After October 7: A Personal Journey to Kfar

[ Rumbling in distance ] -There is thunder in the west when I first arrive at Kfar Aza, but the sky is cloudless on this morning in late March, and I quickly realize my error.

[ Rumbling continues ] This isn't thunder.

It's the report of bombs a few kilometers away in the Gaza Strip, where Israel Defense Forces are fighting.

Nearly one year ago, the Hamas terrorist attack devastated this kibbutz and others in southern Israel.

The echo of war is now a constant here.

So are reminders of the October 7th carnage.

The first reminder appears on the main road just past the kibbutz checkpoint.

It's the wreckage of a home.

Terrorists armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades began its destruction.

IDF tanks completed the job, razing the structure to neutralize terrorists who'd taken refuge inside.

I came to Kfar Aza at the urging of friends -- Israeli-Americans who shuttled between their two homelands.

Glued to screens in their Manhattan apartment on October 7th and the days that followed, they contacted me at all hours with details about the terror unfolding in a kibbutz they once called home.

[ Film reel whirring ] When details of the terror overwhelmed them, my friends reverted to memories and shared photos and home movies of happier times.

The adjective "magical" was employed time and again in their descriptions of the community.

I've come today to see that community for myself.

-It's a bit of a problem to call some place "magical" because it means that it's from the fairy tales.

And it's not from the fairy tales, it's a man-made heaven.

It was worked very hard to achieve.

But for me it was really welcoming and loving and gave you a sense of security and of confidence.

And that makes all the difference.

-Ayelet Khon is my guide at Kfar Aza.

She was born and raised here.

Military service took her away at age 18, but she returned for good in 2005 with a husband.

She begins my tour with areas which, even after months of neglect, give a sense of the kibbutz's serenity and history.

-A hundred years ago when the first kibbutzim was started, it was influenced very strongly from the Russian Revolution.

The first kibbutzniks came from Russia or Eastern Europe.

And the idea was to create a society with complete equality, socialist in the best way possible.

Everybody is sharing the load of work and getting whatever they need from the society.

You give everything that you can and you get everything that you need.

And it worked for a while, as long as all the members of the kibbutz came to the kibbutz with this idea.

At some point, people start families, and there were kids that were born in the kibbutz and not necessarily carry the same belief as their parents.

And then they started to change the rules a little by little.

Today, most kibbutzim and ours included is privatized, meaning that every person works for himself and gives money to -- taxes -- to the community.

The means of production are still belonging to the community.

The factory belongs to the kibbutz, the fields belong to the kibbutz.

Some of the money goes as a dividends to the members and some of the money is stayed in the system to take care of the system.

-That system of communal life and work functioned from the mid-1950s until October 7th.

Two months later, in mid-December 2023, Ayelet and her husband, Shar Shnurman, were the first to return to their kibbutz home.

October 7th isn't as much a memory for them as a presence.

It's the rescue and recovery symbols on the adjacent home where their neighbor was murdered.

It's the indelible tattoo on Shar's forearm.

– I woke up half past 6: 00 in the morning.

I was sitting outside drinking my coffee on the terrace in front of the house.

And all of a sudden there was a noise that...

I never heard a noise like this ever in all the years I live in Kfar Aza.

It was like -- My husband says it was like a helicopter trying to land on the lawn in front of the house.

Because what happened is that in Kfar Aza we hear all the missiles that are coming out of Gaza, doesn't matter where they go.

If they go towards us or towards Be'er Sheva or towards Tel Aviv or towards Jerusalem, we hear them anyway.

So there were all the missiles coming from Gaza and we know that they shot a few hundred missiles that day.

And there were all the missiles that are coming from the Iron Dome to prevent them from hitting anything.

It's all coming above our heads.

The sky became white.

[ Missiles roaring ] -From Gaza, Hamas launched 3,000 rockets at Israel on October 7th.

The barrage overwhelmed Israel's air defense system known as Iron Dome.

In the chaos, Hamas terrorists broke through fortified border fences and invaded Israel.

-So I told my husband I'm going to see what happened with the neighbor and he says, "You're not going out with that noise."

And he said, "I will go."

And he went and he came back after maybe five minutes, which is a long because -- it's a lot because... it's right next door, and he says "They murdered Meera."

And that was like an extreme shock.

Because you have to understand, the possibility of terrorists coming into the kibbutz is always in the back of your mind when you're living so close to Gaza.

