Visit to Be’eri: Life is slowly returning on Ortdes Grauens

Sharon Cohen wears a black T-shirt. It says in white writing: “I love be’eri”. In addition, the image of a connected heart – it stands for a love full of pain. Sharon Cohen is 45 years old, lived in the Kibbutz near the border to the Gaza Strip for 24 years. Until October 7, 2023, when the Hamas Be’eri attacked.

Cohen, her husband and the four children hid in the shelter of their house. The terrorists tried to penetrate, her husband blocked the door. 13 hours. “I thought we couldn’t do it,” recalls Cohen. “We have already written farewell messages to family and friends.”

The architecture of her house Sharon Cohen and the family has probably saved. Because the corridor to the shelter was so narrow, the attackers did not shot on the door – otherwise they could have hit the back balls. When Cohen and their family were able to leave the room, they looked for their relatives. The devastating was so devastating, so brutally the terrorists had prepared some victims that Cohen only had final clarity after 48 hours: the parents, an aunt and a cousin of her husband were dead.

A good one and a half years after the attack, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited the Kibbutz Be’eri. He is here for the second time. During the first visit in November 2023, he saw the traces of blood on the walls, the ashes of the fire that the terrorists had laid, the smashed furniture, sooty dolls, torn beds – remains of a life that had been destroyed here. “The horror pulled us through marks and legs,” the Federal President recalls when he is now back in front of the burned -out gallery of the place accompanied by the Israeli President Jitzchak.

In Be’eri, 101 residents and 31 security guards died on October 6th. 32 people kidnapped the terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Yuval Haran, a young man from Be’eri, wore seven relatives. They all came back alive. Others not. Six hostages from Be’eri have not been released to date. Her photos hang in many places in Kibbutz, most of them are young men. But their fate is known: they are all dead. It is now about leading their corpses home.

If you walk through Be’eri today, you can see how a new place is created. 120 houses were completely demolished, new ones are now being built. The Sharon Cohen house, which the terrorists devastated as long as they besieged the shelter. Like many other families, the Cohens were housed in hotels, including on the Dead Sea. In the meantime, around 700 people from Be’eri live in an emergency shelters built in a settlement near the city of Beer Sheva, south of Tel Aviv.

Cohen’s house is not yet finished, but Cohen is not yet ready to return. She wants to go back to Be’eri, that, absolutely, her family too. Her husband was born here. A sister in Canada offered them to record them. But the two daughters and the two sons, today 18, 16, 11 and 7 years old, protested. They too want to go back to Be’eri. But as long as not all hostages are free, says Cohen, she cannot go back.

Yuval Haran also says that one cannot live a normal life in the knowledge in one place “that our brothers and sisters are sitting in any basement just a few kilometers away”. Haran lost his father and an aunt on October 7th. Seven other relatives, among them children, were kidnapped. They are free again, “a miracle,” says Haran. In total, Hamas still has 58 hostages in its violence. Of 20 you know that they are still alive, a few others are unclear, more than half is dead.

Life only gradually returns to the Kibbutz. Be’eri’s printing company, which offered many people work, also Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, is back in operation. Many Israelis who work here commute every day. Palestinians no longer work there. In the first few months, the Cohens received government support. Hardly today. Both work again, the children go to school. “We are doing this,” says the mother.

Germany helps reconstruction the burned -out gallery as a cultural center in new architecture with seven million euros. Above all, the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Construction, Sören Bartol, has made the cultural center a personal concern. The winning design of the architectural competition is presented during Steinmeier’s visit.

Cohen and Haran wear chains with a trailer to remember the hostages. “Our heart is in Gaza”, it says in Hebrew. And again in English: “Bring Them Home Now.” Is the government doing enough to free the hostages? Cohen and Haran avoid the question of whether the war of the Israeli army against the Hamas in the Gaza Strip actually helps to free the hostages or harm. They agree on the formula: “The hostages are not all freed yet – so it can’t be enough.” And one is not easy to speak here about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Many accuse him of being responsible for the lack of protection of the Kibbutz, who made the terrorist easier for the terrorist. And in more than 19 months, Netanyahu Be’eri has not even visited.

Cohen and Haran do not know what life in the neighborhood of the Palestinians could look like in the future. You don’t plan that far. Does Haran want to know who killed his father? “It doesn’t help me if I know the murderers,” says Haran. “My life doesn’t get any better if I have a person’s picture that I hate the most.”