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1 month after Oct. 7 massacre, the ruins of Kibbutz Kfar Aza testify to its horrors
KFAR AZA, Israel (JTA) — One month after their bucolic kibbutz turned into a site of carnage, Hanan Dann and Gili Okev returned for a brief visit — alongside two former world leaders, dozens of journalists and a handful of volunteers who were still engaged in the painstaking work of gathering the traces of their neighbors who were murdered.
The motley crew traipsing through Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Sunday had been brought together by the historic horror visited on the community of 750 on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists burst in. Between 52 and 60 people were murdered. Seventeen are believed to have been taken hostage in Gaza.
The residents returned to retrieve belongings. The world leaders — former British prime minister Boris Johnson and former Australian prime minister Scott Morris — and journalists had come to bear witness. And the volunteers were doing the same work they had been doing since days after the massacre, when they arrived to retrieve and prepare bodies for burial according to Jewish tradition.
They all carried on their work as the war that Israel launched in response to the attack carried on just kilometers away, its sounds audible and shadow palpable.
The bus carrying the press delegation stopped at the entrance to the kibbutz. David Baruch, who was accompanying the group on behalf of the Israel Defense Force’s spokesperson’s unit, instructed the 40 or so members of the press to walk the rest of the way, explaining that the IDF had received an alert for anti-tank missiles in the area and that the bus was a sitting target.
Baruch warned the journalists not to film any live reports. “The last time someone did that here ended up with four mortars fired from Gaza almost immediately,” he said.
Hanan Dann, right, speaks with the IDF’s David Baruch on Kfar Aza, Dann’s home kibbutz, a month after Hamas terrorists attacked it. (Deborah Danan)
When the group reached the “younger generation” zone, the area earmarked for young couples and families, the cruel capriciousness of the attack was laid bare. Around 40 houses, typical of kibbutz architecture in their modest appearance and size, had sustained varying degrees of destruction. Some were entirely blackened out, their walls pockmarked with holes made from grenade fragments. Others were left with gaping holes in their exterior walls from RPG impacts. All of them bore remnants of the lives that were once lived within their walls: a hammock covered with a thin film of dust, a handful of cards from a children’s game scattered among the rubble, a full mug of coffee on a kitchen table.
One house had the sentence “human remains on the couch” written in black paint on the outer wall. The adjacent wall featured yellow graffiti with the words “terrorist inside” and the date it was written, Oct. 11. One soldier at the site said Hamas terrorists were hiding in homes for days following the attack.
The couch inside the compact living room was stained with blood. Dann said his neighbors Sivan Elkabetz and Naor Hasidim were likely pulled out of their safe room and murdered on the couch.
“For the world this is maybe just another war in the Middle East. For Israelis this is a national tragedy,” Dann told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But for me, this is a personal tragedy. These are people that are friends of mine.”
It was the second time Dann had toured that area of the kibbutz since the massacre. The first time he “lasted five minutes and couldn’t take it any more,” said Dann, a computer programmer who has been residing in the Tel Aviv suburb of Kfar Shmaryahu in the past weeks. His house, on the other side of the kibbutz, was spared and together with his wife, young children and parents, who had been visiting for the Simchat Torah holiday, he survived the hours-long ordeal in their safe room, reading terror-filled text messages from friends and neighbors, some the last they would ever send.
Dann recounted the harrowing story of the Almog-Goldstein family, in which it took a full week to determine, using DNA samples, that the father, Nadav, was killed alongside his eldest daughter, Yam, and that his wife, Chen, had been abducted to Gaza along with the couple’s younger three children.
“They couldn’t even count how many bodies there were after the murder,” Dann said.
“What would you rather hear? That your family has been all slaughtered and burnt to death? Or that they are being held captive by Hamas in Gaza? Which is the better news?” he asked. “This is the dilemma my friends are dealing with.”
The IDF’s tours of the kibbutz and other sites hard hit during the attack are meant to flood the world with firsthand information about what happened there to counteract the distortion and denial that have spread in the weeks since. As foreign news organizations rotate their staff in and out of the country, more journalists have been able to see what Israel wants them to share — but also locals are being asked to recite over and over the horrors they have seen.