But we were driven into the belief that we are safe.

There's a very smart fence, and there are soldiers over there, and even if they pass the fence, the soldier will come and attack them and protect us.

So we start calling people telling that our neighbor was murdered.

And we understood very quickly that... there's nobody... that's going to come.

[ Gunshots firing ] And the second thing that we hear is that Ophir, our head of municipality, also a neighbor, he lives in the house nearby, he was killed.

[ Gunshots firing ] So we now know that we have two murdered people in the kibbutz.

And they're both around our house.

So we close the door of the safe room.

We close the window with the iron screen.

And we say, "Okay, we'll sit here and we wait.

It will take a few hours.

The army will come and will free us."

This is the safe room.

We were here for 30 hours.

And really early in the events, after maybe four or five hours, the electricity stopped.

There was no power at all.

And we realized the terrorists are really close to us, so we had to close the iron screen.

[ Screen rattles ] This is what you get, complete darkness.

And this is what we had for over 24 hours.

-Ayelet and Shar were the first to move back, but other survivors of October 7th come and go.

-[ Speaking in Hebrew ] -Sergei Yankelevich came this morning to show his children the vault where he battled Hamas militants and nearly perished.

Sergei was a member of the kibbutz security team.

He and a comrade were trapped here for six hours.

-[ Speaking in Hebrew ] -[ Speaking in Hebrew ] -[ Speaking in Hebrew ] -Bleeding out from a high-velocity round, Sergei was close to death when IDF soldiers routed the terrorists.

-[ Speaking in Hebrew ] -Sergei keeps his tone light, I suspect for his children's sake.

His account of the attack aligns with that of several terrorists captured by IDF troops in Kfar Aza.

One Hamas commando detailed his mission during interrogation by Israeli intelligence agents.

[ Men conversing in foreign language ] [ Birds chirping ] -[ Speaking in Hebrew ] -Shimon Elkabetz often returns to Kfar Aza to lecture visitors.

Approximately 70 terrorists infiltrated the kibbutz.

Among the 63 people they murdered was his daughter Sivan.

Shimon's audience today is comprised of Israelis and foreign tourists.

Multiple times a week, similar groups are bussed into the kibbutz to see and hear for themselves.

Shimon's audience is stunned into silence.

-[ Speaking in Hebrew ] -That silence extends to the kibbutz's Young Generation District.

37 people lived here on October 7th in efficiency units designed to give young people their first taste of independence.

11 were murdered, 7 were taken hostage.

-If you lived in Kfar Aza as a young person, at some point you lived in these rooms.

This is the rooms that when you want some privacy and you don't want to live with your parents anymore, you come to these rooms.

All our life was in the communal area.

So coming here and seeing it, that was devastating.

That was like heartbreaking.

I... -All but one of the residences is barred to visitors.

The one open to us is where Shimon's daughter and her partner were murdered.

Shimon has placed placards, videos, and charts of the attack throughout the interior.

One description reads, "human remains on the sofa."

Many survivors here claim that this arsenal left the kibbutz vulnerable to attack.

In 2023, the Israel police ordered kibbutzim security teams in the so-called Gaza Envelope to lock all weapons in a central storeroom.

When Hamas terrorists infiltrated Kfar Aza, civilian security personnel raced to this arsenal, for some a distance of 300 meters.

-At the day we're talking about October 7th, the long weapon -- the M16 -- was not in the hand of the guard unit, they were in the armory.

And then people from the guard unit have to run over there, take the weapon, and start protecting the kibbutz.

But nobody realized how big is the situation... [ Men shouting indistinctly ] ...so they realized they needed to reload.

So then when they came back to take some more magazines, they were ambushed and murdered right outside the armory.

It's another example of how chaotic was the situation.

The soldiers didn't have any idea who is still in the house and who left the house and who they have to survive.

They just did random checks.

So we came outside and said, "Now us."

And they said, "Okay, now you."

And they pick us up in their armed car, as I said.

And while we were going into the armed car, the soldier was shooting at someone on the other side.

So when I say that we were rescued under fire, literally there was a fire going on while we were rescued.

And then we were all in a petrol station, and over there, that was the first place that we saw other people from the kibbutz.

So we started to see who survived.

Because 30 hours is a long time, and at some point you started to think "Maybe we're the only one to survive.

