The hospitality of Kfar Aza
What I learned in this Israeli village, pillaged by Hamas terrorists
Kibbutz Kfar Aza (“Gaza Village”) is a cluster of modest, single-story stucco homes within view of the fence line of Hamas-controlled southern Gaza. From a distance, the palm tree-lined neighborhood with a community pool, winding walking paths, and bright playground equipment looks like southern California.
But daily life for its 850 residents, just 3.1 miles west of Gaza, isn’t Palm Springs.
Bullseye for rockets
This idyllic desert oasis, which I visited last summer, was a magnetic bullseye for an arsenal of homemade Hamas rockets, mortar fire, missiles, and assorted homemade projectiles repurposed from lampposts and any other available metallic cylinder packed with explosives. Israel’s fabled Iron Dome missile defense had largely minimized the destruction.
But when one form of aerial assault fails, terrorists try another. A militant “balloon brigade” sent clusters of colorful helium-filled balloons attached to incendiaries across the border. Children in the kibbutz are warned away from balloons, while a bomb disposal robot tackles the package. The sight of balloons is a trauma trigger in Kfar Aza.
In recent days, Hamas social media posted celebratory videos purporting to show the terror group’s missile production line — perverted ingenuity converting unearthed PVC pipes carrying water to Gaza into lethal stockpiles. Hamas’s disregard for human life has become its calling card.
Chen Abraham was one of my hosts when I visited. Her family has lived in the Gaza envelope since the 1950s when moving to a kibbutz (“communal settlement”) represented the height of the Israeli ideal. It was here in this working-class paradise where cooperation thrived in a just society of shared property, a common table, communal planting and harvesting, and even a system of community-wide parenting.
Today, the utopian ideal of common cars and shared nannies has given way to more democratic norms. Still, the spirit of helping and sharing has never left. The hospitality of Kfar Aza is something to experience.
Seconds to decide
In recent years, after the kindergarten in the town square was rocked by more Hamas rockets, a reinforced concrete anti-bomb canopy was constructed over it. The cheerful
green paint was soon scarred by terrorist mortar fire.
With the constant threat from invasion, homes have bulletproof saferooms with reinforced walls and doors. A high-tech early warning system blasting warnings at even the slightest incursion.
Mothers watching children play outside have to choose which child to carry to the shelter before the countdown expires. Because they’re so close to the border, they have seconds, not minutes, to decide.
Every few yards throughout the village, bus-stop-looking bomb shelters appear with angled, modern rooflines and bright designs painted on every side in primary colors. Chen said art helps allay children’s fears.
When reports carried the horror stories of kibbutzim survivors from the little towns dotting the Gaza border, news slowly trickled out that Kfar Aza was one of the communities hardest hit.
When the town’s red alert system activated just after 7:30 Saturday morning, residents scrambled to check on neighbors and locate Israeli Defense Force units nearby, but it was already too late. Hamas terrorists moved with brutal efficiency aided by detailed, color-coded maps of the houses and streets in the kibbutz.
We know now that the trail of terror wasn’t incidental or haphazard. Hamas meticulously planned this mission to kill, kidnap and brutalize a population of civilians — including women, children and babies.
Calculated terror
When some of us reunited with Chen on a Zoom call this week, she reported that over 50 Kfar Aza residents were slaughtered. Evidence reveals a brand of sadistic, calculated terror that shattered the innocence and took the lives of residents young and old.
The invaders “swarmed like locusts,” she said. It took the IDF six days to finally declare the village free from terrorists.
Mercifully, she was on vacation in Portugal when her phone delivered the pre-dawn warning. She called her father, warning him to seal himself in the secure room. When she heard an Arabic speaker through the receiver, she yelled, “Abba, the terrorists are in your house, they’re there, run!”
Then waves of community WhatsApp messages from other neighbors rolled in with cries for help. “We’re being shot,” she recalled. “Someone is breaking down my door,” said another. “They’re burning my house. Please comesave me,” typed another.
One by one, the agonizing chats went silent. “It’s a massacre,” she recalled. “At that time, half of my father’s neighborhood were either dead or deadly wounded.”
When global media was invited to walk through the blood-soaked sidewalksof Kfar Aza, reporters and soldiers saw exactly what Chen Abrahams described— total destruction.
Everything is gone
“We have no house, no car, no job,” she said. Everything is gone.
In the hours and days after the attack, Chen set up a remote command center to coordinate emergency help for neighbors incapacitated by grief. In the last few days, she’s been attending funeral after funeral of beloved friends andneighbors. “I try not to cry.”
There’s work to be done. Israel is at war, and everyone is broken. Her intermittent sleep is beginning to wear.
In the past few days, Chen has been texting Instagram and Facebook friends around the world, raising money to underwrite food, travel and hotels for her big family.
“For most of my life, I was living in kibbutz Kafir Aza. It was the place where my son and nine of my nephews and nieces were born and raised,” she wrote in an appeal. Her efforts are almost singlehandedly funding their survival.
Chen says there’s a quiet debate amongst neighbors dispersed throughout Israel. Some don’t want to return to a community where “rivers of blood” flowed. But others say it would dishonor the memories of the fallen not to return.Chen is undecided.
Voices from the other side
When I visited Israel, I tried to find voices from the other side of the wall and heard from a few. One was a young doctor who traveled between her home in Gaza and a medical facility on the Israeli side.
As one of the relatively few Palestinians with coveted work permits, she told us suspicions were part of her daily existence at the border crossing. Hamas thought she was a spy. Still, she persisted.
Another young Arab man in his 20s, Adnan Jaber, started a movement called “Tech 2 Peace.” It was an NGO building a tech corridor where young Palestinians and Israelis built relationships and learned to resolve conflict.
Adnan said he didn’t learn to understand Israelis until he learned Hebrew. While many view his efforts as a betrayal to the cause, each one of his tech meetups creates excitement with a young generation exhausted by perpetual conflict.
Not hated — not known
But then there’s the reality that individual effort won’t be enough. A 26year-old Israeli man working in close protection security for visiting politicians is one of some 300,000 IDF reservists called to duty. We’ve kept in touch and built a friendship through a library of Instagram voice messages discussing family and politics.
His arguments are compelling. In a reflection after his reserve unit was activated, Rotem said, “I don’t hate Muslims, I just don’t know them.” In Israel, there are few spaces for dialogue or relationships. His plans to finish law school are on hold until this present war is over. He’s not alone.