“I saw heads, and I saw bodies,” said ZAKA volunteer Simcha Greineman after being asked by one reporter to verify IDF claims of Hamas beheadings. “I can’t say that I saw someone do [a beheading]. I collected heads without bodies, I collected bodies without heads, I collected children that were stabbed.”
He went on: “One child had his whole body burned but there was a knife stuck in his head from side to side.”
Images of decapitated corpses were shown to the group of journalists.
Greineman recounted a scene in which a family of five, including parents, two children and a grandmother, were found in the bedroom “standing in a circle, hugging each other, locked arms.” He and other volunteers from ZAKA, an organization that specializes in search and rescue for bodies, were tasked with detangling the family.
“We’re taking these last moments of life that they had, this circle, and we’re taking apart every body that was attached to each other, and putting them in the bag,” he said.
“It’s horrifying. People should not be mistaken about the savage attacks that occurred here,” said Johnson, who resigned as British prime minister last July.
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson, right, and former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, at left, visit Kibbutz Kfaz Aza one month after the Oct. 7 attack. (Deborah Danan)
“You can’t help but be overwhelmed by the sense of that where we’re standing was once, a month ago, a place of innocence and now has been desecrated beyond comprehension,” said Morrison.
Both Greineman and Dann spoke about the kibbutz families who had helped Palestinian workers from Gaza. Dann said he had a friend who had become close with one of the workers whose daughter was ill with a heart defect, and helped them get medication and medical care.
“We were glad that workers from Gaza were coming to Israel with work permits to have jobs to meet Israelis, to see that we’re not all ‘those devils,’” he said, gesturing with air quotes. “We all really believed that things are changing. That Hamas has maybe matured from being this terrorist group to being the grown up; taking responsibility for their people, worrying for their welfare. And that concept really blew up in our face.”
Members of one family who had hired a Palestinian employee were now in Gaza themselves as hostages, Dann said.
“I can’t tell you if one of those workers was a spy,” he said. “We can assume that probably yes because they had intelligence. They came here with maps. They knew exactly where everyone was.”
Okev, another resident who had returned to the kibbutz to gather some belongings, said he and his fellow kibbutz members were struck by an overwhelming feeling of “disappointment.”
Simcha Greineman of ZAKA, which specializes in search and rescue for bodies, speaks at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where has been working for nearly a month to extricate the remains of dozens of people murdered there on Oct. 7. (Deborah Danan)
“These people — not people, terrorists — they came to kill you just because you’re Jewish. There’s no other reason. They worked here, they lived here,” Okev told JTA. “We had lots of faith in them. But after seeing them over [in Gaza] celebrating on the streets, we lost faith.”
Okev spent seven hours trapped with his wife in their safe room with the terrorists just on the other side of the wall on the couple’s porch. According to Okev, they used the porch as a kind of headquarters to issue commands. The area was strewn with soot and charred farming tools, the aftermath of a battle between the terrorists and Israeli forces that would later unfold.
During their time inside the safe room, the couple, whose adult sons were not on the kibbutz when the infiltration occurred, sat quietly, prayed occasionally, and set up a blockade by the door.
“It wasn’t a question of whether they would enter or not, it was a question of when,” he said.
But they didn’t. Okev has no explanation as to why his life was spared when 12 of his close friends were murdered.
“Divine providence, what can I tell you,” he said. “There’s someone watching over us. He didn’t watch over the others, apparently. Or they were too good so He took them.”
Dann is unsure about whether he will ever return to the kibbutz.
“Even though my individual house is intact, this place is so full of blood. It’s a question that is still too big for me and still too big for everybody,” he said.
Okev, meanwhile, has a different take.
“We will come back here and we’ll build this place and it will flourish and grow. It won’t stay like this,” he said. “We won’t let them move us.”
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The post 1 month after Oct. 7 massacre, the ruins of Kibbutz Kfar Aza testify to its horrors appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.