www.hidabroot.org/video/221040 (Hebrew only for women only; it's the same video in which Batya Cohen appeared at the end and Orit's daughter/Batya's granddaughter, Natalie, appears at the beginning; Orit appears in the middle)
Orit's 86-year-old mother, Batya Cohen, is one of the founders of Kfar Aza, and Orit's home is Kfar Aza.
(You can read more about Batya Cohen here: saved-from-terrorists-by-an-uncannily-precise-rocket-strike.html.)
Baruch Hashem, neither Orit nor her 4 children were there the day terrorists invaded from Gaza.
But Orit's ex-husband, whom they murdered, and her elderly mother, who survived, were there.
The terrorist came prepared with detailed information about the kibbutz — including the location of the kibbutz armory.
For some reason, it was forbidden to keep weapons at home, so when the terrorist invasion forced the security force out toward the armory to arm themselves, a fierce battle ensued.
Out of the 15 members of the security force, terrorists murdered 8 of them, with several of the surviving members wounded.
Orit's ex-husband tried to arm himself from the cache in the armory to protect the kibbutz. His body was found the next day, lying in the grass.
"On That Same Ill-Fated Shabbat, Everything Crashed."
But she never imagined anything more than 10 or 15 terrorists at a time. (10-15 was always considered a very large group until now.)
In addition, Kfar Aza hosted its own security force, of which Orit's brother-in-law stood at the head. (He was also murdered in the terrorist battle.)
Orit considered him trustworthy and he always reassured her of the security force's readiness and how they regularly practiced for such situations, telling her:
"Listen to me. One little touch of the fence, and the entire IDF is here. Don't worry.
We're just the band-aid for the first few minutes until the IDF arrives. We're the security force, we're 15 members trained with weapons. You have nothing to worry about."
And that's exactly how it used be.
Only that didn't happen on the day of the Horrific Invasion.
What's more, the IDF didn't come after a few minutes — but only after several hours.
As Orit describes the rude awakening:
We have the IDF who watches over me.
We have a fence with sensors. Really, if a fox touched the fence, everyone would snap into action.
On that same ill-fated Shabbat, everything crashed.
Everything crashed.
"The impressive fence" — within minutes, they succeeded in obliterating all the sensors.
There was no army.
It took 4 hours until the first soldier arrived.
Do you know how many people can be killed in 4 hours?
People without weapons — CIVILIANS — sitting in their homes in pajamas at 6 in the morning, with their family in the mamad.
And the terrorists — those Nazis — simply went from home to home and murdered anyone they found there.
And I'll tell you what else they did.
They did more than that. They also brutalized.
My grandfather was a Holocaust survivor from Latvia. His entire family was murdered in Latvia.
He returned, he managed to survive and come here — the only one.
" 'They' Always Promised Us There Wouldn't Be Another Holocaust."
"They" always promised us there wouldn't be another Holocaust — because we have a country.
Yet on the seventh of October, we experienced a Holocaust.
We endured a Holocaust exactly as it was with the Nazis.
Jews hid their babies in closets.
Jews needed to cover a child, to lie on one's child in the bushes in order to take the bullet so the child will remain alive.
And now, every night before I fall asleep, all I can think about is my friends who were murdered — about my friend, Hadar, who was murdered with her husband.
She had 10-month-old babies — 10 months old! — and they hid them in a closet and the babies screamed.
And those degenerates used those babies as bait.
Each person who heard the crying of those babies and came to rescue them — the terrorists shot them.
They didn't let anyone rescue them.
For 13 hours, those babies cried.
From hunger, fear, and pandemonium. And from not having neither mother nor father.
From missiles and tumult and gunshots all the time.
And the terrorists didn't let anyone come anywhere near the babies. They simply murdered anyone who tried to approach.
And my friend texted me in kibbutz WhatsApp, They shot my husband, they shot my husband, do something!
We have a WhatsApp group for the kibbutz. And people were texting as if maybe there on WhatsApp, someone will hear them.
Because there was no other type of communication.
There was no army. There was nobody at all.
So they texted in WhatsApp: They're shooting me, they're shooting me!
...and there is nobody to go and there is nobody to rescue them.
Nobody comes.
And then there's silence.
"They Abandoned Us."
The kibbutz buried 60 people within a week-and-a-half — entire families.
At one point, Orit attended 12 funerals in one day.
She recalls the funeral of a childhood friend and his wife and 3 children — the Kutz family — all buried next to each other.
She describes them all as good-hearted people who wouldn't harm a fly. Good agricultural kibbutznikim — "the best people you could ever meet."
She also refers to the horrors as happen "to me" and "to us."