Maybe nobody else survived," because you don't hear from anybody.

[ Men shouting, gunshots firing ] Shar, my husband, and myself, we were sitting in the petrol station, and I asked him, "So, what do you want to do?"

And he said "Well, we'll wait a few hours, the army will finish fighting in the kibbutz, and we go back home."

[ Man speaking indistinctly ] And there was this solider.

We will never forget this.

He was looking at us in these pitiful eyes and he said, "It's going to take us like three or four days to clear the kibbutz."

And that was our understanding how big the situation is.

And...And then we understand we had to leave.

So we left, but from the first moment, we knew we are doing everything we can to go back.

And the minute the situation was right for it, we went back.

And for us, for me, being in my kibbutz was the most important thing.

And, yes, maybe because I'm such a strong believer in peace it was easier for me because I wasn't negative about the situation.

I was trying to be positive, even in this hard condition.

-I leave Kfar Aza and travel 100 kilometers north to Shefayim, a town on the Mediterranean coast.

At a resort that has hosted generations of vacationers, several hundred Kfar Aza families are now sheltered.

The festive decor competes with tributes to October 7th victims and hostages.

I find reminders of the hostages everywhere: in the lobby, the dining room, the gardens.

-This hotel take all the people from the kibbutz, that they save them, and they bring them here, and gave all the families rooms and food, everything they need.

Really, you can't believe how much they hug them and really bring them everything, because there is no home in the kibbutz anymore.

-In the aftermath of October 7th, people throughout Israel have reconnected with friends from Kfar Aza.

Alex Niv first came to the kibbutz as a 17-year-old youth worker in 1975.

That experience proved so positive that he stayed for nearly 30 years.

He now comes to Shefayim regularly.

I suspect as much to receive comfort as to give it.

-I fell in love in the kibbutz.

Really fell in love like you fell in love with a girl.

Really.

I decided in this minute when I came there the first time that this is going to be my home.

And then, nothing...pay my attention to other things.

Just I wanted to go to the kibbutz.

[ Film reel whirring ] I married, I had two children, and I really, really love the kibbutz.

I love the people, I love the place, I love everything that was in the kibbutz.

All the way of life.

[ Sirens wailing ] Then in the year 2003 I think... fell a big bomb.

I was at home.

I heard a big, big bomb that I had never heard in my life.

I get out, run to see my children, everything was okay.

My wife was working at a factory.

We didn't have a safe room in the kibbutz.

No one had.

We just decided to leave everything.

I was 50 years old.

We decided to leave everything and go from the kibbutz.

Because -- The real thing is because I didn't see a future of the place.

-We evacuated with all the members of the kibbutz at the 8th of October.

All my family is here.

There is not much space.

But outside, I think we are lucky to be in such a place that makes us feel there is a reason to live.

-Ido Shamriz and his family were resettled at Shefayim shortly after the Hamas attack.

Ido was raised in the kibbutz.

He married there, had children, started a wood fabrication factory with his brother.

He also served on the kibbutz security team.

-Our purpose is to defend Kfar Aza until the army forces will come.

Unfortunately, on Saturday the IDF soldiers came late, so we had to defend the kibbutz for hours and to fight against dozens of terrorists.

When you see the message of the security team, you know what the meaning is.

It's a real thing.

You need to take your stuff and go to the armory to grab your weapon because our weapons were not with us anymore at our houses.

They took away a couple of months ago.

So I ran fast as I can to the armory to grab my weapon and I saw my...my friends over there from the security team.

We tried to understand what is the scenario, how many terrorists are in the kibbutz.

And all of the sudden I saw them 50 meters from me, and they literally ambushed us at the armory.

Now I can understand that they knew the critical points at the kibbutz.

They knew where to be.

They collected information during the years and they use it to know the kibbutz better than me.

Seven members of the squad were killed after minutes.

And all of a sudden we are... five people at the armory need to defend ourselves before we're gonna lie like our friends in front of us.

It's...a surreal image because you are fighting face-to-face against terrorists... ...at lawns that I played as a kid.

So it was surreal image to all of a sudden to have a fight and to shoot at somebody, you know?

Because we are not soldiers.

We are civilians from the kibbutz that are not trained to such a scenario.

After a few hours, we reached to my apartment with my best friend.

We saw my neighbor's door open.

In front of me... Adar and Itai lived, two friends of mine that moved to this apartment a few days before.

