Documentation: Hamas terrorists infiltrated Zikim Beach on 7/10/Walla!
On the morning of October 7, I woke up at 05:45 a.m., as I usually do on Saturdays, and got ready for a bike ride in the area. I usually ride through the Karmia reserve, pass between Yad Mordechai and Netiv Ha'asara, bypass Kibbutz Erez, continue to Sderot and level, Gevim, Yachini and back home to Zikim.
At 06:29 A.M., while I was in the shower, the "Color Red" alarm went off and we heard dozens of missile launches from Gaza, bursts of missiles. At the same time, from that moment on, a power outage began, the internet stopped working and we couldn't make or receive calls from our phones. The power and communications outage, by the way, continued until Wednesday evening.
My wife Zehava and I locked ourselves in the safe room and waited for the barrage to end. I thought to myself, how do I convince Goldilocks to let me go riding, and then the second, third, fourth volley began. The house didn't stop shaking and we even heard the sound of glass shattering. Zehava said that such heavy gunfire had never happened before, and that the sound of glass breaking must be from the solar panels on the roof.
06:40 A.M. - I see Shimon Portal, the neighbor, get into his small police car and drive off. It later turned out that in a heroic operation, under heavy fire from Hamas bastards, he rescued his daughter and her husband from the slaughter that took place in the village of Gaza.
06:50 - Suddenly, amid the barrages of missiles, we heard small arms fire. I told Zehava that I thought the missile fire was a diversionary act and that they were probably trying to infiltrate the kibbutz on foot. This happened in the past during Operation Protective Edge, when bullets whistled around the house. I cocked the pistol in my hand and, with a bullet in the barrel, stood in the living room overlooking our small street, to make sure no unwanted people were coming.
Sound of the envelope/voila! NEWS
07:00 - I sent a WhatsApp message to Ron Ben Yishai, my friend, that terrorists are trying to infiltrate the kibbutz. On Friday, 6 days later, he wrote and asked in his article in Yedioth Ahronoth how it was possible that what I, the ordinary citizen, understood at 7 a.m., the military commanders and heads of state did not understand at the time. A disgrace that cost us rivers of blood.
A short time later, it was quiet. I went out into the street with my gun, Gutman, the neighbor, also came out with his gun, we tried to understand what had happened. Suddenly, one of the members of the alert squad came running up and shouted at us to go inside, we asked what had happened, and he replied that they had killed 3 terrorists. Later, it turned out that the kibbutz's alert squad, together with an officer from an elite unit who was on vacation at home, had eliminated the nine terrorists who intended to slaughter us all. In the battle with the bastards, two of our alert squad fighters were wounded.
I went up to the roof to see if the solar panels had been damaged. They were intact, but then I saw that my car had been hit by shrapnel, it was the glass noise we heard. During my stay on the roof, the sirens continued, and barrages of missiles flew over my head. I clung to the wall on the roof and felt protected. Suddenly, my phone rang and I discovered that at this point on the roof, there was weak reception. I shouted to the neighbors that we could call from our roof, they all came up and contacted the relatives. Gutman has a daughter who lives with her family in Netiv HaTeen. He managed to contact her and it turned out that they had survived and found a way out of the moshav. The neighbor Orna spoke with her partner Shimon and heard for the first time that he had managed to rescue his daughter and her partner from the inferno in the village of Gaza.
I called Doron Zemach, my friend who lives with his family in Bari. He said that he and his wife, Shlomit, were hiding in the safe room. He saw dozens of terrorists outside the house, they entered their house but couldn't open the safe room door because Doron blocked it with a broomstick.
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Volleys of thousands of missiles. Rocket fire from Gaza, October/Reuters
Hours later, when soldiers rescued them, it turned out that Shahar, his eldest son who fought in the alert squad, was missing. The terrorists looted everything in the house, including passports and credit cards, which were ready for the flight to Greece scheduled for Sunday. The scavengers managed to extract thousands of shekels from his account that day. Only the next day, at the end of the day, did Doron and Shlomit receive word that Shahar, who had bravely defended the wounded in the clinic, had been murdered when he ran out of ammunition.
Throughout the day, thousands of missiles were fired at us, we hoped electricity would be restored, and we received regular updates from the IDF staff and the kibbutz operations room. It was dark and the electricity and communications didn't come back. We lit candles. We left the house, got into the car and turned on the radio to hear what was happening and catch up. We couldn't comprehend what we heard, Netanyahu announced that we were at war.
