Hope Despite the Horror: Visiting Sacred Sites of the Oct. 7th Massacre - Reporter's Notebook, Photography
Honestly, I didn't think I could do it.
Recently, a busload of residents of my village, Kfar Hananiya, and neighboring villages in our local Upper Galilee Regional Council in northern Israel, visited the Gaza Perimeter on a solidarity tour.
In an earlier conversation with co-admin over at our Life on the Border (LotB) FB group, Adele Raemer — a veteran Kibbutz Nirim resident who, thank God, successfully held out in her home safe room on Oct. 7th against the pogromist hordes — I admitted that I wasn't certain that the visit, for me, at least, wouldn’t be too traumatic. Having intensively covered the war wearing several hats: that of a self-declared “ever-recovering reporter” for the last three decades here, as a directly threatened resident of the battered north, as a co-admin at LotB, almost 24/7 for the past 14 months, and security team guy for our village — I wasn’t so sure I had the emotional strength to actually visit the literal killing fields.
I have much more to say — but, for now, let the photos suffice (I hope to add more images as soon as they’re edited).
Photo caption: “October 7th, 2023. We will forever remember your light and joy that was extinguished.”
Our stops along the route included visits to the “National Digital Center “ in Sderot, and the memorial to the southern city's devastated police station, located some two kilometers from Gaza and the scene of a day-long firefight between police and Hamas Nuchba terrorists.
At one point I and another member of our group sat with a religious scribe in a tent at the Nova Massacre Memorial, as he painstakingly wrote a Torah scroll dedicated by the parents of one of the hostages.
Gingerly holding his forearm to join in the sacred ritual symbolically, I added my prayer as he inked in a letter and I recited a special blessing for the speedy return and recovery of all of the hostages.
Despite initial misgivings, I'm proud that we attended the daylong visit to memorial sites where the Hamas Nuchba terrorists and over a thousand so-called “non-combatants” slaughtered, immolated, beheaded, raped and killed 1,200 residents from over 20 Israeli communities, and then kidnapped, looted and then lustily paraded bodies, “sex slaves," toddlers and the elderly through the cheering mobs in Gaza City and elsewhere.
May all of the kidnapped — from infants to the elderly, civilian and IDF soldier, both alive and dead — be speedily returned to Israel, and the scourge of Hamas and its Iranian-backed bands of mass murderers be just as speedily eradicated from the face of the earth.
The Tekuma administration reported that demolition work has begun in Kibbutz Kfar Gaza, as part of the local rehabilitation plan, funded and managed by the administration. As part of the work plan for the kibbutz's rehabilitation, 400 buildings will be renovated: 360 residential buildings and 40 public buildings, along with infrastructure that was damaged on October 7 and 97 buildings designated for demolition, of which 48 are in the youth neighborhood, for which a decision has not yet been made in the locality regarding their demolition. The Tekoma administration has allocated approximately 200 million shekels for the rehabilitation of Kfar Gaza.
Similar renovation, reconstruction, and renewal plans are in the pipeline for stricken communities along the so-called “Gaza Envelope”.
Some earlier reports on events since Oct. 7th, 2023 here in the north and along the Gaza Perimeter area:
Wailing Sirens, Shofar and Rocket Blasts Blur Sacred and Surreal - Reporter's Notebook
"With no end to war in sight, how are Israelis coping with October 7, nine months on?"
This report will be updated as events dictate. Meanwhile, please feel free to share this post, subscribe, and help support my efforts to bring you accurate, sourced reporting, and close-up-and-personal slice-of-life scenes here in northern Israel and our Life on the Border - thank you for your consideration:
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