Adar and Itai had twins, 10 months old.

And when I saw the door open, I realized what happened to the parents.

And I didn't know what happened to the babies because I didn't hear them.

On my steps, in front of my apartment door, I saw a magazine that belongs to the terrorist weapons.

So we got into my apartment as soon as possible and locked ourselves.

And I told my friends, "I don't hear the babies.

What they did to them?"

And after a couple of minutes, I heard them crying.

And we tried to rescue them.

But I heard the terrorists are in their house, the terrorists surrounding my house, so I realized that we can't go outside and we need to be smart how to do it.

So until the evening, I send messages to forces that got into kibbutz... ...and we rescued them only at the evening after 12 hours of non-stop crying.

I got in the house with the IDF soldiers and took the babies, kissed them, hugged them.

I brought their bottles, their clothes, and...

I walked past the bodies of my two beautiful friends, Itai and Adar.

Just was so glad to see the smile of Guy and Ruy to be held by people after a long, long... ...time alone.

-Following their evacuation to Shefayim, the Shamriz family waited for word of Ido's missing brother Alon.

There was no sign of him in the days after the Hamas attack.

-For 10 days I grieved on my brother because I saw what happened to his neighborhood and I thought there is not much chance that he survived such a thing.

And they told us to send pictures of Alon with tattoos and everything, so I thought they are trying to identify bodies.

And after 10 days they informed us that he's probably kidnapped, and after a couple of days they told us that he's for sure in Gaza.

And... it was the happiest message that I got in my life because you didn't hear the other news.

So you're still hoping to see him again.

You still have hope to fight to bring him back.

-Alon Shamriz and two fellow hostages escaped their Hamas captors and sought out Israeli forces.

They scrawled the words "Save Us" on a bedsheet and called out for help from their Gaza City hiding place to Israeli soldiers in the distance.

-On the 15th of December, Alon and Yotam and Samer decided to go out in the morning with a white flag without shirts because they heard the army is... something like 100 or 200 meters from them.

So they decided to get out... hoping that the army will identify them and bring them back.

And unfortunately they identified them as terrorists, as a threat, and they shot them immediately.

We are lucky that we are surrounded by people embracing us, that there is a reason to live, you know?

I think about the people that I saw at the armory and Adar and Itai, that some days you feel like there is no reason to still live, you know?

You feel like you are living the hell.

In Israel there is a phrase, ein li eretz acheret -- "there is no other country."

And I ask myself this question today, if this is the only place for me and my family.

Because if I'm not feeling safe anymore in Israel, I will not stay here.

I think this is basic thing to feel, to feel safe.

And if my country can't guarantee that I will be safe now and in the future, me and my daughters, I don't want it to be my future.

I don't want to live in such a place that I'm not feeling safe in every place.

Not only in Kfar Aza, but in every place in Israel.

-We really enjoyed our garden, our house, the fact that I lived next to my parents, the fact that I lived next to my brother, which is also living in the kibbutz.

And we had many friends and our children had many friends and there was -- it was like...

I always felt it's like in Israel you can never know, although I know.

There is a price for that.

My children, each one of them, every children that grew up in Kfar Aza during those days had something like... we call it sritai.

It's like, you know, a wound... a damage from this situation.

And also us, of course, the grown-ups.

-10 kilometers south of Shefayim, I meet another of the Kfar Aza diaspora in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya.

Roni Lupo and her family are living here in a friend's home, a temporary state that Roni calls suspended animation.

Roni and her husband are architects.

They completed renovations on their Kfar Aza home in the summer of 2023.

Material and workmanship are first-rate.

The view from their home now is anything but.

Terrorists overran their district.

-In the morning there was the alarm, and we ran to the shelter as we usually do.

My sister is not really used to the situation because she left the kibbutz long before those bombing and she... somehow managed to avoid all the attacks that were in the past.

And she was a little bit nervous, but we said to her, "It's okay, we are used to it."

We have even a few pictures that we made in the shelter that we are laughing and, you know, trying to calm her down.

And then there was a -- It stopped.

But on the television, I think we saw all the flashing alert.

It seems very -- Not just the same as we used to.

And Avi and her saw terrorists running towards a neighborhood in front of us.

We all ran to the shelter once again, closed the door, of course.

Avi has a gun in the safe, so he went to bring it.

