Nir Oz, Israel — Eliyahu Margalit, better known by his nickname “Churchill,” is the mythical cattle rancher of Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities along the Gaza border worst hit during a brutal attack by Hamas terrorists in Oct. 7. Margalit, 77, was kidnapped, along with his horse, to Gaza. On December 1, the Israeli military announced that Churchill had been killed by a terrorist group while in custody.
Just a day earlier, Churchill’s daughter Nili, 41, returned from Gaza as part of the seventh batch of hostages released in a temporary ceasefire deal brokered with Hamas.
More than a quarter of Nir Oz’s 427 residents were either killed or kidnapped on Black Shabbat, as is known locally.
Of those, 31 are still in custody in Gaza, including Kfir Bibas, the red-haired baby who at the age of 11 months became a symbol of the hostage crisis as the youngest kidnap victim.
The IDF announced last week that seven hostages had died in custody, four of whom – including Margalit – were from Nir Oz.
A volunteer picks avocados in Nir Oz, which like many nearby agricultural kibbutzim have relied on outside help to come in and harvest their bounty. Courtesy of Deborah Danan After the Hamas attack on Nir Oz, about a quarter of its population was either killed or abducted to Gaza. Reuters
Life goes on for the Margalit cowshed and on the day his death was announced, a new calf was born.
The newly delivered cattle were not the only signs of new life emerging from the destruction.
Last week saw the planting of new potato seedlings and the harvesting of avocados with volunteers from all over Israel arriving at the farm to lend a helping hand.
The once bucolic kibbutz, located just a mile from the border with Gaza, has 6 acres of farmland and is known for exporting potatoes, pomegranates, wheat and peanuts.
A temporary school in Hotel Eilat is now housing those evacuated from Nir Oz. Courtesy of Deborah Danan The luxury hotel in Eilat where residents of Nir Oz are currently making a new temporary home while they consider how to return to the Kibbutz. Courtesy of Deborah Danan
A green oasis in the arid climate of the western Negev desert, the kibbutz is an ecological wonder and home to 900 species of flora.
Since the start of the Second Intifada in 2001, Nir Oz — founded in 1955 — has been beset by rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza.
These attacks increased significantly in both number and frequency after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas subsequently took over the Peninsula in a bloody coup.
Still, kibbutz residents say it’s a price they’re willing to pay for what they believe is a little bit of heaven on earth.
Yagil Yaakov, was detained in Gaza for weeks (left), but has returned to his family (photo before detention). courtesy
“It’s 99% heaven and 1% hell,” Benny Avital, a member of Nir Oz’s rapid response team, told The Post outside a row of burning houses on the kibbutz. “They are [fire rockets] in our case, we run away with the children, sometimes for a few days or a few months, and then we come back and be quiet for a while.
“But after that Saturday, it was 1% heaven and 99% hell.”
Each of the nearly 20 communities targeted in the October 7 massacre experienced the attack differently, leading to varied responses and different perspectives on both recovery and the possibility of return.
In Nir Oz’s case, IDF troops took hours to arrive, leaving the terrorists to carry out an advanced, systemic strategy of killing on sight, home invasions, and attempts to breach safe rooms.
Kibbutz Nir Oz is located just a few minutes from Israel’s border with Gaza. Wikipedia/ Danny-w
When, in some cases, those attempts fail, the terrorists set Nir Oz’s house on fire, leaving the residents with a terrible choice: face suffocation or face the attackers.
According to Avital, who threw a wet towel over his head and ran into the house to save several dozen survivors, of the 700 Palestinians who entered the Kibbutz that day, only 150 were actual armed militants.
The rest are civilian men, women and children.
It later emerged that some civilians had taken members of the kibbutz hostage.
Ron Bahat, a longtime resident of Nir Oz, has chosen to return to the Kibbutz — one of the few members currently living in the community. Courtesy of Deborah Danan
The relentless violence on October 7 left many residents — including Avital — unable to answer whether they would eventually return to the kibbutz.
“We don’t want to think about it now. There are still many people kidnapped and the situation in Gaza is unknown,” said Avital. “We cannot continue to live here when they are there.”
Renana Gome Yaakov, whose sons Yagil, 12, and Or Yaakov, 16, were returned to Israel on November 27 after suffering horrific abuse in Gaza for 54 days, including being branded by terrorists with a motorcycle exhaust pipe, said for now, there will be no return in the card.
“Can you imagine bringing those children back to their homes to be kidnapped,” Gomeh Yaakov told The Post.
However, a tentative plan to return to Nir Oz was finally drawn up.
