Adele Raemer survived seven harrowing hours sheltering in her safe room on Oct. 7 as Hamas terrorists rampaged in her kibbutz a mile from the Gaza border. She says that day, something in her and many Israelis changed.
Those in Kibbutz Nirim have long endured the risks of living close to that frontier. They know that they only have about 10 seconds to get to the safe room in their homes once the sirens start to wail.
Then, the rockets start to fall.
“Horrific stories. I’m full of them,” Ms. Raemer told The Epoch Times in a telephone conversation from the Israeli city of Eilat, where she and her daughter’s family evacuated.
One man, hiding in his safe room and trying to hold the door closed to keep the terrorists out, was fatally shot through the door. Another man and his daughter were dragged out by terrorists and shot on the spot, according to Ms. Raemer.
A 75-year-old woman and her two adult sons were kidnapped.
“The terrorists used her phone and took pictures of her being abducted by a man with a rifle and sent it to her daughter. That’s how [the daughter] knew she was being abducted,” Ms. Raemer said.
“I'll tell you: they’re barbarians. This is not an army. Armies don’t act this way. These are barbarians. Their only aim is to conquer, destroy, and colonize.”
Ms. Raemer, 68, who was born in the United States, had traveled to Israel for a youth program in 1972. A year later, she returned to the United States for college, but the Yom Kippur War broke out that October.
“I said, ‘What am I doing in America? Israel needs me.’”
She returned, was immediately drafted, did her military service in Kibbutz Nirim, and stayed.
On Oct. 6, the kibbutz had a big party to celebrate its 77th anniversary, Ms. Raemer said. Her daughter also lives there with her husband and three children, and her 33-year-old son was visiting.
On Oct. 7, they were awakened by air-raid sirens and the sound of massive rocket fire at about 6:30 a.m. and retreated to their safe room. At about 7 a.m., the kibbutz sent a notification that terrorists were on site.
Most Israeli homes near frontiers have safe rooms now, although they don’t have locking doors, so someone hurt inside during a rocket attack can be rescued.
“They are built to be safe against rockets, not infiltrators,” Ms. Raemer said.
The army was notified that the kibbutz was under attack. Overwhelmed with reports, they took seven hours to arrive.
“For seven hours, we were alone, with terrorists rampaging through the kibbutz,” she said.
The kibbutz has trained, armed first responders—who killed some terrorists—but there weren’t enough of them, according to Ms. Raemer.
Not all of the first responders could go out and fight. Ms. Raemer’s son-in-law, separated from her daughter, had to stay behind with their three daughters.
“Thank God he could not leave the house to join the team. Because when the terrorists tried to enter his house, he went outside the safe room,” she said. “He closed the door. Behind it was where the girls were. And he shot the terrorists that infiltrated his house.”
Ms. Raemer and her son remained in her safe room and had been told via the kibbutz’s text message system that under no circumstances should they leave it. At one point, she heard Arabic shouting outside.
At some point, she couldn’t avoid going to the bathroom and crept out of the safe room.
“I saw the slats on my window were busted because they tried to get in,” Ms. Raemer said.
“I don’t know why they gave up so easily—if it was dumb luck or divine intervention or my husband looking over me.”
At about 2 p.m., they were informed that the army had arrived and was hunting down the terrorists to clear the kibbutz. While nine terrorists were killed there, at the time, they didn’t know how many were there. Security cameras later showed that about 50 had infiltrated, although not all of them were armed.
“Some of them came just to loot and plunder,” Ms. Raemer said. “They went into people’s houses. They went into one woman’s house. She’s over 90, and she had a foreign worker who’s her caregiver. They demanded money.
“She gave them money, and they took things and left.
“Other houses, they went in and they smashed things up. They stole whatever they could. They shot up cars. They slashed tires. Anything, just to destroy.”
One young woman was alone in her safe room, she said. She held the door closed with both hands so they couldn’t get to her.
“They decided to smoke her out. They set fire to her apartment,” Ms. Raemer said.
The woman was on the phone with her mother, who advised her to crack the window to let in fresh air.
The steel door got so hot from the fire burning outside that she had to wrap the handle in a pillowcase to keep holding it closed against the intruders, she said. The first responders finally rescued her.
Ms. Raemer is particularly distraught over a friend who was out for her daily early morning walk through the fields. Judy Weinstein Haggai, 70, and her husband were outdoors at 6:30 a.m. when the rockets started flying overhead.
