Posted on June 28, 2024
Life as we knew it:
I am married with two cute kids. We live in Kibbutz Misgav Am, where I was born and raised. It’s the northernmost kibbutz in the country, situated atop a hill with a 360-degreeview, right on the border with Lebanon; meaning, the kibbutz’s fence is the border itself. The kibbutz has always faced the challenges of its location on the periphery of the country and in a sensitive security situation, but in the years following the Second Lebanon War, the kibbutz flourished, new families arrived, and the kindergartens filled up. We were complacent, trusting Israeli military deterrence and intelligence, and those were wonderful years.
Within the kibbutz, I was – still am – in management and a member of the kibbutz’s business team. By training, I am an environmental engineer and have been managing research and development for a small company for eight years now, but since the war began until a month ago, I’d only been to work twice. In the days before the war, I was also involved in a startup that combines solar energy and hydroponic vegetable growing, but I don’t have time for that anymore.
Before the war, we had a daughter in second grade at the “Alei Giv’a” school and a son in “Gan Tamar,” the kindergarten where I also grew up. We had a house with a garden and an orchard. That was before everything.
Landing on October 7th:
On October 7th, I was returning from Thailand with my entire family, and we were in transit in Dubai when we were exposed to the videos and the horrors. We landed at Ben Gurion Airport and immediately fled north from the missiles. We arrived home around 11:00 PM, and the head of the civil defense unit came out to our bus and said, “I hope only you and your dad have come.” Turns out, while we were rushing home, half of the kibbutz had already evacuated due to the threat. The night between the 7th and 8th was very tense for me. I put the children to sleep, closed the shutters, prepared my protective vest and weapon, and prepared for a call-up. At 6:00 AM, the phone rang. I geared up and joined the civil defense unit. An hour later, I called my wife and told her, “Open the kids’ suitcase, take out their wet swimsuits, and go.” And that’s it. My wife and children haven’t been home since, and I’ve been serving in reserve duty in the civil defense unit.
When was the last time you were home?
When you say home, do you mean where my family lives or where my house in the kibbutz is? Half of the week, I’m in Misgav Am, in what has become a military post, and the other half I’m in Kfar Hanassi, where my family now lives. But it’s a matter of terminology. Today, we live in Kfar Hanassi, that’s the truth. Can I call it home? You know, we live there. It has four walls, it’s a home.
High Vigilance:
In the civil defense unit, there’s the routine work – shifts, patrols, and lately, fires too. But the most significant thing is the sense of vigilance. Very high vigilance and readiness for combat. Because we’re on the border, we’re not alone, and we have the army with us. But the reality is that at any given moment, we could be going into battle: with a few minutes’ notice or with no notice at all. So every time I leave home, or report for guard duty, or go to lunch, or head to a briefing with my unit, I always leave fully equipped – with a rifle, protective vest, eight magazines, and a two-way radio… I leave home ready for combat.
In December, a missile hit not far from me, about 10 meters away from where I was standing. Hezbollah fired an anti-tank missile at the guard-post’s shelter. Luckily, during one of the drills, one of the guys from the unit said, “Listen, this shelter isn’t safe. It’s not well positioned, and an anti-tank missile can penetrate the concrete. We need to stop using it.” Up to that point, we had used this shelter as a protected area and had run to it when there was a warning of an incoming attack. On that day, I heard a whistle approaching us. I jumped into a ditch, and the shelter – exploded. The missile had hit it. So in the end, because I was alert, I recognized an approaching danger, I reacted, and I wasn’t hurt. But that high vigilance really sets the tone whenever we’re on duty, even when we’re “just” sitting around in the guard-post.
Containing the Fire:
Recently we’ve had quite a few fires within the kibbutz and in agricultural areas, and we’ve lost a lot of vineyards. All year there was no agricultural activity so the grass and weeds have dried up. Now, every time they shoot a missile from Lebanon and the Iron Dome intercepts it, shards fall to the ground and start a fire. It takes the firefighters at least half an hour to arrive, so we go and try to put it out, only we don’t really have the ability to extinguish a field or forest fire; we have no access and limited means. So we do what we can to contain the fire and prevent it, at least, from reaching homes.
Uncertainty:
The hardest part of dealing with this situation is at the family level; we constantly need to make decisions based on a very high level of uncertainty. For example, we do not know what to do next year. We moved to Kfar Hanassi because we thought it was a place where we could stay until the end of the war. We thought the war would end within three months. It did not end, and it seems to be heading into a new school year. So we thought we would just continue here for another year, to give our children some stability. But now we’ve been told that there is no room for them in the regional school. Because of the many evacuees, the school does not have enough protected areas for all the children, and right now everyone who is defined as an evacuee has no place in school. And it really hurts because, what will we do, move again? So we’re on the waiting list, and we have to make a decision when we really don’t know… We don’t know when this will end, don’t know if my children will have a place, don’t know whether to stay or leave. Perhaps we’ll go somewhere else in the country, perhaps we’ll go abroad. We have friends who moved to Thailand, registered their children in an international school in Ko Samui. We intend to check the possibility of moving to Canada, which currently allows Israelis and Palestinians to obtain a work visa for three years. We’re considering all the options.
Living the War:
Sometimes I hear or read some talkback and I get a sense of detachment. For example, at some point we received a grant from the government for Passover, and someone responded and wrote, ‘The state is burning money for no reason, the evacuees are getting rich at our expense.’ And I wanted to reply to him and ask if he knows how much it costs to host a Passover seder when you don’t have a home to host it in.
In the end, our lives are not the same. They are not our regular lives, and we probably won’t go back to our regular lives. Even when the war ends and we can return home, it’s likely that a significant number of our community will not return. Overall, the social and economic fabric of our kibbutz and the north in general has been ruptured. Whatever we end up returning to, it won’t be what it was before. And it’s important to me that people know this. Even if in other parts of the country it seems that if you don’t watch the news you don’t know there’s a war – here we are living it.
Crossroads:
This situation is pushing us to examine all ideas. And maybe that’s actually a good thing. My routine is gone, I have no stable ground, it’s not there – I don’t have my home, I don’t have the education system, I don’t have the community; it’s forcing me to make choices, but then, everything is open. We are looking into everything, we are open to everything. And there’s something positive in that. This reality is forcing us to do things we wouldn’t do, because we would likely stay in our comfort zone. Now we find ourselves at a crossroads and I hope something good will come out of it.
Recovery:
Despite the personal upheaval my family is going through, and wherever it will take us, I am still active in the kibbutz management. We have now decided to start a fundraising campaign, both for essential equipment we need now – fire-fighting equipment, rescue and emergency equipment – and also for the future rehabilitation of the kibbutz, both physically and socially. For example, ‘Gan Tamar’ has been housing soldiers for eight months now, and with every passing day it looks a bit less like a kindergarten and a bit more like soldiers’ quarters, so it’s clear it will need refurbishment and restoration before children can use it again. The same goes for our community center and other cultural and educational buildings. We hope, for instance, to carry out comprehensive renovations to the community center of the kibbutz so that it can better serve the people who choose to return to the kibbutz after the war. Beyond that, we want to fundraise for mental support and community resilience, to support and strengthen the members of our community both now, during the war, and later, when it’s over.
We hope that after the war, when all this ends, people will want to return, and we are already making plans for rebuilding our home and community anew.
To make a donation:
The kibbutz movement has a recognized non-profit association through which donations specifically intended for Kibbutz Misgav-Am can be made. If you are interested in helping, please reply to this email and Bronfman will connect you with the fundraising team. Thankyou.
