With apologies to a ravaged family: walking in the carnage of Be’eri

I wasn’t invited into your home, and I might never have been, nor would I have met you. When I visited the remains of Kibbutz Be’eri, along the Gaza border, I came out of the need to tell the world your story. I want to apologize for trampling into your private life. I am a journalist, but I am human. Trying to understand your plight, I seek to understand the incomprehensible: those who took your life.

The ashes of war were all over me as I stepped into your home and surveyed the horrific deeds the barbaric Hamas did to your home on the morning of Oct. 7. The refrigerator was adorned with magnets, a practice I too enjoy, as do so many families, who view the fridge as a place for their memories.

But here they were scorched beyond recognition, melted by the burning heat of the fire the terrorists ignited. I wanted to see who lived in this home, where the table was set for the Sabbath and the holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah. Everything was coated in hues of gray.

A misshapen plastic pillbox on the kitchen counter, with tinges of color offsetting the ash gray; food still in the fridge; children’s shoes scorched and smoke-stained on a shelf abutting a bedroom, a closet full of clothes in what was the parents’ bedroom, and a child’s stuffed animal lying on a shelf, one of the few remnants of the last moments of this family’s history.

This home is representative of the many families that were attacked: the Haran, Kipnis, Shoham, Avigdori families; the family of 8-year-old Emily Hand, who was murdered by the terrorist intruders. That day more than 120 people on Kibbutz Be’eri were murdered in cold blood, and an unknown number were kidnapped. That day more than 1,400 Israeli civilians were dragged out, shot, beaten, raped, beheaded and burned alive.

Civilians of Israel and Gaza

The plight of the Gazans is one none of us would want nor can we imagine: 2 million people in densely packed neighborhoods, many living in squalor and often challenged with only a few hours of working electricity and running water. Many innocent civilians are being killed as the Israeli army retaliates while Gaza’s Hamas rulers hide behind their subjects.

The Hamas-ruled enclave was given the plush lands of Gush Katif when Israel evacuated unilaterally in 2005 and with it the highly developed farms and fertile greenhouses that the Israelis left behind. The Gazans’ benevolent overseers burned them. Where was Hamas when it came even to the humanity of its own people?

As Israel opened its gates to 20,000 Gazan workers each day, it was people like you who employed them, enabling families from across the border to earn a living. It wasn’t Egypt opening its borders for Palestinian workers. And it was your neighbors’ families who built relationships and trust with their Gazan neighbors. A trust that might have cost them their lives.

The tactical handbooks that Hamas created for their warriors from hell were so precise in describing how to take hostages, the details of every unit’s hat and the weapons they may seize. The firsthand knowledge of the Israeli base lying along the border, the operational command center, its cameras, and the layout of the kibbutzim aligning the border is disturbing.

A security breach many will be questioning and writing about for decades and one for which many will pay. It is exactly the question one should be asking of the workers who might have collected intelligence and that should be asked by the Israelis who put their lives down on the border protecting Israel, who put humanity first and ended up trusting the very terrorists who might have killed them, directly or indirectly.

There is no equivalence in weighing a life of terror versus humanity. War is ugly but there are lines that should not erode the fabric of civilization. More than 200 hostages are presumably disbursed throughout Gaza and will be used as the greatest bargaining chips the world has seen.

As I write this, two US hostages were released in what is portrayed as a sign of goodwill, crediting efforts to broker a deal by Qatar. But many are skeptical, warning that this "grand gesture" is in reality a cynical war tactic.

Hamas is a cunning and sophisticated human war machine that methodically outsmarted the brilliant Israeli army the day it sent thousands across Israel’s borders. As the days of war progress and the stories emerge, the true strategy of this designated terrorist organization will become clear. Front and center in most of the world’s media outlets, the more than 1,000 media members who “parachuted” into Israel should not inadvertently become part of the Hamas arsenal.

It is the responsibility of a civilized world to recognize and note atrocities and to distinguish between downright evil and the “ethics of war.” Moral equivalency is not an option, a page that should not appear in this handbook. The terrorists had no ethics and no respect for life.

The lives lost by the family that lived in this home and so many others like them not only should not be in vain, but they deserve respect, even in death. Many years from now, when the history of this small nation is remembered, it is the civilians and so many young men and women who were robbed of their lives, who will be immortalized. And for what?

Standing amid piles of memories with ashes on my feet, I hope the world can still differentiate between good and evil and not whitewash away the lives of so many innocent victims.

Felice Friedson is president and CEO of The Media Line news agency and founder of the Press and Policy Student Program, the Mideast Press Club, and the Women’s Empowerment Program. She can be reached at felice@themedialine.org.

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