The Israelis and the Middle East: A NPR Story About Israeli War, the Gaza Strip, Israel, and the World. The Israel/Iran Connection

Israel is sinking deeper into its own self-destructive crisis a year after the war began in Gaza. A war that is only intensifying and broadening has left tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from northern towns and kibbutzim, as well as southern border villages. And, in addition to having to cope throughout the year with loss, shock, rocket fire and overwhelming fear for their safety from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran itself, that anxiety is compounded by turmoil from within.

This story is part of an NPR series about how war has impacted Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the world.

And what story is Iran telling? That it has some right under the U.N. Charter to help create failed states in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq so it can cultivate proxies inside them for the purpose of destroying Israel? And by what right has Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel that the Lebanese people and government had no say in and are now paying a huge price for?

The Israeli-Palestinian War and the Holocaust: A Multiply Deployed Crisis on the Streets of Tel Aviv, Following the Oct. 7 September Attack

Thousands of Israelis have decided to leave Israel since October 7, others are considering emigration. Many thousands more have also taken to the streets week after week, engaging in acts of civil disobedience, which began before the Oct. 7 attacks with protests against the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul and, after a brief pause, resumed with a new focus on the hostage crisis and demand for early elections. The images of Dan Halutz being removed by the police from the street at a sit-in in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus private residence and relatives of hostages being roughed up by law enforcement officers were further proof.

What is the value of a Jewish homeland if it doesn’t prioritize, or save the lives of its civilians, kidnapped from their homes? Will I ever feel safe again? And what kind of future do I have here if the only vision our leaders are offering is endless war?

At one of the recent mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling for a hostage deal and for early elections to replace the Israeli government, one protester held up a sign reading: “Who are we without them?” referring to the hostages. Give me one reason to raise kids here.

The sister of a former Israeli prime minister and a renowned Israeli psychologist said that the kibbutz members had many questions from the fire.

Silence is what helped keep the survivors of this small community alive the day of the attack. Silence is what they carried out of hiding from their safe rooms along the Gaza border to a hotel on the Dead Sea that took them in.

The number of people killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last October is said to be about 1,200. Of the total number of people killed in the village, about one out of every 13 people resided in Kibbutz Be’eri.

The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7 one year later: Beeri-hamas attack. A story told by Gal Cohen

“I’m so exhausted after every funeral that we have to deal with again,” said Gal Cohen, the head of the kibbutz. We cry again because it brings back everything.

The tight-knit Israeli community near the Gaza border is digging up its dead from temporary graves further away and returning them to their homes, as a safer place to gather now that the Gaza war has ended.

Then she saw the man she had heard all day loading gun cartridges in her home. She says he was stripped naked and guarded by an Israeli soldier as he sat outside.

She found a lot of weapons on the living room floor after she was freed from her safe room. She understood: Her home had been transformed into the attack headquarters. People were killed around her.

Some people who survived the attack are taking sleeping pills in order to forget the trauma and can’t see the destroyed homes. I believe we will have to take them all down.

The homes that were attacked last year are a short walk away. Bullet holes, shattered windows, a pair of children’s shoes in the debris: Oct. 7 frozen in time.

Source: The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7, one year later

The Israeli Village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7 as Attack Annihilation: Is it possible to stay and live?

A couple hundred families have moved back to Kibbutz Be’eri. Cohen, the head of the community, is overseeing an ambitious project to bring the residents back within two and a half years.

I thought to myself, what do you want? Is it possible to continue living? I can also not. I really thought about it. She says she decided that she wanted to live. I have a family, I have children, I have grandchildren. I draw. I’m learning to kayak to deal with my fears. I do all I can to give meaning to life now that they’re gone.

She wanted to stay with his body in the moment it was unearthed. She felt guilty that she wasn’t there to see her family in their worst moment on Oct. 7, as she didn’t live on the kibbutz anymore.

Batya Ofir was at the funeral. She reburied her brother’s family in the cemetery after exhuming his partially nude body, which was a temporary grave.

Teens and parents walked out of the neighborhood cemetery after the funeral of a mother and her son, one of many reburials in recent months.

Source: The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7, one year later

An Israeli village counselor in Be’eri: “You can’t hide, but you can always help,” a village worker in the Dead Sea

“When I gave guidelines to the therapists in Be’eri at the beginning, I said, smile and say, how are you? Because these people don’t know that it still matters. They have to be shown that their wellbeing is still relevant. The life instinct wants to see that someone calls him back.”

“They are extremely anxious about the future of this place. Many leave the country. Because their parents told them that in the Holocaust, those who didn’t leave, died,” she says. Hopelessness and lack of control are very strong. The trauma is national.

A boy in a kibbutz lost his family in an explosion and his siblings were also killed. We can either tell him about each separately or we can tell him about all of them together. she says.

Roth has also counseled former hostages who returned from Hamas captivity in Gaza, families whose loved ones were killed in captivity, and Israelis who didn’t experience a personal loss but still suffer from sleeping difficulties, anxiety attacks and depression.

It took many weeks to account for everyone: who was dead, who was captive in Gaza. The village secretary read out the names of 27 identified bodies and over 100 missing people in the basement of the Dead Sea hotel.

When the Israeli military eventually published its investigation into the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, it found about 340 attackers had infiltrated the community and that it had taken about seven hours for significant numbers of Israeli forces to arrive to fight off the invasion there.