If you don’t look around too closely, you can see why the residents of Kfar Aza once called their home 95 per cent heaven, 5 per cent hell.
The low-rise white houses are stunning. Sofas and barbecues outside speak of an idyllic life. The gardens are well-manicured, there’s birdsong.
But today that’s punctuated with the buzz of drones overhead, the booms of artillery and crackle of bullets.
Each house has various signs graffitied on, left over from when the IDF was liberating the kibbutz. There is a sign to say how many dead bodies were found inside. Many of the exteriors show signs of battle; from a spray of bullets to a fire. The area of the kibbutz that was the home of people aged between 18 to 30 – where there was a birthday party which went on until 3am on October 7 – was the hardest hit.
What remains of many of the small dwellings there are shells. They feature posters outside of those who were brutally murdered inside. It a ghost town in every way.
For the past 12 months most of the residents of Kfar Aza have been living in a resort close to Tel Aviv called Shefayim. A temporary kibbutz has been set up in the grounds of another kibbutz, Ruhama, which would mean that at least the children can go back to their old schools. But they will be living in caravans for the foreseeable future.
A few residents have gone back. Barbara Cohen, a Brit who moved to Kfar Aza 40 years ago when she was 19, is working there. The well-manicured gardens are Barbara’s handiwork. She oversees groups of volunteers who want to help those hit on October 7.
It is a simple but important thing for those who have lost so much – 64 of Kfar Aza’s 950 residents were killed and 19 were taken hostage, with five still being held in Gaza. Two of Barbara’s closest friends are still missing their loved ones – Mandy Damari’s daughter Emily was taken, as was Aviva Siegel’s husband Keith. Mother-of-four Barbara knows she cannot lessen their pain – but she can tend to their gardens.
“The first time I came back I was with Mandy and I saw her garden was completely overgrown and it affected her,” says Barbara. “At the same time, we’d been approached by a group who said they had 15 volunteers who wanted to come and help in the kibbutz. Asking them to help maintain the private gardens was my idea. We renovated the old children’s house for the volunteers to sleep in and now people come from all over the world to help.”
Barbara works there five days a week, often starting at 5am to beat the scorching heat.
“When people come back to their houses and see the grass has been mowed, the bushes have been cut and someone’s watered the plants they get very emotional. It really is amazing.” Today there are still question marks over what Kfar Aza and the other Gaza envelope kibbutzim will be like when – if – residents are able to return. The biggest question is over safety. “We can’t move on, and many people have said they can’t contemplate returning until the hostages are back,” says Barbara. “There’s a lot of discussion about what to do about the houses where people were killed. Everything is very difficult.
"We are a long way from recovering.”
