One thing is to reproduce the information from press reports and what was posted on social networks, another is to feel it and tour the scene of the events where even in the destruction you can perceive the atmosphere of the hours lived by those who were tortured with absolute sadism. , physically and mentally before being executed, some in the presence of family members.
The experience was lived first-hand by a group of Hispanic journalists from the US and Latin America, invited by the non-profit organization Fuente Latina that promotes the cause of the Israeli people in the world and combats anti-Semitism.
Hamas is a group that promotes the disappearance of the state of Israel and acts accordingly, but this attack, although probable, was surprising, due to the way in which it was carried out, due to the scope and power demonstrated, which opens the question to other questions. Who is behind this group of extremists who have hijacked the flag of Islam to commit crimes and hide behind the Palestinian population sheltered in Gaza to say that they represent them?
What the Israeli army says
Army spokesman Major Roni Kaplan described how before this attack there was a good neighborly relationship between the populations settled in the Kibbutzim in the southern part of the country and the residents in the Gaza area.
“The head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, while a prisoner in Israel, was operated on for a brain tumor by an Israeli doctor, which saved his life, the major described. Today Sinwar is considered the strategist who led the attacks against Israel on October 7.”
“We knew that Hamas had these intentions. When Hamas emerged in 1987, it always said that Israel would exist until it was eliminated. Even that any peace exercise would be a mere exercise in futility, he acknowledged. However, we had no information that they had the capacity to do so, or attempt to do so.”
Serious failure of Intelligence
For Major Kaplan, a descendant of survivors of the Jewish Holocaust, what happened on October 7 was a very important failure of the Israeli army, intelligence and defense, “I would say one of the most important failures in recent decades.”
“There is a big gap between what happened and what should have happened. As in every democratic country there will be investigations, and responsibilities will be defined, now, we are focused on the war effort; The time for lessons learned will come, there is no doubt that the country will not be the same after October 7th.
“You cannot kill the idea of the caliphate that Hamas promotes, but you can decimate it until the strength that sustains it can be recovered and that is what we are doing,” he said.
Dismantle Hamas
Among the civilians interviewed, we spoke with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, vice mayor of Jerusalem, who made a very precise definition that also warns of the economic consequences that the displacement of the populations whose neighborhoods were devastated by the terrorist attack is having for this nation.
“We will not be able to return to the south if Hamas is not dismantled, that is where the rural communities are. It is where 60% of all the fruit and vegetables in the country are harvested. At this moment there is no manpower, the Thais who were doing it escaped, those who could, because Hamas beheaded one of them and showed it to the others. There were about 50,000 Thais working in agriculture here.
“Now we have a logistical problem because the south is abandoned. That is why we have to dismantle Hamas to return and rebuild the south.
In an assessment of the facts, the vice mayor of the historic city warns.
“Now we are focused on the war, but one day after the war there will be a lot of talk, a lot of investigation to determine how this could have happened. Because the haters aren’t stupid, they knew exactly what was going on here. Internal division is something very negative. There were many factors that led us to this moment. Internal division. We granted 20,000 work permits to Gazans, we believed that if they received a little economic prosperity that would bring calm, but, evidently, sufficient protection was not put in place against the risk of this transfer,” he assessed.
Meanwhile, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum laments that in her country she perceives “a national trauma, an enormous sadness.
“We built this country so that the horrific scene of the Holocaust would never be repeated and that is exactly what we are experiencing on a smaller scale. There is no fear, we are strong people, but there is national trauma.”
“We have a moral obligation to the people that the government, the country, abandoned, at the time they had to protect them,” he acknowledged.
A few steps from Gaza
At Kibbutz Or Haner Eduardo Polonski had gone to sleep early Saturday morning, after having dinner with his wife, and he remembers that at 6:30 the red alarm went off.
“We heard the explosion of the projectiles on the iron dome and we returned to bed, but we began to hear shots from automatic weapons and that was already beyond what we theoretically consider ‘normal.’
“My oldest son, who is 40 years old, told us that there was a special situation; 10 minutes later he told me that Kibbutz Erez, located very close, had warned on the radio that they had been invaded. There was a member of the first response group who died and there were wounded and they had no possibility of stopping the offensive because they had run out of ammunition.”
Polonski explained that the Kibbutz defense forces are nothing more than civilians with basic training, but not enough to confront a heavily armed group like Hamas invaded that day.
“I remember that I was 6 or 7 years old and in Argentina I always heard about the exploits of the Israeli army,” he commented. Until Saturday, October 7, I told the world about the strength of the Israeli army, that if our responses to the offensives were not bigger or stronger it is because we tried to be moderate, however, since that Saturday I cannot give the same response, he valued.
“Since that day, the most natural thing, to welcome my grandchildren to my family at my house to eat a barbecue, I cannot do it, nor do I know when my children and grandchildren want to return to this area and feel safe. On Saturday there was the attack, on Monday we received the order to evacuate the Kibbutz.
And after this reflection that is made with a lot of nostalgia in his gaze, Polonsky, who left his country of birth during the military dictatorship, questions, “until now we wonder what happened.”
In his opinion, “there are two options: that someone did not want to be there, very tenaciously, decided not to be there that Saturday; the other, the arrogance, not only of the army, but of the country, from the prime minister to the last citizen, to say and believe we can, and in the first turn, we see what happened.”
However, his conviction is clear, “I have no choice, this is a war for the subsistence of the Jewish state in the world.
And he adds, “our political line until Saturday, October 7, was peace. We know that you cannot kill even the last soldier who fights for ideals, even if they are erroneous ideas, even if they do not coincide with mine. No matter how many Hamas soldiers we kill, I am aware that this does not end with the war, the war has to set guidelines so that someone in the world realizes that this has to end in a different way. That someone realizes that there is a people, that of Gaza, that needs help to be liberated that will not be able to do so by their own means as long as this intervention by Hamas continues, with the support of either Iran, Russia or China, the world has to realize. Israel doesn’t have to be inside Gaza, but there has to be someone to help these people (Gaza residents) rise up and govern themselves, form a way of life that promises them and us a better life.”
Where was our Army?
Galia Sapher, who survived with her family hiding in the bunker that was her daughters’ room, says, “On October 7, we were wondering where our forces were, our Police, we didn’t understand where they were, why they abandoned us to our fate.
At this moment, she is sheltered in a hotel in the capital, she firmly assures, “we have zero confidence that they will tell us that you will return home and everything will be fine.”
And with the power granted to her by being a mother who saw her family’s survival in danger, she sends a strong message:
“How dare you tell me to have confidence, if from the northernmost point to the southernmost point of the country it takes eight hours, and where were you when they were massacring us?”
They didn’t take care of us
Itzy Horn, who lost track of the days and nights since her children were kidnapped by Hamas, says, “the only thing that keeps me moderately sane is telling the story, knowing that with what I do I help the topic remain relevant.” , demand and hope that all the hostages are released.”
The claim of Horn, a history professor, Argentine relocated to Israel, expresses a similar claim regarding the actions of the authorities on the day of the attacks.
“The state’s contract is to take care of its citizens and they did not do it, 1,400 deaths is reliable proof, now the obligation is to remove the hostages from Gaza, absolutely all of them, those who were taken alive and the corpses that were taken for negotiate.
“Many of those killed in the Kibbutz were people working on projects to improve the lives of people in Gaza. What happened leaves many lessons.”
Special Envoy
