This story was excerpted and adapted from the book “10/7: 100 Human Stories,” winner of the National Jewish Book Awards’ 2024 Jewish Book of the Year and The Natan Fund’s 2025 Notable Book Award.

Bipin Joshi wasn’t supposed to be sent to the Gaza border.

At 23, the tall young man carried his family’s aspirations on his shoulders — he was their firstborn son, their vessel of promise.

Home was Kanchanpur in Nepal’s fertile westernmost reaches, where the Mahakali River nourishes borderlands renowned for abundant harvests. There, Bipin first envisioned transforming agricultural knowledge into prosperity — he dreamed of a banana plantation that would secure his family’s future.

Israel was meant to be just a brief detour on his path to building something lasting back home.

When he enrolled in the Learn and Earn program that purported to offer  students from Africa and Asia  the opportunity of earning relatively high wages while taking classes in high-tech agriculture. Bipin had been assured placement in Israel’s heartland. But his assignment was changed at the last moment, and he was placed at Kibbutz Alumim, two miles from the Gaza border. Yet any disappointment he felt gave way to  relief: He would be working with Himachal Kattel, his best friend and roommate from college in Nepal. In Alumim, the two Nepali young men resumed their familiar schooldays routine, sharing a modest room where, after exhausting days of fieldwork, they would unwind with cold beers and songs from home.

A month later, Himachal and Bipin were some of the only students left alive from their cohort, nearly 3,000 miles from their home in Nepal, when Hamas attacked Alumim.Through the lemon and orange orchards, dozens of Hamas terrorists rampaged the Kibbutz, shooting indiscriminately. They killed 22 Thai and Nepali citizens, kidnapped eight, and injured a few more.

Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu | Sept. 13, 2023

Himachal, a 25-year-old from a small village in the mountains of Gorkha, sported a large red Tika on his forehead at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. This was a blessing from his older sister, Niruta. He was the youngest of four siblings.

All 17 students awaiting their midnight flight were adorned with Tikas, a token of pride and blessing from their families.

In Nepali culture, they serve as good-luck charms and vouchsafes for significant journeys. Many parents had come to the airport, some in tears, others bearing gifts. It was a long goodbye — their children were leaving for 11 months.

They were making the trip for the money, and the education: they were supposed to earn more in a year in Israel than they’d earn in a few in Nepal, as well as gain skills that would advance their careers.

Aged between 22 and 25, most of the students had been raised in poverty.

Prabin Dangi, 24, was hoping to support his chronically ill mother back home, but found that despite his education, good jobs in Nepal were scarce. This was a common dilemma in his family, as one of his brothers was working in Dubai and another in Saudi Arabia for the same reason. His mother pleaded with him, her youngest son, not to leave, but he was determined to provide her with the best possible care.

Ananda Sah, 25, had promised his grandmother that he’d build a house for her. Dipesh Raj Bista, 24, planned to finance his younger brother’s medical studies, being the sole supporter of his family after the death of his father.

And Joshi traded his musical ambitions and writing talent for practical skill: He wanted to learn advanced agricultural techniques that he could apply back home.

The group was sent to a classic “old-style” kibbutz named Alumim, where they shared responsibilities and lived communally. The kibbutz population — a community of 500 — was a mixture of religious jewish immigrants from Arab countries, members of the U.K.’s largest Orthodox Jewish youth movement, agricultural workers from Thailand and now, them as well.

Thai labor, along with Nepali labor, became Israel’s agricultural backbone after Palestinians (who had previously replaced Israeli farmers) were restricted from working in Israel in large numbers following the first intifada in the 1980s. Security concerns about terror attacks led Israel to seek an inexpensive workforce sourced from countries uninvolved in the conflict.

Kibbutz Alumim | Sept. 14-Oct. 6 

The students arrived in Israel in mid-September: warm, sunny days.

Soon after arriving, the students’ expectations collided with reality. The communal socialist principles they’d heard about didn’t seem to apply to them.

