Shachar and Ayelet Kohn are the only people who have returned to Kfar Aza, near the Gaza border.
More than five months after the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, the kibbutz with almost 800 inhabitants is a ghost town.
Sixty-three innocents were murdered here. All survivors except the Kohns are gone.
Shachar and Ayelet, in their late 50s, now serve as guides for journalists like me, who come from all over the world to see evidence of Hamas’s atrocities.
Shachar could be mistaken for a suburban American father, except for the date 07.10.23 tattooed on the inside of his forearm. He leads my group of various international media through the rubble-strewn streets.
Photos of the dead are displayed on banners stretched over houses with bullet holes.
Sivan Elkabets and Naor Hasidim were only 23 years old – a couple since their teenage years. They were dragged from the safe room of their small home and murdered on the living room couch.
The misery is suffocating.
Why would Sachar come back?
“I can’t be a refugee in my own country,” he told us matter-of-factly.
If Jews cannot live freely in Israel – where else can they do so?
More than five months after the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, the kibbutz with almost 800 inhabitants is a ghost town. (Above: Memorial to Hamas victims in Kfar Aza, near the Gaza border)
Shachar (above) and Ayelet Kohn are the only people who have returned to Kfar Aza, near the Gaza border.
Shachar could be mistaken for a suburban American father, except for the date 07.10.23 tattooed on the inside of his forearm.
Before visiting this great nation’s month, I never considered myself a Zionist (a supporter of a self-governing Jewish state).
I have long supported the only democracy in the Middle East and although I was raised Catholic, I have always been proud of my Jewish heritage.
Yet Zionism felt a bit extreme.
Maybe I felt I was too sophisticated and cosmopolitan to take sides in an age-old feud. Zionists were old men like my grandfather, who had bookshelves full of Judaica, drawings of Ben Shahn on the walls and, I thought, paranoia in their heads.
It is now clear to me that I was the one who got caught up in irrational thinking.
Zionism is not an option for Jews.
It is a last resort.
Inside an Israeli military base in Tel Aviv, I am shown images of the October 7 massacres.
Many of these filmed horrors have been written about before – but they bear repeating.
Home surveillance cameras captured the moment Hamas assassins threw a grenade into a bomb shelter where a father huddled with his three young sons.
A moment later, only two boys walked out.
“Daddy is dead,” the twelve-year-old says to his younger brother. “It’s not a joke.”
“I know it’s not a joke,” the 10-year-old replies. He is blind in one eye.
‘Why do I live?’ the older boy cries.
Some of the videos that the Israeli army is now showing to journalists are made by the terrorists themselves.
In these images, these devils rejoice with eerie glee and take selfies with corpses.
But these monsters are not singing ‘Free Palestine.’ They don’t celebrate the death of Israelis.
Sivan Elkabets and Naor Hasidim were only 23 years old – a couple since their teenage years. They were dragged from the safe room of their small home and murdered on the living room couch.
More than five months after the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, the kibbutz with almost 800 inhabitants is a ghost town. (Mourners at funeral for victims killed in Kfar Aza)
A soldier looks on in a house full of bullets after the deadly attack by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip on October 7 in Kibbutz Kfar Aza
No, they are cheering because they ‘killed a Jew’.
Israel’s enemies are not fighting for their own liberation. They want to exterminate Jews, in Israel or anywhere else.
My grandfather wasn’t paranoid. To him, the Holocaust was a living memory, not a TV show on the History Channel.
He understood the phenomenon we are witnessing today. That when the world leans toward chaos and democracy retreats, anti-Semitism rises like a foul stench.
Jews live as a religious minority in every country on Earth except one, and are thus always vulnerable to the whims of the majority when evil is afoot.
To the north, on the border with Lebanon, I, wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet, see the abandoned homes of more than 60,000 Israelis, forced to flee as Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, launches missiles across the border.
Buildings in once quiet communities lie in ruins. Others have now become makeshift IDF army barracks.
Here it is an active combat zone.
But in the US, just this month, the Democratic leader of the Senate gave a speech undermining Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war efforts.
Everyone I have spoken to in Israel, from top officials to taxi drivers and people in the local cafes, knows that this war is a fight for survival.
As I enter Jerusalem on the last day of my trip, I think of my grandfather again. He fought in Korea and served as a rabbi in Vietnam. He traveled the world, but never set foot in this ancient citadel. (Above: Mark in Jerusalem)
Thousands of years of conflict, from the crushing fall of the Temple, to the clatter of the Crusade, to the scimitar roar of Saladin and the echo of artillery from 1948, 1967 and 1973, live and breathe in the City of David.
It cannot end without destroying Hamas. These terrorists and their allies must know that they will be worse off after October 7, or they will attack again… and again… until the Jewish state is gone.
But fickle American politics has moved away from this reality.
A new poll shows that 38 percent of American adults believe Netanyahu’s handling of the war has been appropriate, while 34 percent say it is unacceptable. That three out of ten could be important for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
So the Democrats are telling the only nation committed to the survival of the Jewish people to back away from their own defense.
As I enter Jerusalem on the last day of my trip, I think of my grandfather again.
He fought in Korea and served as a rabbi in Vietnam. He traveled the world, but never set foot in this ancient citadel.
Standing in front of the Catholic Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I hear the Islamic call to prayer just steps away from the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.
Thousands of years of conflict, from the crushing fall of the Temple, to the clatter of the Crusade, to the scimitar roar of Saladin and the echo of artillery from 1948, 1967 and 1973, live and breathe in the City of David.
It is a testament to the spirit of the Jews, who will never stop fighting for their survival.
For centuries, my ancestors said during Passover, “next year in Jerusalem.”
Well, this Catholic boy came there.
And now he is a proud Zionist.