Oz Bin Nun ’15

Posted on December 22, 2023

White owls, burning pick-up trucks.

On that night, the white owls flew between sheets of darkness. A faint, isolated scream preceded a wing clap that was the faintest of the faint. On the fence of Kibbutz Magen, shining lights flickered, and there was deafening thunder, even though there was no storm.

The world recalculated itself on that evening. The sun set in a sea of fire and smoke. In an abandoned gas station in the south, five wanderers of God, with torn clothes, sat and cried. Their eyes were gaping; their brains were burning up; I wish this were a metaphor.

The fire burned along the sides of the road, even when it was not clear why or how. The APCs [armored personnel carriers] made furrows in the asphalt, moving in straight lines. We were too late; that was clear. The convenience store at the gas station was like a zombie movie set, defeated, pierced with holes, destroyed. The apocalypse had come to us; the moon turned to blood on that great and horrible day. We were too late; that was clear.

Two bodies were left lying behind a white pick-up truck. Fire encircled them. Fire they had lit, blood they had spilled. Pieces of broken cars were scattered randomly, desecrated.

It was quiet when we arrived, armed and ready, to Kibbutz Magen. It was quiet because we were too late. Only the white pick-up truck still stood in the place where it had broken through the fence. On top of it stood a machine gun, ready to complete its work of slaughtering. In the sky, the owl screamed, diving for its prey.

The truck’s twin, its rival, stood broken, only two hundred meters away. Its rear destroyed, the windows sprayed with bullets, drops of blood marking the evacuation path of the kibbutz security manager. That day, death came to Kibbutz Magen, but there was no pogrom. Death was halted between these trucks, and in the sky only the sound of the owl, diving.

The pogrom was prevented, but not thanks to us; we were too late. Our brothers’ blood cried out to us, and we heard, but too late. When they asked: “Where are you?” we answered: “We are here,” but our voice echoed from where we were standing in line for equipment. When our response arrived, it was already too late.

Flames danced next to the perimeter fence; smoke rose from Gaza City; sounds of shooting began to be heard; tanks crushed the sand between the near and far horizons. The bloody Shabbat began to slowly become part of the history books. The fragrance of the flower bushes in the abandoned homes, the blood of the murdered, and the flames of shelling sang the
Havdalah melody. He who distinguishes between darkness and light, between one truck and the other truck, between the day of pogroms and the time of war. Amen.