It is not easy for Avi Freiman, the dairy farm manager at Kibbutz Alumim, to tell about the heavy damage suffered by the place and the heavy price paid by the workers on that black Saturday of October 7. But mostly, it is evident from the conversation with him, it is difficult for him to return to the moment when he left the safe room and rushed to the barn to see the horror up close.
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"I arrived at the scene and my eyes darkened, the situation was worse than I thought. It's all a sword. The cows didn't hurt, but they touched hard because they didn't get food and weren't milked for an entire day. I walked among the bodies of the workers, sat in a corner and burst into bitter tears for half an hour. Then I just picked myself up and decided that from here we start gathering strength and rehabilitating."
The barn was established in 1974. It is one of the most prominent and stable branches of production of the kibbutz. Over time, it grew and developed, and about a year and a half ago, an innovative milking institute was inaugurated there, purely high-tech. Most of the workers there are foreigners, along with Reifman and two other old friends from the kibbutz. Nothing prepared them for what happened a little over three weeks ago.
It was inaugurated only a year and a half ago. The Milking Institute in Alumim,
"At 6:30 a.m., the raid began," Reifman recalls. "We experienced the entry of about 20 terrorists from several different places, but fortunately, the infiltration was immediately identified by the alert squad, which waged a heroic battle against the terrorists. The force pushed their entrance to the residential area, but they spent all their anger and frustration on the agricultural area, focusing on the cowshed compound.
"At least ten terrorists gathered around the new milking parlor and fired an RPG missile at the Thai workers' quarters nearby. That's more than 30 workers who lived there – not just those who work in the dairy farm. Some were killed in their sleep, others fled to the standard safe room, but the terrorists entered it and massacred 19 workers in an instant, taking eight with them. Very few came out unscathed."
The terrorists, who cruelly sought to wreak as much destruction as possible, set fire to the two buildings, completely set fire to all the fodder intended for cows for the coming year, and burned the shuffle and the agricultural machine that prepares and sorts food for the cows. They pierced the milk tanks, set fire to the entire logistics area of the cowshed, including the office area, and destroyed the entire electrical system of the milking parlor. Fortunately, the iron skeleton of the institute remained intact, so the remaining workers were able to put the place to service within four days.
They didn't stand a chance. Workers' quarters,
Reifman heard about the terrible incident in the cowshed while he was with his family in the safe room for 30 hours. "I kept getting updates about smoke coming from the cowshed. One of the Thai workers spoke to me and said, 'Gaza, inside, a big mess, landlord, save me.' I also received pictures of the hayloft on fire, of the institute burning, of a pogrom. I told my wife that I was afraid to think about what I would see when I got there. Only on Sunday afternoon, when Alumim was completely evacuated, did I decide to stay on the kibbutz and go see the damage."
The key to recovery: speed
Today, the institute works in an emergency format with dairy volunteers, and instead of the burned fodder, the cowshed receives prepared food from an external food center. "We have a lot of work to do in herd rehabilitation," Reifman says. "It's a long road and comes with many obstacles, the most complex of which is the team issue. People are reluctant to work in agriculture. In times of war, volunteers come to help, but in a while everything will be over, and there will be no one to work.
"And of course the costs are very high, it's millions. I already know that property taxes do not intend to compensate us even half the value of the damages, and I believe that Tnuva, to whom we supply milk, will help us and hug us as much as possible - as they have been doing since the moment the disaster happened - but the responsibility is mainly on the state."
Tnuva, Kiryat Malachi, photo: Reuters
Tnuva's assistance to dairy farmers from the moment the war broke out was expressed professionally and financially, as part of a close relationship that lasted for decades. Among other things, the company's board of directors approved the establishment of a fund to support the dairy farms in the envelope, at a scope of about NIS 15 million, which will help rehabilitate the infrastructure and support the dairy farmers. Among the localities that the Foundation will support: Nir Oz, Nir Am, Nir Yitzhak, Sufa, Nahal Oz, Kissufim, Ein Hashlosha, Alumim, Yad Mordechai, Bror Hayil, Saad, Gevim and Yakini. In addition, the fund will examine every request received from the dairy farms in the area that were damaged as a direct result of the war.
"The importance of the aid fund is related to the fact that the sooner these dairy farms are rehabilitated, the greater their likelihood of returning to operation as they were before the war," explains Efri Raikin, director of raw milk and producer relations at Tnuva. "Working within the framework of the fund will be agile and efficient. I am already clarifying with all the dairy farmers what their needs are following the terrible event, and we will make sure that there is funding for repair, rehabilitation and renovation of everything necessary to restore the cowsheds to their strength.
Complete disconnect for hours. Raikin, Photo: Arik Sultan
"We know all the dairy farm staff and almost all the managers. The family is there for each other on good days and bad days, and now these are definitely very bad days. So we felt we had to help them as much as we could."
