Beeri, Israel – Little has changed in Miri Gad Messika's parents' home from two years ago, when Hamas-led militants swept into this small community less than three miles from the eastern edge of Gaza, killing more than 100 people and kidnapping 32 others.
The burn marks from the fight that day still kill the walls, and the undergrowth of bullet-shattered tiles is created by Messika's footsteps with every step. To one side lay a stuffed panda doll, dusty and discarded from what was left of a kitchen counter.
“We always used to say that this place is 99% heaven and 1% hell,” Messika said, his eyes scanning the room before looking out at the devastated courtyard.
Miri Gad Messika, a resident of Beeri who was in the Kibbutz on the day of the October 7, 2023 Massacre, is shown at his parents' destroyed home on the second anniversary of the attack.
(Yahel Gazit / for the times)
The Heaven Part was the place he had known all his life as a third-generation Beeri resident, with its printing press and basketball team. Hell? Those were the periodic rocket attacks during decades of outbreaks between the militant group Hamas and Israel that would send residents running to their safe wards.
“But we knew how to handle that,” he said. “We just walked into the safe room and closed the door. That's all.”
But 10 minutes after the attack on the fateful Saturday morning of October 7, 2023, Messika understood that it was “a historic event.”
Visitors point to photos of their loved ones who were murdered at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023.
(Yahel Gazit / for the times)
“We were not prepared for such a thing,” he said.
On Tuesday, the second anniversary of the attack, Messika and others across Israel remembered the day that sparked the country's longest war, shattered Israelis' sense of security and once again shattered the long-running hatred and divisions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The scars linger like the lingering smell of soot in his parents' house.
Four Beeri residents remain in Hamas hands, but none are alive, Messika said, adding to a tally of 102 people who were killed, nearly 10% of the Kibbutz population. And while a few hundred residents have returned to live here, most remain in alternative housing, awaiting a reconstruction project to repair the 134 homes destroyed in the attack, including Messika's.
Messika is building a new house and remains adamant that she, her husband and three children will continue to live here among the community of those who survived. But there are days, like Tuesday, when you wake up with a migraine that makes you “want to never wake up.”
“How do you digest the loss of 102 people?” she said.
The Hamas operation began around 6:29 a.m. and involved a barrage of rockets and drones, paragliding commandos, and teams of fighters advancing on pickups and motorcycles from Gaza in southern Israel. When it ended, some 1,200 people were killed, two-thirds of them civilians, Israeli authorities say, and approximately 250 people were kidnapped.
There is hope here and throughout the region that there may soon be an outcome to the war. Last week, President Trump presented a 20-point peace plan that has since been accepted, for the most part, by Hamas and Israel. Final negotiations are underway this week in Egypt, with the expectation that all the hostages, the 20 who are alive and the 28 thought about death, will be handed over in the coming days.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a statement Tuesday, pledged U.S. support for Israel and said the peace proposal “offers a historic opportunity to close this dark chapter and build a foundation for lasting peace and security for all.”
But even if that was going to happen, said Shosh Sasson, 72, there was a sense that something had been irreparably shattered.
“I never thought an attack like this would happen here. We always felt safe. But now the ground under our feet feels shaky. Yes, even now, because the problem is not over,” said Sasson, who came with her husband to pay her respects at a shelter converted into a Shrine on the road outside Beeri.
Her husband, Yaakov, agreed. “For the future it will always be like this. Our neighbors do not want to live with us in a friendly way,” he said.
Near Reim, the site of the Nova Music Festival, where around 300 concertgoers were murdered, visitors walked past a memorial site, holding signs with images of the victims and a description of their last moments.
I never thought an attack like this would happen here. We always feel safe. But now the ground beneath our feet feels shaky
– Shosh Sasson, Israeli citizen
A few feet away, a tour group from Eagles' Wings, an organization that brings Christians to visit and support Israel, was listening reverently to Chen Malca, 26, as he described his experience surviving the Nova attack. When he finished, a priest led a prayer, placing his hand on Malca's head while the others raised their hands to heaven.
“We pray the destruction of Hamas and the destruction of evil, just a couple of meters from us in Gaza, father,” he said.
As he spoke, an explosion rumbled in the distance, then another. One of the Eagles' wing organizers assured the group that it was “Israeli action activity in Gaza. It's nothing to worry about.”
Partying separately from the crowd was Kati Zohar, 55, who kept vigil before a memorial for her daughter, Bar, 23, who was killed while trying to warn police that Hamas fighters were nearby, Zohar said.
She and her husband moved four months ago to the city of Sderot, a 20-minute drive away, to be near their daughter's monument.
“Every time I feel like I miss her, I come here and sit with her, have a cup of coffee, smoke a cigarette, talk to her… because this is the last place I was alive and happy,” she said.
Although he was once a happy person, “I'm not happy anymore, and I don't think I will be happy again,” he said. “A part of me is missing.”
His sadness, Zohar said, was matched by his disappointment that the Israeli military did not do more to stop the attacks and save his daughter, and by his anger that the war was still going on with the hostages still not returning, even as the world is turning against Israel.
Israel's campaign since the attack has so far killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, injured nearly 170,000 and all erased the enclave, even as nearly all Gaza residents are now displaced. The United Nations, rights groups, experts and many Western governments accuse Israel of committing genocide.
Israel denies the charge, even as it faces unprecedented levels of opprobrium.
“Everyone says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, so what did Gaza do in Israel on October 7 isn't genocide?” Zohar said.
He added that he did not believe peace with the Palestinians in Gaza was possible. “If they're not sending missiles, it's drones, balloons or another October 7,” he said.
“We are not trying to bother them, we are not sending missiles or drones,” he added. “We say, 'We live in peace, you live in peace.' But they don't want that.”
Acled, a conflict monitor, published a report on Tuesday detailing attacks on Gaza by the Israeli military since October 7, 2023. The report counted more than 11,110 air and drone strikes; More than 6,250 bombing, artillery or missile attacks and some 1,500 armed confrontations.
Messika, the Beeri resident, was equally disillusioned about the prospect of peace. Before the war, Kibbutzim residents tried to help the Gazans, hire them for jobs or take them for medical treatment. And she remembered her father telling her about going to Gaza to eat falafel – “it used to have the best falafel, he always said” – and buying produce at its vegetable markets. But the notions of helping Gazans were born of naivety.
“We know there are no innocent civilians in Gaza…they hate us,” he said, adding that Trump's plan, which involves disarming Gaza, was the right solution. Messika was still debating with other residents whether all the damaged houses should be torn down, or whether some would be preserved as a monument.
“Some say we can't live near a place like this again. It would be like living near Auschwitz,” he said. But for her, it was about turning October 7 into a learning opportunity. Without that, he insisted, the suffering would be for nothing. Although the Kibbutz council said it would continue with the demolitions, it appealed and was awaiting a new verdict.
“The next generation, they need to learn and see with their own eyes, walk through it,” he said. “It's not enough to make a website or a monument. This is evidence of history, of what happened to our friends. And I don't want it destroyed.”
About 10 miles away, in Sderot, people flocked to a mountain on the edge of town, which over the years has become a popular vantage point for a glimpse of Gaza, complete with a telescope – Cost: five shekels – to get a closer look at the landscape. Suddenly, in the distance, a large cloud of smoke bloomed somewhere beyond the destroyed edge of Gaza's Nuseirat camp.
Some raised their smartphones to record video. Others nodded gratefully and praised the Israeli military's “work ethic” during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Behind them, children played in the afternoon sun.