Their accommodation consisted of small cramped rooms equipped with bunk beds to maximize space.

Their days began around 4 a.m., when they’d gather in the cramped, gray kitchen to cook the lunch they’d bring with them to the fields, before heading out to do arduous physical labor under the sun, which typically lasted until approximately 4 p.m.

Prabin, Padam and Rajan were responsible for managing the kibbutz’s irrigation system. Their duties included carrying heavy pipes out to the fields, assembling the pipes and connecting them to the irrigation system, and fixing malfunctions.

Himachal and Bipin worked together in the orchards, trimming trees, and picking and packing pomelos and oranges. The work was simple, not technically advanced; it was difficult for them to ignore a sense of disappointment.

Each evening of the three weeks the Nepalese cohort spent there, many students called home, reassuring their families that their time in Israel, though it was draining, was a wise investment in their future.

They clung to the hope that their situation would improve once the university opened in October – the “Learn” portion of the program, which involved attending classes at Ben Gurion Negev University once a week.

On Oct. 3, an earthquake struck Nepal, and many were concerned for their families. Padam Thapa called home anxious on October 6. His sister-in-law, Mekhu Adhikari, told him about the frightening aftershocks. Ganesh Nepali urged his elder brother to look after their parents and stay safe, as their family home had sustained structural damage.

Kibbutz Alumin, the Foreign Workers Zone | Oct. 7

Himachal had stayed up until 3 a.m., engrossed in the final season of “Vikings” on Netflix. Saturdays offered the only chance for sleeping in.

Drifting off with his earphones in, he didn’t hear the sirens. At 6:30 a.m., Bipin woke him, urging, “We need to get to the shelter quickly.”

In the other room, Prabin, still half-dressed, rushed to the bunker, witnessing rockets slicing through the sky.

The 17 students were confined in the open-door shelter for more than an hour, waiting for instructions. This was the first missile attack they’d ever experienced. They’d been reassured before that rocket attacks from Gaza were common but rarely harmful, and told that staying inside a shelter would keep them safe. To pass the time, they divided into teams, playing Ludo on their phones.

Meanwhile, Rafi Babian, a kibbutz member and the security officer of the Sdot Negev Regional Council, was worried: The sheer number of missiles being fired was unusual. He headed to the council’s headquarters to activate the emergency center. En route, he was warned at the Reim intersection about the presence of terrorists nearby and soon after received an alert about terrorists approaching the gate of his home, Kibbutz Alumim. He notified the kibbutz a few minutes before Hamas arrived. By 6:45 a.m., the entire kibbutz emergency response squad, comprising a dozen members, was armed and ready. Fifteen minutes later, about 20 terrorists were at the kibbutz gate.

The Nepali students didn’t know any of this. They assumed the noises they heard were from missiles. They didn’t know that terrorists riding motorcycles and mopeds were already firing RPGs.

The emergency squad prevented the terrorist from reaching the kibbutz’s residential area — a few civilian-volunteers and soldiers were killed in the battle — but no kibbutz members were harmed.

The terrorists, having been repelled, went looking for another target. They found the workers’ quarters, near the cows and orchards.

From their shelter, the students heard loud Arabic being spoken by the approaching terrorists. Thinking the Arabic was Hebrew, they were relieved: someone had come to help them.

Dipesh Raj Bista stepped out of the shelter, followed by Ganesh Nepali, who just needed to use the restroom.

Outside the shelter, they were met by two men in black, pointing guns at them. Realizing these weren’t kibbutz-members, Dipesh Raj Bista yelled, “We are Nepalese!”

Gunfire was the response.

Dipesh and Ganesh were killed on the spot.

Soon after, a grenade was thrown into the shelter where the 15 other students were hiding. Bipin immediately realized what happened and threw the grenade back out. But he couldn’t catch the grenade that followed, and five of the students were injured. Ananda Shah was severely bleeding, clutching a pillow to stifle his screams. Lokendra Singh Dhami, bleeding too, was whispering about his wife, his 5-year old daughter, and his 2-year-old son.