Because for Orit, Kfar Aza is home and because the horrors happened to close family members and friends who are like family, and because she was in contact with them as they suffered through the horrors, she experiences the event very personally as if she was there — because in a sense, in her heart and mind, Orit was indeed there:
The kibbutz was within the boundaries of the country, the country of the Jews.
And they murdered us because we are Jews.
The family who lived next door to them — they murdered the father and a daughter.
As for the mother and the 3 other children? They took them captive.
It's absolutely horrifying.
And how does the world remain silent?
Children are held in Gaza in tunnels — how does the world not see it?
I'm angry — I'm angry. I'm angry at all of them.
They abandoned us.
There was another little girl, Avigail — 3 years old. Her parents were murdered...she ran to the neighbors, knocked on the door — a 3-year-old girl.
They open the door; they see a little girl covered in blood.
They thought she was wounded and started to clean her up. And they realized it was apparently the blood of her parents. And her parent apparently had been hugging her or...I don't know what happened; she managed to get away.
[These neighbors] took her, they cleaned her up, they tried to calm her.
And then the father called the security force and they told him, "Listen, you need to come here with a weapon. Tons of terrorists are wandering around here."
There were 300 terrorists in Kfar Aza...he ran and started trying to save the people nearest his home.
When he returned home, he couldn't find his wife. His wife, the 3 children, and little Avigail were taken captive...
How much evil can there be in the world?
On November 26, Avigail was released from captivity to the custody of loving extended family.
"We Thought We were Settled on Our Land — Our Country."
We thought we were settled on our land — our country.
This is Israel, this is Israel, this is the Jewish State.
This is our country.
There is antisemitism throughout the whole world.
But we purposely chose to live in Medinat Yisrael because I knew this was a protected place, that my home is protected, that they protect me.
But they didn't protect my family.
They didn't protect my friends.
"And in the Moment, There isn't Anything You Can Do Except Stay in the Mamad and Pray."
They were top-notch, a very experienced force.
But they were 15 against 300 terrorists.
The terrorists just slaughtered them.
Eight were murdered and the other seven somehow managed to fight.
I have another friend who was in the mamad with her husband, their 2 children, and her husband's parents.
Terrorists came in...but they didn't manage to open the door of the mamad, otherwise they would've slaughtered everyone.
But they managed to shoot via the door.
They hit her in the head. A bullet hit her in the head. She died on the spot while there are 2 little children there in the mamad.
Their father covered her with a blanket and said, "Mommy's sleeping."
For the next 10 hours, they remained there with their murdered mother in the mamad.
And in the moment, there isn't anything you can do except stay in the mamad and pray.
"For Four Hours, Not One Soldier Arrived. Not One."
Again, for four hours, not one soldier arrived.
Not one.
And in the meantime, we're being murdered.
They were slaughtering us.
"They Passed Information to the Hamas."
Unfortunately, yes.
First of all, I was born there 52 years ago. We had a good relationship with the people from Gaza.
They came to work for us and we went shopping there...as a little girl, I went to the beach of Gaza...we were like neighbors who got along with each other.
There was give and take; we gave them salaried employment.
Of course, the relationship gradually weakened until the Intifada when Hamas rose to power and broke off all contact.
But more recently, people received work permits. And they came to work in our building. And apparently, those people who received permits — every contractor who brought in Arab employees from Gaza brought in only those with approved work permits — they passed information to the Hamas.
Because otherwise, you can't understand how they knew exactly where people lived, exact locations, the exact location of the armory...names.
The assumption is they passed on the information. I don't know if they were Hamas operatives or whether Hamas threatened them — and I don't care either.
I just know the end result.
They gave information about what's going on in my kibbutz, my home — and those people will no longer enter the kibbutz with any kind of permit.
"If It's Either Me or Them, Then I Choose Me. And My Children."
You know, I have a friend who every Tuesday, she took a vacation day from work at her own expense.
She took a car and fueled up on her own dime, went to the Erez Crossing to take children from Gaza — sick children who could not receive proper treatment in Gaza — to the hospitals in Israel.
She waited until the treatment finished, whether it was a cancer treatment or a treatment for some other chronic disease, and she drove them back. Then she went home.
And she was murdered.
What do you say about that?
Did a woman like that deserve to die?
The terrorists weren't squeamish about anything.
It's simple: We are Jews, so we need to die.
Again, these were good people — farmers — people who wanted to live with them in peace.
But it's over.
I no longer think well of anyone over there.
If it's either me or them, then I choose me. And my children...
And I don't apologize for saying this, but I don't feel any compassion for any civilian killed there. Not at all.