"If we give up - none of this will be"
The war also took its toll on the cowshed at Ein HaShlosha, where work stopped on the day the terrorists entered Israeli territory. In addition, a week later, a mortar struck her, causing significant damage. Regarding the drama experienced by the workers that Saturday, the dairy farm's manager, Danny Weiss, relates: "The staff members finished their morning milking and went home. The second team, which was supposed to continue the daily treatment, got caught up in 'Red Alert' and immediately entered the cowshed's safe room, where they were trapped for many hours."
It's hard to think long term. Weiss
On that day, the barn itself was not damaged, but the ongoing work was disrupted because it was impossible to continue the continuous milking. "For three days we couldn't enter the cowshed, so the cows weren't milked or fed," Weiss says. "The big cows get water automatically from the hose, but the small heifers manually, so I was worried that they would dry out completely. Luckily, the soldiers who arrived at the scene gave the little carts water, and that's what saved them."
A week after the attack, as mentioned, the cowshed suffered a direct hit by a mortar shell. In addition to the heavy damage to the building, three cows were killed and four others were wounded. Weiss: "We are concentrating on trying to return the place to daily work and work under all the restrictions, but not at 100% capacity. We milk only twice. We spilled huge amounts of milk for several days, because the trucks couldn't come regularly because of the security situation, which is very economically damaged. Also, cows that have suffered for several days, that have not received food regularly and that have not been milked, give less milk.
A column of tanks near the Gaza Strip, photo: AFP
"I believe that we will be helped by the aid fund established by Tnuva, and we also receive an auxiliary force of volunteers from the Cattle Breeders Association. Of course, we will also seek assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture. Always during security incidents, the dairy farmers and the alert squad were the only ones left at the front, but this time we also had to evacuate, and only after three days did we return. We still don't think about the long term – we don't know how long this security situation will last. We're dragging our feet and trying to hold on to what's there. If we give up, none of this will happen."
Day by day production is improving
Tnuva, as mentioned, works closely with the dairy farmers in the envelope and sees them as a significant force in Israel's steadfastness along the border. So it was clear that once that border was breached, they were there to help in whatever way they could. "In the afternoon we started trying to talk to all the milk producers in the area and prepare a status report," Raikin says of that Shabbat. "It is important to emphasize that in milk, unlike other types of agriculture, the element of time has a decisive significance. Production and processing continuity must be maintained in the minimum time. Any gap in work times is significant and causes milk loss, and may even lead to the loss of the possibility of continuing production in the cowshed. Therefore, in addition to taking care of the people themselves during the event, we wanted to understand from the professional aspect how we manage to maintain the continuity of work in the best possible way."
Dairy farms (archive), photo: Ancho Ghosh/Genie
Raikin says he and his people immediately realized that some of the cowsheds were in dire straits. "There was fighting, terrorists entered the kibbutz area and also the cowshed area, there was a complete disconnect with the people. As of today, only two cowsheds still do not produce milk: the first is in Kibbutz Kissufim, where the cowshed was completely destroyed, the cowshed manager was murdered and the milking facility was vandalized, so it was decided to remove all the cows from there. Today this barn simply does not exist, and we do not know about the future. The second cowshed is in Nahal Oz, where the cows have not been milked for almost two weeks and are trying to slowly return to normal, and it is possible that this week we will be able to return to producing milk there. The rest of the cowsheds have partial activity. The optimistic side is that production is improving day by day."
In the early days of the war, Raikin says, milk collection was very problematic because of the danger to the crews. "We were in contact with the Home Front Command, the tankers waited hours for permits, some had to return without a permit. The milk transporters showed determination and courage, and as soon as the smallest window of opportunity opened, they entered the communities, collected the milk and left quickly at risk.
Israeli Air Force bombings in Gaza. Iron Swords War, Photo: AP
"Dairy farmers are in a state of mental turmoil. You talk to them about rehabilitating the cowshed, and they expand on the subject and say that they don't even know if there will be a kibbutz here, if they will return, if they will be able to guarantee them and their families basic personal security after the fighting. The attempt to return the cowsheds to routine is part of coping, but it enters a much broader complex of rehabilitation of the envelope.
"I see a lot of determination in them, and it stems from the connection between the dairy farmer and the cows. It's more than a livelihood, it's a lifestyle, really part of it. In general, dairy farmers always feel that they are part of the front, and it is no coincidence that they always stay here during security events. This time they were also evacuated in the first few days, which was very significant.
"I think the barn gives them some traction, a bright spot to impart some dimension of sanity and a return to normal. It's very hard for them – friends, colleagues, neighbors and family members have been murdered or kidnapped – but they're trying to hold on to something, and maybe the barn is a form of therapy."
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