What Is a Kibbutz, the Israeli Communes Targeted in the Hamas Attacks?

Israeli soldiers carry the body of a victim of an attack by terrorists from Gaza at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, on Oct. 10, 2023. Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters

Israel’s kibbutzes—kibbutzim in Hebrew—bore the brunt of the Oct. 7 terror attack.

Hamas targeted those close to the Gaza border. Two were particularly hard hit: Kibbutz Be'eri, where at least 117 kibbutz residents were murdered, and Kfar Aza, where more than 100 were killed.

The kibbutzim are a living experiment unique to Israel. Communist countries often have had collective farms, but they were and are compulsory.

Israel’s farms are voluntary, settled since 1910 by those looking for a more communal way to live. Most of the founders were socialists.

Attack Victims Often Peaceniks

One tragic irony is that Hamas’s victims were predominantly from Israel’s political left. These were the Israelis most likely to support peace talks, a two-state solution, and coexistence with Israel’s Arab neighbors. The approximately 270 kibbutzes are nearly all within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Another 260 were killed at the Nature Party music festival near Kibbutz Re'im, an event far more likely to appeal to Israel’s secular young than those from culturally conservative Orthodox backgrounds who don’t live in the kibbutzim.

“The Israel of today and tomorrow will not be the Israel of three days ago,” Adele Raemer, 68, of Kibbutz Nirim, told The Epoch Times. “Our DNA has been changed by this horrific massacre.”

“I consider myself left-center [politically]. I’m talking [now] like far right-wing extremists, to my [own] ears, but we have to learn our lesson,” Ms. Raemer said.

She hid in her house’s safe room for seven hours while Hamas terrorists rampaged through her kibbutz. She thinks Israel has been too soft on Hamas and should stop issuing warnings before striking Hamas-occupied dwellings in Gaza.

“These are not people anyone can make peace with.”

Israeli left-wing activists hold a sign during a demonstration against an earlier Gaza war, in Tel Aviv, Israel on July 26, 2014. AP Photo/Dan Balilty

Among those missing since the Be'eri attack is Vivian Silver.

The Canadian-born activist, who immigrated to Israel in 1974, was prominent in efforts to build peace between Israelis and Palestinians, including in Gaza.

“I am not 100 percent sure if she is in Gaza or is dead on the ground in her house,” her son Yonatan Zeigan told the New York Times. “She works in the peace industry.

“That was her life’s work. She was always invested in that, in making the world a better place, and she failed.”

Kibbutzes Have Changed

On the kibbutzim, people farmed together on collective land, governed themselves, and were paid equally. When they worked off-site, many kibbutzes required them to give their salaries to the kibbutz.

The collective farms have changed in recent decades, as economic necessity, changing times, and changing sentiments prodded most toward more free-market and capitalistic set-ups.

Not everyone wanted to give up their children to be raised collectively in a group home. Those who threw themselves into kibbutz life sometimes resented making the same money as those who didn’t work as hard. Those working off-site wanted to keep more of their own money.

Sunflower fields at Kfar Blum, a kibbutz in the Galilee area. Courtesy of Kfar Blum

Agriculture, once sustaining them, became less profitable over time. Kibbutzes went into debt. Many turned to plastics, tech, or tourism to make more money.

On many of them, foreign contract workers now tend to the fields while kibbutz members work in more lucrative enterprises.

Kibbutzim no longer pay all members the same salary. Many kibbutz functions once collective have now been privatized. And some property collectively owned has been distributed to individual ownership.

However, they have remained popular places to live for the sense of community and the opportunity to build a house, which is otherwise difficult in a crowded country where land is costly.

Frontier Outposts

The kibbutzim had other roles, though. The fledgling state of Israel created new ones to stake Israel’s claim to the land within the borders established in the 1949 armistice.

They were often on the frontier and thus the nearest targets for Arab “fedayeen” fighters who came across the border at night to attack.

Kibbutzniks, working their fields by day and standing guard at night, produced a disproportionate share of the nation’s best soldiers, as country boys often do. They were resourceful and more accustomed to hard, outdoor work than city boys—plus they'd seen the enemy up close.

There have been numerous stories of kibbutz residents, many military veterans and reservists, who fought back on Oct. 7 despite being outnumbered and outgunned. Sometimes, they were members of the kibbutzim’s emergency squad, which patrols and has access to arms.

A few kibbutzim fought off the attacks entirely because their squads moved quickly to keep the terrorists from entering once the alarm was raised.

Gabriel Gliksman, whose mother survived the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, is a self-defense proponent who teaches the Israeli Krav Maga martial arts in Berkeley, Calif. Courtesy of Gabriel Gliksman

Kibbutzim also were destinations for Israel’s steady flow of new immigrants. Not all could find a place in the cities. Kibbutzim provided a fast way to integrate into Israeli society. They sometimes took on an ethnic character, where immigrants from particular groups gathered.

Kibbutzim like Be'eri, Kfar Aza, and Nirim were all set up around the time of Israel’s 1948 independence to help it hold the land.

The so-called “Gaza Envelope” refers to populated areas, many of them kibbutzim, less than 5 miles from the Gaza Strip and thus within range of mortar shells and Qassam rockets. Around 70,000 people live in the Gaza Envelope. It bore the brunt of the attack.

Better Self-Defense

Gabriel Gliksman, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., grew up in Ein HaShlosha, a kibbutz near the Khan Yunis in south Gaza. He spent agonizing hours on the phone with his 81-year-old mother Jacqueline, who still lives there, as she hid in her safe room.

The woman, who suffered a stroke a month ago, climbed out the window in her pajamas and flip-flops as Hamas terrorists poured flammable liquids on her house and prepared to set it on fire.

Gabriel Gliksman with his mother Jacqueline Gliksman, who narrowly escaped her safe room at Kibbutz HaShlosha as terrorists set fire to it on Oct. 7, 2023. Courtesy of Gabriel Gliksman

She got away and sheltered with a neighbor, but her house burned “completely to the ground,” Mr. Gliksman said.

“She has nothing left,” he said. “I’m doing a GoFundMe. I’m trying to raise money. I’m trying to see if anyone can help over there. I’m sure the government eventually will help, one way or another. But I don’t know if you will be able to rebuild her house, and I mean her life, the way it was.

“I don’t know if she wants to go back there. And I know a lot of people who don’t want to go back there. Which makes sense,” he said.

Mr. Gliksman said he knew an entire family gunned down on a nearby kibbutz. He knows people on all the hard-hit kibbutzes. “It’s very rough. Very rough.”

In California, Mr. Gliksman owns a school teaching Krav Maga, the Israeli fighting technique. He gives firearms instruction as well.

“My father was a Holocaust survivor. He passed about a year ago. We need to fight.

“We’re not waiting for the police or the military to save us. We’ve got to do it ourselves. We’ve got to keep our community safe,” he said.

Israel should make it easier for civilians to own guns, Mr. Gliksman said.

“People from my kibbutz didn’t have weapons to fight. Only some. And those who fought were the most successful. They need to arm the civilians who live right by our borders.”

He said he was inspired by the example of his father’s uncle, a Holocaust survivor, who owned guns in Belgium. “He was ready to defend himself [and did], and he did survive the war.”