coming home. This is the best emotional recovery, in my opinion,” says Solvy.

But he acknowledges not everyone feels the same, estimating that up to 15% of the surviving residents of Be’eri may never return because of the trauma and the memories of October 7.

And many of those who want to come back, he says, are unable to do so until the extensive damage has been repaired and homes rebuilt – a massive renovation project that means it will be at least 2 years, according to Solvy, before the majority of residents can return home.

“There is no infrastructure for kids, there are no schools, so people with families cannot come back yet,” he explains.

‘There were terrorists in my house’

Work on the physical scars has already begun, with heavy machinery breaking ground on a new neighborhood of Be’eri. New homes, untouched by the October 7 attack, are seen as an essential means of attracting the majority of the residents back.

Ayelet Hakim, her husband and their son, 12, and daughter, 5, live alongside many other Be’eri survivors in government-supplied temporary housing in another kibbutz, Hatzerim, an hour’s drive from the horrifying memories of what was their home.

“I sat in my safe room there for hours and hours not knowing what was going on, and feeling my life being threatened, my kid’s life being threatened, because there were terrorists in my house,” she adds.

Her son, Yehonatan, interrupts. “I want to go back to Be’eri, back to the house that I was living in. I don’t care about the trauma,” he pleads.

“The house, no. The kibbutz, yes,” asserts Ayelet.

“Kibbutz Be’eri has been my home for the past 56 years. That’s where I want to live,” she says.

But after so much death and destruction in Be’eri, a community so close to Gaza, much must also be done to reassure residents they’ll be safe.

In July, an Israel Defense Forces internal investigation into the events of October 7 concluded that the Israeli military had “failed in its mission to protect the residents” and was ill-prepared for the mass Hamas attack.

“I believe it will be possible. But it will be a big challenge and will take a long time for people to feel as safe as they felt before October 7,” says Tzemach, back at the ruins of his Be’eri neighborhood.

“You know, once something happens, you always have in the back of your mind that it can happen again.”