But the silence did nothing to dampen the memories of what had happened here seven weeks earlier when I, my wife and three children endured 16 hours in our safe room during the attack.
This is a community. It’s supposed to be full of life and activity, like the sound of children laughing as they play and ride their bikes outside. Instead, the atmosphere was that of an abandoned ghost town, which is exactly what it is now.
The house was dirty and the silence deafening. As I came to our safety room, which is my youngest child Adam’s bedroom, memories of the fear and terror we experienced in this small space came flooding back.
A shiver went through my spine. I asked myself how we’d ever be able to live here again.
I also wondered how I’d get through the next three days that I planned to be here. I didn’t sleep very well.The next morning I drove to the dairy farm at Kibbutz Holit, which had suffered even worse horrors than ours.
The Thai workers’ accommodation area was totally destroyed. Metal structures were burned and blackened. A wooden building was a pile of ash.
What was the centre of life for our amazing group of foreign workers had been reduced to a site of total destruction.
The Thais were a central part of the team at Holit. But now they are gone. Some were murdered, others kidnapped. The rest have returned home to Thailand, as have the Cambodian students, one of whom was also killed.
The destruction caused by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Re'im on October 7, 2023 (Photo by Yossi Zamir/Flash90)Flash90
The Bedouin workers were kidnapped and are still missing, and the Israelis from the area like me were evacuated.
The farm has suffered terrible damage, on the face of it irreversible.
I walked around and met the manager. He’d bravely been there almost every day and so has the new manager who’s supposed to replace him soon. These two men are heroes.
Then I was introduced to the volunteers who have come together to help us out in our hour of need: people from different backgrounds and different parts of the country, men and women from 17 to 70-plus.
Some have dairy farm or technical experience, others have none. But all of them have positive energy, enthusiasm, optimism and willingness to do whatever they can to help.
These are the most amazing group of people I’ve ever met, volunteering to do an extremely difficult and demanding job, but in a damaged farm, in a war zone, with rocket sirens and explosions going off all around them.
Along with the few remaining staff, they have saved the farm. Meeting these heroes is what gave me hope for the first time since October 7.
They assured me that the farm will survive. They promised me that the region will recover and that maybe not yet, but one day, life here will return.
I went back to our kibbutz feeling a lot happier. And unlike the previous day, I saw some people there, who like me had come back to the area for their work, leaving their families in the safety of their hotels in Eilat. It was still quiet and dark but it felt less eerie.
As I set off two days later for the long drive back to Eilat, people were working in the fields.
Tractors were driving back and forth, people were walking among the crops and irrigation sprinklers were pouring life back into the fields. It was then I knew we would survive.