And he decided he would not enter to the shelter but lay outside with his gun.

We heard a lot of shots.

We heard a lot of gunfire going on, and still also bombing during this time.

-I left the kibbutz in 2000 and that was the beginning of the second Intifada and the beginning also of the missiles.

In the first years of the missiles I did try to talk to my family and tell them that I don't understand why they stay.

Every time there is like an escalation round, I would tell them, like, "you need to leave now" and argue with them and they would always say, "No, we'll wait a bit, see how it evolves."

But especially when my nephews and nieces were younger, I was trying to convince them.

It was very difficult, and I get why.

I really get that you don't want to leave your home and this is your not only home in the sense of four walls, but also in the sense of a community, of a place you built for yourself and as many people in the Gaza surroundings, or "envelope" as we call it, say it's 90% or 95% paradise and hell the rest of the time.

-Along with her sister Roni, Ziv Stahl was born and raised in Kfar Aza.

While Roni remained in the kibbutz, Ziv moved away for good in her teens.

She now lives in Tel Aviv.

Her last visit to her family in Kfar Aza began on October 6th.

-It was clear from the very first moment it's a big thing.

It's not one missile and that's it.

So they kind of told me, "Okay, it will be okay, you will be okay," like," "you have to experience it one time" and so on.

And then there was a little bit of a quiet moment when there was no alarms and we kind of took advantage of that and left the safe room.

Then I went out and I sat on the deck at the house and smoked a cigarette.

And I heard, like, shooting from a light weapon, but it sounded quite distant and I thought maybe it's louder because it's very quiet.

It's very early in the morning on a Saturday.

So I didn't make anything out of it.

And then there was another siren and I went back running.

And as we were running to the safe room, my brother-in-law already saw a terrorist group running on the pavement really close to where I was sitting.

He came and told us that there are terrorists and in the kibbutz.

And then we turned off all the lights and the TV and everything and just try to stay very quiet.

I don't know if it's only Israelis, but I think it's more in Israel.

People really believe that the army at least, if not police, will come and get you from any trouble you're in.

Even if it's not in Israel, they would come.

-I received a text from my daughter Ori, which is 21, that she's in Kfar Aza apparently, and that Sivan, her boyfriend, is with her, they are very frightened.

And she asked me what to do.

And I said to her, "Don't go out, lock yourself and stay in the shelter room."

Avi, as I said, my husband... was lying outside, and he heard Ori and Sivan screaming outside our door... that -- "Let us in."

We immediately -- He immediately ran to them and saw that Sivan was shot.

And they were running, crossing from their house to our house, which is around 500 meters, and came to our house.

He was wounded with gunshots both of his hands.

-It started to feel like we are neglected, like no one is coming for us.

No one is doing anything.

We are stuck here for hours.

And we ended up taking care of an injured person for more than eight hours by ourselves, really worrying about him.

He's a medic, so he knew what's going on.

He was giving us instructions, actually.

And he was starting to be worried that he's been too long with no... the things you put to stop the bleeding, which we held on both sides.

Every Israeli is very much exposed to violence in a way.

We live kind of -- Violence is around us in many ways.

But personally, I've never been to a terror attack or anything like that.

And I would say, even going to the West Bank, I never experienced such violence.

I experienced violence, but not like that.

-Ziv is executive director of Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization that documents violations of Palestinian human rights, typically by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Ziv and her colleagues often film and distribute videos like this, the aftermath of an Israeli settler attack on a Palestinian village.

10 days after surviving the onslaught at Kfar Aza, Ziv published an essay in the newspaper Haaretz.

"I have no need of revenge," she wrote.

"Nothing will return those who are gone.

Indiscriminate bombing in Gaza and the killing of civilians uninvolved with these horrible crimes are no solution."

Ziv says that months after October 7th her perspective is still evolving.

-It might be too early to say how October 7th changed me.

I would say my immediate reaction was shock and mainly anxiety.

I felt it mostly in my body, actually.

I think in the few first weeks, I thought that's -- I needed to think of another career for myself.

Because I felt like my life is full with violence and I felt like if there's, you know, a tank, it was quite full before the 7th of October for me.

And then meeting this kind of violence, I felt like it's unhealthy to continue dealing with what I deal.

So after three month's break, I came back to work in January.

And that was very challenging and it is still very challenging for me.

But also good for me because it is what I think is very important to do and I find a lot of meaning in what I do.

