“When I stepped out, I found a paraglider next to my car”

The event

“The first siren went out at 6:30 AM. We got up, with my daughter (9), entered the safe room where my son (4.5) was sleeping, and shut the door. We thought it was all routine, something like this happens every once in a while. But within seconds the amount of sirens and blasts became insane, something intensive unlike anything we’ve ever experienced before. Something was clearly happening, but at this point we still didn’t know what, all we heard were sirens and explosions. We didn’t even take our phones with us. After about 20 minutes we heard rapid gunfire. My wife and I, without saying a word, knew there was a breech attempt. I immediately went to get our phones from the bedroom, to get up to date with the community’s emergency broadcast app.

“The app crashed, but the local Whatsapp group was buzzing throughout the first hour, until the internet crashed. The group was flooded with a downpour of messages, people hearing gunfire, and what’s happening, so much confusion. When I read that I figured that the rapid response squad probably ran into them and a battle broke out, not here, but away in the territories. Then someone wrote – I hear Arabic outside the safe room, they’re trying to get into my house. And we realized it was already here, in our homes, and the bombings are so intense you can’t step out, and there are terrorists but you don’t know where, and people are begging for help and there’s nothing you can do.

“All this time, I see unanswered calls from my family. I’m originally from Maayan Habsor, this hidden gem where nothing ever happens, very few rockets over the years. Until that point I was certain it was something specific to us at Netiv Haasara, but then my dad wrote that there are battles raging in their back gate. I was shocked, that’s 7 kilometers from the boarder, how did they get there? I started texting with my brother and realized it was bigger than I thought. At this point I figured they must have collaborated with the Bedouin or Arabs from Israel. I never even considered vehicles crossing the fence. After about an hour, the internet was cut off, no more internet and no cell reception. From that moment on, every two or three hours the internet would come back on for thirty seconds, and a rush of all the messages sent during that period would pour in – then everything would cut off again. And all this time, the sirens are blaring, not like the first hour but every few minutes. In between we managed to gather that they reached Sderot and Ofakim, that this was an event on a wholly different scale, we just didn’t understand how big and didn’t yet hear what was happening across the Otef.

“In the first few hours, everyone kept asking where’s the military. We knew we had the rapid response squad but that is only a first line of defense, and the military should get here within 15, 20 minutes. Here, for hours on end, there was no military. Just the rapid response squad fighting off the terrorists. Sometime when the internet came back on and tons of messages came in, I saw someone took a picture of a paraglider in the lot behind his house, and we understood that that’s how they got in. Looking back, we were lucky. The power went out in the moshav. We don’t know if it’s because a rocket hit a power line, or if it was something they did, because over the last year we’ve had thousands of power outages, maybe 4-5 times a night, and we suspected it was some sort of cyber-attack, because whenever the moshav complained, the electric company said there were no issues on their end. Either way, that’s what saved us, because once the power was out, the gates locked and we know of at least two pickup trucks that tried to get in but couldn’t.

“All this time, the kids knew nothing, of course. We kept our cool so as not to stress them out, but told them they had to keep quiet and whisper, because the military asked us to. They understood something unusual was happening, and they played along. Twice I ventured outside: once into the kitchen, to get some foo, and we had ourselves a picnic on the mattresses; a second time, to get books and toys to pass the time, because there was no internet and we couldn’t put on their shows on Netflix. All this time we’re whispering, and trying to gather what’s happening outside, without them catching on. Every once in a while the internet would come back for a moment, and we’d get a blast of messages in the community group, and text from friends and relatives asking what’s going on, and I replied – you tell me, we’re cut off.

“In the late morning my wife suddenly asked, what about Chavik? She meant Chavik Segal, her friend’s mother, a widow living alone in a wooden house without a proper safe room. So she quickly sent a text in the community Whatsapp group and someone replied – I checked, but the message disappeared. Around 14:00 I got a text from my mom that in the morning Chavik went out to the migunit [street shelter] because she couldn’t stay in her safe room, and that she was murdered there. She was the first person I heard of that was murdered, and I didn’t tell my wife so that she wouldn’t fall apart in front of the kids. I texted our neighbor, Dani Waback, asked him what was going on, and he didn’t answer, but I told myself it was because of the internet outages. Only later we found out that he too was killed.”

The escape

“By noon we got word from the rapid response squad that the military is starting to come in from the back gate. I said – great, half an hour, hour tops, they’ll cleanse the place and we’ll be able to come out. But an hour goes by and another and another and another and nothing, they’re nowhere to be seen. Around 17:00 I said to my wife – listen, they’re not taking control of the situation. Throughout the day I took my son out to the bathroom, quietly, told him to pee on the ceramic bowl and not into the water so as not to make any noise. But what would happen when night falls and we’d have to turn on the lights? And how much longer could we keep them whispering? We decided that as soon as there’s a sign that we can move out, we leave. After about an hour we saw texts from people who decided to leave through the front gate. I tried to contact our command center to understand whether an instruction went out to leave the safe rooms and evacuate, or if people were doing it on their own accord, but there was no contact with the command center, and after another half an hour went by I said to her – OK, I’ll run out to get a suitcase from the storeroom, you fill it up and we’ll leave. And that’s what we did. At this point the kids had lost it completely, and I told myself they were making so much noise that by the time we manage to get out they’ll attract the terrorists. So we decided that my wife will get them ready, I’ll go out first, make sure there are no terrorists around, toss the suitcase in the car and come back to get them. When I got out, I found a paraglider next to my car. Turns out that when they first arrived, two of them landed next to my car. It was utterly surreal.

