She used to collect ancient artefacts… Now she’s sifting through ashes at Be’eri
DR NIRIT Shalev-Khalifa used to collect ancient artefacts, but now she’s amassing remnants of the October 7 massacre.
“When I arrived in Kibbutz Be’eri, I was in terrible shock,” Shalev-Khalifa told the JC. “I can read Arabic and understood the graffiti that Hamas had written on the houses, parts of the shahada [Muslim profession of faith]. We are archiving these through pictures.
“In Be’eri, three neighbourhoods were destroyed along with the site of the kibbutz gallery. Nothing is left of the cabin, just the pillars, it looks like Ground Zero.”
Shalev-Khalifa, who is collaborating with the National September 11 Memorial, had visited the gallery three days before October 7.
It is a centre of contemporary art established in 1986 inside one of the last remaining wood huts brought by European Jewish immigrants in the 19th century.
“In every kibbutz in the 1940s and 50s, all the homes were cabins. The history of these early towns and villages is anchored in those wooden houses, which were not typical of Israel, because we did not have forests,” explained Shalev-Khalifa. “Nowadays, only a handful of them remain and are located as museums and galleries.”
She was the last person to photograph Be’eri’s gallery before Hamas terrorists burnt it to the ground. She has plans to work with architects to rebuild the site in the future.
Shalev-Khalifa is the director of the Visual History, Exhibitions and Documentation Department at the Yad BenZvi Institute.
Prior to October 7, she was working on a government-funded project called “Aretz Hefetz”, which took her to “collection houses” across the country. These informal museums house historical items, papers, documentation and archives, which Shalev-Khalifa helps to register professionally and preserve.
Five weeks after October 7, ShalevKhalifa was contacted by the Ministry of Heritage to instead start documenting Hamas’s atrocities.
She is collaborating with Raanan Kislev, former director of the Conservation Department at the Israel Antiquities Authority, who works as a consultant for Kibbutz Be’eri on the issue of documentation and commemoration of October 7.
“We started by asking ourselves which artefacts could tell the stories of Israel’s Black Saturday,” Kislev told the JC.
“The idea was to gather enough of them for the public to internalise what happened.
“We are keeping the evidence so that no one inside or outside Israel can ever forget what happened or deny it.”
The team has already collected thousands of destroyed objects, including water fountains, baby baths, children’s toys and musical instruments. They are even considering preserving an entire burnt house.
Their work is parallel to that of the National Library of Israel, which is collecting digital artefacts including footage and WhatsApp conversations from October 7.
“We are treating artefacts the way we would a pot from the 19th century,” explained Shalev-Khalifa. “But sometimes we cannot even recognise what the object originally was.”
She started the project at Be’eri’s dental clinic, where Amit Mann, a 22-yearold paramedic, was killed on October 7. Shalev-Khalifa managed to retrieve the clinic’s calendar, displaying the work schedule for the week of 8 October.
“It has not been tampered with, but to the residents it is extremely shocking to look at,” she said. Her next step is to construct a facility to store the items properly until the residents of Israel’s south decide what to do with them.
“When they are made aware of our project, they realise that their property is no longer lost, that their memories did not turn into nothing,” she said.