The kibbutz's operations room announced that they had opened a secure exit route for those who wanted to leave. We decided to wait until morning, my old charger did the trick and we were able to use it as a flashlight in the dark house and charge the phones. We tried to fall asleep but couldn't quite succeed.
At 06:00 A.M., I went up to the roof again. I was interviewed from there by Radio Tel Aviv and spoke with Dalik Wolinic. We knew something terrible had happened, but the monstrous dimensions that were discovered later were still unknown. A security vehicle pulled up next to the house. They shouted to me that from 7 to 8 o'clock you can leave the kibbutz and that the IDF is securing the road. We quickly packed up necessary supplies and drove to the house of one of our sons in Rosh HaAyin.
It's either us or them. Palestinians from Gaza crossing the border into Gaza, on October 7th/Flash 90, Abed Rahim Khatib
We left the kibbutz, there was heavy smoke all around us. We drove cautiously along the road strewn with fragments of missiles, shrapnel and bodies of terrorists. On the road between Yad Mordechai and Ashkelon, we saw several abandoned vehicles that had been seen after an accident. Later, I realized that they were wounded from the party, bad guys who managed to escape and get all the way here and were evacuated by MDA personnel. We arrived in Rosh HaAyin and were happily received. A week later, on Sunday, we didn't tell the children and drove to Zikim to get more equipment for an extended stay outside the house. The area looks exactly like it did during the war, and around the house there are many soldiers in positions. I picked oranges from the tree in the yard and handed them out. We emptied the refrigerators of the products that had broken down, and closed the electric blinds.
Since then, more than three months have passed, during which we are refugees in our country, 136 abductees in Gaza, over 1,500 children, women, adults, soldiers and soldiers slaughtered and killed, thousands of families in mourning and an entire country still in shock. We're trying to maintain normalcy and try to get back to the life we had, so we rented an apartment in Ashkelon, from where Zehava can travel to work at the rehabilitation hospital. Once a week we go to the house in Zikim, to clean, water and breathe in the smell of home that we miss so much.
- The decision makers all failed, and they all brought destruction and the Holocaust of Israel 2023 upon us, we must convey the following messages to them and insist on them.
- Returning all the abductees whatever the price!
- You don't leave Gaza until you eliminate and kill all the Hamas leaders and all the bastards who crossed the border into Israel on October 7.
- We are changing the entire concept of protecting the communities in the envelope – creating a wide buffer zone between us and Gaza, such that anyone who approaches it will be killed immediately, and putting trained military units to our security 24/7. Senior officers must come to our communities and explain to us how they intend to protect us!
- It's either us or them. Either they die or we, our children and grandchildren die, that's the equation. We have become disillusioned and now we are fighting for the existence of the State of Israel. Don't be confused, this is our war of existence. If Sinwar and Mohammed Deif survive, it is only a matter of time when we will be attacked by a combined attack from Iran, Lebanon, Syria.
- I don't trust the judgment of the decision makers. We realized that the people of Israel are smarter, better and more proactive than all the leaders of the state combined. It's painful, it's sad but it's reality. Israeli governments over the past 23 years have failed miserably and abandoned the residents of Israel in the envelope. The army, which is subject to the decisions of the political echelon, acted in accordance with the instructions of the politicians.
Haim Kuznitz/Courtesy of the subjects
The quantities of weapons, weapons, underground and underground fortifications found in Gaza are not available to entire countries. For 20 years, the largest, most sophisticated and powerful fortified target in the world has been built under our noses. Tens of thousands of Gazans worked in it, tunnel diggers, heavy equipment operators, laborers, engineers, software people, chemists and more. Benjamin Netanyahu's policy of strengthening Hamas and funneling money to it turned out to be the biggest mistake made by an Israeli leader since the establishment of the state. The fact that we didn't know what was happening in Gaza is an abject failure on the part of all intelligence agencies. At the same time, if we knew what was happening in Gaza, but chose not to take action, it would be a resounding and far more terrible failure.
We must not let decision makers stop and capitulate. We continue to fight until we see the perforated bodies of all Hamas leaders in Gaza and around the world. After we eliminate the bastards, we will conduct a serious, painful and thorough investigation into how we failed, who caused it, and send home all those responsible, everyone. We will elect a new leadership that will present us with a detailed plan of how what happened will not happen again, we will rebuild the destroyed communities and rebuild the houses that were burned. We will make a better, stronger country, without hatred and venom between us, because we are all brothers, one family and we have no other country.
Haim Kuznitz is a resident of Kibbutz Zikim, a lieutenant colonel (res.) and a tour guide
- More on the subject:
- Gaza War
- Iron Sword War
- Gaza envelope
- Kibbutz Zikim