“I went back inside, grabbed my son and we all ran out together, to the car, quickly before the kids ask any questions. My wife drove, my son sat in my lap and my daughter lay down in the back seat. We decided to take the peripheral road, hoping we won’t run into any terrorists or dead bodies. Looking back, it’s good that we did, because the sights on the streets were terrible, and everything looked like a war zone, the entire grove in fire and smoke. We drove like that from the open fields and on to Route 4, a long drive to our family in the Sharon region, and on the way we passed through plenty of checkpoints, along with many others who were escaping to the north. Only then was I able to sit back and go online and I realized what was happening. I knew nothing about our neighboring kibbutzim, about the party, about what happened in Be’eri and Nahal Oz. On the ride I told my wife that Chavik was killed, and it broke her. When I went back two weeks later to pick up some gear, I saw the migunit where she hid, and the bullet holes in the walls. That was always her greatest fear – terrorist infiltration, and that’s what got her.

“Then the names of the murdered members of Netiv Haasara started coming in. Friends, neighbors who were murdered, members of the rapid response squad. I didn’t know everyone, my wife is a moshav native, but it was extremely difficult. My breaking point was when I learned that Dani, our neighbor, was killed. I only learned that the next morning, when they posted pictures. He was an incredible person. He came to Israel from Ukraine all alone, settled in the kibbutz, and at one point he met two youngsters from a broken home who were living on the street and fell to a life of drugs and crime. He adopted them unofficially, brought them into his home, cared for them and rehabilitated them. He was their father and mother, and they spent every weekend with him, even when they grew up. One of them was there that morning, with his girlfriend and two dogs. Dani wasn’t a member of the rapid response squad, but he had a personal weapon and when everything started he went out with his gun and teamed up with another neighbor, Oren Stern, a guy who’s originally from Geha and has been living in Netiv Haasara for years. When Dani was out on the street, the terrorists tried to break into his home, 15 meters from mine, a one of the dogs charged at them. The terrorist shot it, Dani and Oren heard, a battle broke out and they drew the terrorists away from the area and saved the son and girlfriend – and us, too. Both were killed in that battle. Had we taken the road through the houses, we would have seen their bodies.

“We still don’t know for sure what happened in Netiv Haasara, and how things went down throughout the day. There are a lot of versions by people who were there, and they don’t all match up. They found three paragliders in the moshav, some two0seaters, and we don’t know if they carried four or five Nukhba terrorists. We don’t know where those who landed by my house went and why they didn’t start with us; maybe they wanted to rendezvous, or went to a crummier house because ours is new and nearly all of the homes where people were murdered were ones that are easier to break into, older or made of wood. One of these terrorists was taken out by the rapid response squad. We don’t know what happened to the rest, whether they fled to Gaza or were eliminated by the military elsewhere. In addition to those, seven other looters with simpler weapons managed to jump the fence. They were all captured alive.

“A total of 20 people were murdered in Netiv Haasara that day, and no one was kidnapped. Two folks were initially declared missing, but their bodies were later discovered: one was on Zikim Beach and the other went out for a ride before everything started. We were relatively lucky, compared to other places like Be’eri or Nir Oz or the party, and I don’t even want to imagine what went down there. If we want to, we have somewhere to return to.”

The future

“Eventually we arrived at our family’s place in the Sharon on Saturday evening, we spent about a week there, and have been staying at a hotel in Tel Aviv with about half of the community from Netiv Haasara, the rest are in Maale Hahamisha. There were about two weeks of chaos in terms of daily routine and timetables, and then they started organizing activities for them until noon, just these fun activities ran by young people. In mid-November they set up a preschool and the kids joined the schools, half-days but it’s still something, gives the kids some sort of normal routine.

“We’re surrounded by help. There are people from Hosen and the municipal psychological services, and we get counseling, both for us and on how to explain the whole situation to the kids.  During the event they didn’t know what was happening, and also when we got to the family in the Sharon, for a good couple of days they didn’t watch TV, radio, news, nothing, until we decided how to explain things and what parts to tell. After a few days I took my daughter out to meet up with friends in Tel Aviv, and before that I sat her down and explained in broad terms that we left because there was a war, there were bad people who wanted to reach the moshav, and goo people from the moshav fought them off. Later we trickled some more details, and she also heard things from other people. One day we were walking in Tel Aviv and ran into the teddy bear display and she understood that it’s for the hostages, and that children were also kidnapped. She developed a lot of fears.

“We, the adults, keep chasing our own tails with hundreds of Whatsapp messages and errands and forms to fill. We don’t know how long we’ll stay and there’s just this huge uncertainty. The sleeping arrangements were taken care of rather quickly: the state funds our stay, and those who don’t want to stay in hotels get a daily stipend that’s supposed to cover the cost of living and a place for the night. We’re now looking for a place near the hotel. Slowly, we’re starting to get some response to our needs, but it’s all so disorganized, and generates a daily hunt for dozens of tiny details, and you just wait for the day to be over because you can’t get on top of everything. About two weeks after the event I tried getting back to work on my dissertation and realized I can’t find the time, and even when I can – my mind isn’t there. I told myself I’ll give myself the time I need to let things settle and cool, because right now it’s not working. I hope I’ll manage soon. When we move and find a place and things will settle a bit, I’ll be able to get back to it.

“I don’t know where we’re going from here. Right now we feel angry, we feel a complete mistrust of the system. We miss home, but as it is now, even if someone were to say ‘that’s it, we’re done, you can go back’ – obviously we won’t because I no longer trust the military, the command echelon, the politicians. Eventually it would go back to a state of aloofness, fatigue, and they’ll catch us by surprise. We’ll only go back if they do what they say: eliminate Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, destroy terrorist cells and form a mechanism that makes sure they don’t rear their heads every again. But I’m extremely pessimistic, and I don’t know what a future like that would look like. I’m not alone in that. Few say with certainty if they’re staying or leaving – the majority, like us, are debating the question of ever returning to Netiv Haasara.”