But my belief is very well rooted that there is no other solution than solving this conflict.

And if we want to live and if we want to live well and we don't want to grieve anymore and we don't want to be scared anymore, there is only one solution.

And I'm not talking about a specific political solution.

On that there can be many solutions.

And I think we should be creative about the solutions.

I'm talking about if we have to choose between continuing conflicts and struggle, and hatred, or trying and push as hard as we can to figure out a way to get out of this situation and talk to our enemies and find a way to solve this, I think we should invest every creativity, every dime, every hour of the day for that.

-October 7th left the Lupo family traumatized and adrift.

Roni's sister-in-law was murdered by terrorists.

The Lupo home now overlooks the ruins of the adjacent block.

After months of deliberation, Roni and her husband decided not to return to Kfar Aza.

-When we were rescued and I exit my house, that was the first time I felt like it's not worth it, that a piece of land is just a piece of land.

For me, it's not holy.

It's my roots there, but it's not holy, okay?

It's not like the holy land or something like that, and therefore I need to stay here.

No, my roots are there, and then therefore I stay there, but it's not sacred.

My family is.

I felt like, you know, the balance between those two need to be changed.

-Right now I'm living in Herzliya, in Reichman University, and Professor Uriel Reichman has decided to give us, the members of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, 20 dorms.

The Reichman University and Herzliya city are welcoming us in a warm way.

But for me it's a very sad experience to be a refugee in my own country.

-Liora Eilon is living temporarily in a high-rise dormitory in Herzliya.

Her granddaughters and her family members are frequent visitors.

Liora says that her family bonds were strengthened by their ordeal in Kfar Aza.

Liora lived in the kibbutz for 44 years.

She and her late husband raised four children there.

Two of her adult children also settled in Kfar Aza.

They now have children of their own.

-My husband and I wanted to do something meaningful for us.

So when we were interviewed to move in Kfar Aza, they told us in those exact words, "we have nothing really to offer you, but we very, very much -- we need people."

So we came because we felt needed.

[ Birds chirping ] -Liora also felt secure in her new kibbutz home.

Kfar Aza is, after all, Hebrew for "Gaza Village," and the Gaza Strip border is barely three kilometers away.

For decades following the kibbutz's 1956 founding, relations with Gazans and Palestinians were harmonious.

That ended in the year 2000 with the onset of a years-long armed uprising by Palestinians against Israeli occupation called the Second Intifada.

-For 20 years, I lived in Kfar Aza without missiles over my head.

And then for 20 years, there were missiles over my head.

Fortunately, my kids were already grown up, so I didn't raise kids under missile attacks.

I don't remember feeling any hostility or any fears living next to Gaza.

I was hoping that the relationship will somehow be even better than it was before.

I couldn't imagine that it could be worse.

I was always a peace activist.

For the last few years, I was participating in an NGO called the Road to Recovery.

I drove Palestinians to hospitals, people who were sick, either them or their kids.

One of the family was sick, so I drove them to hospitals.

So even now, until the 6th of October, the 7th of October, I couldn't imagine... That relationship could be so bad.

On the 7th of October, we ended up in my safe room in my house, five people: myself, two of my kids who were visiting me, those who don't live in Kfar Aza, and two of my granddaughters who decided to have a sleepover at my place.

We stayed there for 35 hours.

We were under ongoing attack of terrorists trying to open the door several times.

My kids held the handle of the safe room for 35 hours.

My house was bombed.

My house was a field hospital for injured and dead soldiers of the IDF who tried to protect the house and the neighborhood against a lot of terrorists that were there all around the neighborhood.

And soon enough two soldiers came into the safe room after they finished treating the wounded soldiers and asked us to tell them where they are because they had no idea where they are.

So my 15-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter and I opened the Google map for them and explained them where to go and we told them, "Look, here is a swimming pool, here is a dining room, here is this road, here is that path," and then we pointed at them, the families that we got calls from that they need help and we told them where to go.

The next thing we knew was that they put my granddaughter's phone into their group of WhatsApp.

And from that time on, they used my granddaughter as a source of information for them.

They asked her to send them locations and to tell them where to go.

So she had a very, very unique and very important role through that 35 hours that we were in the safe room.

And I can also tell you that we didn't have any electricity in the house.

And Gali's, my granddaughter's battery was getting low.

