'Death on every corner': Jonathan Dekel-Chen slams IDF for Nir Oz's destruction

A lack of IDF support on October 7 caused the "miracle in the desert" community of Nir Oz to be almost fully destroyed by Hamas, Prof. Jonathan Dekel-Chen, told Tamar Uriel-Beeri on The Jerusalem Post Podcast. 

Dekel-Chen criticized the IDF for not sending any support as terrorists attacked, noting that when Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, the residents were left to fight off the attackers themselves, with not a single IDF soldier arriving later in the afternoon.

The lack of IDF support caused the small kibbutz to suffer heavy loses.

"We had a massive number of hostages taken, 79 hostages, because no one was there to interfere," Dekel-Chen said. "Our very small civilian security team [emergency standby squad] was overwhelmed somewhere around 9:00 in the morning, being vastly outnumbered by what turned out to be 200 terrorist commandos... and several hundred looters, mostly civilians but some of them armed as well."

This huge terrorist onslaught seemingly outnumbered the kibbutz itself, which Dekel-Chen said was home to just 400 people beforehand. The end result is the near total destruction of the community.

"When one goes near Nir Oz today, all they can see is utter destruction," he said. "Only four buildings in the entire kibbutz were not destroyed in some measure, either shot up and looted or burned to the ground by the terrorists or the civilian looters."

He described the loss of life that took place that day, including that of his son Sagui, who was one of the ones who raised the alarm as the terrorists attacked. 

"A little after 6:30 in the morning, he saw a group of terrorists walking into the kibbutz, heavily armed, heavily trained," Dekel-Chen said. "He, along with some other people who were up early that morning, put out the alarm to the kibbutz, not one of them understanding at that moment the extent to which the kibbutz was about to undergo the worst possible trauma."

The destruction of Nir Oz

The fate of the kibbutz is one of near total destruction, nearly fully razing a home to around 400 people.

Dekel-Chen lauded it as a model of the old cooperative spirit behind the original kibbutzim. 

"We made most of our living through agriculture. It was still kind of the kibbutz archetype," he said. "It was like walking through a botanical garden, just spectacularly beautiful, a kind of miracle, a true miracle in the desert."

Life in the kibbutz before October 7 was "95% paradise, 5% hell," Dekel-Chen explained. "And the 5% hell had really been in effect since Hamas staged a coup in Gaza in 2007 and almost immediately began firing into Israel."

During that time, the residents had to evacuate the kibbutz on multiple occasions, often with little support from the government. But none of that was enough to prepare them for October 7.

"It's a site of death on every corner in every home," he said. "I know exactly who was murdered. We had 51 people murdered that day in Nir Oz. Many of their bodies were taken to Gaza. Many of them still remain there. There's not a single square meter on the kibbutz that I don't associate with that massacre and the horrors and the bravery of that small number of young men who did what they could in an impossible situation and were either killed in combat, executed, or taken hostage."

"It is a place that is no more, no less, than a killing field. And the people of Nir Oz still have yet to decide... if and how the kibbutz is going to be rebuilt."

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