“She took a picture of a rocket in the sky,” Ms. Raemer said. “That was the last contact we had with her.”
Later, she learned that Ms. Haggai and her husband were among the missing.
“She was an English teacher, like me,” Ms. Raemer said. “She works with special education students especially. She taught English through puppetry. She taught mindfulness. This is the sweetest, kindest, funniest soul you ever want to meet. She was certainly the first one who would want to sit down with people and make peace and make people happy.
“These animals took her.”
Ms. Raemer and her son evacuated with other kibbutzniks to the community’s members’ lounge in the afternoon, after the army told them it was safe to move. There, they spent an uncomfortable, crowded night. Some were dispersed to other safe buildings, also protected by the army, at about 9 p.m. as the rocket barrage resumed.
The next day, they were escorted, a few families at a time, back to their homes to pack small bags. They walked via a circuitous route.
“I understood afterward it was because there were all these terrorist bodies that they hadn’t cleaned up yet, and they didn’t want us to see it,” Ms. Raemer said. “They didn’t want us exposed to that.”
When she went to pack, she called a first responder to check her attic, where she kept her suitcase.
“He went up with his gun and checked it out to be sure there weren’t any terrorists hiding up there,” Ms. Raemer said.
“There are people in my kibbutz who don’t have a home to go back to.”
Loading the buses was harrowing. It took a long time.
“I was in that bus for about 40 minutes. That in itself was petrifying, because you never know when there’s going to be an incoming rocket,” she said. “With zero to 10 seconds (to get to safety), if we’re sitting on the bus when there was a rocket, there’s no way we could get out of there in time.”
They departed on four buses at about 1 p.m. on Oct. 8.
The main highway serving their community “was a war zone,” but the buses had no other way out.
“There were burning cars on the side,” Ms. Raemer said. “I saw charred bodies and tanks driving by. We heard artillery. We were evacuated under fire. It was petrifying.
“I was sure this was the end. I was sure I would not live to see another sunrise.”
A four-hour journey took them to Eilat, the port on Israel’s southern tip. She and her daughter’s family are now staying in a hotel.
“I’ve lived in the kibbutz since 1975,” Ms. Raemer said. “I’ve never feared for my life like I did that day, those two days.”
She said her outlook and those of many people she knows have changed permanently.
“The Israel of today and tomorrow will not be the Israel of three days ago,” Ms. Raemer said. “Our DNA has been changed by this horrific massacre.
“I consider myself left-center [politically]. And I’m talking [now] like far right-wing extremists to my [own] ears, but we have to learn our lesson.”
She, for one, thinks Israel must end the “knock on the roof” policy.
When targeting buildings in Gaza with Hamas members inside—and Hamas routinely uses human shields this way, which is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions—the military drops a light explosive, the ‘knock on the roof,’ and sends text messages telling residents they’ve got 10 minutes to get out. The terrorists usually leave with them.
“I'd say, no more knock on the roof. If you live in a building that has Hamas offices, you’re taking your life in your hands,” Ms. Raemer said.
“I mean, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
“These are people who carry out random acts of violence and hate and terror and don’t care if you’re a foreign worker or a Jew. If you’re in Israel, you’re fair game to slaughter, to massacre as brutally as possible.
“And they’re so proud of it. They take pictures. I mean, they’re totally like the Nazis, who kept track of all the names, of all the people, everything was so documented.
“These are not people anybody can make peace with. This is ISIS, Iran-proxied ISIS.
“Nobody in their wildest nightmares could have conceived of what happened.”
She said her heart goes out to innocent Gazans for what they’re enduring, which will likely get far worse.
“I know they want to live as good neighbors,” Ms. Raemer said. “But their leadership leads them a different way.”
She cited the well-publicized incidents of Gazan children who, for their end-of-school-year play, dress up as Hamas fighters capturing Israeli soldiers.
“That’s how they educate them,” Ms. Raemer said. “They teach their children to hate us. And those are the terrorists that were in my kibbutz two days ago. They’ve been training them like this for two decades since Hamas took over in 2005. That’s what they’ve been teaching them to do.”
She doesn’t know what the prospects are for her kibbutz rebuilding. Many people lost their homes.
“I can’t see people going back there until something has been done to sufficiently neutralize the threat from Gaza,” Ms. Raemer said. “Because the country has to finish this off properly. Because if not ... the region where I live is finished.
“You can’t keep running away from borders because then the border keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and there’s no place left to run.”