Grim sight: Mailroom at Kibbutz Nir Oz, with tags above residents’ boxes stating, in Hebrew, if they were ‘killed’ or ‘kidnapped.’ Courtesy of Deborah Danan
For the next month, the community will continue to stay in a hotel in the Red Sea tourist resort of Eilat where they were evacuated after the massacre.
The resort town – which straddles Israel’s borders with Egypt and Jordan – has doubled in population since the war began, housing more than 60,000 of the estimated 300,000 evacuees.
A converted field school in Eilat has been transformed into a school for 600 children from Nir Oz and other Gaza enclave communities.
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The hotel itself, located between popular reef diving spots and the red Negev mountains, has undergone several renovations to adapt to its new function.
A dozen tents have been set up next to the pool, for everything from a makeshift preschool to a massage clinic and art therapy space.
At first, clowns and singers were brought in in an attempt to lift the mood, but according to Irit Lahav, the daughter of founder Nir Oz who has taken on the unofficial role of kibbutz spokesperson, it just didn’t feel right.
Nili Margalit, a member of Nir Oz, was kidnapped to Gaza where she was held for weeks. His father — the Kibbutz’s beloved cattle herder — was killed by Hamas. via REUTERS
“Too much sadness,” he said.
Late at night, the hotel lobby turns into a gathering place where survivors, plagued by insomnia, exchange stories about that fateful day.
Lahav’s own life – and that of his 22-year-old daughter, Lotus – was saved after he jammed an oar to prevent the safe’s door handle from opening.
“Here we sit and cry,” he said, gesturing toward the opulent lobby, which overlooks several swimming pools and manicured gardens.
After living in Eilat, the community, which Lahav said hopes to stay together, will move to a newly built apartment block in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat where they are expected to stay for eight months.
Moving to high-rise apartments in an urban setting is inappropriate, Lahav said, and will represent a significant change for kibbutz residents accustomed to large open spaces, their own private homes and a communal way of life.
According to the plan, the community will receive a kindergarten in the adjacent street. School-age children will attend school in Gat, a nearby kibbutz.
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The move was carried out in conjunction with the Tekuma Authority — the government body tasked with rehabilitating the Gaza Strip — and was partially funded by American Jewish groups.
The Jewish community in the US has also been matched with the displaced Israeli community, with Chicago adopting Nir Oz. Similar efforts are underway for other Hamas-affected communities in the Gaza Strip.
The people of Be’eri, for example, have been moved to a resort along the Dead Sea while those from Kfar Aza are in a hotel along Israel’s central Mediterranean coast.
The Nir Oz community will be housed for more than a year in Kiryat Gat.
At that time, a temporary settlement consisting of trailers known as a caravilla — a portmanteau of the words caravan and villa — will be built for the community in the Negev region, probably Irit near Lahav, a kibbutz about 60 miles east of Nir Oz.
According to the current plan, the community will remain in the karavilla for about two years.
After that, Lahav noted, and depending on a large number of factors, the question of returning to their beloved kibbutz may have a more definite answer.
“Would I go back and take the risk again? Right now I can’t think about next week. I love this place. I love farms, I love people. But it was too scary.” Lahav, who accompanied The Post on a visit to the smoldering ruins of a kibbutz, he said.
Ron Bahat, 57, who grew up with Lahav in the kibbutz’s collective children’s home, has a different attitude and has returned to Nir Oz.
.Almost 60% of Israel’s produce comes from the Gaza corridor, such as Kfar Aza, Be’eri and Nachal oz. Mapcreator.io/OSM.org
“I came back because it was home,” he said. But Bahat remains an anomaly.
For now, the most urgent priority is to ensure that the kibbutz, and its output, does not collapse completely.
Almost 60% of Israel’s produce comes from the Gaza corridor, such as Kfar Aza, Be’eri and Nachal oz.
The IDF unit was tasked with overseeing civilian and military missions to ensure that the work was carried out for what Maj.
Scenes of destruction in Nir Oz after the Hamas attack on October 7. Courtesy of Deborah Danan Soldiers are seen inspecting a destroyed house in Kibbutz Nir Oz on November 21, 2023. AP
Nir Boms called “the day after” — when the fighting with Hamas stopped.
The unit has completed 200 tasks a day in that direction, everything from scrubbing houses still alive of blood to tending to traumatized dogs to harvesting crops.
“One kid asked us to feed his fish so we had a soldier do that,” Boms said.
“Almost from day one, we were tasked with rebuilding. This is what we do. They tear down, we build. They will not break our spirit.”
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