Haim Jelin
Kibbutz Be’eri,
Survivor of the 7th of October massacre.
“After the massacre, people asked me:
‘How are you doing’?
I replied: ‘Alive’.
For the first month, that was my sole answer to every person who asked me that question.
I still don’t know how the Be’eri community will be able to process and internalize what we have gone through.
The horrors, the loss of lives, the hostages, the feeling of being so helpless.
For seven hours there was no one except the emergency response team to protect the children, the adults, the babies, and the families who were slaughtered and burned. This was a holocaust, right outside our doorstep. When the IDF soldiers arrived at about 3 p.m., the Arabic was replaced by Hebrew, and this gave us some hope that there was a chance to get out of this alive.
The stories are piling up and the silence is deafening.
All you can do is hug and cry, The heroic stories of mothers who fought like lionesses, the bravery of soldiers who reside in Be’eri, who rushed to save the kibbutz, as well as the bravery of the kibbutz alert squad, and above all the mobile phones found in every safe room, that revealed the full story of what was happening to families until their last breath is an evidence of the Holocaust that took place in these communities.
We will remember and never forget
People are asking me If I will ever go back to Be’eri.
Be’eri is my home, I don’t have any other place to go to.
You can destroy houses, destroy infrastructure, but you cannot kill our spirit.
We will rebuild our society. We will be a light for the State of Israel and the whole world but in order to do so we have to feel SAFE again. There should be No more rockets, No more safe rooms, and no more terrorism from the Gaza Strip. Then, we can come back and make our community bloom again.”