Prabin, Himachal and Bipin weren’t hurt. They had huddled in a corner of the room, squeezing so tight together that it was hard to breathe. Together, they called one of their bosses, pleading, “Please help us, we’re in trouble.”

The response was short: “I’m so sorry, I can’t help you. There are terrorists attacking all over, I’m hiding too.”

Narayan Prasad Neupane wasn’t as gravely injured as the others: despite having lost three toes, he could still walk. He happened to have remembered the number of the Israeli emergency medical services and called for an ambulance. The operator, speaking English, assured him that help would arrive.

Soon after, two men in blue uniforms entered the shelter. “Please don’t hurt us,” the few students still alive begged.

“We’re the police, the Israeli police,” the men assured them.

“Please, take us to a hospital … these people are dying … get us out of here.”

“There are still terrorists outside,” the police said. “It’s impossible to move you now, but we’ll be back. Everyone who can walk, you need to move to a different place; it’s not safe in the shelter. Go to the kitchen or to your room.”

“And leave the wounded here?”

They had no choice.

Bipin, Himachal, Rajan, Prabin, Prabesh and Padam, leaping over the corpses and injured bodies of their friends, made their way into the dining room.

There, a few Thai workers were also hiding. Some of their friends had been murdered while sleeping in their beds.

Narayan, Lokendra and Dhan decided to move to the residency area. Upon hearing a car outside, Narayan went out to check if it was the ambulance he was waiting for. He was shot twice by a passing terrorist.

Crawling back into the room, covered in blood, water was his last request.

Kibbutz Alumim, Kitchen | Oct. 7

A defensive wall of Persian rice sacks — that’s what they constructed to shield themselves from further grenade attacks. Prabin came up with the idea, and they quickly stacked the sacks on top of each other.

It was a small kitchen; options for shelter were limited. Most of the Nepalese and Thai workers crouched behind the “rice wall,” under a wooden table, with Parmod hiding under the sink. Bipin, positioned in the middle and not shielded at all, grew increasingly worried about their friends left in the shelter.

As time passed without any sign of rescue, Bipin considered going back to help them. “We need to think about our next steps. Will you come with me and help bring our friends here?” he asked Himachal.

They sought the opinion of a Thai worker who’d been hiding in the kitchen before them. His name was Phonsawan Pinakalo, a 30-year-old tractor driver who’d arrived in Israel four years earlier, to earn a salary that was four times what he would’ve earned in Thailand. They communicated using Google Translate, going back and forth between Nepali and Thai.

Phonsawan’s response was unequivocal: “Don’t do it. If you do it, you’ll die. We’ve heard the terrorists walking around here for hours.”

On the other side of the table, Rajan tried to reassure his roommates Prabin, Prabesh, and Padam. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen. Help will come soon.”

Exhausted by their ordeal in Israel, Prabesh declared, “If we survive, we’re heading back to Nepal as soon as possible.”

An hour and a half later, Hamas terrorists broke down the kitchen door, shouting “Allah-hu Akbar” and shooting indiscriminately. The makeshift wall of rice sacks offered no protection.

The bullets pierced the sacks and hit them. Blood and rice was spilled on the floor.

“Prabin, how bad is your leg?”

“It’s bad. I can’t feel much of it. And you, Himachal?”

“You see the holes in my chest and shoulder, right? It’s getting harder to breathe.”

“We need water. I can’t bear this.”

Struggling, Himachal rose from their hiding spot under a cheap wooden table to fetch water. As he moved, he aggravated his chest wound and lost more blood. He managed to collect some water in a shallow plate, but half of it spilled as he returned to Prabin on the kitchen floor.

It wasn’t enough. Prabin’s throat was parched and he was writhing in agony.

“Pramod, do you have any water to give me? I beg you.”

Pramod didn’t respond. Hidden under the sink in a small plumbing cabinet, he was the only student unharmed, unseen by the Hamas shooters.

