For as long as I can remember, there has always been a camera in the house. Dad was an amateur photographer and was always chasing us to catch a photo, to document. Slowly, at some point, I too got caught up in it. Since my teenage years, I've been chasing everyone else with the lens. I can't remember the last time I was without any camera on me.
When you live on Kibbutz Nir Oz, there is always something beautiful to photograph. In summer all the guys are in the pool or on the grass. Holidays and events with everyone, just like in the beautiful songs of Shalom Hanoch and Meir Ariel. In winter, the skies turn blue and the clouds come, and the flat expanses of the northern Negev suddenly gain perspective, after scorching months of gray summer skies. It feels like eternity, summer at the edge of the desert, and then the rain finally comes, leaving the world clean and full of colors.
A clean world saturated with colors. Rainbow and irrigation in the field, photo: Shahar Vahav
It doesn't happen much, it doesn't rain much in Nir Oz, so every drop has meaning. A real holiday for farmers, and also for those behind the lens. I've always been both – sometimes a farmer who takes pictures, and sometimes a photographer who works in the field on vacation from school.
Since my teenage years, I've been chasing everyone with the lens. I can't remember when I was without a camera. When you live on Kibbutz Nir Oz, there is always something beautiful to photograph. In summer all the guys are in the pool or on the grass. Holidays and events with everyone, just like in the beautiful songs of Shalom Hanoch and Meir Ariel
I've traveled to all sorts of places around the world, but winter sunsets like Nir Oz are nowhere else. The fields are flat, there isn't even a small hill to cut through the open space - and it's always fierce there in the background, always just below the setting sun in the west. You can't get away with it. The landscape of villages and mosques, of the houses that always look like no one has finished building and painting. Always in the middle, between the camera and the horizon.
It feels like eternity, summer at the edge of the desert. Sunflowers in the field, photo: Shahar Vahav
Such a winter. Sunset in the fields, photo: Shahar Vahav
It doesn't happen much, it doesn't rain much in Nir Oz, so every drop has meaning. A real holiday for farmers, and also for those behind the lens. I've always been both of them – sometimes a farmer who takes pictures, and sometimes a photographer who works in the field on vacation from school
Then came the wave of looters
I photographed quite a bit of the gaze straight from the kibbutz to the west. The path of fields through which Hamas terrorists arrived that Saturday and on which they also returned to Gaza, driving in every vehicle they managed to loot from the kibbutz. Vehicles are overloaded with various strange items they stole, and many of our friends we are still looking for.
On Friday night, I was on duty guarding the kibbutz. At 06:00 A.M., they come off guard, but I lingered a bit near the agricultural tools shed. The sun rises from the east just above the tractors and there is a nice frame there to catch. I didn't have time to take pictures, red alert sirens and incessant rocket barrages forced me to run to the small shelter outside the garage. The Migonit is such a concrete cube with an opening without a door, full of old things that have found no other place. Suddenly, I heard people around me, speaking in Arabic, and then shots and explosions.
Partial solar eclipse over Gaza. It is impossible to avoid this horizon, Photo: Shahar Vahav
In WhatsApp groups and on the kibbutz network, messages begin to flow, getting worse from minute to minute. You've heard the story, the minutes have turned into hours and the messages don't stop. That's what I had, written messages and what I heard. I didn't dare peek out of Fatah, Hamas terrorists sat outside the shelter, singing to themselves and talking on the phone. I heard vehicles approaching, coming and going, I recognized the engine noise of motorcycles I don't know from the kibbutz.
I've traveled to all sorts of places around the world, but winter sunsets like Nir Oz are nowhere else. The fields are flat, there isn't even a small hill to cut through the open space - and it's always fierce there in the background, just below the sun setting in the west
Then came the wave of looters, trying to move tractors and tools in the shed. I know the noise of every starter in our shed and try to understand what's going on from the sounds and messages on the phone. Every few minutes I sent an update to the field crops group: "They're taking the big John Deer", "Breaking into the garage, taking tools", "They're approaching here, they're messing with the shovel". I had not yet understood the magnitude of the attack, and I thought that the information I was providing could help the alert squad and the military forces that came to fight. In retrospect, I understood that at that stage the alert squad was no longer a squad, and that no military forces had reached Nir Oz at any stage of the attack.
"Your tractors, they're in Gaza!" The agricultural tools before they were stolen, photo: Shahar and Hev
"They're taking the great John Deere ." Security camera in the kibbutz, photo: from News 12
But there was no one
While I was hidden in Migonit, I started getting TikTok videos from friends. "Your tractors, you can see by Nir Oz's stickers, are in Gaza!" Tractor and tractor, quite new and shiny like this, on which the looters from Gaza drive tirelessly. Dozens of Palestinians sit on the potato planter and go wild with joy in the streets of the villages. A beautiful and expensive tool in bright red, the splendor of agricultural technology from Germany, which allows us to sow thousands of dunams with impressive precision and at the right time.
"What are they going to do with her?" I think to myself. Even we were sent to special training in Germany just to learn how to operate it. "Just, just," I thought. For years we've been working in the fields and farmers on the other side of us are on a donkey or an old tractor, waving goodbye and waving back. They, too, must have come to Nir Oz that day.
Meanwhile, in Migonit, I'm trying to make sense of the world around me by hearing, to peer at my phone's camera through some hole. Thinking about how to use the knowledge of optics to maybe see something, to turn the shield into a camera obscura somehow, imaginations.
I only went out in the evening. Wahab Bmigonit,
But can't move, not even sit. Terrorists are outside and I have to be quiet. Suddenly, a message from my mother said, "Dad was shot."
"Okay," I replied, "I'll bounce whoever needs to help." But there was no one who could help.