And then my other granddaughter realized that we have a cable that enabled us to charge Gali's phone with our phones.

So one by one we just transferred our battery into Gali's phone.

It was like a Hanukkah miracle, you know?

[ Chuckles ] The batteries had held for 35 hours.

We kept...not calm, but quiet.

Each one of us held his fear inside.

We didn't let it come out in order not to be in panic.

And I realized soon enough that my job is just to make sure that everybody is okay, to encourage them in whatever they were doing all the time.

But we were evacuated under fire in the middle of a war.

And after they took us out of the house, they just bombed the house with a tank and ruined it completely in order to make sure that the terrorists that were there are dead.

-Liora's Kfar Aza home was destroyed.

Everything in her dormitory apartment has been scrounged, donated, or bought.

Her son Tal was killed defending the kibbutz as a security team member.

-Of course there was a security problem when it started.

The members of the civilian defense group did not have weapons in their homes.

What they needed to do was to run without guns to the armory house, to the arsenal, grab weapons, and they were all gathered there and one by one were shot.

My son was the one who opened the armory house.

He had the keys.

So he managed to grab a weapon and start running and fighting.

He managed to kill three terrorists on the way just before he was wounded.

But he had no chance against all those terrorists that were there already.

And while being wounded, he still commanded the civilian defense team, telling them that there are a lot of terrorists in the kibbutz dressed as IDF soldiers and told them to deal with terrorists first and only then come and deal with the wounded people.

Also told them that he's wounded already.

They could hear it.

He sent voice messages so they could hear him... getting weaker and weaker every message but still commanding them.

On his last breath, Tal called the commander of the civilian defense team in Kibbutz Sa'ad, the kibbutz right next to us, telling him that there are a lot of terrorists in Kfar Aza, and they're probably heading to Kibbutz Sa'ad.

And he told him to gather his defense team, lock all the gates, close all the gates in Kibbutz Sa'ad, and spread his defense team on the fences to protect the kibbutz.

And I know today that by doing that, Tal saved a lot of lives in Kibbutz Sa'ad.

So he died as a hero.

-Liora has adapted to her temporary quarters, and while she's a beloved figure in her new community, she yearns to return to her home in Kfar Aza, albeit with conditions.

-The question of whether we're going back to Kfar Aza or not, that's a question that most of the people deal with every day.

In my age, to start all over again, not knowing where I'm going, or what will I ever have in my life, not knowing what my plans are for the next couple of years, not being able to plan anything for my retirement because I don't know where I'll be, what I'll do... that's quite a hard thing to do.

I'm still a peace activist.

I want to stay a peace activist.

I do try to hold on to the belief that... ...there is still goodness in the world.

And we've tried war for too many times, and it never brought us anywhere good.

And we need to try something else that we've tried many years ago.

Once the prime minister was murdered trying to bring peace, and we need to try that again.

I strongly believe, deeply -- I base it on nothing, but I strongly believe that we've come so low, this crisis is so deep, that something else could and should arise from that place that we're now in.

-Kfar Aza is no longer a ghost town.

Stores, businesses, schools remain shuttered, but new signs of life are emerging.

Reconstruction plans have begun, and a few more couples and individuals have recently returned for good.

An IDF unit is now stationed at the kibbutz.

Ayelet and Shar host cookouts for the soldiers every Monday.

They spend the rest of their time fixing, planning, waiting for an end to the blasts, and the beginning of a new normal.

-The first question is what is "normal"?

There would be people who say living where we live for 20 years with missiles falling on our head is not normal.

For all the therapists that we talk to and that the other people that I heard from in the kibbutz talking to keep stressing that it's not post-traumatic, it's still the trauma.

We're still in the trauma stage, we're not in the post-traumatic stage.

This is to be seen after a situation is settled.

What is settled?

[ Chuckles ] Great question.

I believe in the deepest part of my soul that the kibbutz will flourish again.

But it will be a new normal.

It wouldn't be the same as before because 63 people died here and they will be missed.

Some of them were pillars of the community.

Right now the community is quite broken.

Someone told me this week it would take a year.

You know, in the Jewish religion the first year after a tragedy, the whole year is mourning year.

And the Jewish mourning ceremonies are very much in tune with the energy of the human being.

So I think the kibbutz had to go through the year, and maybe a year from now, a lot of people would eventually feel that this place that they made their home, they miss it more than they're afraid.