“Pramod, there’s water in the sink above. I beg you, I can’t move to get it. I’m so thirsty, I might scream, and they’ll come again and finish us off.”

He pleaded again and again, until Pramod made a small hole in the sink pipe and collected some of the murky water in a pot. Extending his hand from the cabinet, Pramod whispered, “Here, this is all we have.”

Prabin lapped up the mixture of water and urine. His roommates, Rajan and Prabesh, lay under the table as well: They were dead, killed immediately.

Padam, a fourth roommate, took longer to die. “I am dying, bhauju,” he managed to send a short text-message to his sister-in-law, then plead with his friends to help him: “Kill me. I can’t stand this anymore, kill me with a knife if you can.”

“Please, friend, bear this pain. The police will come for us,” Himachal said, though he believed they were all doomed. Beneath the table, he noticed his own breathing growing heavier and heavier, matching the heavy breathing of Padam and Parbin.

Oct. 8 – The Present

The men who arrived in Israel as “neutral” replacements for Palestinian workers ultimately returned to their home countries either empty-handed or in coffins.

Out of the 17 Nepalese students at Alumim, 10 were killed, four injured, two survived unharmed — and Bipin was taken hostage alongside Phonsawan.

From their hiding spot in the kitchen, Himachal and Prabin overheard one of the terrorists questioning the two hostages about their religion, to which Phonsawan responded, “Buddhist, Buddhist, Thailand, Thailand.”

Two hours later, Bipin and Phonsawan were seen with their captors being pushed into a-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

With the onset of war, the thousands of Thai and Nepalese workers in Israel left the country, causing the collapse of the Israeli agricultural sector.

In the midst of harvest season, Israel was once again in desperate need of guest workers. In December 2023, the government of Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, announced it would send about five thousand young people to work in Israeli agriculture. Hundreds of Sri Lankans also joined, putting money over safety.

Himachal and Prabin spent several months in Israeli hospitals, lonely, unable to communicate adequately, facing a range of complex surgeries and medical procedures. Eventually, they managed to recover and even continue their studies, earning their master’s degree from Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Rehovot last month.

At some point, Phonsawan was added to the list of dead; his body was returned and flown to Thailand this week. But Bipin’s fate remained unknown.

During two years of war, Bipin’s family lived in agonizing uncertainty, not knowing whether their son was alive or dead. They were disappointed through two ceasefires, when Thai citizens who’d been taken hostage were released, and as government officials expressed “grave concern” for his life. Clinging to hope, they did everything in their power to raise public awareness about their son, a young man trapped in a foreign conflict.

Their worst fears were confirmed last week when Bipin’s corpse was returned to Israel, on the first day of a new ceasefire that brought with it the release of all 20 living hostages in Gaza.

“With immense pain, we received the worst news imaginable. Our dear son, Bipin — brother and soulmate to our daughter Pushpa — was murdered in Hamas captivity. Bipin left us full of excitement, setting out for a year of study in Israel. We never imagined that the hug we gave him then would be our last,” the Joshi family said in a statement.

“Before you were taken, you managed to send a message to your cousin, asking him to be strong and always look toward the future. It is hard to imagine a future without you, Bipin,” the statement continued. “Every flower in the garden we planted for you will remind us of you — every orchard, every field. You are part of the landscape of Nepal, and now also part of the landscape of the Land of Israel.”

On Monday, Bipin made his journey home. The first stop was a ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, where a top government official praised his heroism and addressed him directly, saying, “I am sorry. It shouldn’t have ended this way.”

Then, Bipin’s body was flown to Kathmandu, where Prime Minister Sushila Karki draped Nepal’s flag over it during a brief ceremony at the airport.

And from there, his coffin was taken to his village where on Tuesday morning, after a night in which his family was reportedly accompanied by so many who had provided comfort over the last two years, his body was cremated in a ceremony on the banks of the Mahakali River. Government representatives were present, and the photograph that had become famous in Israel and beyond was on display. Bipin was home in Kanchanpur, the borderland district whose soil nurtured his dreams and now his memory.

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