A message from my wife: "There are people in the house, trying to open the safe room!"
"Okay," I replied, "stay inside with the door locked." Pretending to be cool, being practical is my sanity. Luckily, two years ago, my wife insisted on installing an internal bolt in the safe room, such reinforced iron into the wall. I thank her for it every day, that's why they're still alive.
Meanwhile, in Migonit, I'm trying to make sense of the world around me by hearing, to peer at my phone's camera through some hole. Thinking about how to use the knowledge of optics to maybe see something, to turn the Migonit into a camera obscura somehow, imaginings
And I'm standing. Standing and waiting. At any moment, terrorists may enter the shelter, they are literally half a meter next to me. Opens a camera on your phone and plays video capture. Don't know why, let there be documentation. Someone will already see it if something happens to me. If there are red alert sirens or battles start with the military forces, they will definitely go into the shields, that's what I would do in their place.
But I maintain such a false composure, and mostly think about my son. Not about what might happen to him, which I preferred to push out of my thoughts, but about what had already happened to him. That's what scorched my heart at that moment. He's already lost his innocence, she'll never be the same again, and he's not yet 7 years old.
This picture was not easy to grasp, I was especially looking for a place with a small fold of ground, where I could take a picture with the child without the Gaza skyline. A small corner where we can forget for a moment what we live next to, and enjoy only the sunset and the beautiful wheat fields
We messed up big time if our son had to go through wars. Shahar and his 7-year-old son, Photo: Shahar and Hehav
We messed up big time if our son had to go through wars. In fact, he goes through them from the day he is born. Once or twice a year there is such a war, as if no drama and Chick Check return home to the affairs of the day.
Now we won't get back to business so soon. There is talk of two years of restoration and construction. I am infuriated by this destruction, half a day of rampage destroyed hundreds of lives.
We messed up big time if our son had to go through wars. In fact, he goes through them from the day he is born. Once or twice a year there is such a war, as if no drama and Chick Check return home to the affairs of the day. Now we won't get back to business so soon
We are normative people. Farmers, artists and everything in between. They want to create and grow, not destroy and destroy. After the friends who disappeared and the kibbutz that burned down, the great crisis is that they stole our dream from under our feet. The little piece of paradise that is only ours, the one we have laboriously built over decades, our safe place. I've never locked the front door, and now my son watches the "Forget Me Home" movies and plans how he makes funny traps for terrorists. He no longer goes to sleep without all the doors and windows locked on a bolt.
They stole our dream from under our feet, Photo: Shahar Vahav
Farmers, artists and everything in between. Kibbutz Nir Oz on other days, photo: Shahar Vahav
I'm writing all this in Paris, while my father Yossi is being buried in Israel. I'm watching the funeral live in the background. My wife is French, not even Jewish, what about her and these wars? So right after the incident we flew to France. Feel far away from family and friends, but also feel safe. What I have left are the pictures.
For three decades I have been photographing everything around me in Nir Oz. The terrorists took my cameras and my father's cameras, they left my computer, so good friends extracted my backup from the house. A lifetime of photography that is more important to me than all the objects in the house. Your eyes see.
Want to create and grow. Tractors in Sdot Nir Oz, Photo: Shahar Vahav
All with luggage
I didn't leave the shelter until evening, after dark. The military came to rescue me 13 hours later, while the alert sirens went red. I walked with them through the whole kibbutz in the dark, because they hadn't finished scanning the place yet to make sure there were no more terrorists.
On the way, I explained to them what was in the buildings, where to check, what was behind the chicken coops. Only then did I realize the extent of the destruction of the kibbutz, which looked as if someone had played a violent computer game inside it - with unlimited powers.
We teamed up with some of the members of the alert squad, whoever remained, and I started asking what about that guy and what happened to her. They didn't even answer with words, just a slight shake of their heads. Light, but heaviest. The numbers start piling up in your head, so much it's hard to remember.
In the end, we reach safety. Everyone who remains from the kibbutz is in a protected kindergarten, and I'm surprised that they all enter in one place. Meeting the family, but still wandering among them all like an eccentric, looking for who's in and who's not. It will take a few days before I know exactly who is missing. There is also some food, delicious halva from canned battle dishes made me happy, I haven't eaten in two days.
They go to sleep with everyone on the floor, amid helpless looks from the kibbutz members who still don't know what about their loved ones.
The flat expanses of the northern Negev. The fields of the Gaza envelope and Gaza,
The next day, we were allowed a few minutes to collect belongings from the house before evacuating to Eilat. Everyone walks with suitcases and makeshift bags along the burnt kibbutz paths. The procession of shame, I think to myself. We run away like refugees from our homes. Driving out of the kibbutz, additional dimensions of destruction become clear, on roads and fields. The last photograph I took in Nir Oz is of a cloud of smoke over the receding farm. I don't want to show you this picture, so you won't remember Nir Oz like that.
We teamed up with some of the members of the alert squad, whoever remained, and I started asking what about that guy and what happened to her. They didn't even answer with words, just a slight shake of their heads. Light, but heaviest. The numbers are starting to build up in your head, so much it's hard to remember
Dad's funeral ended just right. My friends talked about the camera that was always with him, documenting everything, and I'm finishing writing this text. Thank you, Dad, for the love of photography, which has been and still is part of me, all my life.
Thank you for the love of photography. Abba Yossi z"l,
All the friends who were kidnapped or murdered, the kibbutz that burned, the fields where we will grow nothing this year except grasses. Everything stays in the pictures and burns in me to show the whole world. Here is Kibbutz Nir Oz that was, this was our life. A life of building and creating, not destruction. We will be back again, promise to take pictures for you.
Brought to print: Adi Rubinstein
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us