They can say I'm not human, that I'm not humanitarian — no one thought about me when they came to murder my family, and my friends, and my community.
No one thought about the humanitarianism.
My friends who were taken captive — no one came from the Red Cross to see what was happening with them.
Where are you, righteous gentiles of the world, who speak to me about being humane?
Did you know that during Tzuk Eitan [Operation Protective Edge], the 10-year-old children on whom we had mercy and did NOT kill — now they're 19 and they came to kill my friends?
The same children we felt sorry for and the whole world was saying, "Don't touch the civilians, the children!" — they're now 19 — 19-year-old children came and annihilated my community...
During Tzuk Eitan, they were ten...
Enough! It's over. That's it! I don't care what they think about me in the world. I don't care! Because no one thought about me when they came to murder me in my pajamas! I don't CARE what the world thinks about me!
I want to defend my children.
What's going on here?
Why do I need to listen to what this one says or that one says? They don't live here. They're didn't go through what we went through.
I'm not interested. They can organize a thousand demonstrations for all I care.
I want my children to live.
What? Is that too much to ask?
Who can promise me it won't happen again?
How can I return to live there?
I have many difficult questions.
But can you imagine that entire area of the country empty?
Introspection and Re-Assessment on All Levels
Though already religious and well-aware Hashem runs the world and we need only rely on Him, I unconsciously still relied all the normal security measures.
Because my son's friend reported how his personal experience of blindly shooting at anything that touched the border fence (it was always a camel), I also relied on their security system.
A great many people throughout the country changed the mamad door to a wooden door for safety reasons (to use as a bedroom; the heavy mamad door is dangerous for children) or took off the large iron discs to utilize the hole in the upper wall for air-conditioning installation.
Many citizens had broken or stuck mamad doors or windows.
We all presumed, like all the other wars, we would have plenty of notification to remedy these situations before things became critical.
And with our army and tactics considered one of the best in the world — combined with a tiny-sized country, which enables anyone to arrive anywhere fast — we all relied on the capabilities of the army.
Furthermore, so many of the combat soldiers themselves feel such dedication to protecting Am Yisrael, we relied on their devotion along with their prowess.
BTW, the devotion never flagged. People even rushed as inadequately armed civilians to help, seriously endangering their own lives to jump into an unplanned battle with too many unknown factors. For example, the first off-duty soldier (a religious Jew who raced there from Yerushalayim), along with 2 policemen and 1 commander of security for that region, to arrive at Kfar Aza didn't even have any idea how many terrorists they faced.
They thought they were 4 guys against 10 terrorists.
They had no idea they faced over 30 times as many terrorists.
And while I'm no bleeding-hearted liberal, I used to feel bad for the Gazan children and for the people I felt sure existed — Arabs who wanted peace with the Jews and felt trapped under the Hamas dictatorship.
Of course, I always prioritized Am Yisrael first.
I steamed over how young Jewish soldiers needed to die in on-the-ground battles so Fatma and her sons could live.
I viewed it as: "OUR sons need to suffer injury and death so HER sons can live in tranquility — NOT acceptable."
I despised the kid-gloves treatment reserved by the government and high-ranking military officials for Arabs in Gaza while Jews paid the price.
I always rejected the idea of soldiers' lives worth less than civilian lives when all are human beings — especially when so many of the soldiers are good and so many of the civilians are bad.
But the murders and the brutalization preceding and following the murders were so gruesome.
And the civilians who accompanied the terrorists — some equaling the terrorists in savagery and inhumanity (and capturing Jews, whom we still have no news of), and some exploiting the situation to steal, to loot homes, and to scavenge from still-warm dead bodies.
Cameras revealed these ghoulish, barbaric "civilians" as old men, women, teenagers, and children.
What's more, those elderly and women raised the bloodthirsty terrorists to be bloodthirsty terrorists.
Whether they actively participated in the barbarism on that day, they share a huge chunk of the blame for encouraging barbarism.
And Orit makes a chilling point:
The same children we spared 9 years ago?
They came at us on a murderous rampage.
Someone told me of a video in which Israeli soldiers caught a nasty 10-year-old pelting rocks at the soldiers.
Because of his age, they let him go.
And after all, it wasn't his fault, right? He was just a kid, influenced by the culture around him.
And that same kid, now age 19, was one of the terrorists who slaughtered and brutalized Jews on October 7.
And despite all the details they clearly knew about the kibbutznikim, they still murdered the woman who gave so much of herself, her time, and her money to devote herself to the diseased Arab children from Gaza.
Altogether — and each person on his or her individual level — it provokes a certain introspection most of us never managed to access any other way.
May Hashem please bring the Geula quickly b'rachamim.