My haunting visit to Israel’s bloodstained kibbutzim – and my despair that Hamas’s monstrosity has been all but forgotten in the clamour for a ceasefire

Feb 25, 2024 by Jill

by Lisa Nathan, Daily Mail:

The small humble concrete building at a kibbutz on the Gazan border was once home to a young couple. Their names were Sivan Elkabets and Naor Hassidim, both were 23.

Now it lies ransacked and desolate, the walls and ceilings riddled with dozens of bullet holes, the furniture stained with the blood from their mutilated body parts: the terrible evidence of the crimes committed by Hamas militants who had brought untold horror into their community on October 7.

That devastation is replicated everywhere in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a once-thriving neighbourhood now transformed into a sombre mess of burnt, ransacked and vandalised buildings – a ghastly memorial to the 67 members of the Kibbutz’s once 950-strong community who were murdered that day. Five were taken hostage and remain in captivity more than four months later – after what was, undeniably, the worst terrorist attack on Israeli soil in the past 50 years.

Back in my London home, my middle-class neighbourhood is populated by security cameras and alarms. It has always felt a world away from the barriers, barbed wire and armed military that are needed to protect Israeli civilians from those who want to see them annihilated.

The reality is that, as both a proud British woman and proud Jew, the events of recent months – and people’s reactions – have forced me and Britain’s Jewish community to confront a wave of growing anti-Semitism.

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